THE INFORMANT

JEHAN GRAIDA

CO

NTE

NTS

Vaughan OliverRe-Contextualisation

Neil Spiller Digital Architecture Now

Nic ClearSpace & Architecture

Stacey PitsidillesDigital Death

Rachel ArmstrongEvolution

What have we learnt so far?

Manifesto

Mark InghamAnimation - Robots of Brixton

Simon HerronDrawing

Neil Spiller Surrealism

On the 11th Feb we had a lecture with Mark Ingham about magazines and magazine designs.

Mark basically introduced us on the new brief and told us what we needed to do. In the lecture he showed us a few videos such as ‘Magazine is Born’ – it showed us the process of making a magazine by a group of designers working for a company. I found this video fascinating because it showed every stages of making the magazine. Also, this video is giving me inspirations on how to create my own magazine for other lectures. It showed us that it takes a long time to produce an amazing piece of work and it takes a lot of detail to perfect a magazine.

He then showed us another video called ‘Magazine Design’,which is a slide-show showing different kinds of magazines and their layouts. It showed us ba-sic design layouts for spreads and a few front pages. I found this video interest-ing because it made me think about the kind of magazines I’m making and who it is targeted to. Also, it made me think about colours, layout,textures, text, and context of my magazine.

He introduced us to a webpage “Old Student” which is a website where we could connect with past students. The webpage had reviews on film, tv, music, design and many more. We were also told that we have the opportunity to join the website, to give reviews or email him about anything we may need help on.

Mark then told us to make a Twitter account and to follow him to inform us on upcoming lectures and getting information quick and easy. This will also be helpful to some who may not understand or need help on the lectures.

INTRO-DUCTION

VAUGHANOLIVER

Vaughan Oliver was born in 1957 and is a British graphic designer/ art director. He is based in Epsom, South London. He has been in the graphic design business for 30 years. He is massively inspired by Salvador Dali’s works. In 1980’s he was lucky enough to bump into an old friend named Nigel Grierson (photographer/filmmaker), who was set-ting up a new record label named 23 Envelope. He was doing freelance work and then he moved on to doing full-time.

He had a real passion for music, so it was really easy for him to produce work for the company. He worked a lot with musician, designing their album covers and record sleeves. He showed us many images of his work with certain musicians and told us stories behind the work. Oliver mentioned the way he works is by re-contextualisation, which basically means that he breaks down images and the meaning and giving it a new meaning. He is very famous for the works he done for a band called ‘The Pixies”. He said, “Music is the highest form of art”. The way he worked was, he would listen to the bands music in detail and asks the band what they would want him to design. He worked very close and exclusive with the bands. It was really interesting and inspiring seeing his work, because I love designing and also music.

He told us that he hated typography in school, because he thought it ruined his work and illustrations. Because of this he used very minimal amount of typography but still had very impactful imagery. He then started talking about his life after music; he was producing packaging for various companies.

Overall, I enjoyed Vaughan Oliver’s lecture, he has inspired me to work with minimal typography but still make it work. He has also taught me that inspirations can be any-where.

Re-Contextualisation

NEILSPILLER

Neil Spiller is the Dean of the School of Architecture, Design and Construction at the University of Greenwich. He is also Professor of Architecture and Digital Theory and founding director of AVATAR; which stands for Advanced Virtual and Technological Architecture Research Group. Neil Spiller is an architect, artist and writer; he re-cently published his book, ‘Digital Architecture Now’ and ‘Visionary Architecture’.

In the lecture he talked to us about his project he is working on called ‘Community Vessels’, which talks about the technology and Architectural space. He has been working on this project for twelve years because he enjoys working with long projects. His favourite philosopher is ‘Zodiac Mindwarp’, he said he is not a fan of his music but says wonderful things. “I believe there is poetry in souls of every man, in F1-11 fighters and Roberto Duran”.

He then talked about his relation-ship with Vaughn Oliver; they used to work together in the late 90’s and wanting to work together on Commu-nicating Vessels. He mentioned that they wanted to design a book layout. The project was situated on an island in a placed called Fawn, outside Canterbury in Kent, which is where he grew up. This island did not exist in real life but it did in Neil Spiller’s head.

Neil Spiller then talked about Salva-dor Dali’s sculpture Lillith, which was created in 1966 by Salvador Dali in homage to Raymond Rousel; who in 1910-1920 was a novelist and wrote books such as ‘Locus Solus’. This book is about “a mad professor on an island inventing mad things”. Salva-dor Dali had this book on his bedside table when he died.

Lillith is another name of the witch in the ‘The lion, witch and the ward-robe’. Lillith religiously was Adam’s first wife; they supposedly split up be-cause she wanted to be on top whilst

Digital Architecture Nowmaking love. He liked the thought of liberation.

Also, he showed us an image called ‘Angel with the Brazilian Bush’.Spiller mentioned a sculpture that which was built in Rome in 1622 – 1625 called Apollo and Daphne. The story behind the sculpture is that Apollo was chasing Daphne to give her his love; she doesn’t want his love so she turned into a tree. In the sculp-ture it shows her turning into a tree.

Neil Spiller told us some interest-ing stories about artist’s work and I found it really interesting. Although, I did not quite understand some of the things he was talking about, I was still very intrigued.

NICCLEARSpace & ArchitectureNic Clear teaches architecture design and runs a post-graduate diploma unit.He’s been teaching architecture for 20 years, and he’s taught at the school of Architecture in Univer-sity of London. He is interested in film and anima-tion, the development and the rep-resentation of architectural ideas and architectural practises. He mentioned that there are two aspects of architectural business, one being learning about buildings and the production of it. He be-lieves that architectural business is still a new thing and still which to be broadening with digital space, virtual space and authenticated space.Nic Clear then started to talk about the history of architect and told us about a book by Robin Evans called ‘Translations from drawing to building and other essays’ it is about the origin of drawing. He mentioned that there are a lot of programmes and because of this

architecture is very graphical. He said, “Drawing is so instrumental” because ar-chitects will always have to draw before the production but ‘we couldn’t have an architecture before the drawing”.

He then moved on by showing us a clip of a video by David Fincher, and it basically shows us the way camera angles and moving through spaces gives a movie a bigger impact and makes it more interesting. By doing this it tells the audience that that was an important part of the scene. Showing us movie clips and other videos made it really interesting and more fun. He didn’t make it boring as he was talking and explaining whilst the movie was playing, rather than us being really confused about them.He showed us a few of his students’ video and I like the video where he showed us a video of recreating Oxford Street using After Effects. This video was done using After Effects, by layer-ing 2D images to create an illusion of a 3D space. His lecture was inspirational and in-formative.

STACEYPITSILLIDESWe had a lecture with Stacey Pitsillides, who is one of our lectures at the University of Green-wich. Stacey did a lecture called ‘Digital Death’, which talks about where people’s information online such as Facebook goes when you die. Stacey’s lecture was mainly about what other work she’s been doing outside the University and also her BA final project, which is called ‘Rest in Pixels’. Stacey does a lot of research, conferenc-es, debates, exhibitions about this topic; it really shows that she is very passionate and enthusiastic about this topic.

Stacey showed us a few videos she made when she was in her final year of University, they were very confusing at first then I understood it as she talks about it more in detail. Stacey talked about how we live through technology and not with technology, she is right because nowadays everybody has easy access to social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. on their mobile phones. Most people go on social network sites before they go to bed and when they wake up. This has changed our society as everything we do revolves around social network sites and use of the Internet.

I found Stacey very interesting and wise to listen to as she described the social network as an ‘ice-berg underneath us’; this means that if you were to take a picture of a subject, the image belongs to you because the camera is your property. Stacey told us that when a person posts up an image on a social networking site such as Facebook, this image suddenly belongs to that social networking

site. What is the reason for this? Its simple, the reason for this is because the account will not be in use, the owner ship of all Images and videos will not have an owner, so the social networking site would then take ownership over it unless a family member/ ancestor or friend wants to inherit the photo or video as their own property to keep. On hearing what Stacey was talking about, the in-formation she was sharing with us instantly made me feel intrigued with what and how the situation is dealt with.

Whilst listening to Stacey talk about how digital death works, I started to wonder about my own accounts I have on different social networks. I am a very out going person and I am interested in the fashion industry so therefore I take many pictures and post it up on social network sites for people to notice my style and talent on photography as well as my modeling skills. Now thinking about the amount of images and videos I upload on social networking sites, it makes me curious as to where my images actually are. I remember Stacey mentioning that when you upload an image, and delete it, the social network-ing site still has is saved in their archives. Not only does the social networking site have a copy of my image stored on their system, but also so does Google. It worries me to think that when I die, pictures of myself will still be out there and it is quite disturbing thinking about what people would use these images for when I am not around. I defiantly wouldn’t give permission for anybody to use my images, as in my eyes they are still my property as they are filed under my name. When I

Digital Death

die, I hope for people to respect my property and me.

Not only for myself but I genuinely feel that it is unfair as a death in somebody’s family can be quite tragic and for them to think or even see or worry about images of their dead relative being publicized on a social network site is traumatizing. For this reason I have a highly opinionated judgment on this topic of Digital Death.

Another topic that she brought up and men-tioned was about the death of animals. There was a situation that occurred in either China or Japan where a person lost a loved pet of theirs and wasn’t able to bury the animal due to the fact that the country was over crowed and there was no room/space for an animal graveyard. For this reason the person then decided to take on the role of producing an online graveyard. The person which created and come up with this fantastic idea then became well known in China, and other members of the Chinese public started to pay the owner to bury their animals online.

This procedure then became well known globally, so people started to store informa-tion of the animal online. Even the public, which lives in spacious countries and vil-lages, started to store data online as well as burying their animal. They felt the need to upload information on the system simply just to have a clarified digital record some-where so that it could be found later on in the future.

Whilst Stacey was talking about this topic, I immediately felt emotional and sensitive towards what she was saying. I was quite responsive as even though it hurt for me to think about my own pet that has recently passed, I felt intrigued that someone out there does such a nice thing for animals, as they as well as human beings have a heart beat. It hurts to think that there are such people out there, which do not show any re-morse and emotion to this sensitive subject.

To conclude Stacey’s lecture, I have learnt a lot about Digital Death and social network-ing sites and it has made me more aware of where my images and videos that I upload are going. It has made me more cautious as to which ones I upload from now on. Before her lecture started and knowing that it was called Digital Death, I did not think that it would be interesting only judging by the title. I thought it would be quite boring and something I would not be interested in but after she spoke and got really into it. I felt very attached to some of the topics she was talking about.

Social Network

RACHELARMSTRONGEvolution

We had a lecture with Rachel Armstrong; she is a lecturer at University of Greenwich in the school of Architecture department. She shocked me as soon as she started talking; I was surprised that she had so much energy and en-thusiasm in her speech. It showed me that she was a very motivated and passionate person. As she works in an architecture depart-ment, I did not expect her to be so enthusiastic about biology.

She spoke about a disease called ‘Leprosy’; which is an infectious skin and nerves disease. The first sign on a person who is suffering would be that their skin would start to get pale patches. It does not itch or bother the person in-fected so the majority of the time people do not even know that they have it.

Rachel Armstrong then showed us a video on the topic of bacte-

ria, showing particles of different bacteria, but before she revealed that it was bacteria and she asked many students to see the variation between each individual’s opinions on what they thought it was. The majority suggested that it looked like such things as cells, bacteria, underwa-ter, and many other slim related substances.

Rachel Armstrong also put across her opinion about how she thinks genes and evolution has been transformed over the past years. Also, Rachel mentioned of a famous well-known biologist Richard Dawkins. “Dawkins is an atheist, a vice president of the British Human-ist Association, and a supporter of the Brights movement. He is well-known for his criticism of creation-ism and intelligent design”.

To conclude the lecture, I would say that Rachel Armstrong knowledge

in biology is very strong. I believe that I can relate to her in many ways. She is a big inspiration and has moti-vated me for the following reasons; I myself am studying Digital Graphic Design and I am also interested in a different path to what I am studying. I aspire Rachel as she has linked her interest of biology into her architec-tural career path. I also am interested in Geography and will now be moti-vated into bringing my knowledge of Geography into my works in Graphic design.

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT SO FARThis article is about what I have learnt so far from the previous lectures. Many lec-turers, graphic designers, architects came to share their knowledge on their specialist path. Mark told us to answer three ques-tions for this article; • How do we learn?• What have you learnt so far?• What is a record?

How do we learn?

For the past six weeks, I have been taking notes on the vital and important informa-tion that were said in the lectures. I was also taking pictures of the work they were showing up on the projector. Another thing I was doing was recording videos and audio on my phone to make sure I do not miss out anything whilst taking notes.

What have you learnt so far?

I have learnt many things during these previous lectures, some of them have not taken direct effect on me but some others have.

Vaughan Oliver has taught me that I need to take on a more personal and original ap-proach to my work; otherwise I could end up getting lost in a trend. The lecture that interested me the most

was Stacey Pitsillides because she was very passionate to everything she was saying and I felt a real connection towards her passion. I also felt emotionally af-fected by her topic, which reminded of my pet that recently died.

What is a record?

A record is the purpose of registering down information to preserve informa-tion. It basically means taking notes down to remember things. A record could also mean winning or achieving something.

“Music is the highest form of

Art”Vaughan Oliver

MANIFESTOWhat is a manifesto?

When the word manifesto came across, I was really confused about it. I did some research and I found that it is a ‘public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds’. The meaning of creed is ‘a formal statement of a religious belief and a confession of faith’.There are many types of manifestos such as religious manifestos, political manifestos, technology manifestos and artistic manifestos.

I did some research on famous manifestos and I came across Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech and the Bible and the Ten Commandments.

Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream speech” has inspired me through his very motivational and passionate speech. I wish to be as motivational as Martin Luther through my designs and other work. I wish to be as confident through the way he speaks his mind and the way he is so passionate about what he believes in.

Another manifesto is the Bible and the Ten Commandments have made me think about my beliefs and morals. The ten commandments was God’s idea of how people should live in society and it helps people today because it gives them good standards to live by and helps them understand the differ-ence between right and wrong. God used Moses to carry out his message (Ten Commandments) to tell people his idea. Back then you could also see the Ten Commandments as a political, principle and intention because it had everything to do with society in the days before Christ. Nowadays, people view it differently although some people still live by these rules, a lot of peo-ple believe that what happened was a fairy tale and a way of keeping society in good shape.

Mark Ingham had a lecture on animation he asked us what the meaning of animation is. Animation is a series of sequence or movement using many 2D draw-ing or 3D artwork/models and figures. It is creating something that comes alive and shows movement.

In 1534 was known to be the first use of animation. I find it fascinating because I did not think people would discover animation in the 16th century. In 1826 the first photograph movement was known. Then, in 1895 shocked the whole world by the first animation film created. For the people in the 19th century, this would have been a massive shock to them, as it was out of the ordinary seeing moving images. This would have amazed me if I were in the 19th century because it is not something I would normally see and would have not thought of even ever seeing it back then. Although, seeing animations nowadays does not really amaze me as much only because I have learnt it and I am always surrounded by graphics and animations. Every time I watch an animation film, I am only bothered about the story of the movie not the production of it, apart from the movie Avatar. I found Avatar so amazing as it looked so life like and the details in the movie were so intricate and very sophisticated. The level of work and time that was put in this movie is immense.

Mark showed us a movie called ‘Robots of Brixton’, which was made in 2011. This movie is a 5 minute long animation that won the Special Jury Award for

MARKINGHAMAnimation - Robots of Brixton

Animation Direction at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. The movie has very intense music and the background colour is very gloomy which gave the audience a tense feel-ing. The movement of the robots were so life like, even the tiniest detail such as eyes were so complex. I also like the way that the movie had loads of animation but had reality aspects such as images and videos. The use of combining animation and reality makes the audience feel like there is another world or another kind of Brixton out there. At first, I did not understand the story of the movie, but as it went on I understood it and it was about the things that happen in society such as the looting in London. The movie overall, was very dramatic and intense not just because of the story but also the level of detail of the animation, music, etc. They all played a massive part of making this amazing film, now I know why it won an award.

My favourite animation or cartoons are Pixar movies, be-cause the stories are very funny and interesting, even adults would love. Not only cartoons are for children but there are also some made for adults such as Family Guy, South park, etc. These cartoons have a lot of swearing in it and therefore would not be suitable for young children.

Overall, the lecture made me think about animation in a completely different way than I did before. It made me real-ise that animation is for all types of different people, some were humorous and can also be tense.

SIMONHERRONWe had a lecture with Simon Herron on the topic of drawings. Simon talked about the origins of drawings and how in the olden days people would draw to communicate their ideas and talent. He then talked about making a collage in the olden days, he showed us a folder containing many images in different scales and said that collage would normally start off like that. People would normally assemble all the images together manually to make a collage, but now days there are programmes that we have to produce this for us. We do not need to keep a folder containing many loose paper and images to create a collage; the computer does this for us by simply putting them it in our folder documents. Programmes such as Photoshop helps us and make our lives much more easier to create projects such as a collage. In the century now that we live in, we rely too much on things that could and would make our lives easier for example, Photoshop, Illustrator and Microsoft Word. In the olden days, people did not have the technology that we have now and they had no digital press to use, so they relied on using a typewriter. This method is very simple as it is straightforward to use. Though, typewriters are heavy and it is very inconvenient to carry around with to places, unlike the laptops that we have nowadays which are very easy and light to carry.

Simon mentioned that drawing is a tool, which leads to your final idea or project. Drawing I believe is a much better tool to use to plan out designs before putting the work into Photoshop. Also, I have always thought that drawing by hand (hand-made) looks more natural and to me it shows that a person has put a lot of effort into the project.

Personally, I like to draw using pencils, I would rather draw than use pro-grammes such as Photoshop, but I feel that drawing alone would not take me to where I want to be in the future. The graphic design business involves a more digital approach to projects rather than doing it hands on.

Drawing

NEILSPILLERSurrealismNeil Spiller came back the second time to do a lecture on Surrealism, this time he went in to more detailed about it.

Surrealism is a cultural art movement and an artist called Andre Breton then founded the artistic style in 1924. ‘Surrealism style uses visual imagery from the subconscious mind to create art without the intention of logical comprehensibility’.This art movement began in Paris, Europe that the Dada members took a lot of interest in the movement. The movement then eventually spread across the world and people have really embraced the new, weird and wonderful way of presenting the art-ist’s imagination and thoughts.

The most famous Surrealist artist in the world would be Salvador Dali. He was born in 1904 and died in 1989. He grew up in Catlonia, Spain. Salvador Dali has made many paintings dur-ing his life many of which are very famous and expensive. One being the painting called ‘Swans Reflecting El-ephants’ – 1937, I actually really love this painting because it makes the au-

dience use their eyes and imagination to work to see and understand what is really going on in the painting. The painting is very bold as the colours are bright, and also, it is the painting is very detailed.

Another famous painting by Salvador Dali is called ‘Persistence of Memory’ – 1931. It is a painting of clocks slowly melting in the hot desert. To me the reason for the clocks being melted in the sun symbolises the dragging of time in the space or the irrelevance of time.

Neil Spiller then showed us a black and white image of a wood art manne-quin and by looking at it and studying the image, I still do not understand the meaning behind this. I see that the image is very detailed and has a lot of things going on. This image is also very abstract and very imaginative.

Overall, Niel Spiller’s lecture was very informative regarding the topic of Surrealism. Although, some of the work were really confusing but I think that Surrealism is all about using your imagination to another level.

CONCLUSIONFrom the past lectures that we had, I have really learnt a lot from the lectures that came. There were graphic de-signers, architects and biologists who came and shared there past experiences, work and knowledge to us.

I have learnt many things especially from Mark Ingham’s lecture on animation. I loved the topic, as it was very in-teresting and fascinating to hear about the works that has been done in the past. Also, finding out the history behind animation, which impacted on me a lot because it shocked me how early animation started. Also, the animation Mark showed us really got me excited and made me watch closely on the details of the movie. Animation takes a lot of effort and time to produce but the outcome is always amazing. To be honest, I am not as good as some people are in animation but after watching and learning about the topic of animation, it inspired me to learn and practise more to improve for the future. I aspire to create a piece of animated film like the one Mark showed us one day. I have also learnt that drawing a key skill and tool to use in the industry, and in the olden days drawing would be the only tool to create projects. They used very simple tools such as pencils and typewriter. The world that we live in now is very digitalised and I must say very lazy, as we would rather get things done quicker than doing it hands on. We revolve our lives around computers and we sometime forget the vital things such as drawing.

Also, Nic Spiller taught me the meaning and history of Surrealism. To be honest, I have never really understood the art movement but now I have a clear idea of what it really is.

I have been inspired with all the lectures I have had in the past, and it motivates me seeing the people who came started off a student like I am now. I believe if I put my mind and worked hard into something, I would get some-where and be successful in life and in the graphic design industry.

BIBLIOGRAPHYReferences:

http://www.hardformat.org/designers/vaughan-oliver-designer/

http://ogunte.com/innovation/about-you/featured-social-innovators/269-dr-rachel-armstrong-living-architect

http://geoffmcdonald.com/famous-manifestos/

http://www.surrealism.org/

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/manifesto

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/creed

Lectures:

Vaughn Oliver

Neil Spiller

Stacey Pitsillides

Images:

http://www.albumartexchange.us/2009/06/designer-spotlight-vaughan-oliver.html

http://arubsaqib.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/drawing-by-dirty-dedicated-daring-delicate-drawing/

http://zionhears.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/time-in-word-epiphany-6.html

http://bethecharlotte.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/being-social-in-social-networks/

http://factoryfifteen.com/7936/152394/home/robots-of-brixton