SOS Project

Been back at art school for a week now and I'm really enjoying getting back into it and seeing everyone again. My first brief this year, like last year, is the Tapirulan illustration competition, but obviously this time there's a different theme - SOS.

Last time I did the Tapirulan brief I took it down quite an abstract and conceptual road so it didn't bear much obvious visual resemblance to the theme. This year we have been given a bit more time on the brief and encouraged to actually enter the competition so I decided just to go with something a bit more commercially viable and not try to twist the theme so much. Having looked at the website most of the previous winners have followed a similar approach and favoured drawing and printmaking over other media so whilst not wanting to be a sheep I think I might as well give that kind of approach a go and attempt something that's more likely to be successful. 

SOS is quite a difficult theme to interpret in an original way. I started off by thinking about the obvious nautical connection and also about the quite cliched idea of SOS spelled out in the sand so it can be seen from above. This led me on to thinking about more subtle ways to spell it out and how that could be done by accident.

I thought about the "dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot" morse code pattern and the idea of people floating in lilos and rubber rings unintentionally signalling to be rescued. As a bit of a habitual non-drawer I had a lot of trouble at first (hence why I've cropped the pictures of the sketchbook pages) but eventually I got into it and decided on a style I liked:

Another idea I had was about signs overlapping and spelling out SOS which obviously has less of a narrative but visually could be quite nice. I did a bit of lino and monoprinting for this which I thought was pretty effective and always an easy and fun way to fill up a sketchbook.

Another idea I had was about bulbs failing on a typographic sign changing the meaning of the sign, for example "storage" could become "rage" if the S, T and O went out. I liked the idea of spelling out SOS on some dingy roadside shop/diner/bar/petrol station type place so I played about with a few compositions and media:

I really like this idea though it's not been that well executed. I would definitely need to play around with some media and see what works. I like that it's quite sombre in mood although bearing in mind that all the finalists for the competition have their pieces put in a calendar obviously I still want to keep it a bit light hearted.

Creme Fresh Final Poster

After working on the two designs we decided that the blue and gold room looked best. I like the contrast between the ornately designed room and the space station as they look entirely different and serve different purposes, decoration vs. function, but are linked by their origins in human imagination. I like the contrast of the enclosed space (the room) and the vast infinity of space which could symbolise the intimate club setting contrasting with the "musical journey" the clubber goes on (if you wanted to be really cringey). The wee guy on the control panel also made me think of a DJ which made me laugh a bit as I wanted the image to be quite decorative but also a bit playful. 

I started playing around with the text on Photoshop and made quite a few changes to really tighten up the layout. We also decided to add a drop shadow to some of the text to make it stand out and I made the text cream as well.

Although reactions to the poster have been a bit mixed I'm really pleased with the outcome and think it stands out from most of the club posters I've seen. I also did a banner for the Facebook event:

... and a double sided flyer, the idea being that as the club nights progress there will be a series of images for people to collect adding to the value of the advertising and making the night a bit more creative:

Creme Fresh Poster Development

Took a break from the poster to go to Dimensions festival in Croatia which was amazing. It gave me some time to mull things over so I came back to the project quite refreshed. I added in the phrase "all night party music" at Duncan's request. Despite this I think my first attempt looked pretty stale and didn't stray that far from what I'd done before so I felt a bit disheartened.

Feeling a bit nervous about the project I came into the studio yesterday and decided to just completely start again with the imagery (but keep the traced and cut out text which I liked). I had a look through my books and took some photocopies then started playing around with pure collage. I wanted to come up with something relating to human ingenuity  - art, music and science which to me are all pinnacles of human achievement. My main stimuli for the poster were imagination/creativity and playing about with scale and space. This approach suited me much better and I came up with three images that I was pleased with:

I sent them over to Duncan. We agreed that the two images set in a room were the most dynamic. He also asked that I change "all night party music" to "party music all night long" which reads better. 

Creme Fresh Poster Design

Been busy over the summer with work and holidays which has been great though I'm feeling a bit lazy on the art front. Now I'm almost starting back at uni though I feel like getting back into a project so I've been working on a poster commission for a friends' club night - Creme Fresh - which is starting up in Edinburgh.

Duncan wanted the poster to be along the same lines as some of my collage work in style. He had quite a strong idea about coherent branding so I looked at the covers he'd done for some of the Creme Fresh internet radio shows for inspiration.

As an obvious place to start I used the same font, and also thought about the pictures he'd chosen which were very disparate in content but had a similar feel in terms of humour and general strangeness. This is something that appeals to me so I had a search through some books and found some pictures which I thought worked and started playing about with them.

I made a couple of mock-ups and sent them over to Duncan.

He liked the second image the best so I started working on that in Photoshop playing about with the text and came up with this final version:

I was pretty happy with the way it looked but several people said that it reminded them of slaves/migrant boats (racists) which obviously isn't ideal when promoting a club night so I had to start over.