Archives: Projects

  • Lost in Blue

    Lost in Blue

    For this project I decided to explore one of Solnit’s key themes in ‘A Field Guide to Getting Lost: Blue. She uses the title ‘Blue of Distance’ for alternate chapters. In the first chapter she links this with a discussion of cyanotype visions of the world. The cover of my paperback copy has an atmospheric abstract watery watercolour landscape on the cover – much like my view over St Ives Bay where we were staying.

    My original inspiration for the project was the following text that I found calming and inspiring as I gazed out of our camper van window at the sea and sky of St Ives Bay.

    Blue of Distance and Depth: The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that gets lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colourless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the colour blue. ( Solnit A Field Guide to Getting Lost p29)

    Use an image and a piece of text to create maximum information or detail. Next, strip back the design to maintain the same meaning or effect but with minimum visual content. Find a point between these two positions where there’s just enough information or detail.

    Preparation

    My working process was somewhat different from the previous project in that I started with existing physical images – cyanotypes – that were random and experimental rather than explicitly designed for this purpose. I then manipulated the images using Procreate on my iPad to fit three different extracts from Solnit’s text.

    In my ‘Lost on the Way to Zennor’ sketchbook I had made a page of ‘Blue’ quotations from Solnit, matched with a collage of some of my ink and gouache doodles.

    I had become increasingly interested in the cyanotype process as another photography-based printmaking process that I could do at home. I had booked my self onto a course with Karina Savage at Curwen Print Study Centre in Linton. These first cyanotype images were very experimental in exploring different textures – glass hangings, small sherry glasses, feathers, latex gloves, clingfilm, prisms, bubblewrap, netting, grasses and jewellery with different angles of exposure. Some of the images were produced on top of solution painted on with a brush so had brushmarks, other images were on pre-prepared paper and these produced different blue tones. But I really liked some of the textures and effects. I decided it would be interesting to use these rather arbitrary images and see where they led.

    Theme 1: Blue light lost

    I used Procreate on my iPad for many of my most successful images in Illustration 2. It is a very flexible software that can produce many image variants quickly through blend modes, masks etc that can produce very evocative high resolution images from many different types of source image. There have been a lot of recent updates eg addition of text, more blur and selection functions and a sophisticated liquify mode. Further developing these skills is important in diversifying my digital work away from my pc and managing my RSI.

    • I selected the cyanotype that I considered the most evocative of ‘beautiful blue light’ as my base image, edited it slightly to give fewer glass circles and put the full text in the gap so that it was legible.
    • I then cropped the image to square in different ways and overlaid a much shorter version of ‘Blue is the light that gets lost’. Of these I like the darker more dramatic image with its glistening light and the text that gets lost.
    • The fourth version was then really minimal with just the word blue, leaving the light to speak for itself.
    • The final image has excerpts for the text in Optima typeface for elegance and to give a bit more information. I tried several darker versions to be more like the version 3 and need to work on this more to make the blues more varied and the text more shimmery as it is a bit bland.

    Theme 2 The fable of the blue jar: innocence and freedom

    For the second theme I used a different crop of the same cyanotype and a different text:

    • The first maximum image is the same image as Blue Light Lost but flipped horizontally and making a masked hole for the longer text to make it legible.
    • For the second maximum image I cut and flipped the running figure to make her more obviously a woman running towards the pyramid palace. I like the very stylised figure produced by accident from the splayed ends of the jewellery.
    • In the third Minimum image I further cropped the image and reduced the text to make it a more enigmatic commentary on whether the dazzling beauty of the pyramid was ‘innocent’ and whether the figure running after the glitz is in fact free.
    • For the ‘just right’ image I reduced the text from the original tale to something shorter and more poignant. I added a rather robotic blue vase for her heart. But I think this is quite effective as an evocative fairy tale image.

    Not the right blue’ ideas of unreachability and yearning from a story by Isak Dinesen about the daughter of a shipwrecked merchant obsessed with blue chinaware. “although she bought many hundred blue jars and bowls, she would always after a time put them aside and say: ‘Alas, alas, it is not the right blue.’ When her father suggested maybe the blue she was looking for did not exist she said ‘O God, Papa, how can you speak so wickedly? Surely there must be some of it left from when all the world was blue.’ After decades she finally found an old blue jar from the Chinese emperor’s summer palace. When she saw it she said that now she could die, and when she died, her heart would be cut out and put in the blue jar. ‘And everything will be as it was then. All shall be blue around me, and in the midst of the blue world my heart will be innocent and free, and will beat gently…’ ( Solnit A Field Guide to Getting Lost pp 125-126)

    Theme 3 Melancholy Blue

    Theme 3 ‘Melancholy Blue’ started with the same text as theme 1 ‘Blue that gets lost’ but with the rather intriguing latex glove dog shape image. Imagining the dog is called blue. In the inverted image experiment I like the Prussian Blue lines against the pale blue. This suggested whistful melancholy.

    So I returned to my Solnit quotes and started to work with different text:

    Cyanotypes (Prussian blue) and melancholy: This world was realised in the cyanotypes, or blue photographs of the nineteenth century – ‘cyan’ means blue, though I always thought the term referred to the cyanide with which the prints were made. Cyanotypes were cheap and easy to make, and so some amateurs chose to work in cyanotype altogether, some professional photographers used the medium to produce preliminary prints, treated so they would fade and vanish in a few weeks’ time: these vanishing prints were made as samples from which to order permanent images in other tones. In cyanotypes you arrive in this world where darkness and light are blue and white, where bridges and people and apples are blue as lakes, as though everything were seen through the melancholy atmosphere that here is cyanide. ( Solnit A Field Guide to Getting Lost p34)

    • The first maximum version takes the full dog cyanotype and full text, with a transparent background for legibility.
    • In the second maximum version I cropped the image square to create a more claustrophobic feel. I shortened the text to focus on the idea of depression and threat of suicide. I wanted to reduce the contrast between the blue and very bright white. But the black and cream do not work. The dog shape also becomes less clear.
    • In the minimum version I keep the cropped claustrophobic image and reduced contrast but with just the word melancholy, letting the image speak for itself. I put a further overlay to reduce the contrast between the white and blue and make the blue a darker melancholic Prussian blue.
    • The final version then draws on the inverted image above. I wanted a more tangled melanchoilc mess where the word itself was more expressive. I overlaid a crop of the image with a clipping mask. I like this image

    Earlier Photoshop versions: Blue is the LIght that gets Lost

    These are my original cynatoptype photographic experiments in Photoshop/DXo FX before I had learned the cyanotype process. The first using Silver FX antique cyanotype effect looks rather like a Bible reading – reminiscent of some of the posters outside the many churches in St Ives. The second one is more dramatic. I like the bold verticals like bars of a jail enclosing/excluding the viewer with depressive blue. Somewhat reminiscent of Ed Ruscha. I need to become more proficient in Photoshop to make them look more interesting.

    Further possibility

    Yves Klein Leap blue ( intense Ultramarine) globe and colour of the void, space and death. In 1957 Yves Klein painted a globe with his deep electric blue (intense Ultramarine), and with this gesture it became a world without divisions between countries, between land and water, as though the earth itself had become sky, as though looking down was looking up…Painting the world blue made it all terra incognita, indivisible and unconquerable, a ferocious act of mysticism’…1960 Leap Into the Void

    ( Solnit A Field Guide to Getting Lost pp ??)

  • Life is Orange

    Life is Orange

    ‘l love every minute of my life… I squeeze it like an orange and eat the peel, because I don’t want to miss a thing.’ Huguette Caland

    I chose ‘Orange’ because I wanted to start this series of projects with something bright and optimistic. Initially I had worked with ‘Lost in Blue’ from my first visit to St Ives in March – a time when the weather was fairly consistently cold and rainy and the atmosphere very tense with uncertainty of a No Deal Brexit. My work at this time was pretty depressing.

    But then in the second visit in July there was an exhibition by Huguette Caland at Tate St Ives that really inspired me with her bold abstract shapes and bright colours – though I also like her thin pen and ink drawings. I enjoyed her playful innovative approach to sexuality and enjoyment in shocking what was at the time a male-dominated art establishment. And the quote below seemed to sum up the more lively and optimistic side of my somewhat bipolar psyche.

    Developing the Concept

    This project was the first of three warm up exercises:

    TASK Using an image, text, a flat block of colour and a limited colour palette, create as many text and image combinations as possible.

    I decided to take quite some time over because it was a useful framework within which to explore Project 1.3 Creative Design Toolkit in much more depth and also significantly develop my practical skills and experience with the many stylistic possibilities of Adobe Illustrator.

    I started with a review of the work of Huguette Caland to understand a bit more about her work. From this I selected a palette of orange, red, warm yellow contrasting with turquoise, dark brown and black. I also did an Internet search on ‘Orange’ to look at the different cultural interpretations and uses in graphic design. I experimented with ideas and acrylic colours on large A2 sheets in my Cornwall sketchbook to loosen up before working digitally.

    Version 1 Define It

    My first attempts were rather standard graphic design that interpreted the task in a rather uninteresting way – though I did experiment with distortion of the text, different text effects and image trace in Illustrator. This looks like an advert for oranges and the meaning of the text is lost – particularly in the final version where Love and Eat are the same size and the eye seems to go straight through to the orange. The first line of the much plainer text in version 3, without any attempt at illustrative manipulation, lets the meaning through much more clearly, without competition from ‘eat’. The first line containing the real essence of the meaning of the rest of the text.

    Version 2 Make It Bold

    In ‘Make It Bold’ in order to give prominence to the text, I swapped the solid colour block to make that a large orange circle, initially with a grain texture, and reduced the image to a very small logo by Hugette Caland’s name. My initial attempts were uninspired – looking like cork mats and the text did not stand out in red, but using the other colours with that design looked strange. So I decided to go back to my sketchbook and play a bit more – doing a large orange/red/yellow acrylic painting with sponge and fingers like Caland’s ‘Red Sun’.

    Going back to Illustrator I removed the texture from the circle, and put a bold ‘I’ in the middle as the ‘backbone’ of the meaning – the woman in charge of her life and reactions to it. The diagonal strokes into the centre were discovered when by accident I used a very wide stroke on a dotted art brush when I was experimenting with different brush settings. I used the bold and showy Broadway font with some distortion and kerning to vary the text. The logo I put on its side in black – Caland was Lebanese – and this attracts attention to her name. I am quite pleased with what I managed to achieve here in Illustrator. Though if I was not tied by the task in brief and my aims to work in Adobe Illustrator, I think this would have been a very interesting starting point for a much more dynamic joyful treatment in paint – using also the lipstick and chocolate for the text that I experiment with below.

    Version 3 Let’s look at the real thing

    Let’s look at the real thing raises the question of what is meant by ‘real thing’? Just the image, or the meaning of the text. In the first image the eye is attracted by the big orange, but then does go to try and make out the meaning of the turquoise text – more in this simple image than in the more manipulated ‘Define It’ version. I also like the simplicity of the version with the large rather anonymous text.

    Version 4 Introduce Time Motion Sound

    Version 4 Introduce Time Motion Sound was a bit of a discovery – aiming to draw typographic inspiration from Dave Carson. Unlike Photoshop, Illustrator has no motion blur and no matter how I experimented with the other blurs and feathering, it was difficult to simulate motion.

    But when I was experimenting with clipping masks I discovered that the pixelation of the background image introduced motion. I then exaggerated this through changing the font to Acumin Pro condensed black italic -thick enough and slanted enough to show the image through. I then set the type to narrow tracking and leading and resized the text block to the full width of the frame and horizontally centred. This produces a dynamic triangular bird-shaped block of text. I contrasted Magneto Bold for Caland’s name to preserve the sense of ‘magnetic’ motion.

    Version 5 What is the Key Moment

    This variation focuses in on the verbs – with the final eating as the main moment. In the final version I kept the other text consistent as Myriad Pro, just emphasising Love and Squeeze through colour, size and tracking. The colour block was transformed as the orange drips from the squeeze. To emphasise the main moment: EAT, I chose a ‘fat’ font – Franklin Gothic Heavy. I needed to make the letterforms more symmetrical as a ‘fat block. I set the tops of the E and T to the same width, and altered the kerning to make the bottoms touch and adjusted using the character panel and touch type tool. The orange logo vertically centred on the orange drips to make the bottom corner point. ‘the peel’ was aligned with the diagonal of the A to emphasise it and set in a justified text box in line with the orange. The kerning was then altered by eye to make it roughly consistent. Huguette Caland was put in a softer brown colour to differentiate from the harder black text.

    But although the emphasis on EAT makes sense in terms of the visual dynamics, maybe I need to rethink the semantic change of emphasis from Loving Life to Eating Peel and do a new design focusing on Love.

    6 Create a Variation

    Inspired by Tomato, Verson 6 variation originated with 5 the Key Moment. But experimented with variable font Acumin and black/white contrast with coloured outlines to see what that would look like. The next version experimented with manipulating the type.

    7 Connect Play, fantasies and daydreams

    In version 7 I decided to go back to playing with textures and ways of using physical media to create letterforms. I had very much enjoyed doing this in Assignment 5 A to Z from Armageddon in Book Design 1. In my A2 sketchbook I experimented with lipstick (love), chocolate orange foil and chocolate orange segments as a brush.

    Taking these into Illustrator, I then converted these into brushes and fills.

    These still need quite a bit more work eg experimenting more with types of path for the lipstick text, incorporating the foil as fills to the orange text (kept getting an error message to clipping mask because the text is warped), and making the straight text on the chocolate image drippy. I would also like to experiment with a style more like that of Sarah Fanelli’s ‘Onion’s Great Escape’ using these same physical experiments. But this was fun and a way of working I enjoy.

    8 Combine seemingly arbitrary content

    This variation was a lot of fun to do, but raised many questions about what might be meant by ‘arbitrary’.

    I maintained certain rules like the limited colour palette where it was possible to experiment with many random variations, only altering colours through different blend modes. The background mosaic grain I selected because it suggests snake skin – not oranges. In the case of fonts there were too many, so I selected ones that might in some way suggest the opposite of the meaning of the text and laid things out to also suggest something different e.g love is Chiller far apart. Squeeze was more arbitrary in that I selected a contradictory font and then set the tracking to high as opposite of squeeze. But had not altered the text box width and so it came out in a tangled lump that I quite like. I adjusted colours and effects through blend modes to preserve a reasonable label of contrast and legibility. I did four versions just changing the background and adjusting the colours. The black version is the most ‘arbitrary’ in the sense of getting furthest away from meaning of the text. I also like the art nouveau feel of the turquoise version, though it would need more purposeful work to achieve real impact.

    Assessment, learning and further Versions

    I found this exercise enjoyable and useful – the apparently random order and near repetition of some of the versions eg bold/obvious, define/real thing, time/key moment etc and alternations between them in the list order made me think much more deeply about ways of doing things differently. Inclusion of versions like ‘arbitrary’ gave me license to really do something different that I would not have tried if I was just left on my own to think of variations.

    As I was doing a lot of work on each version in order to learn Illustrator skills, I was quite tired and getting a bit stale by Version 8. I will return to this project again in Assignment 5 when I have improved my Illustrator skills in the Visual Research module and had a complete break to come back again fresh.

  • A to Z from Armageddon

    A to Z from Armageddon

    This book is an exploration of creative processes in trying to make sense of random rules.

    The letters of the alphabet were taken as the basis for brainstorming apparently random associations between different shapes, materials, colours, meaning and narratives beginning with that letter. This provided a way of opening up possibilities beyond established rules of harmony and exploring different and new ways of combining media, colours and shapes.

    The book is a playful exploration of different associations of letterforms (style and typographic variants) and the words they may begin (colour, media, objects and moods) as a design challenge to see how apparently random elements can be combined to create harmonies and/or tensions.

    I am interested in looking at:

    • associations attached to specific letters, partly but not only through the words they begin, but also their history and evolution from earlier alphabets and their general appearance eg certain letters are generally curved, some have diagonal lines etc
    • how the abstract anatomy of a letterform can convey mood and meaning and how this can be radically altered – shape and positioning of serifs and swashes, stroke contrast, angles and position of lines, forms of curves etc. This includes not only looking at existing typefaces, but also drawing my own letterforms to enhance the meaning of words beginning with the letter.
    • can letterforms morph into each other – distinguishes specific letters from each other, what do intermediate forms look like – is this an interesting area of exploration?
    • effects of materials, papers and use of different drawing tools beginning with the letter eg Q for quill, G for glue/graphite etc can be creatively used and combined to enhance the mood of letters with specific meanings.
    • how colours beginning with those letters can be used to enhance the mood eg B with blue, brown and/or black.
    • how all the above can be combined with positioning and layout to create a playful narrative.

    Letter A  

    Aluminium foil

    Letter B ideas

    Blobs

    Letter D 

    Drypoint

    Letter F 

    Letter G 

    Letter H ideas

    Letter I 

    Isometric Paper

    Letter J 

    Jelly Jam Jar

    Letter K

    Letter L

    Letter M 

    Metallic paper, Matches, Masking Tape

    Letter N 

    Letter O

    OHP Transparency, oil pastel

    Letter P

    Letter Q

    Letter R

    Letter S

    Letter T

    Tissue Paper

    Letter U 

    Mockup for U

    Letter V  

    Letter W 

    Woodcut

    Letter X 

    Letter Y 

    Letter Z 

    Zentangle

    Creative Reflections

    My aim for the book at that point was to:  explore expressive letterforms and the ways letter shapes can be playfully manipulated and combined with colour and layout dynamics to form narratives. I had thought of this possibly as a children’s book for age around 8-10 when children can read well enough not to be confused by alternative letterforms, and beginning to be much more interested in new vocabulary and ‘bending rules’.

    However my ideas for the book expanded to further exploration of materials, colour and creative image creation as I progressed through Assignment 4. I became very interested in paper, and the ways that different scanning strategies can bring out different aspects of apparently very uninteresting materials like tissue paper (See post on Tissue Paper). I had also begun to look at woodcut, deepened my skills in Photoshop and Illustrator. This built on earlier work on colour and printmaking in earlier OCA courses.

    Other research and links

    History of the Alphabet

    Runic alphabets

    Islamic calligraphy

    Concrete poetry

    Typographic Art

    There have been many aspects of the course that I want to explore further in future:

    • visual dynamics of design
    • calligraphy and expressive type and visual dynamics of letterforms – following on from my work in Assignments 3 and 4
    • using different papers and materials for printing and then seeing how to enhance the effects through further digital manipulation in Photoshop – drawing also on work for OCA Printmaking 1 and Illustration 2.
    • commercial self-publishing options and process, including further work on layout and narrative.

    As a way of linking these elements, I decided on a book playing with the visual dynamics of letterforms  exploring different associations of the letterforms themselves (style and typographic variants) and the words they may begin (colour, media, objects and moods) as a design challenge to see how apparently random elements can be combined to create harmonies and/or tensions.

    I then started to plan production of the book in the context of both the self-publishing workflow and the inherent unpredictability of the (my) creative process – and the potential conflicts between linear planning and the need for openness to new ideas and directions as work proceeds.

    Project 5.2 : Planning your workflow

    In the end the product became two books – both still works in progress:

    • a draft book for children using my initial simple ideas and sketches, as a colourful book focusing just on letterforms. These still need further refinement and simplification, then testing with children.
    • a draft book for adults and teenagers where images and ideas are more (too?) complex but where I had much more scope to explore different media, relationship between words and images. As it stands I very much enjoyed experimenting and developing all the images and researching the histories of the different letters. But it does not yet hang together as a book – I need to think more about how the images relate together as a sequence with either greater diversity or greater similarity in styles.

    Part of the issue was lack of time – although in the real world there are tight deadlines, and I could have been much tighter in focus at the planning stage, my purpose in this assignment was learning and exploration. Potentially there is a series of different books here, each with a different focus – for example more formal patterns, fantasy and narrative, flat design, alphabet history and so on. I now need a follow-on process of reassess and refinement – and testing with different audiences.

    So the book has become much more of an exploration of the (my) creative process – interlinkages between visual expression, materials and language, the relationship between creativity and constraints in leading to new directions and inspiration. Though this exploration will be more demonstrated through its outcome in the images than discussed in the book itself. It is now much more aimed at teenagers and adults.

    Many ideas and possibilities emerged in the process before then being simplified and refined around one dominant idea.
    For more details of the process and to contribute your own ideas see: https://www.design.zemniimages.info.

  • On the Road: Cover Design

    On the Road: Cover Design

    The Brief

    Create jacket artwork for the Beat generation classic, On the Road by Jack Kerouac. The publishers, Viking Press, have decided to re-release this title in hardback form, and want a new jacket design to reflect the beatnik and avant-garde nature of this classic novel.

    My response to the book itself was very mixed. I did a detailed concept map (see first page of the Sketchbook) to try and capture and work through my very mixed responses.  I really like the energy – and being ‘On the Road’ is something in my own soul. A passage that is often quoted is:

    The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

    But I found the implicit and often explicit sexism not only of Dean, but also Kerouac himself, really got under my skin – so close to the sexism and prejudice that was all around me growing up.

    Cover 1 Black City

    Black City was my first new idea, developed from my original dark text image and road cover ideas, trying to achieve a similar feel of darkness and fractured movement – maybe ‘big brother watching’. The treatment is expressive, trying to attract the reader with a bold contrasty image and distinctive style.

    The text on which it is based is : The whole mad swirl of everything that was to come began then; it would mix up all my friends and all I had left of my family in a big dust cloud over the America night”

    Cover 2 Pulp Fiction

    This cover was a second parallel idea – developed from one of the few passages in the book that could speak to a modern more feminist audience. It is more of a narrative treatment that suggests a story through juxtaposition starting with the text:

    “Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk.
    Not courting talk – real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.”

    Cover 3 Wings

    This came from a completely new sketch in oil pastel and graphite of some text  near the end of the book where Dean’s energy has nearly sent him mad.

    “I saw his huge face over the plains with the mad, bony purpose and the gleaming eyes; I saw his wings. I saw his old jalopy chariot with thousands of sparking flames shooting out the front. I saw the path it burned over the road…Dean had gone mad again”

    This is another bold, contrasty expressive approach, aiming to attract the reader by a distinctive image style. I was playing around with bold shapes and lines across the page on this one, enjoying the oil pastel. I liked the coloured and textured effect I got – particularly when it was enhanced with a generous dose of fixative. Also the scratched out name.

  • The Greed Game

    The Greed Game

    The Task

    Using a found book, significantly alter the appearance of the pages to create a volume that is personal to you

    Approach the found book in a very physical way, manipulating the pages and paper inventively. If you need to, stitch or glue a number of pages together to reduce the ground you need to cover. Decide what to remove from the book, and what to add. Use the found book as a source of ideas and inspiration – the existing text may inspire illustrative or conceptual images. Embed, overlay and integrate your work into the existing pages using whatever materials, media and processes you feel necessary. This may be digital, hand-rendered, photography, textile, or a combination of all these and more. Apply an inventive, intuitive response to materials and how these can be exploited within the context of the altered book.

    Refer to your contextual research into artists and designers on the course so far. Use elements of your research as inspiration and to inform your book-altering practice.

    Initial Ideas: from Money Rush to Greed Game

    Choice of Book: Money Rush by Alan Duncan 1979

    I had spent a long time wandering around old book stalls in  Cambridge market and Oxfam second-hand bookshelves since starting this course – in anticipation of this assignment. Initially I had found an old copy of Alvarez ‘Savage Mind’ and thought this might offer an interesting complement to the theme of ‘Identity’. But in the end I thought this might lead to too dark a place – and used parts of it instead to test out interactions between different types of paint, ink and inkjet printing on book paper mock-ups, and also for the earlier parts of Assignment 4 : Anonymous.

    I chose instead another book I had found in Oxfam about the impact of discovery of oil in the Middle East in 1970s: ‘Money Rush’ by Andrew Duncan and published in 1979 by The Anchor Press Ltd.

    The cover blurb read:

    ‘the greatest transfer of wealth the world has ever known’ describing ‘in vivid personal detail the background to the new riches…a story of greed, graft, of politics at its most basic, of opportunities lost, enormous wealth gained, and some nobility. It is a guide for those who want to join in, and a warning to those who think it will last forever. The money rush affects us all.’

    The book was quite topical in view of the later effects on Western/Middle East perceptions and relations as later played out in Iraq, Libya and Syria that were graphically documented on Al Jazeera. When I bought the book the Daily Mail was covered with images of Islamic women terrorists, and there were many discussions on BBC of why British women and men were becoming radicalised. The book also covered a period in Iran which I had personally witnessed – a period when our self-interested promotion of the Shah and his SAVAK secret police fuelled support for the rise of the Ayatollahs and stifling of any democratic resistance in Iran. A fact that journalists in Pakistan and Afghanistan later mentioned to me as a reason why they felt support for Osama Bin Laden.

    So I felt that this book would give me a lot of interesting material to explore and work with – looking somewhat critically at Duncan’s analysis and linking the events of the 1970s to current Middle East/West relations. Something that is important background to much of my professional work. I also saw it as offering me the opportunity to explore in much more detail traditional and modern Islamic design – a longstanding interest of mine.

    At the same time, because of all the many interesting possibilities, I was concerned to see how I could do justice to all the many ideas I had in the short time available for the project.

    ‘Petropolis’ : reading the book and (ongoing) design of the board game

    As I read the book in detail, with its really bizarre stories of corruption, greed and lethargy, I started to envisage a board game – like Monopoly – and after some searching on the web I came across a series of board games called ‘Petropolis’ used by oil companies to train staff. I did some research into different versions of the game, and brainstormed through a mindmap about how I might design an adaptation that would raise questions about Oil Politics and Power, rather than just making money from oil.

    See Petropolis

    The Greed Game

    As I progressed with the overall design and more in-depth reading of the book itself and research started to clarify the content. I had wanted to link the events and motivations of both Western powers and Middle Eastern players to current events in the Middle East and the growth of terrorism.  But actually the issues raised by the book are relevant not only for the Middle East, but the links between money and global power more generally. So although the overall design and style is Islamic, I changed the name to ‘the Greed Game’ – the main implication will be in the way I design the Rule Book, player ‘Business Cards’ and the portrayal of the ‘Allies’ and ‘Telex Cards’ (see below) to raise more general issues as the game plays out.

    The Greed Game: GameBox Contents

    I decided the game would use only, and all, parts of the physical book. The existing book cover would be a folding board to wrap around the game contents. The pages would then be used as information cards and booklets, painted over to paint, draw, print, collage on other information, cut up and printed as money or as pop-up assets (I am getting interested in kirigami). Spare pages would be recycled as handmade paper for the Telex cards.d as papier mache. The only real addition might be some cloth/black plastic?? attached to the cover to make the pockets pockets for the contents, probably on card to stiffen them, and a cord to wrap the Box closed.

    Game Box container design

    Game Box Contents

    • Game Board printed on homemade paper from recycled pages
    • ‘Greed Rules’ Game Overview Booklet printed on homemade paper from recycled pages
    • Player Identity Cards and tokens from the book pages
    • Game background booklet : overview of the events, oil interests and Islam from the book pages
    • Country background booklet: Iran, Saudi, Oman, UAE from the book pages
    • Ally cards:  key actors who can be influenced/bought in each country from the characters in the book pages.
    • Telex cards – random opportunities and obstacle cards  from the business deals and challenges faced by expats etc. These will have to be small as there are few spare pages left over for recycling as homemade paper as originally envisaged (to be done)
    • Money – in denominations of thousands and billions of USD and local currency. There are not enough spare pages to recycle for this, so I am planning to use the many old pill plastic covers lying around our house – a reminder of what the money could have been spent on if it had not been frittered away (even where it did not do actual serious harm).

    Research

    Reading and dissecting the book and initial ideas

    I focused first on getting to grips with the book content in order to focus my background research on what is a very big topic. I started by dissecting the book into sections that were manageable, and also to break its ‘sanctity’ and any fear of ‘messing it up’.

    As I worked through each section I researched topics that were relevant, focussing on areas that are of most interest to me in terms of future directions I might want to take my visual communications work.

    Underlying concepts, messages, country background, players and allies

    In my visual communications work in general I want to focus at least partly on political and social themes that I feel strongly about – to learn to communicate these in a way that can bring other people along with me as opposed to bashing them over the head with blunt messages or tiring them with compassion fatigue. This means in-depth understanding of the complexities of issues.

    Oil industry (forthcoming)

    Islam (forthcoming)

    Iran (forthcoming)

    Oman – Research

    Saudi Arabia – Research

    United Arab Emirates – Research

    Islamic art and calligraphy

    I studied Persian and some Arabic for part of my BA degree and so have long had an interest in Islamic art and culture, both traditional and also radical traditions of protest. Part of my model for this is the work of Dan Eldon explored earlier in the course, and some modern Islamic artists and illustrators like Marjam Satrapi, Shirin Neshat, The Little Black Fish and other artists from Middle East.

    I experimented with colours and traditional geometric designs as well as modern styles, combining this with research on printing and papers that I might use.

    Islamic Art and Calligraphy Research – links to detailed posts

    Initial Mock-ups

    NOTE: the two countries I have worked on most so far with developed pages are Oman and UAE (including some allies). Iran I have done a developed digital mockup. Saudi Arabia work is only very preliminary at this stage.

    I read through the dissected book sections and scanned the pages and pasted these into InDesign files for the different Game contents above – as I would be able to use some of the pages directly, other information I would need to reprint on unused spare pages with some sort of painting over the original print.

    I then started the rather scary process of going through the actual pages – highlighting the key information in a relevant colour, and painting over information that was not relevant, and reprinting other information needed to complete the booklet.

    Alongside this I developed a sketchbook from videos and other Internet materials  like photographs and design examples from the country, as well as ideas from imagination, and experimented with materials and papers – building on my experiments earlier in this part of the course.

    Country Mindmaps

    The contents of the book were presented in an entertaining and interesting way. Much of the responsibility for the corruption and waste attributed to Western traders and their ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ attitude and/or downright unscrupulous greed and/or the (competing) vested interests of their governments. However in the light of my other reading it was clear that some of the discussion was inevitably oversimplified. Particularly in the case of Oman and UAE the predictions of collapse and repression were to a large extent unfounded – though there was/is certainly a lot of waste and exploitation.

    countriesmindmap

    A key issue was to decide how to clearly differentiate the styles for each type of content, and the background booklets – and to tread a very thin line between ‘cultural sensitivity’ and stereotype.  I did some initial brainstorming on design – which colours and techniques to use to meaningfully distinguish the different countries and visually communicate the differences between them – the more I researched into the countries the more the differences were apparent. I progressively developed mindmaps for each country, with different colours, shape dynamics and material techniques.

    When I come to finalise this project after a break and feedback, I am planning a review of everything I have so far as Moodboards to firm up these designs and get ideas for the rest of the allies and contents that do not just repeat what I already have.

    Ally cards: in each country there are key actors who can be influenced/bought to assist the players. These are 1-2 page booklets in a similar style to the country. But the idea is they could also influence other countries and change allegiance – at a price. All the allies are up for auction at a negotiated price – depending on their money/ethical track record and power status. Allies are decided, bought sold and negotiated by the players as they go along – using the information on the cards to persuade the others to part with cash, or enhance/risk their reputation by association.

    Background booklets so far

    The background booklets are 12-20 pages long. Mostly bound by laminating with matt or gloss laminating pockets depending on the effect I want. But some of the older pages I want to maintain fragility and will bind through gluing thin strips of cloth for the spreads (these would be consecutive pages. The booklet spreads will then be stitched. They will open the Arabic way.

    Iran

    Greed Game – Iran full project post

    Iran Background booklet initial digital mockup: Iran_background

    Iran research page (forthcoming) this will include discussion of the radical movements that were going on at the time of the shah – not supported by the British or Americans. Including the women’s movement. And the recent ‘men in burkha protest movement’.

    Iran miniature art

    Iran geometric art

    Iran modern art

    Shirin Neshat

    Overall messages/tensions:

    • deep-rooted ‘spiritual’, sufi and also progressive art ‘feminine’ side (even lorry drivers I met in the 70s could recite poetry and the Shah and his father implemented social reforms eg in position of women) which became linked to corruption of the elite class
    • the very conservative male domination of the mullahs that took over with a promise to address poverty, stamp out corruption and provide a strong moral government
    • schizophrenia of the shah living in a fairy world of the past and imposing it with torture and repression that is intensified now under the Islamic Revolution (though currently – temporarily?? – relaxing somewhat after the nuclear deal)

    Colours: like Isfahan and other mosques: deep blue, turquoise, gold and light purple

    Shape dynamics: wavy, swirly Arabesques overlaid by vertical bars and shadowy figures in the dark

    Materials: juxtaposing Gouache miniatures (maybe on top of photos) and transparency slides as whitewash/overlay hiding what is underneath

    Allies: 

    • Shah
    • Empress Farah (shah’s last and favourite wife)
    • Princess Ashraf (shah’s twin sister)
    • Mr Hoveyda (former Prime Minister)
    • General Fardoust (SAVAK)
    • Khomeini (to lead Revolution)
    • Kianpour (Social Affairs Minister)
    • Mahnaz Afkhani (professional woman)
    • Eslamzadeh (Health Minister)

    Oman

    Greed Game – Oman full project post

    Overall messages/tensions

    Oman is a relatively peaceful country, proud of its cultural past and developing a tourist industry. Before the current Sultan Qaboos, the British controlled Oman and supported very cruel tyrants in their concern to protect their access to India and the Persian Gulf. Although lots of money was wasted by Sultan Qaboos who is lambasted in the book, there seems to be little political repression and Omani women have a lot of freedom. The main concern is what will happen when Qaboos dies – he has no heir, nor has he groomed a clear successor, or set up a strong democratic system.

    Colours: browns, reds, oranges

    Shape dynamics: texture, curved like mosque and sea waves

    Materials: woodcut and ink blobs

    Allies:

    • Sultan Qaboos
    • Other???

    Greed Game – Saudi Arabia full project post

    Saudi Arabia very preliminary digital draft of background booklet: Saudi_background2

    Saudi Arabia research page

    Saudi Arabia art

    Overall messages/tensions

    Saudi Arabia is really barbaric and propped up by US interests. There seems to be little in the way of more progressive culture like the protest movements in Iran, or the opening up in UAE and Oman. The elite family is corrupt and hypocritical with millionaire lifestyles. There are though currently some glimmerings of change – though the most recent King has committed human rights abuses.

    Colours

    Black, white and green of Wahabi Islam. Some red as ‘forbidden’ colour.

    Shape dynamics

    Angular, calligraphic, abstract.

    Materials

    Linocut, paper cut and maybe some podgy plasticene for the effete royal family.

    Allies

    • Prince Khalid
    • Al Ghosaibi (minister)
    • Sheikh Yamani (planning minister)
    • Nazeem (education)
    • Other???

    United Arab Emirates

    Greed Game – UAE full project post

    Overall messages/tensions

    UAE has been cobbled together by colonial powers from 7 emirates that find it quite problematic to work together, because of historic rivalries. MKuch of what has been built has risen out of the desert because of a wish for self-aggrandisement by sheikhs like Sheikh Zayed. Sheikh Rashid of Dubai is however more progressive and visionary. Nevertheless there has been considerable and development and progress that is likely to continue and gradually democratise. The situation for women is quite conservative, but there are women airplane pilots and entrepreneurs coming up. The main issue seems to be the human rights of immigrant workers and an almost apartheidt system.

    Colours

    Red, Green, Black and White from the flag.

    Shape dynamics

    Horizontals of the desert and verticals of sky-scrapers.

    Materials

    Collage, tissue (the sheikhs seem to always have coloured tissues at hand), wallpaper textures.

    Allies

  • Anonymous: Experimental Book

    Anonymous: Experimental Book

    This project revisited the theme of ‘Identity’.

    I had had in mind a narrative of an ‘anonymous’ individual seeking hard to find their identity in a crowded and competitive world where advertisements are always trying to make people feel inadequate in order to buy products. Those who are not able to cope with these pressures are given very little help, and often descend into serious mental health problems. My images are informed by novels about experiences in mental health institutions like Janet Came’s ‘Faces in the Water’, also the experiences of people I know, and my own experiences of depression.

    Concertina Book MockUp

    Printed as a Concertina on Everyday Photo Paper

    Image Spreads

    I started with experimental images using Adobe Illustrator styles on the letter ‘I’.

    Some experimental accidents

    Reflections on my Creative Design Process

    To be developed

    The brief was to be very open and exploratory, going with the flow and ‘happy accidents’ in order to maximise creativity and discovery. Rather than following a strict linear sequence. My linking thread was an exploration of the theme of ‘identity’ – and the brief by the end to produce of about 12 or more printed images that could form some sort of narrative sequence and be bound together as an experimental book of  about 16 pages.

    The project aimed to extend my exploration into materials, the design process, and alternative, inventive approaches to book production. It involved four interlinked exercises:

    Project 4.1: Papers:  broadened significantly my concept of book design and the many possibilities for one single image, thinking about emotional associations as well as technical considerations of paper qualities. And exploring more papers I had not looked at in other OCA courses.

    Project 4.2 : Creating Images : here I found it was very interesting to really narrow down my options to Illustrator, and black and white exploration of styles. Although this meant that in many ways technique preceded meaning, I discovered new themes and potential meanings in the quite random process of image experimentation.

     Project 4.3: Printing  I focused on Inkjet printing  because this was I type of printing I had so far mostly taken for granted and had not really explored all the possibilities of using different types of paper, mediums, overprinting and so on. Other types of printmaking I had done in my OCA printmaking course, and also incorporate in the Assignment piece. I produced a sketchbook of images on the papers I had collected. This led to many ‘Happy Accidents’ and discoveries, for example with OHP Transparencies as well as overprinting text.

    Project 4.4: Collating and binding  I looked at different combinations and narratives using InDesign but going back and forth between printing, selection, collation.

    BUT my design process was not at all linear. It was more useful to see the projects as parallel aspects between which I moved as questions from one level raised questions or possibilities in another.

    • My selection and trial of papers was (and is) ongoing as I think more about what effects I am trying to have, and also discover more about different ways of printing – for example the Happy Accidents with OHP transparencies led to me trying similar types of smearing on other glossy types of paper. Different papers were added to my experimentation as I went along.
    • Development of the images was interlinked with considerations of narrative and the ways they were to be bound (linear or cyclical, as booklet or concertina where all the spreads would be seen at once?) and also papers and printing (what effects would different papers have, inclusion of happy accidents to accentuate/contrast the meaning, what is possible or not possible to print)
    • Printing and the various unexpected outcomes led me back to re-evaluate and explore other possibilities in the images, and try different types of paper
    • Binding and collating involved questions of narrative and the relationship between images, which again led me back to the images themselves in terms of both colour and stylistic consistency as a sequence, whether or not different types of paper should be used for different images and types of overprinting.

    Throughout the process to avoid just getting lost in ‘accidents’ I needed to keep asking myself – what am I trying to say with all this?

    • delve deeper and deeper into madness and depression as a futile search for a phantom identity (does it exist???if so can I find it??? or is the brain incapable of doing that?)
    • come to the conclusion that is it better to just go with the flow of life and enjoy it?
    • show a brave anonymous individual being made to feel they have to ‘be cool’ and explore their individuality?
    • is their self-exploration just amusing?
    • or does it lead to disintegration and loss of sense of self?
    • do they then reach any happy ending? or just a compromise?

    But my understanding and narrative through some of these issues also evolved from the technical and design discoveries, not from pre-planning, and I think this external and somewhat random input helped the narrative from becoming too navel-gazing and enabled a bit of humour.