Evaluation

My first thoughts on the exam theme were to have the words outside on the outside of the zine, the word inside on the inner pages and then the words in between in the gaps. After thinking about it further I decided I would try and find things that symbolise each word for example making the word outside out of leaves or wood to represent the outside world and creating the word inside out of veins to represent the inside of the human body. From this I created lots of experiments, mood boards and looked at many different ideas on Pinterest and Behance. Eventually I decided I'd look at the inside, outside and inbetween layers of the body for my theme. 

My Zine will all be about the human body with different typography on each page that represent this. The words I plan to use are veins, muscular, skeleton, organs, external and skin. These relate to the theme as they each represent the inside, outside or in between parts of the body. For example the skin would represent the outside, organs- inside and muscular- in between. 

I have used Pinterest and Behance to browse lots of different artist/designers work that relate to the theme of both inside, outside and in between and the human body. I have then created moodboards out of the most inspiring images to me that I can look at during my work to help me. When visiting the two gallery's/exhibitions I took photographs of the work I liked and also drew some of the artwork into my sketchbook to get my own interpretation of it. I also photographed a skeleton from college and a Lamb's heart that I brought from a butchers.

My three initial ideas were to do paper cutting/engineering for things that symbolise the theme, create a mixed media piece based on the human body and digitally made typography. I chose not to develop the digitally made typography idea as nearly all my work throughout graphics so far has been made digitally and I want to try something different to develop my handmade skills. I decided to develop the mixed media idea based on the human body as it has a strong theme which will work well and it will also allow me to create a wide range of typography using different techniques/materials. I began by doing lots of little sketches of things to do with the body such as organs, muscles and bones. From this I decided to try and find which I could use to create typography, my initial ideas for this were veins, bones and muscle as they were the easiest to make into the letter shapes. I also experimented with different zine formations and chose to take the concertina idea forwards to develop my idea. However I had to change this as I needed to add more pages into my zine which would make it too long and fragile. 

Some of the experiments I have tried are paper cutting, stitching, digital, painting, collage and darkroom printing. The digital experiments at the beginning of the project made me realise I wanted to use handmade techniques for my final outcome this time. Also the paper cutting and stitching experiment with the typography and heart inspired a lot of my ideas as I really enjoyed them and liked the effect it had. This made me think more about using different materials and layers to build up the page.  

The artists that have influenced my work are:

Patrick Hickley:

He has inspired me to use lots of fine detail within my work to build up a strong effect and to portray the exam theme and human body theme clearly. 

Lorette Luzajic:

She has inspired me to use lots of layers within my work mixing text and pictures to build up a buzzy feel to the page so the viewer has a lot to look at which will draw them in.

Maggie Ayres:

This piece of work has influenced my work the most, even though I have not used the same materials or techniques, when I was doing my research at the beginning of the project this piece inspired me to use mixed media for my zine. 

For my final piece I will be making a typography zine about the human body, with words on each page that represent different parts of the body such as bones and muscles. It will be mixed media based including techniques such as stitching, painting, layering and drawing. The zine will be made of 7 A5 pages that I will stain with tea as the base colour and 1 acetate sheet for the front cover. To hold the pages together I will be hand stitching them with blue thread. I will be using words, pictures and layers to represent the exam theme of inside outside and in-between. For example the veins and heart represent the inside of the body. The materials I will be using are tracing paper, acetate, thread, pen, paint and card. I will be using stitching techniques similar to Patrick Hickley's to work into my pages and some collage and text influenced by Lorette Luzajic. 

Pick Me Up

I visited the 'Pick Me Up' Exhibition at Somerset house, London to view the graphic design work to try and get inspiration for my own work and to see what artists/designers I like.

The work below is by Hattie Stewart:

I found her work the most inspiring and I loved the way it was presented on the wall. It has a really powerful effect on the framed work, as it is a black and white contrast and then the bold colours within the work draw you in even more. All of these pieces of work are magazine covers that she has edited by drawing into them.

Malika Favre:

The alphabet made out of two people that seem to be dancing. The artist has used red and yellow to help make it clear that there is two people in each letter. This relates to my theme well and I could possibly use a similar idea to create my own typography from the human body.

Brothers of The Stripe:

Fatherless:

I really love this screen printing technique and hope to try it out sometime in the future. However it still inspires me to try adding more typography into my current zine idea, for example printing random letters or words onto the background before working on to the surface. 

Soma:

I chose to photograph these two images as they relate to my human body theme and I really like them both.

I found this exhibition really useful as it has given me lots of ideas for this project and for the future that I would like to try out.

Research: Photographs

These are the photographs I took of the lambs heart I used to draw from:

First I drew the outside and took some pictures to refer back to or possibly use for a different experiment.

I then cut the heart in half to see the inside, which I also drew a picture of.

I could possibly use these photographs to create letters using the clipping mask tool in Illustrator or I could print them onto tracing paper and create photo-grams of them in the darkroom.

Darkroom Experiments

For this experiment I used the darkroom to create these prints. Using different techniques such as photogram's of different parts of a skeleton and two of my typography pieces. I also did reversals of some of my zine page experiments and the photographs I took of the skeleton. Finally I covered my hand in developer to create the hand print effect. I enjoyed using these techniques, especially the photogram experiments as they came out really well. To improve this experiment I could try printing the photocopies of my work onto tracing paper so that the design and detail would come out clearer. However I don't think i'd like to take this idea forward for my work.

The reason I tried out this idea was to see if I could incorporate the black and white images into the background layer of my zine that I could then work on top of with other materials. I came up with this idea as I am also a photography student and thought some of the techniques might work well.

Lorette Luzajic

This collage/mixed media piece of work is made by Lorette Luzajic, an artist and writer from Canada. She studied Journalism at Ryerson university but is also a self taught artist, specialising in mixed media and photography. The majority of her work is based on strong topics such as human rights, culture, religion, addiction and grief, that work along side her career as a journalist. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and spends all her time working on her visual creativity. The name of this piece of work is unknown but was most likely made to be exhibited or as a book illustration. I have chosen to analyse this piece as I want my final zine to be mixed media based and I found her work very inspiring for this as she has used a mixture of text and images.

The theme of this piece of work seems to be ancient religion for different cultures as the images show objects from the past, symbolism and old bits of writing on paper etc. For example the sarcophagus represents ancient Egypt and the Russian rubble's represents Russian currency. The deeper you look into the collage the more things you find out about as there is so much imagery, such as a ticket, money, symbols and statues to look at. However to fully understand this piece you would need to have a lot of knowledge about religion, culture and history.

She has used lots of different photographs and bits of paper to build up this collage, by cutting the pictures up and layering them on top of each other to fill the page. The colours used in the collage help to put across the theme as they are all very dull and limited. She has also made the photographs and bits of paper go brown to help make them look old.

When I first saw this piece I felt the colours and images drew me in as they looked interesting and I wanted to know what it was about. After looking at it in more detail I could see that it had a lot of culture and religious symbolism within it but the colours used suggested it was to do with the past. However I was still unsure of what it was actually about so I had to do some research into what some of the symbols were and also asked other people on their opinion. I think this really helps the work as it draws people in to look at in-depth. I like the work because of this and the fact that she uses text as the background layer and then builds up on this with images. I also like that it is very clear that it has a strong story about as it holds the viewers attention. I wouldnt say there is much I dislike about this collage as it is so strong but an improvement could be adding in some texture, such as stitching or different materials to do with the theme. This work inspires me as I feel it is very similar to what I am trying to make for my final outcome. So far the main similarity is the text in the background that she has stained brown as I have used the same technique for my page backgrounds to make it look old. However I feel the image below inspires me more:

This is because she has used a lot more different materials to create this mixed media collage, such as fabric, ripped up paper, cut out images and acrylic paints. I would like to merge the two ideas together to create something with more texture and layers but to draw the user in with a strong theme.

Patrick Hickley

This piece of photography/mixed media was made in 2012 by Patrick Hickley. A 21 year old artist and musician from New Zealand that is currently studying Photographic Design at Massey university. These set of images are named 'Complex structures' most likely referring to the complex bone and vein structure that make up the human body. It seems they have been made for an exhibition or possibly for his university course. I have chosen to analyse this piece as he is looking at the different layers within the body as am I and I find the work really inspiring. 

I have looked at his website http://cargocollective.com/patrickhickley/Complex-Structures where I found the images and the information about him. The images are portrait photographs. The theme of this work seems to very similar to my own, the human body, I can tell this as he is showing the different parts of the body such as the ribs, heart and veins in the neck.

He has used water colour paper to produce hand printed cyanotypes which he has then stitched into. To make a cyanotype is fairly simple. 1. you mix Potassium Ferricyanide and Ferric Ammonium Citrate 2. Cover the absorbent surface with the mixture and leave to dry in the dark 3. Objects or negatives are placed on the material and then exposed to UV light (such as the sun) to make a print 4. After being exposed the print is processed by rinsing it in water 5. The outcome will be an image on a blue background. After doing this process Patrick has then stitched into the print with red thread. He has chosen to use red as it contrasts well with the cyanotype but also represents the inside of the body/blood. 

I really love the detail and effort put into this piece of photography as it gives it a strong feel. By looking at the stitching you can tell how much time an effort he has put in to make it perfect. I chose to analyse this piece as it relates really well with my exam theme as it shows the outside and inside of the body in one image. Id like to create a similar stitching technique within my zine.

Here are some more examples of his work:

Zine experiments

These are my experiments for a few of my zine pages:

For this page I drew some muscles on the background in black Biro to represent the typography and then dabbed on some brown acrylic paint with a tissue to get a rustic effect. Next I added a picture I photocopied of muscle on the body in the bottom right hand corner. I decided to create the typography on a piece of tracing paper so that it will be clear to read but so you can also see through to the drawing underneath. Finally i stitched into the page with red thread to represent the muscles fibres. To improve this I would remove the image in the bottom right hand corner as it doesn't work well with the page and takes your attention away from the typography as it stands out to much.

For this page I used the end of a pencil to paint on the brown dots with acrylic paint for the background. Once this was dry I painted over the top with white paint to create a plain surface for me to draw the typography on. Finally I added a bit of text around the edges in black Biro and stuck on a picture of a skull I had photocopied.

For this page I first rubbed some brown/orange chalk onto the background to vary the colour slightly and then added a couple of pieces of text that I photocopied from the dictionary. Next I added a hand print using red acrylic paint onto the middle of the page and drew some doodles of veins and lines into the background with black Biro. Finally I added the typography I cut out of red card and stitched into and the photocopied heart potato print. To improve this I would try and make the hand print more visible, as it is currently hard to identify what it is, and also replace the heart potato print with something that fits with the page more.