
I enjoy a wide range of approaches, particularly:
- creating my own images and text and experimenting with different design and layout options. I enjoyed making the sketchbook for On the Road drawing while listening to the text. I also enjoy drawing, painting and photography as both illustration and fine art. I do a lot of academic writing for my professional work and improving my visual presentation on manuals, reports and other professional outputs was one of my initial motivations for studying graphic design.
- exploration of different letterforms and calligraphy as in: Islamic Typography and my initial work on Western Typography in Type Samples Sketchbook
- exploration of expressive type Experimental Typography and some of the work of other typographers in Experimental Typography and Concrete Poetry
- physical manipulation and exploration of different types of paper and materials, including collage
- exploration of different types of drawing and painting tools and printmaking processes and how these interact with different types of paper as I have done in other courses: Illustration 2: Draw, draw and draw again and Hybrids: Mixing and Matching Tools, and experiments with Pencil drawing, Glue drawing, Mesh drawing and Charcoal drawing. I also enjoy different types of printmaking: see my Printmaking blog where I looked at many different techniques for monoprint, linocut, experimental relief prints, collagraph, chine colle and combination prints.
- working digitally to either combine analogue images, or produce purely digital output. I have enjoy pushing the creative boundaries of InDesign and Illustrator in Experimental Typography and Identity .
As a support to my own design exploration I have been inspired by:
- looking at the work of Modernist and experimental designers and typographers in the Western tradition, including designers like: Dan Eldon, Muller Brockman, Marinetti and the different uses of visual dynamics of line, shape and colour.
- looking at design in different cultures and the different uses of line, shape and colour as for example Islamic Design in Saudi Art, Iranian Art: Geometric, Iranian Art: Miniatures, Iranian Art: Modern, Islamic Geometric Design. I have also looked in detail at Japanese and African traditions, and this is something that is very much part of my scope of interest.
But my interest is more in relation to how I can learn from these for my own practice, rather than interest in those designers per se as a topic for in-depth research.
Things I would like to explore further in future:
- visual dynamics of design
- calligraphy and expressive type and visual dynamics of letterforms.
- using different papers and materials for printing and then seeing how to enhance the effects through further digital manipulation in Photoshop.
- commercial self-publishing options and process, including further work on Layout and Narrative.