Punk Jacket random research

With all of the chosen objects we did loads of research about the context surrounding the items. We looked at the time they were from and what was going on in 'the world' and society at this point. Our aim was to collect relevant, interesting images to possibly use in some kind of 'book' telling the story of the objects.

By artist Jamie Reid, a new twist on his 'never trust a hippy' slogan.

1977 picture of Vivienne Westwood wearing one of her infamous punk designs. Image includes upside down crucifix, swastika and a picture of the Queen.

Malcolm McLaren outside his King's Road fashion shop, Sex, in 1976

English Punk band that formed in 1976, part of the original wave of British Punk Rock.

Platt Hall - The Objects

After our first visit to Platt Hall we felt pretty overwhelmed. There was so much to look at and take in it was initially really hard to make a decision about what we wanted to look at. Eventually we decided we wanted to look at a small number of objects that had a good narrative/story behind them. We asked Rosie, one of the curators to choose items she felt had the strongest and most interesting stories behind them. As the items are all donated they each have a 'card' itemising them and giving any extra information.

Platt Hall suggested four different objects for us to use:

The Punk Jacket

1979-1980. Worn by a Punk rocker riding across from Leeds to Manchester. Gathered outside ancoats hotel deliberately starting fights with police.

The Riding Habit

1859. Two sisters were drowned in the river Calder whilst breaking in a new horse. One of them was wearing this riding habit.

The Red Dress

1945. A dress made from Nazi bunting, worn by an UNRRA worker to dances at the end of the war.

The Shoes

Late 18th Century. Shoes worn by a Thomas Worsley who actually lived at Platt Hall.

Platt Hall Gallery of Costume

Platt Hall project is something I have been heavily involved with since the beginning of third year. The Brief set by Platt Hall themselves is focused on generating awareness of Platt Hall, Gallery of Costume within Manchester. When I first visited the Hall I was totally in awe of the place. It's currently closed due to refurbishment so I was lucky enough to get a sneak peak at the parts the public aren't usually able to go. 

The Hall holds over 20,000 items dating from the 1600s to present day. The collection is amazing! I especially enjoyed the attic area with all the storaged clothes ranging from bathing suits to wigs! The

 main problem with the Hall is that people don't know it's there, this is 

something we are hoping to change.

Intersections

The intersections brief was simply to take the word 'intersections' and look at different ways of interpreting it. I spent quite a lot of time looking at the word and what its exact definition was, and then any other meanings it had. This resulted in lots of ideas but I decided to have a bit of fun and go down a more hands on route.

  I decided to plan, design and make a giant interactive crossword with all the words in it in some way relating to the word 'intersections'.

A 'work in progress' picture on my bedroom floor of the crossword bluetoothed from my phone!!

Artist vs Designer

This was a brief that particularly interested me as it gave an opportunity to write as well as design. We simply had to write an article about the debate of Artists vs Designers and the issues involved. The article then had to be put into a double page spread, with relevant images and headings.    

 The writing process I actually found really interesting as I had to do lots of research on the subject, and found out a lot of  information about and around the

subject. Sourcing appropriate imagery was harder, as not only did the subject matter need to be considered but also the quality of the images. 

  

 It was an interesting process as I realised how important all the components of the page are, as if one doesn't work very well neither will the rest, for example if the heading isn't very strong the viewer may not even take the time to read the rest of the article and simply skim past it. It took a lot of designing to get something that I was anywhere near happy with and even when I look at my final layout design now I can see a lot that I would want to change.

 

An early design mainly playing with headings and sub headings.

Experimenting with the imagery.

A more traditional style design, using serif typefaces and long amounts of text.

My final design, I still think more could be done to this. The second page in particular could be more 'interesting', in particular with the image style and placement.

mag.

This is the project that started me looking much more at editorial design. It wasn't something I was fully aware of before, and I was definitely inspired during this project. The brief was actually to prepare a presentation on a subject of our choice. I actually focused on iconic magazine covers which was something I was already interested in, however I then started looking at the layout designs within the magazines, and how they helped define the strength and success of a publication.

  

I presented the research I had done on the topic in a mock magazine "mag." with  double page spreads, contents page and cover. As the focus was more on the information than the actual visuals I simply displayed them around my presentation space as the spreads rather than making the magazine.

Editorial Design Work

Editorial design and page layouts are something I started to become  particularly passionate about in second year. I enjoy the process involved, maybe because I can be a bit of a perfectionist and like to see things in grid form!

This design is based on my thinking process for the contextual essay. We were asked to construct an essay plan, showing what we were proposing to look at in the essay. For the main themes I decided to look at my 'slight obsession' with magazines, and the role of the professional within the magazine industry. I broke down my thoughts, ideas and some research and then developed this into a 'contents' page for the essay showing at that point what I thought was going to be in it.

  The layout itself I am actually quite pleased with, I think it gets my personality across, shows the subject I am actually looking at and also works in displaying the information effectively. Sometimes I find that I spend way too much time making decisions about how something should look, whereas this was something I produced quite quickly and it ended up looking ok!!!