Following on from last week using embroidery I wanted to explore another media. This time I experimented with mono printing. I used different materials to see what worked best. My favourite personally was fabric as I liked how the design came out neat yet still had indications and imperfections of it being a print. I repeated the same design to fully see the contrast in outcomes, although the silk design came out quite messy I liked how it almost ghosted printed in the back. It made for an interesting background. I then worked into a print incorporating the embroidery I had just learnt. I feel like the combination of colour in thread to black ink was really effective. If I were to further develop this page I think I could’ve potentially explored more colour or when working into them look at different developments like editing digitally etc.
For these pages I wanted more of a foundation of primary research and drawings. Something that would help me for further work that I could potentially refer back to. I went around York city for the day and recorded a variety of things I saw. These being sketches, line drawings etc. It was interesting to observe things about a city that people often disregard/ look past as there’s multiple of them everywhere. I annotated my drawings questioning pattern, size and how I perceived the item. These pages helped me question further what it is that defines a city because I felt it allowed me to notice more things that go unbothered.
Here I looked into a variety of different shop brands to compare and contrast. Annotating them along the way. I looked into two different logo/ branding books which allowed for me to consider colour connotation and its importance. As well as different designs giving off different impressions. In this case how certain product designs dictate a higher price point than others. Often they are more minimal with a simplistic colour palette. I think this portrays a more sophisticated clean product hence the higher price range. Learning from this meant i could take into consideration how I was using text and what I wanted to portray. It deinfelty made me think about target audience and what I want to communicate.
Carrying on from this I thought it would be interesting to explore redesigning something. I referred back to dr martins and explored rough ideas of rebranding. It was fascinating to think about all the different concepts of the shoes and how I could incorporate them. Working more freely like this definitely helped spark more ideas. I think to develop this further I could’ve tried creating a finalised product out of my designs to see the concept more refined. It almost feels like a dead end piece of work due to it not really linking to ongoing pieces but I feel as though it helped me loosen up from precision. Previous projects I hated sketches in my book as I felt a need for everything to be near a final product, however this helped me stray from this mindset a bit more.
With these pages I explored some rough ideas thinking about type. I wondered how I could link the two (cities and type), better throughout my work so explored York. I identified the history of the city and old architecture a lot of the buildings have. I then carried this through to type exploring medieval fonts. I felt as though it was an effective representation of the city especially after some rough drawings. I wondered if this would carry out to use later on.
Following on from this I felt like I needed to show contrast of cities through type. So committed to the same process however exploring what type I felt would depict London the best. With this I was more focused on modern type and what aspects I could bring in like taxi number plates for example. It was just interesting to explore rough ideas trying to create minimal and clean outcomes. I think it’s fascinating to see how much type can change depending on what you’re trying to portray.
