Something New
Packaging is something i have only briefly looked at in the first year but have never had the right opportunity to re-visit. I like to produce things by hand and felt this was a perfect chance to try it. I think what i have produced is very simple and I am obviously still in the early stages. After seeing what everyone else had produced for this assignment, I felt that I played it a bit safe by making an invitation. Although it was something completely new to me, I was not far enough out of my comfort zone to really give it a go. I got the idea from a template book I have and just played around with ideas in order to try and make it work. The thing I enjoyed most about this was the fact that it was all done by hand, from cutting, to type. I have always enjoyed working with my hands but feel that better work could have been produced, had i chose a different path.
London Living
After a talk from Luke i realised that living in London, I had never really just gone out to have a closer look. I decided to go to places where I go regularly and look a bit deeper. i found it strange to see certain things that have always been there but i have not seen because of the routes and routines I have. Since doing this, I have found that i dont leave the house without a camera because there may only be one chance to catch certain moments.
With these three images the most interesting one to me is the painted white bricks on the left. It is not the most interesting thing to look at but it asks questions such as how, when and why. When looking at it for long periods of time, your minds goes round and round trying to figure out the endless possibilities.
3 Minute Hero
I found this 3 minute video very exciting as we could take it in any direction we wanted. Having said this, I spent ages coming up with ideas and ended up leaving it pretty late to do. I think the video is successful and the contrast between type and image works well. It was a process of trial and error as i wanted to do it all in one take. If we got asked to do another 3 minute video I would spend less time thinking and more time doing in order for my work to reach its full potential. It felt good to take a hands on approach as oppose to sitting at a desk on a computer. Video was something iI had never really worked with before so i tried to keep it fairly simple but i plan to use this media more often and experiment more with the environment around me.
Areas of Proposed investigation When it came to choosing areas to investigate I didnt do too much thinking as I knew I would move onto a different path. I wrote down five areas and then began to experiment with them all to get a feel for the direction I wanted to go in. I started with what I had least experience in which was film/ video. I attempted to make a few time lapses but realised that i needed to film for a lot longer than I originally did. I decided to choose branding and packaging as I knew I would find a few interesting briefs within the competitions. Photography and visual communication where two things I very much wanted to look into so I chose to combine them and thats what I have chosen to progress with.
London Busses
After a few hours of my mind being blank i decided to set myself a project which involved moving around. I decided to try and take as many photos of london busses as i could. After a while i decided to stick to the first 100. It was not difficult but it was very time comsuming. I am thinking of making a book with information on where these busses go. The way I got the photos was quite difficult as I had to overtake the busses and quickly get out and snap away. It was a stressful but good experience and I saw parts of London I had never seen before
Image Manipulation
I began to focus my work around photography and image manipulation. I found this worked best at night as i could use light to easily alter an image. For these images, theres only so far it can be taken so a lot more experimentation had to happen in order for me to get a focal point. When taking these photos I realised that I could develop this technique by using moving objects in different scenarios.
After a group meeting with Mike i decided to not concentrate on making things so obvious and literal. It was still a fun experience to experiment with stencils and lights as you keep trying different techniques to get different effects. Instead of continuing with this approach it was decided that i should just use my own images and add text to them. This could be any kind of text, be it controvertial, obvious or subliminal.
Adding text to Images
For the D&AD/YCN I chose to colaborate with Anjelo Raposas. We both wanted to work with packaging and having worked together before, we thought we could work well together. As there are two of us, we have decided to do three briefs. The Body shop brief interested us because it is a well known brand and they have asked us to re-package four products. The second brief is also a packaging brief for an energy drink called Boost. We feel that the two are completely different as one is very classy and one is very cheap and it would be interesting to see the differences we find. The third brief is Thames Clippers, which is advertising. We felt that if we had three briefs on packaging we would get fed up of it so we took the third one in a new direction. We are still very much on the starting line having only brainstormed and sketched images but we feel confident that we will produce some excellent work.
Evaluation
Being able to chose our own paths has been a great experience and i feel it has opened me up to doing things I wudn’t have done otherwise. It has given me the chance to be very creative and experiment with a variety of new things, primarily photography. I think that i have learnt a lot and really been able to push my ideas furthur that i thought possible. I feel that i have taken some really nice pictures and thought that adding text to them could have destroyed them. Ordinarily, this is where my creative process would have ended and in the end i am glad that i have been able to overcome this. The work rate has definately stepped up from last year and i feel that I have done the same and am keeping focused. However, I have found it particularly difficult to manage my time with so many different briefs and project going on at the same time but all in all i think i am keeping up with the pace.