Progression

For one of my self initiated projects, I decided to tackle the subject of making tour posters in relation to music. I am going to see The Buzzcocks live soon, so I thought i'd choose them as they've always had a unique style associated with them. Obviously, I did not want to make a generic punk rawk poster for them, I wanted to base them on something to show their uniqueness in this musical landscape.

To help with this project, I researched and referenced poster work by different artists in relation to rock music. Whilst this helped, it also made me try to create some over-complicated work to reply to the brief I had set myself.

So, onto the progression.

(note: To not take up too much space on this blog, I'm using smaller thumbnails than I would like. Simply click on them to be taken to a larger version on flickr).

Poster No.1

This was my first attempt at seeing what I needed to put on the poster for it to work as a tour advertisement. Obviously, i've created a creative faux par by using a photocopier and adhering to the punk asthetic (which I am trying to avoid) but it did help me to see how I needed to layout my poster, and the information that would be stored on it.

Poster No.2

This was the next version I created. I was interested in the idea of 3d pictures, and even though it wouldn't work as a proper 3d picture, I liked the bold colours so I knocked together a drawing of the bandmembers and used a free version of Helvetica as a basis for the text. It is a bit bland, and to quote my tutor "I love The Buzzcocks, but you'v emade a poster that makes me NOT want to see them!". It needed a lot of work.

Poster No.3

This was the third revision. I had a book about arial photography, and I wanted to use it in my work somehow so that is what the background collage is based around. I also added the figures in to add another dynamic to the image, and went for a plain set of colours to tie the whole thing together. Whilst I think it's a vast improvement on the first set of posters, It was becoming too overcomplicated with all the elements vying for dominance. I decided at this point to spend some time away from this project, and focus on something else so that I could come back with some fresh ideas.

Poster No. 4 & 5

When I returned back to the project, I had found a new idea when talking to one of my tutors in a crit. The idea was simple: since this tour is about the band playing their first 2 albums, why not make small graphic elements of some of the songs that were in the setlist. I dug out the lino cutter and printed some small graphical representations of the songs, and then came up with this poster idea. It's simple, get's the message across and it's not overcomplicated. I'm yet to decide on a background colour, but yellow is favoring me at the moment so I think I shall utilize it in some sense.

I hope this was an insight into the method of working I use, and hopefully the choices that need to be made when revising designs

Xmas Cards

Click for bigger/Flickr

Re-format

I've just had a bit of a re-arrangement of my blog, so i've got rid of a lot of the clutter that wasn't helping out or that I was not using. I'm also trying out a new tagging method, tagging each blog under a singular category for ease of archiving/documenting. There's now a way of sorting by tags on the right, so that you can bunch posts by what is contained in them. I'm not sure how useful this will be, but I thought i'd give it a go for a while to see what happens.

Student Union

Click for flickr/bigger

Quick Update

Not much to report at the moment, i'm a bit snowed under with preparing to go home for the holidays. Just a quick update to let you know that i've gone through my blog and updated all my pictures with flickr links, so now the images should link directly to there so that they can be viewed larger. The old way of loading images took far too long and took up too much space, so i've tried to update it as uniformly as possible. Plus, then you can check out some of the work that i've not uploaded on this blog, along with some photography.

To sedate you till I upload some new work, here's a 3 part narrative that I did a few weeks back. Enjoy, and I hope to post some new work fairly soon.

Drawing Practice: Fawn

Click for bigger/flickr

Status Update

So I haven't updated this in a long time, be it due to working hard or laziness (you decide!) so I thought i'd post a general update about what's been happening with my work and this blog.

This blog is going to be staying here for a while, but i'm currently in the process of setting myself up a website with a proper blog and a portfolio in preparation for the inevitable end of university and the plunge headfirst into freelancing. No official details to report yet, i've got a temporary host at the moment with little to show (as i'm waiting for a chance t

o create a website as part of my course/final major) so i've not got anything to link to as of right now (except an empty page with nothing on it). Stay tuned for more information on that once I finalize what is going to happen with that.

As of uni work, i've been steadily working through that on some pretty good  briefs that i've adapted from the standard ones we have been given (it's third year, it's allowed)

. Currently i'm working on a poster for the Buzzcocks tour in january, which hopefully i'll get to go to, a couple of editorials, and a book cover project about music genres. I've also made a narrative for a fundraising book that my year are releasing to get some funds for our end of year show, which should be good.

I'll post a couple of pieces of work on here, as per usual more work can probably be found on my flickr and deviantart (which are linked on the right).

The first piece is a 24 hour editorial project, whereby I had to illustrate an article on dressage. The second piece is part of the buzzcocks poster project, and is a rough sketch I was working on. Experimenting with flickr links this time, so click on the images to see them bigger/links to flickr (I think)