Yulia Brodskaya's Paper Graphics

Yulia Brodskaya, brings all the things she loves and creates beautiful contemporary illustrations. She combines typography, paper and handcrafted objects- 3 things I love. Her work is highly decorative but has also been utillsed in a commercial sense, in campaigns for Orange, The Guardian, Starbucks, Nokia and many other international companies. Her website is http://www.artyulia.com/ and is well worth a look at. Finding work like this has further increased my desire to create hand rendered work and aswell as using paper maybe incorporate other techniques such as stitch and even try out quilling.

Silence

Yesterday, we were assigned our first brief for third year named 'Silence.' We have been asked to research all of the possible concepts and visual potential of silence. "Reflecting on what Silence could mean and begin a body of visual experiments that visualise your ideas and visual studies. This can be Digital Photography-found imagery, drawing, scanning and software experiments- an amalgam of these or just one approach-it is open to your interpretation." When I first looked at the brief, I panicked but during the lecture each lecturer took it in turns to present to us their personal interpretations of the word, a mixture of imagery and text. This put my mind at rest and I began to think about my own ideas and interpretations, but I don't want to make my approach too literal. Having looked at the examples given to us on the third year blog, I have begun to think about how and why silence exists and the feelings behind the word. Its time to get thinking....Here are a few samples of the tutors' interpretations:

Sherill Anne Gross

I recently came across the artist/designer Sherill Anne Gross, whilst researching methods of contemporary illustration during the summer brief! I really enjoyed the attention paid to the detailing seen on the surface of the paper which adds texture. Sherill has extensive experience working for both design agencies and as a freelance designer, designing work for print environment, which includes area's such as interactive media, large format exhibitions, photographic collages, retail sales packaging, advertisements, calenders and various other marketing material including magazines. In 2007 she set herself a project which she called 'One-a-(weekday)'. The task involved her creating a technical drawing/cutting once a weekday and then posting it one her blog http://sagworks.wordpress.com/. The work was the published in a book- something which I need to add to my collection!! Sherill's website http://www.sagworks.com/ is full of inspiration and as I love cut paper illustration so much, I really enjoy having a good nosey and getting some ideas. One of my favourite quotes on the website is

"I say my artwork is what happens when you run with scissors.

It is only created with paper, glue and patience."

Kino4

During our summer away from uni, we were sent a brief to keep us busy! The brief was to create a new logo identity and final posters designs for a new cinema club which has been set up to run internally in our course. The club which has been named Kino4 will run weekly and will give us the opportunity to watch classic 'Arthouse' films and cultural documentaries. After doing not alot of work for 3 months, I found it really difficult to get myself motivated...but eventually things got desperate and I realised that the deadline was only 4 weeks away, so thought it was time to get started. When I sat down, it wasn't too bad and I began to research what the term 'Arthouse' actually meant and symbolised as I felt this would give a better understanding of the themes which I might have considered during the identity and poster designs. Next I wanted to look into the name 'Kino,' and what the cinema club would actually represent. I discovered that Kino, is a worldwide organisation which was founded to help independent filmmakers, as the founders did not believe in big blockbuster budgets. Whilst looking through the other organisation which are being ran all over the world, I noticed that within several of the logos, the shape of a star was used.I decided I would like to maintain this shape within my logo design. I kept the logo quite simple as I felt if it was too complex, it could possible detract from the main images and text on any film poster. When advertising the film club, the logo can be kept large, however when being place on each individual posters for the films it can easily be re sized and the colour can be adjusted to suit the themes of the film and the layout of the poster.

After designing the logo, I decided to design a film poster for the film 'Good Night and Good Luck,' which was directed by George Clooney in 2005. The existing film posters were very simple and contained a colour scheme of just red, black and white which worked very effectively in portraying the themes within the film which was shot in black and white. As the film was based on broadcasting in the 1950's, the main feature on my designs was a vintage style microphone. As I prefer creating hand rendered work, I decided to cut the shape with a scalpel out of black card stock, I then scanned it into the computer which allowed me to experiment with layering, pattern and various colours.In initial experiments, the U.S flag was Incorporated as I thought the portrayed the conflict between the media and the government, but after several experiments I decided against using the image of the flag. I was inspired by several designers particularly those who use paper their main medium including Peter Callesen, who creates beautiful, delicate cuttings from one single sheet of white copy paper. I also took inspiration from a women called Sherill Anne Gross, who I discovered through her blog! Finally I looked at the design work of Kuntzel and Deygas who designed the opening title sequence for the film 'Catch me if you can.' They use silhouettes over simple block colours which work really well and as the film was set in the same era as 'Good Night and Good Luck,' I thought it would be perfect! So here is a sample of the final designs...

Blogging!

Finally, I've managed to figure out how to create a post for my blog! It wasn't even that difficult...now all I have to do is be organised and keep it up to date, now that might proove to be the difficult task!! So it all starts from here...