Tag Archives: Research

Gregory Crewdson: Cathedral of Pines

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A wooden box

Five dead birds

Nakedness

Nature as redemptive

Light as transformational

Solitary

Suspended animation

Dirt and debris

Water

Container and contained

Search for meaning

Ordinariness and intensity

Tumbling responses

Framed and framing

Intimate gaze

There are a myriad of possible responses to the Cathedral of Pines and I know at this point in time I am far from having them organised in my head. Crewdson talks of the work in this series as being more personal, and as optimistic. It has emerged out of a period of change for him that brought him away from his usual cityscapes and into nature. He talks eloquently of light and nature being redemptive. My response seems to be an embodied and emotional one. I am at once moved, frightened, enthralled, appalled… This leaves me torn in terms of writing for my blog, it takes me from an aesthetic and emotional response to having to move to a more cognitive domain. 

The images have an extraordinary quality that I feel draws you in. As someone with an deepening interest in still life I enjoy their carefully constructed nature, I see them as Vanitas on a grand scale. I like the relatively low-key palettes, the multiple frames within each frame and that the images are ambiguous enough for me to bring my own meaning to them. I found I was constantly moving between the image as a whole and the details. Tiny fragments of life become repeated motifs – nail varnish, emery boards, tablets and pill pots. I find I become a little uncomfortable with the intimacy in some cases.

 Several images stand out for me:

  • Mother and daughter, 2014
  • The Barn
  • The Disturbance

 I can read these in many ways either negatively toned or positively toned. My initial response to Mother & Daughter is one of concern and anguish. The door is open, the snow has drifted in, interior and exterior are intermingling.

 The images take me into theory in two ways – the first is the psychoanalytic concept of ‘container/contained’ from Wilfred Bion and the second is the notion of ‘frame’ and how we assign meaning through our frames of reference.

Cathedral of the Pines design

 The exhibition and promotional designs are spare and minimal, in some ways in contrast to the works themselves. A delicate pine sitting above wide spaced sanserif text. I think it conveys a sense of openness that can be seen in some of the images. The accompanying catalogue is substantial and exquisite. It sits in harmony with the exhibition and while it cannot replace the experience of seeing the actual prints it definitely does them justice.

 I am left with a slight question about what the images are saying about women but that is for another day.

Assignment Five: Your Choice, Part One

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Assignment Five: Your Choice, Part One – Idea Development

Brief 1: Book Design

Penguin Books have asked you to design anew house style for a collection of books on design for children and young people. They are starting with three titles: Colour, Typography and Photographs. Produce three covers – front, back and spine. The designs need to be recognisable as a series and at the same time be appreciated for their individual merits. The book dimensions are 190mm wide by 225mm high.

In addition they have asked you to produce the one on Typography, called A is for…Create an introductory chapter of at least four pages.

I started by defining the brief a little further. Children and Young People is a very broad market and it is unlikely a design for five years olds will work for fifteen year olds. I decided the market would be primarily Young Adult (defined as 12 – 18yrs; Young Adult Library Services).

I had already done some background research on Penguin Books, and having read ‘Penguin by Design,’(Baines & Pearson, 2005) I felt like I had plenty of scope for developing the designs. While they needed a degree of consistency, the cover designs could draw on a range of influences. Although Penguin is mostly associated with orange spines, it has used patterns and other colours so this didn’t feel too restrictive.

I then did my usual in terms of sketching ideas and thinking about the themes I might use to develop the designs.

I was a bit put off by the fact that the Typography book seemed to have a double title – both ‘Typography’ and ‘A is for…’ so in my sketches I played with some examples where they all had a title. But this also seemed inconsistent, why would you have a book on colour called ‘C is for…’ when the one on typography is ‘A is for…’? I was also a bit worried that the title might locate it in a much younger age group and could therefore be in tension with the age group I had chosen to work with. It seemed to me that this meant the cover needed to be eye catching enough to be taken off the shelf and explored.

During Section Four I found three books on typography that were both helpful and enjoyable:

  • Typography Workbook (Samara, 2004)
  • Playing with Type (McCormick, 2013)
  • How to Draw Type and Influence People (Hyndman, 2017)

The two activity books were particularly good for engaging me and were a bit more playful than some of the other resources I had found, which seemed to get very technical very quickly and I found a bit daunting as a non-specialist. I decided I would take a similar approach to encourage young readers to play with typography. I did a bit more research and found that Penguin do produce activity books so it would be in keeping with the brief.

I did more research around typography books for young people and found very little, apart from the truly delightful ‘Serif Fairy’ (Siegfried & Mann, 2007) I broadened the research to graphic design and found a few more titles, but not many – definitely a gap in the market!

Layout examples:

  • Typography Workbook – 230mm x 230mm, 3 column grid
  • Penguin by Design – 185mm x 220mm, 3-column grid
  • Playing with Type – 235mm x 235 mm, mainly 2 column grid
  • How to Draw Type… – 270mm x 230mm, layout is varied – single column to three
  • Graphic Design for Kids – 210mm x 230mm, two column grid

This seemed to imply that the dimensions I was working with were narrower than the other activity books I had seen. A challenge, but hopefully not insurmountable!

References:

Baines, P., & Pearson, D. (2005). Penguin by design: a cover story 1935-2005: Penguin Press.

Hyndman, S. (2017). How to Draw Type and Influence People: an activity book. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd.

McCormick, L. (2013). Playing with Type: 50 graphic experiments for exploring typographic design principles. Beverley, MA: Rockport Publishers.

Samara, T. (2004). Typography workbook: a real-world guide to using type in graphic design: Rockport Publishers.

Siegfried, R., & Mann, J. (2007). The Serif Fairy. New York: Mark Batty Publisher.

 

 

Greetings cards

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Having talked to various friends and families to develop some ideas I also thought I would find out a bit more about the greetings card market generally. This helped in terms of understanding the brief and refining my approach to the cards.  According to the Greetings Card Association the UK greetings card market was worth £1.5 billion in 2015 (up by 5% on 2014).

The statistics are fascinating and not necessarily what you might assume given the digital alternatives:

  • Everyday cards increased by 60.1 million on 2014
  • Birthday cards £564 million (up 10.4%)
  • Relations and occasions cards £586.4 million ((up by 17%)
  • Christmas cards are 12% of total card sales
  • 85% of all cards are bought by women
  • the market includes 1,000 publishers, and there are 400 members of the GCA (350 are micro/small businesses)
  • £50 million was raised for good causes from charity card sales

Greeting cards are divided into a number of categories:

  • Spring season
    • Valentines
    • Mother’s Day/ Father’s Day
    • Easter
  • Everyday
  • Ages – Birthday specific
  • Everyday – congratulations, Engagement, New Home, New Job, Get Well etc.
  • Relations – specific family members
  • Christmas: Singles or counter, and Boxes or multiples
  • Wedding Anniversaries

I also discovered there is something called the Henries Awards for Greeting cards and they use slightly different categories:

  • Cute
  • Contemporary Trend
  • Wholesale
  • Traditional words – sentimental
  • Contemporary words – sentimental

This additional research helped me think more about the possible markets for my proposed cards and who their buyers might be.

Research Point One

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A series of different typefaces - based on 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' phrase

Research Point (pg.38 OCA Graphic Design)

What sort of items have you collected so far?

What was it that made you want to keep these items?

My research to date has been broad in terms of getting to know the field a little better, and narrow in terms of the specific exercises and assignments. A core part of my strategy involves using different Pinterest boards extensively to collect visual examples:

I am also following a number of OCA Pinterest boards as that gives me access to more examples and includes things I might not have collected myself. I have a growing pile of books that span practical guides through to theoretical and conceptual approaches. These are particularly useful for weaving into other aspects of my life as I travel!

I am making use of my sketchbook to collect examples of the work of a range of Graphic Designers. This has been very helpful in terms of the HG Wells book cover design exercise. I have also been collecting magazines and online pages to get a feel for different design and layout approaches.

A series of different typefaces - based on 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' phrase

Collecting

The current collecting focus for me is typefaces. I have learnt how to add new typefaces to my apps on the desktop and am making use of lots of free resources. It has been interesting exploring a number of websites that talk about trending typefaces. The Google fonts site is also helpful in that it suggests typeface combinations (this is helping me gain confidence in thinking about what I would use). Typography is the area I probably feel least comfortable with and although it comes later in the course I feel it is something I need to be thinking about as soon as possible.

The reasons for collecting these different materials vary. With some it was purely because I had some form of immediate response to them, approaches I really liked and disliked. Some surprised me or showed an idea I would never have thought of. Some of the illustration based examples made me full of awe – a case of illustration envy! In many cases it is an aesthetic response, something beautiful, ugly, funny or sad. In this process I have also found myself particularly drawn to work with a socio-political message. I am more interested in this field than the commercial ‘selling’ aspects of graphic design although I accept that there can be complex messages in those too and the dividing lines can be fuzzy.

I love research and as such this all feels quite natural to me. I think the thing I need watch is the never-ending data collection syndrome. The collecting bit is easy, it is knowing when to stop and make decisions that is the challenge!

 

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