As my very initial research when looking into the theme of cities I wanted to gain a foundation of primary work to reference. Cities was something that interested me due to its many aspects and busy atmosphere. It allowed for me to explore a a variety of concepts, some that go more disregarded than others. I explored London for the day which exposed me to a lot of media and different art etc. I took primary photos of architecture, signs and logos. I then later analysised this through annotation. What I liked about this was that I began to think about what certain objects (in this case vehicles), define a city. The taxi cabs were definitely a big indicator of this. I was already contemplating what paths I could take cities down. Looking back on these pages I think that my research could’ve really developed through sketches and observational work rather than a planned out page. It restricted my ability to explore a wider range of things as well as capture things not purely through photo.
As it’s only week two and we are in the initial stages of this project I did some general artist research into Gilbert Schneider taken from contextual studies and Sun Young Oh. I really liked how Schneider incorporated drawings into letters making them feel suited to the composition. Especially his use of block colour combined with fine liner. I knew at the beginning of this project I wanted the inclusion of type as it’s something Ive recently come to admire. His work has made me question and think more about how I tend to view type and drawings as separate things. Yes, they may be on the same page but I often separate the two so there’s spacing between them. When in actual fact I could explore the complete opposite of this. Besides this I looked into Sun Young Oh who combines type with fun innovative illustrations. I liked her play on words and the simplicity brought to her style. At this stage I didn’t know what focus point of cities I was going to take on so my research was quite broad.
Here I did some general research into logos purely as it was something I was interested in. As well as it’s relevance to cities and branding etc. I looked into two different books one being ‘A handbook of food and drink marks of identity’. It was interesting to replicate the designs and annotate what I think worked effectively. I think the contrast in logos emphasised the different perceptions they set out to have. It’s fascinating how much a design can speak volumes and persuade viewers into something. I think it showed me the value they have and exposed me to a variety of cool interesting concepts, considering outlines, simplicity, boldness etc.
Here shows my research after looking into Hull art gallery. At this stage I was just trying to expose myself to a variety of art and research to gain inspiration to then narrow down into a focus point. I really enjoyed looking at the different medias people had used ranging from embroidery to lighting. I think the type being illuminated simply added more emphasis to the art. A key thing I took away from this gallery was the flooding exhibition and how differently people communicated their experience through art. Major events/ tragedies like flooding are things that can happen to cities which made me question wether my art will correlate to my own experiences associated with urban life.
Here I decided to include some pictures I had taken from when I went to Berlin at the start of the year. I felt as though for one it’s a city but also it had so much art, history and interesting architecture to analyse. It’s such a contrast to the uk through cleanliness and general structure/ layout. I loved looking at the different approaches to art when it came to the Berlin Wall. I was more drawn to the graphic graffiti style pieces which involved type rather than abstracted large scale ones. I feel as though these pages were beneficial to give me inspiration at the start of the project, I wanted a broad range of research into different areas to compare and contrast. Analysing what particular aspects interested me to explore further.
