P A U L P H I L L I P S

STUDIO PRACTICE

EGRD1008

Creating a set of rules for a utopia is not an easy task, where with a dystopia you need only to consider the negatives, with a utopia both have to be considered because what is utopian for some, may be restrictive for others, there has to be balance with utopia.

On the opposite page is a 25 step guide to attain and sustain a utopian society, within this society these rules would be displayed at every opportunity to remind people of their responsibilities.

The idea of my groups utopian existance would be a society self contained in one large megastructure, the mockup of which is pictured to the right.The idea behind the poster is the manifesto is represented in the form of the tower and the birds flocking toward it repressents the desirability of the utopian existance.

To understand oneself’s place

in the perspective of the whole.

This subject can be enlightened

by the lifting of the burden of

purpose. We are all the same,

we will all love, we will all

suffer and we will all die.

Our society will be devoid

of reasons for conflict.

Although the religious shall

be tolerated, they will be

asked to leave their preaching

slippers at the door.

The value and the benifits of a

work ethic shall be emphasised

at an early age in order to

allow people to work without

contempt or question.

Behaviour breeds behaviour

therefore tollerance should be

exercised at every opportunity.

We tollerate everything, even

the intollerable.

A harmonious society is

attainable if everybody

within the society is striving

toward harmony.

Freedom shall be valued with

every waking hour. To take

freedom for granted is a slur

to those denied this luxury

A hierarchy is not a division

of class, it is simply an order

in which things fall into.

Decisions have to be made

and they have to have a

point of origin, it makes

sense to all involved that the

point of origin be the most

successfully educated.

Learning is what allows us to

maintain our society, it gives

us the tools to progress and

it amplifies our potential as

individuals. We shall strive

to learn something everyday

so that our belly’s and minds

stay content.

As a society of people with ups

and downs it is necessary to

maintain perspective of our

goals and to remind ourselves

that our actions have impacts.

So no matter how you feel

you should strive to keep

perspective and take comfort

in knowing we are all doing

the same.

Commerce is a necessary

evil in order to survive. The

harder we work the higher

standard of living we can

attain. But more important

than the wealth is our

happiness and we cannot

gain happiness if we are

consumed by greed

This is the key to how our

society works. Without citizens

cooperating with one another

we would cease to function to

our full potential.

Violence is a by-product of

unhappiness. If you are driven

to violence, question wether

you can make your own life

better before making someone

else’s worse. It’s the smart thing

to do. And your smart. Right?

Gender oppression will not

be considered a harmonious

attitude. Understanding of

equality between sexes is

paramount. The differences

between sex is not anymore

prominent than those between

individuals. Equality does not

mean ‘the same as’.

There has to be as little restrictive policy as possible in order to maintain a balance between a heady goal of utopian standards and peoples freedom to explore. We shall remain liberal in the understanding that our society respects the boundaries of art, literature and any form of infotainment as being consumable, recreational and not a license

for ill living.

To Genuinely understand is

to put value in the meaning

of something/someone and to

choose to ignore the impluse

to make assumptions based

on guesswork.

To accept is to be humble in

the face of difference. This

very acceptance can become

a door to inner self worth,

this is an opportunity not to

be missed.

We are all important regardless

of intelligence, size, height,

colour and all the minor

differences that make us

individuals. As soon as you

start to value yourself over other

individuals you are devaluing

them. And they notice.

Your occupation does not

define you, your clothes do

not define you, your space

buggy does not define you,

your haircut, or lack of does

not define you, your record

collection does not define you.

The only thing that defines

you is your behaviour, so be

mindful of this.

Be polite, other people will

like you for this and you in

tern will like yourself, this

costs nothing. If you find

that they are not appreciative

of this gesture, don’t feel

dejected, for you are still a

better person for it.

Constant happiness is

unobtainable due to having

more than one emotion.

There has to be room in

our lives for sadness, if

there wasn’t, how would

we know when we are

genuinley elated.

It is in human nature to

assume, we do it and act upon

it without really thinking

further than the upper tips of

our snouts. These thoughtless

acts can often lead to. . . . . . . . .

Misunderstandings are

unavoidable. They are

born from a moments lack

of mindfulness, so it is not

constructive to cast blame.

To blame another person for

a misunderstanding is like

blaming the sun for shadows.

Forgiveness is a capability that

everyone possesses and is a

valuable asset when faced with

adverse personalities. It may

not always be the first port of

call emotionally, but it can be

a rewarding goal and proof of

the power of the human spirit.

We will maintain an

openness to each other as

well as other societies and

will have faith that our belief

system and it’s manifesto

will protect us from any

maleavolent outside forces.

EXIS

TENT

IALI

SM

RELI

GIO

N

WO

RK

TOLE

RANC

E

HARM

ONY

FREE

DOM

HIER

ARCH

Y

LEAR

NING

PERS

PECT

IVE

WEA

LTH

COO

PERA

TIO

N

VIO

LENC

E

GEN

DER

REAL

ISM

LIBE

RALI

TY

UNDE

RSTA

NDIN

G

ACCE

PTAN

CE

SELF

IMPO

RTAN

CE

YOU

MAN

NERS

HAPP

INES

S

ASSU

MPT

ION

MIS

UNDE

RSTA

NDIN

GS

FORG

IVEN

ESS

OPE

NNES

S

Although our society is founded

on the maximisation of

happiness, that does not mean

to say we do not acknowledge

the seemingly negative sides

of human nature. Sceptics are

welcome to their scepticism,

just as optimists are welcome

to their optimism. We shall

not judge disparagingly those

who inherantly see the world

through a tinted window.

MANIFESTOFOR ABRIGHT

First attempt at a corporate brief. The persistant challenge of making the product stand out in the market place is common place and a neccessary evil so I was eager to get stuck in. The brief was fast paced and loaded with rejection, I found this environment exciting to work in and the high pressure made the end result more gratifying.I was not pleased with the final design but I felt the team I was working in had achieved the best we could given the constraints and it was confidence building to be able to bounce ideas of fellow peers.

First attempt, the deserts would be stacked in a cylindrical container.

Third idea, this idea was abandoned as we felt the image of the desert was not clear behind the text therefore was not a good representation of the contents.

Final Product Design

We decided to go with the theme of Good and Evil as they are something that is easily recognisable by the general public and instantly identifyable. Also we wanted something that could enhance the juxtoposition between fruit based deserts and chocolate based deserts.

BOOKABOUT

ABOOK

BOOK

ABOOK

The aim of this brief was to create a book about a book. In order to get us thinking outside the box and to help us try to look at books as something more than just paper, words and binding we had an enjoyable excercise in book art. I found this warmed me up in a positive manner and instantly the ideas came flooding and although the outcomes did not contribute directly to my end result, the act of creating them changed my perspective toward books as a concept. It is at this point I questioned what define’s a book and how could I make a book unconventional on the surface but still retain the elements that make a book a book.

After playing about with several differing ideas none of which I felt enthusiastic about, I remembered a piece of art I saw years ago (I forget the name of the artist who produced it), but they made astonishing multi-layered images using perspex. I decided to adapt this technique in order to challenge the concept of a book. The realisation that if the pages were transparent the book could be read, even if it were stuck together, gave me the freedom I needed to create something a little different.Together with the help of one of my tutors I made a screen printing setup at home and set to work printing the individual pages. This process proved to be equally rewarding as it was frustrating as there were more inherent problems with printing on polycarbotnate than I had anticipated. But ultimately I was really pleased with the results.

I chose Mody Dick as I wanted to choose a classic book with great imagery as I was planning to illustrate it, plus the original having been illustrated by Rockwell Kent gave me the opportunity to create a pastiche of work I have been researching for my independant practice.

Book Production

Book Consumption

As the aim of this unit is production and consumption we held a book fair. For this fair I produced the below poster advertising the event and put it up around Uni campus in order to raise awareness, this also doubled up as an online flyer which was disseminated on various social networks.

I had sold two out of my four books prior to the book fair starting so I decided price my books according to rarity. I had sold the previous two books for £10 so I decided to price one of the remaining books at £15 and one at £28.50, the reason being as each book gets bought the remianing book increases in value. As people would rather pay £15 instead of £28.50 I was able to pre-price them on a self dictated sliding scale. However in the end I ended up selling both for £15 in order to secure a final sale in the last minutes of the fair. This still enabled me to make a proffit.

This pricing system was meant as satirical comment on the nature of valuation.

The fair as a whole was a great success and it was a good opportunity to chat about each others work and see up close what everybody had been working on.

I n t e r v e n t i o n

This task was about how pretty much anything can be considered intervention of sorts, from a traffic light stopping the traffic to a piece of graffiti that catches your eye and momentarily steals your attention. The lesson here is to start to identify the many differing ways in which you can communicate with people, sometimes without them even knowing.

GOOGLEFAMEMANNY B SHONGOMOLA EKATHLEEN B NIELS E ANTONIA WROWSHANARA SYUI Y

9485058596178

116127183231261293298302332361511513523551552589690730882886

KARINA MNEAVE RPAULA MTRISTUN GROBBI GKORY VMATT SANTONIYA KCHRIS BOLI WGEORGINA SISABELLA GCALLUM BROBBI GCHRISTOPHER LLUKE ELAURA NSIMON RAARON RGEMMA G

CATRINA BLUCA CAGATA RKASHIF NABI RJACK HEMMA RREECE CED PLOUIS DREBECCA WBSHAKIL HVILLE NHAYLEY KEMILY BZIZI A

TOM VRACHEL CLAUREN GVINCE LDANIEL JKEVIN F

LOUISE GTHOMAS HREBECCA WALICE LMATT KPAUL P

1060118012901420178020702420305038504210520053307420772088808920

101001270042400468004960080300

216000234000296000320000793000856000

This Infographic represents the findings of my research into how famous my peers are based on how many hits each of them attains when you type their full name into Google.

0-99 hits

100-999 hits

1000-9,999 hits

10,000-99,999 hits

100,000-999,999 hits

b ynnaMe alomognohs

b neelhtak E SLEIN

W AINOTNAS ARANAHSWOR

y iuy

984

5058591687

116721381132162392892203

332163

511513

325551552

985096037288688

M ANIRAKR EVAENM ALUAP

G NUTSIRTG IBBOR

V YROKS TTAM

K AYINOTNAB SIRHC

W ILOS ANIGROEG

G ALLEBASIB MULLAC

G IBBORL REHPOTSIRHC

E EKULN ARUALR NOMISR NORAAG AMMEG

B ANIRTACc aculr atagan fihsak

r ibah kcajr ammec eceer

p ded siuol

bw acceberh likahs

n ellivk yelyah

b ylimea iziz

v motc lehcarg nerual

l ecnivJ LEINAd

F NIVEK

g esiuolh samohtw acceber

l ecilak ttamp luap

06010811092102410871070202420503058301240025

53300247027708880298

001010072100424008640069400308

000612000432000692000023000397000658

GOOGLEFAME

Information Graphics

For this brief we had been given the task to obtain a collection of information and create an information graphic for public consumption. Initially I had the idea to compare the ratio of advertising to content in the mens and womens magaines for that month, to see which sex is targeted more by marketing and advertising. Unfortunately due to most womens magazines being packaged in plastic I was unable to get to the information needed.

With time now being a constraint I decided to go with plan B which was to see what happens when I searched for my peers names on google. Based on the amount of hits each name generated I began creating an infographic to represent the results. The breadth of the results made this a hard task as in order to show every result which ranged from 9 to 856,000 I would have to find a way to chart the results. Wanting to avoid standard bar graph’s I chose to represent each result as a concentric circle. Initially this did not work as the scale would have had to be enormous in order for the smallest result to be visable with the largest result still fitting on the page. I overcame this by dividing the results into escalating groups and colour coding the groups so all the information could be shown on the same page.

My first design was not effective I realised due to a lack of a key and a guide, it seemed people did not instingtively realise how to read the graph. This came as a surprise but was a valuable lesson learnt.

This is the first of three illustrated posters I produced based on the ‘make me think’ brief, one of the concepts we were told to use was things that are important to us. This first illustration represents Beauty. Art and Design of all different genre’s would be lost without the potential to be beautiful, even uglyness has it’s own kind of beauty so I felt this was an integral part of the things that make me happy. I chose conventional icons of beauty, flowers and a models face as I felt this would convey the message from a distance.

I chose the subject of home for the second illustration as it is universal, it is a concept everybody feels a connection with in one way or another. I also chose it because I am interested in how the term home has slightly differing connotations between cultures, an example being the German idea of ‘Heimat’ which means home but in a much wider sense that encompasses a whole philosophy.

My third and final illustration is based on the macabre. I chose this because firstly it is an important juxtoposition to beauty also it is something that interests me on many different levels. I find myself automatically drawn to macabre imagery and concepts and feel it is important to acknowledge it’s influence and popularity in modern culture from the bleak masterpieces of Francis Bacon to the recent explosion in extreme cinema. The general public seem to have an unwavering fascination with the macabre and I think this can be used as a tool in design.

As part of the ‘Labudio/Make me think’ brief I wanted to genuinely do something that would be interactive and would actually force people to think. I like the idea of an adult colouring book so I illustrated three posters and gradually put them up in the LAB over the two weeks along with a box of paints and colouring in materials and encouraged people via the Lab blog and facebook to come and colour in the posters. I really liked the idea of working in a group but due to schedule problems and commitments this was going to prove difficult so one of the best things about the concept is that I could be in a group without actually being in a group, or even knowing who I was working with. I was excited each day to come in and see how the project had developed and not knowing how people where going to interpret the images became one of the high points of the exercise.It would have been nice to have had a little longer so people could finish and take a little more time over it and the end results of people efforts weren’t particularly graphically pleasing, but it was the process that was important and peoples willingness to be involved that made it a worthwhile excercise.

THE LAB

Evaluation

Production and Consumption

For this semester we have been focusing on the production and consumption of graphic design. I personally have found this term very rewarding. The tasks we have been set, have for me, had more defined goals, so I have found it less daunting when starting out. I have been able to step back and gain a better understanding of what processes work for me. And having a goal to work toward has enabled me to hit the ground running with the majority of tasks. I have also found that the links between what we have been learning in contextual studies, my studio practice and my independent practice have become far clearer which in turn allows me to be more focused. It is knowing the context that the work we are doing fits into that gives me more confidence in what I have been trying to achieveI found briefs where we work to tight deadlines surprisingly enjoyable and working with other people just as beneficial. Being able to work off other people’s ideas and being inspired by what they are doing can sometimes push me in a direction I would not normally travel. I seem to work far better under pressure and the critiques have allowed me to pinpoint where I am going wrong. I feel sometimes I lose focus of the communication side of design because I get too involved in the aesthetics. Whilst I still need to work on this I do feel that I have improved. With every task we are set I seem to gain a new set of skills, to me this is very exciting and it has a knock on effect, as every skill set you attain can influence other skill sets and you can keep building. This unit has put a perspective on the work I have been doing and I feel I am beginning to wrap my head around the place of Graphic Design in the world.

The projects we have undertaken have also pushed me to research more, there have been so many subjects that I have had no previous experience in so I have had to e-mail designers and go to exhibitions as well as the typical library and internet resources in order to gain an understanding of the subtleties that differentiate good design and bad design. I have also read a few books on Typography and this has helped a great deal with getting to grips with how it works and can be a valuable tool in getting the message across.

Ultimately this term has taught me not only where my weaknesses are and where I need to improve but also what methods work for me. I have gained a lot of technical skills that have been a mystery to me in the past. But it is being able to understand the context of my work and how it can be disseminated and what kind of reactions to expect not to mention how to deal with those reactions, that has really helped my understanding grow.