Graphic Design, Photography

An introduction to some basic graphic design principles; and photograms.

Graphic Design focuses on visual communication, advertising and selling.

Tools of the trade brainstorm: logos, magazine adverts, posters, banners, billboards, flyers, online adverts, TV commercials, annual reports, brochures, letterheads and business cards, packaging, point of sale (tillpoint branding), promotions in broadsheets, newspapers, widgets (branding an item like stationery).

In small groups, we designed a name for a brand of drinks.  Our group was targeting children aged 5-12 with a drink based on the popular Horrible Histories series, which thrills kids with gore and nastiness.

Notes
- Small, square plastic bottles to fit into lunch boxes
- Facts on the bottles 
- Collectable bottle tops
- 'DREADFUL DRINKS'
- Flavours?  Bloody Blackcurrant / 'Orrible Orange / Lemon, Lime and Tudor Slime / Victorian Vomit / Rotten Apple / Pineapple Pus / Cut-Throat Cherry /  Strawberry Guts 
- Illustrations by Martin Brown are integral to the books and the TV series, huge part of brand identity, so should be prominent in ad campaign.  Famous images from the books altered to fit the campaign... eg. an axeman holding up a head with blackcurrants tumbling out as gore... an Aztec holding a human heart / strawberry... A plague victim's buboes spouting pineapple pus... A guillotine about to slice down onto a cherry...

We were really pleased with what we managed to come up with within half an hour, it nailed the brand identity, it felt like a clear concept that would work across lots of posters and other advertising, and I think the horrible flavour names would appeal to the target market.

Photography.  I'm an absolute beginner to this topic, and this was my first time inside a dark room.  The class made photograms, which are made by putting an object directly onto photographic paper, exposing it to light for a few seconds, and then passing it through all the development chemicals. 

These are cucumber slices and slivers of cucumber skin.

I tried to make a window out of the skin and slices, but I should probably fiddle with the exposure times to get a crisper impression of the seeds.

These are solarised images, which are put through the developer twice. Something went wrong with the cutlery, making it all grainy, which I rather like because it looks old and gritty.

Some mistakes... I left developing fluid on the workspace and it dribbled over this solarisation attermpt.  I learned to keep the workspace clean and clear.

I scrunched up some plastic to see if I could get some grey translucent shadows, but neither a pale light nor a bright light were quite subtle enough.  More trial and error needed.

The problem I had with this task was that we were supposed to be photogramming fruit and vegetables, and I found that quite limiting because the smell of most fruit makes me gag.  I have to hold my breath if I walk past a juice bar, so being in a stuffy room with that smell and lots of photographic chemicals was really quite unpleasant.  I couldn't really play with the fruit or make pretty patterns simply because I have that issue with it, so I don't think the photograms I made were all that impressive.  I would be interested to try and make patterns with other materials, though, such as leaves, feathers, netting or glass.

Photogram artists - research a couple and do include a bibliography.
Susan Derges, Adam Fuss, Raoul Hausmann, Len Lye, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Alexander Rodchenko, Christian Schad