Claire Smyth AAD010 Introducing Studio Practice : Games Design (Redesigning the Board Game of Battleships)
Games design is in which the art of applying design and aesthetics with the main aim of successfully producing / creating a game structured for entertainment, or in some cases for the likes of educational, exercise or experimental purposes. Increasingly, common elements and principles of game design are also commonly applied to other interactions, such as in the form of gamification. Games design tends to create / emphasise thing such as goals, rules and challenge to efficiently, strategically and intellectually define the likes of a board game, card game, dice game, casino game, role-playing game, sport, video game, war game or simulation that produces the desirable interactions among its participants and possibly, spectators.
For the AAD010 games design workshop and assigned task we were in which given the brief, considering bling decision making and other aspects regarding positive game designs to effectively re-create the board game of Battleship ensuring that is contains rules and mechanisms that lead to more interesting player choices when playing the games, through adding, changing or taking away the current rules, but ensuring that is still resembles and is recognisable as battleship.
The late 60’s vintage board game of battleship is in which a game where two players face off to destroy each other’s ships. Players start the game by placing their ships on a gridded board hidden from view of the other player. The two players then take turns naming out grid co-ordinates, if the other player’s ship or part of their ship is lying on that area, you score a direct hit. The battles ships each have different hit points, and each must be hit by the other player to sink that ship. A player then wins by / when they have destroyed and sunk all the other players ships.
However to redesign this battleship board game through enhancing it features, overall I have in which added in various aspects of good decisions regarding effective game design through the introducement of updated rules and extra challenges or rewards to assist in help to win through being the first to sink all of the other opponents / players ships.
As a result when now playing this / my updated version of battleship, player 1 and player 2 are in which given a 10 by 10 square grid with the coordinates A – J and 1 – 10, along with being given 3 big and 3 small ships, correlating to six in total, each having a different coloured range of ships. Unlike the original game of battleship, before beginning and once / after secretly placing each players ships on random coordinates in an attempt to play the game to sink all of the other players ships in order to win, I have in which included 4 different colour coded ‘trick or treat` cards (risk or rewards cards etc) to enhance the process / progression of the game up a bit, either making it easier or that little bit harder by sad default. For these trick or treat cards and to effectively implement them within the game, players are to also randomly place the four coloured squares onto the coordinate grid without the other player knowing, where both cards for each player are the same, including their colour but it may just have to be the luck of the draw to see who got a trick or a treat as well as how many times as there is 4 chances with 2 tricks and 2 treats. To implement this new concept into the game and after the players have randomly placed the squares they will use a dice to see who goes first through the person to role a six and continuing it along with each go as players will have to roll an even number to have a turn in guessing the correct coordinates to sink their opponents ship, which adds increased competitiveness to the game through always wanting to land on an even number as it may mean that you might have a better chance in winning or sinking the ships much quicker than the other player. However, when going along and continuing in a blind attempt to guess the right coordinates for the other opponents ship, if they choose / say a coordinate that has one of the 4 coloured trick or treat squares on it, it means that they have lost / hit one the cards already in which they have to fulfil what it say. For these trick or treat cards:
Purple means that you are to get another go.
Green means that you have to miss a go, allowing the other opponent to have two goes before you can go again, unless the other player has guessed a coordinate landing on either the green or purple trick or treat card.
Red means that you have been granted with the free opportunity to sink one of the other players ships, but the opponent is to decide which ship they are willing to let go.
Blue means that you are able to receive a clue for one coordinate that an opponent’s ship is sitting on, however, to ensure that it is fair, the first half of the chosen coordinate is only aloud to be given out.
As the game goes on to where both ships and cards are being hit it is not until the all of an opponents ships are sunk until there is a winner, meaning the other player has at least one ship still at sea, but once you land on a trick or treat card you cannot be affected by it again as they are to be turned over after the player has fulfilled its command, meaning there could be a possibly of winning / losing the game through hitting hardly any of the cards or hitting near enough all four.
Furthermore, to / making my redesigned battleship board game as pictured below, I had in which used a wide variety of materials and techniques to in where I digitally produced a 10 by 10 squared grid in Microsoft Word to ensure that it and the contained squares where evenly measured. As a result, to structure the boards, I printed out using a Dymo label maker of the letters A to J and the numbers from 1 to 10, where I then stuck them at each side of the board to symbolise the coordinates, along with differentiating between player 1s and player 2s boards. To make the ships, I used an origami paper folding technique to form the shape of a general boat / ship after practicing it a few times from following a YouTube tutorial until it was right, resulting in me having two equal quantities and sizes of ships for both players. When designing the cards I wanted to ensure that they stood out and was easily recognisable if a player had hit it through choosing one of the cards coordinates, I decided to use four brightly coloured shaped cards corelating to the square colour that would be randomly placed on the grid / board and in which to spell out the commands (tricks / treats), I used my label maker again through feeling that the black against the bright colours really stood out and in which I am to believe that I am quite overly pleased with the outcomes of my battleship board game (including its new rules etc) and its 3D paper prototype.
Claire Smyth AAD010 Introducing Studio Practice : Animation (Character Design, Research, Concepts / ideas etc
According to Disney Pixar : A character is which what truly drives the story and breathes life into a film as the connection of the audience to / towards the character is greatly registered and considered as the primary goal when designing a character. Imbuing the characters with humanity and focusing upon it and their characteristics is vitally important to display this connection, as when designing the character, the artist will need to know exactly what to exaggerate / what to play down, what to add to give a hint of background / depth, along with what to do or incorporate to enhance and develop the characters personality etc.
The term character design is in fact mainly used in the context of animated films, comics and games in which there are one or more fictionalized characters with whom the audience is meant to identify. In addition to determining the character’s physical appearance, the process may involve fashioning his or her patterns of speech, body language, actions, and so on. Fully developed character designs are an important part of the production process in these contexts and may ultimately determine whether or not the final product is successful on the market. Character designers tend to utilise a variety of techniques, most of which are dedicated to figurative representation. For example, within animation, characters are designed using three-dimensional methods such as maquettes, character models and motion tracking. In recent years, as the rise of Internet has increased interest in the field, the definition of character design has expanded to include character-driven designs outside of the film, comic, and game into the likes of books, advertisements and branding etc.
In relevance / when designing a character, a character designer (or character artist) goes about creating the entire concept, style and artwork of a character from scratch. This often includes a deep look into the characters personality to develop a visual idea of the characters physical features. Creating a character from scratch (human or otherwise) generally tends to take a lot of creative energy, meaning the process of character design is in which very complex and is often one of the most sought-after careers for inspiring entertainment artists. Every artist has their own creative process, meaning that there is no right way to create a character. But typically, the character design process starts with a briefing of the character. The character could be a mutant turtle with ninja-like abilities or just some person who lives a simple workaday lifestyle. With this briefing there’s often a series of suggested traits be they physical or emotional to where the character designer uses those notes to start thumb-nailing ideas as rough thumbnails help to flesh out the many directions that the designer could take.
Once the artist chooses one (or a couple) thumbnail styles they’ll often paint more details and bring those thumbnails to life. This can include trying different clothes, different hair styles, facial styles and maybe different weapons or props if applicable. Then a final design is chosen and once the character is signed off the artist will create many different views of the character as reference materials. In animation this often turns into a model sheet for other artists to reference in their drawings. The overall idea of character design is to go on a creative dive into the unknown, and from that artists / designers pull out the best design that matches the character description.
Inspired by the BBC CBeebies little robots animator and digital designer / creator Bruce Husband and its contained characters, I took it upon myself to take great inspiration from the concepts, digital forms, structures, design features and colours from the various created character throughout the show and its backstory / contained surroundings / environment etc to go onto deign, create, publish and draw up an animated (hand drawn) character of my own taken from secondary source images of robots made out of scrap materials and general items taken and placed with a junk yard / skip that people tend to through with the main of using the shapes as different aspects of the figure / skeleton, such as eyes, arms, legs body etc.
As a result, to respond to the given animation brief and task set by Alec, I have in which created a fictional robotic character named scrappy, generally suited to children aged from 2 – 12. Living within the environment of a scrap yard / dump he is made up of various items commonly thrown out by members of the public, in which it changes from time to time due to the different items being brought into the skip. Scrappy is more or less a cute stumpy kind of character where within a junk yard environment he always welcomes each and every other animated characters, looking out for anyone especially when other characters are at risk of being accidently put into the skip to be recycled / crushed down when successfully attempting to hide from the tip / junk yard staff.
To execute, create and design my character, I took it upon myself to present a much more collage / abstracted approach through the use of creating features and shapes (body shapes / forms) through the use of materials including brightly coloured card, tinfoil, googly eyes, cable ties, newspaper and string etc. In relevance to this, the included scrap yard items to resemble scrap objects and make up part of my characters body where in which and included old, dented and worn down spatulas, a microwave / washing machine, bread bin, cables, and iron, rubber gloves, mugs, rusty nails / screws clothes pegs etc.
When completing this brief I decided to create a couple other character based on and inspired by other CBBC animated shows including the likes of ooglies, which is based upon general household items as funny but cute animated characters with googly eyes placed upon them to create a humorous effect within / throughout the programme.
Claire Smyth AAD010 Introducing Studio Practice : Animation (shape and form drawings / sketches, contextual research, 12 principles of animation & stop motion experiments / examples / animations
The subject of animation is in which a designing method to where figures of shapes are manipulated to appear as moving images. For example, within and towards traditional animation, images are typically drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to then be photographed and exhibited on film. However, in today’s day ‘n` age, most animations are made with computer-generated imagery (CGI). Computer animation can in fact be registered and applied to very detailed 3D animation, whilst 2D animation can also be used stylistic reasons, low bandwidth or faster real-time renderings. In addition / furthermore, other common animation techniques can apply a stop motion technique to two and three dimensional objects like paper cut-outs, puppets or clay figures. Commonly, there are in which 5 types of animation, these include: 3D, hand drawn, vector, stop motion and motion graphics.
In relevance to aspects of shape and form within both shapes, lines and figures, I in which completed multiple / a range of exercises set by Alec which included various rough and experimental drawings of long straight lines, circles, curved s lines, basic forms and shapes (3D / contour lines and 3D flour sacks resulting in becoming much more familiar with the general drawing aspects and shapes and forms commonly applied to the work / creation of animation, especially towards designing a character:
Throughout the art of animation and digital designing, including its main principles, aspects, techniques and purposes etc there are in which a total of 12 main principles for / of animation. The main / set 12 principles of animation include: squash and stretch, anticipation, staging, straight ahead action and pose-to-pose, follow through and overlapping action, ease in / ease out, arcs, secondary action, timing, exaggeration, solid drawing and appeal.
Squash and stretch:
Squash and stretch is debatably the most fundamental principle within / of animation. The purpose of squash and stretch is in which to give a sense of weight and flexibility to drawn objects. It can be applied to simple objects, such as and like a bouncing ball, or more complex constructions including the musculature of a human face. Taken to an extreme, a figure stretched or squashed to an exaggerated degree can in which have a comical effect. However, towards / in realistic animation the most important aspect of this principle is that an objects volume does not change when squashed or stretched. This is because if the length of a ball is stretched vertically, its width (in three dimensions, also its depth) needs to contract correspondingly horizontally.
Anticipation:
The principle of anticipation is used in attempt to prepare the audience for an action, whilst to also make the action appear much more realistic. For example, a dancer jumping off the floor has to bend the knees and a golfer making a swing has to swing the club back first. In addition, this technique / principle can also be used for less physical action, including the likes of and such as a character looking off screen to anticipate someone’s arrival, or attention focusing upon an object that a character is about to pick up.
Staging:
This principle is in which akin to staging, as it is mostly known in theatre and film. Its main purpose is in fact set out with the aim of directing the audience’s attention and making it clear that what exactly is of greatest importance of a scene. For example, famous animators commonly tend to define it as the presentation of any idea in which so that it is completely and unmistakably clear. Whether that idea is an action, a personality, an expression or a mood, this can in fact be done by various means, such as the placement of a character in the frame, the use of light and shadow, or the angle and position of the camera. Overall, the essence of this principle surrounds itself by keeping focus on what is relevant and through avoiding unnecessary detail.
Straight ahead action and pose to pose:
These principles are in which two different approaches to the drawing process within animation. Straight ahead scenes are animated frame to frame, while pose to pose involves starting with drawing a few key frames and then filling in the intervals later on. Straight ahead action tends to create a much more fluid, dynamic illusion of movement and is better for producing realistic action sequences. However, on the other hand, it can be hard to maintain proportions and to create exact, convincing poses along the way. Pose to pose tends to work much better for dramatic or emotional scenes through the use of computer animation, where in which composition and relation to the surroundings are in fact of greater importance. Altogether, a combination of the two techniques is often used within the animation industry.
Follow through and overlapping:
Follow through and overlapping can be described and seen as a general heading for two closely related techniques which help to render movement more realistically along with helping to give the impression that characters are following the law of physics. Follow through means that loosely tied parts of the body should continue moving after the character has stopped and the parts should keep moving beyond the point where the character stopped only to be subsequently pulled back towards the centre of mass or exhibiting various degrees of oscillation damping. Overlapping action is in which the continued tendency for parts of the body to move at different rates (an arm will move on different timing of the head etc). For example, a related technique is drag, where in which a character starts to move and parts of them take a few frames to catch up. These parts can be inanimate objects like clothing or the antenna on a car or parts of the body. On the human body, the torso is the core, with arms, legs, head and hair appearances that normally follow the torso’s movement. Body parts with much tissue, such as large stomachs and breasts or the loose skin on a dog are more prone to independent movements than bonier body parts. This exaggerated use of the technique can go onto produce a comical effect, while more realistic animation must time the actions exactly to produce a convincing result. The moving hold animates between two very similar positions, as especially / even characters sitting still or hardly moving can in fact display some sort of movement such as breathing or very slightly changing position. This then prevents the drawing from becoming dead
Ease in and ease out (slow in and slow out):
This principle of animation can be defined as the movement of objects in the real world, such as the human body, animals, vehicles etc and how it needs time to accelerate and slow down. For this reason, more pictures are drawn near the beginning and end of an action, creating a slow in and slow out effect in order to achieve much more realistic movements. This concept goes onto emphasise the objects extreme poses as inversely, fewer pictures are drawn within the middle of the animation to emphasise faster action. This principle commonly tends to apply to and towards characters moving between two extreme poses, such as sitting down and standing up but also for inanimate moving objects, like a bouncing ball.
Arcs:
Most natural actions tend to follow a much more arched trajectory, where for within animation to adhere to this principle following implied arcs are to be implemented to demonstrate greater realism. This technique can be applied to a moving limb by a rotating joint or a thrown object moving along a parabolic trajectory with the exception of mechanical movement, which typically moves in straight lines. As an object’s speed or momentum increases, arcs tend to flatten out in moving ahead and broaden in turns. In baseball, a fastball would tend to move in a straighter line than other pitches; while a figure skater moving at top speed would be unable to turn as sharply as a slower skater and would need to cover more ground to complete the turn. An object in motion that moves out of its natural arc for no apparent reason will appear erratic rather than fluid. For example, when animating a pointing finger, the animator should be certain that in all drawings in between the two extreme poses, the fingertip follows a logical arc from one extreme to the next. Traditional animators tend to draw the arc in lightly on the paper for reference, to be erased later.
Secondary action:
Adding secondary actions to the main action can in fact give a scene much more life, whilst helping to support the main action. For example, a person walking can simultaneously swing their arms or keep them in their pockets, speak or whistle or express emotions through facial expressions. As a result, the important thing about secondary actions is that they emphasize, rather than take attention away from the main action. If the latter is the case, those actions are better left out. For example, during a dramatic movement, facial expressions will often go unnoticed. In these cases, it is better to include them at the beginning and the end of the movement, rather than during.
Timing:
The animated principle of timing commonly / generally refers to the number of drawings or frames for a given action, which translates to the speed of the action on film. On a purely physical level, correct timing makes objects appear to obey the laws of physics. For instance, an object’s weight determines how it reacts to an impetus, like a push; as a lightweight object will react faster than a heavily weighted one. Timing is critical for establishing a character’s mood, emotion and reaction as in most cases it can also be a device to communicate aspects of a character’s personality.
Exaggeration:
Exaggeration is in which an effect especially useful for animation, as animated motions that strive for a perfect imitation of reality can look static and dull. The level of exaggeration depends on whether one seeks realism or a particular style, like a caricature or the style of a specific artist. The classical definition of exaggeration, employed by Disney especially, was to in fact remain true to reality, just presenting it in a wilder, more extreme form. Other forms of exaggeration can involve the supernatural or surreal, alterations in the physical features of a character; or elements in the storyline itself. As a result, it is important to employ a certain level of restraint when using exaggeration as if a scene contains several elements, there should be a balance in how those elements are exaggerated in relation to each other, to avoid confusing or overawing the viewer.
Solid drawing:
The principle of solid drawing solely means taking into account various forms in three-dimensional space or giving them volume and weight. For example / in great relevance an animator needs to be a skilled artist and has to understand the basics of three-dimensional shapes, anatomy, weight, balance, light and shadow, etc and for / towards a classical animator, this greatly involves taking art classes and doing sketches from life.
Appeal:
In relevance to the animated principle of appeal and for example, appeal in a cartoon character corresponds to what would be called charisma in an actor, whereas a character who is appealing is not necessarily sympathetic; villains or monsters can also be appealing, as the important thing is that the viewer feels the character is real and interesting. There are in which various / several tricks for making a character connect better with the audience, as for likable characters, a symmetrical or particularly baby-like face tends to be effective, whereas a complicated or hard to read face will lack appeal or ‘captivation’ in the composition of the pose or character design.
As a result of main 12 principles of animation as stated above and explained in great detail, we were to in which look into, analyse and focus upon the principle of timing and spacing in response to stop motion animator Kevin Parry, which as a result I have went onto create various stop motion pieces of animation through the app of stop motion along with multiple miscellaneous items / inanimate objects within my house placed upon white, cooperating, experimenting and taking into consideration aspects of spacing / fluidity, whether the lines are all the same length or start of close together and get longer or the other way round:
(please click the below links to view stop motion video animations)
Claire Smyth AAD010 Introducing Studio Practice : IXD / Interaction Design (brief / concept pages
Interaction design (IXD) is in which described and referred to as the efficient design of interactive products and services in which a designers focus goes beyond the item to include the way in which users will interact with it, meaning the close scrutiny of users’ needs and limitations etc truly does empower designers to customise output to suit precise demands.
To begin the interaction design workshop we took part in sketching / designing a number of quick products, items, objects and buildings under three different time limits / constraints (5 / 10 / 20 seconds) to get our minds constantly thinking about what design aspect work well together when giving something to sketch out in procreation for designing concepts within the set interaction design brief which I feel was really helpful to understand that design can be produced in so many different but intriguing ways, through how simplistic drawings can portray outstanding imagery that is still recognisable. As pictured below, the objects / things that we had to rough draw out included – The Titanic Centre, a watch, phone, radio, book and a laptop:
Within todays developing society, recent research has shown that we are in which becoming slaves to our devices, as while screens provide a window into the digital world they can also immensely begin to separate us from the physical as a result of relying too much on the workings of a device and its contained technology to get through each and every day. Whether we are conversing with friends through the likes of WhatsApp, posting photographs of miscellaneous things on Instagram or organising plans / a night out through Facebook, we now hugely tend to be constantly connected to our screens, through increasingly and more than likely experiencing the world through screens and filters, leading to lose of connection towards / with reality. As a result / for this interaction design workshop we were in which given the brief of developing concepts for a digital product or app that would in which encourage people to take time away from their screens with the aim of getting out and interacting more with their surroundings and areas / county of which they live in, meaning as a result I have created, put together and designed a digital app fitting this brief through the displayment of concept pages, research, ideas and explaining my concept / app in great detail.
Research shows that there are great amounts of people having lived in a specific area but have not fully explored it and seeing what it has to offer along with becoming much more educated on its history etc due to establishing set routines to where they visit, go to and travel as a result of sticking to places that they have liked and was best suited to them and their family despite living in that area for various years or most of their life. For example and in great relevance to aspects such as this when aiming to appreciate your surroundings and local areas, throughout this year of 2020, lockdown more than ever has taught, showed and demonstrated to us that the actual ability, desire and want to go out and explore (daily walks etc) the surrounding, urban areas that we live within or near / close by as a result of the governmental travel restrictions and social distancing measures. In correlation to this brief, I have in which now wanted to put together, research and design a digital interactive but educational app with the main aim and ability of exploring / widening your surroundings much more frequently. As a result I have given it the name of urban exploration in corelation with the aim to explore the local urban surroundings around you and within a small radius, including places, local businesses, environments and buildings such as museums, galleries, parks, loughs, beaches, toe paths, sculptures and national trust forests / parks etc including places within Belfast especially and its contained museums, the history of Titanic, Botanic Bardens, docks, towpaths and many more
Throughout this app and its contained concepts, it can in which give people / families with the opportunity to create memories in the outside world, learn and further educate yourself on the place where you live, with the ability to reflect on your experiences (highs and lows / peaks of pits of your day of exploration), whilst continuing to analyse your physical activity through the use of counting steps and being recommended various local places to participate in the likes of hikes, camps training / exercise camps and park runs.
To work / control this digital app of urban exploration, ensuring that you are getting the best out of it, once downloaded the user will in which begin with selecting, typing in and registering their postcode or area, meaning that it can bring up various destinations, places areas etc close to them within either walking distance or driving to along with a wide range of recommendations of places to visit, go for walks / runs / cycles or experience, to where they can then pick and go through all the suggested areas / places in their surroundings choosing what to actually visit and checking them off as they go along as a result of having the ability to visually look at pictures of the area / destination beforehand along with becoming much more educated upon it. This is because under each tab of a place / area recommended / suggested within the app there is in which a briefly documented fact file including information and key dates of the environment / place being visited. When a family, group of people or individual who is controlling the app chooses to visit a particular area / place, the app will give the opportunity to create a log of each time / day a particular area was visited. This then means that to increasingly interactive and gain more from visiting the suggested places, such as the likes of museums, parks and exhibitions a short quiz is available to be completed incorporating simple multiple choice questions regarding general information about and surrounding it, which allows the people on the app to become much more educated upon the particular place, creating the aspect of competitiveness of wanting to ensure that all questions are correct. Common questions can include: what year did the park open? Who designed the sculpture exhibition/ etc. Throughout logging your explorations and visits, there is the ability to create an almost diary / blog post of the day spent exploring aspects of your surroundings. This includes uploading any pictures taken and documenting the time spent there through highlighting both highs / lows (peak and pits), what you found interesting and in general just an overview of the visit for your personal memories whether it was spent with family or friends as all logs are saved in a calendar tab to where you can look through and reflect upon what you got up to on that particular you went and visited / experienced something new. Furthermore, as exercise is highly important not only for your physical but mental health, the app once logged on will continue to count your steps, along with recommending various local areas to exercise including the likes of park runs and exercise classes in nearby leisure centres
The benefits of this digital interactive app of urban exploration can in which be seen as:
Receiving the ability to be encouraged to go out and walk more, increasing and improving a person’s overall physical health through being recommend greater opportunities to participate in further aspects of exercise, along with tracking your physical health.
By reflecting upon your experiences, it allows the ability to work upon and consider your mental health and wellbeing, much more frequently than perhaps before
The app can further help the likes of local business with your area to boost its economy / hospitality through being recommend a variety of them, especially due to the recent implications brought by coronavirus including the closure of non-essential places / shops.
Claire Smyth AAD010 Introducing Studio Practice : Graphic Design & Illustration (Punk Vinyl Research)
Visual research and examples of images throughout the punk era (punk subculture) and vinyl records of their music / contained artists through the displayment of a Pinterest Board as linked below:
Punk rock (or simply punk) is in which a music Genre that emerged within and throughout the mid-1970s. Rooted in 1960s garage rock, punk bands rejected the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock as they typically began to produce short, fast-paced songs with hard-edged melodies and singing styles, stripped-down instrumentation and often political, anti-establishment of lyrics. In great relevance, the era / overall subject of punk tends to embrace a DIY ethic, as many bands throughout the year commonly go about self-producing their recordings and distributing them through independent record labels. The term punk / punk rock was in fact first used by American rock critics in the early 1970s to describe 1960s garage bands and certain subsequent acts. When the movement now bearing the name developed from 1974 to 1976, acts such as Television, Patti Smith and The Ramones in New York City; the Sex Pistols, The Clash and the Damned in London; The Runaways in Los Angeles; and the Saints in Brisbane formed its vanguard. Punk had become a major cultural phenomenon in the UK late in 1976. It led to a punk subculture expressing youthful rebellion through distinctive styles of clothing an adornment (such as deliberately offensive T-shirts, leather jackets, studded or spiked bands and jewellery, safety pins, and bondage and S&M clothes) and a variety of ani-autorotation ideologies. As a result, in 1977, the influence of the music and subculture spread worldwide, taking root in a wide range of local scenes that often rejected the affiliation with the mainstream. In the late 1970s, punk and its overall design processes had in which experienced a second wave to where new acts that where not active during its formative years began to adopt the style. By the early 1980s, faster and more aggressive subgenres such as hardcore punk (Minor Threat), street punk (The Exploited) and anarcho-punk (Crass) gradually became the predominant modes of punk rock. Musicians identifying with or inspired by punk also pursued other musical directions, giving rise to spinoffs such as post-punk, new wave and later the likes of indie pop, alternative rock and noise rock. By the 1990s, punk fully remerged with the success of punk rock and pop punk bands such as The Clash, Green Day, Rancid, The Offspring and blink-182
The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, fashion and other forms of expression, visual art, dance, literature, and film. It is largely characterised by anti-establishment views, the promotional of individual freedom, DIY ethics, and is centred on a loud, aggressive genre of rock music called punk rock. The punk ethos is primarily made up of beliefs such as non-conformity, anti-authoritarianism, anti-corporatism, a do it yourself ethic, anti-consumerist, anti-corporate greed, direct action and not selling out. There is in which a wide range of punk fashion including and such as deliberately offensive T-shirts, leather jackets, Dr. Martin boots, hairstyles such as brightly coloured hair / spiked mohawks, cosmetics, tattoos, jewellery and body modification. Women in the hardcore scene typically went about where much more masculine clothing. Punk aesthetics tend to solely determine the type of art punks enjoy, which typically has underground, minimalist, iconoclastic and statical sensibilities. Punk has generated a considerable amount of poetry and prose, through having its own underground press in the form of zines, along with the making of punk-themed films, documentaries and videos
For a musical and social movement that snarled in the face of authority and wasn’t averse to spitting at its friends, punk has received a great many shelf inches in the last 30 years respectfully devoted to histories, reassessments and eyewitness accounts. Over the years and even from today, there is even an academic journal exclusively devoted to the pursuit of punk and post-punk studies, which has just published its second issue. All in all, there can’t be much left to say about the music, clothing, media outrage and legendary gigs, but the graphic expression of punk has received less critical attention. For example, within weeks of each other, two thick, illustrated volumes have appeared: Punk: An Aesthetic (Rizzoli) edited by Johan Kugelberg and John Savage and The Art of Punk (Omnibus Press/Voyageur Press) by Russ Bestley and Alex Ogg. Kugelberg and Savage have also curated “Someday all the Adults Will dir”, an exhibition of punk posters, handbills, record covers and ’zines at the Hayward Gallery in London.
An editor’s approach towards the punk era / style of music can carry / implement a number of various, styles, techniques, colors, texts or imagery etc. Kugelberg and Savage’s book is more of an album, with the images presented in an art-book style on a plain white page, which can be referred to as smart writers as Savage, author of Englands Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock and beyond, is a key participant in the era, his punk archive is now stored at Liverpool John Moore’s University. But neither author / designers are a historian or critic of graphic art, design or visual culture. “The history of the punk aesthetic cannot be told, only shown,” claims Kugelberg, somewhat unpromisingly. Savage made punk collages with the artist Linder Stirling and he has some good observations about punk montage, in the act of dismembering and reassembling the very images that were supposed to keep you down and ignorant, it was possible to counteract the violence of The Spectacle and to refashion the world around you. Throughout his produced work, he often continues to point to the visual influences of the likes of John Heartfield, Martin Sharp’s work at oz magazine, the feminist artist Penny Slinger, the Beach Books 1960s pamphlets and Dawn Ades’ photomontage (1976). Bestley and Ogg go about writing / designing with a carefulness of phrasing and appearance of academic detachment that only partially masks the same devotion to punk as listeners and fans. Punk graphics was the subject of Bestley’s PhD and he curated the earlier exhibition “Hitsville UK: Punk in the Faraway Towns”; he is course director of the graphic design MA at the London College of Communication. Ogg is the author of No More Heroes, a history of British punk and an editor of the punk and post punk journal. “It is important to question the notion of a direct association between work by prominent early punk designers and the emergence of a radical new visual language of parody and agitprop,” they write. “To an extent, the techniques adopted by Jamie Reid, for instance, were already widely accepted as the natural languages of anger and protest.” Such a comment can only be addressed to readers who know nothing about the histories of graphic design and graphic protest. As Savage and Kugelberg point out in their exhibition intro, punk’s precursors and putative influences include Dadaist collage, the Situational International, the mail art movement, the graphics of counter-culture protest and the 1960s underground press.
When designing / producing punk records, the relationship between punk D.I.Y. design in its most basic or amateur forms and the later development of graphic design cannot be avoided for anyone who is both sensitive to punk’s impact and legacy (“the immediate implementation of D.I.Y. grassroots culture among the young” — Kugelberg) as it is committed to graphic design as a medium. Kugelberg and Savage say that the “anarchic upsurge in graphic creativity truly revolutionized design,” through the clear attempt to assert punk graphics’ significance beyond the punk subculture, yet this claim, too, can only be substantiated by a lot more detailed research. Within the UK especially, punk related designers that had most influence towards their produced records within the early 1908s were in which a handful of individuals such as and including the of Malcolm Garrett, who been formally educated as graphic designers (in his case at the University of Reading and Manchester Polytechnic), through designs mainstream was, in fact, slow to learn from and assimilate the lessons and styles of subcultural music designs. In any case, the graphic sensibility of Garrett’s work for Buzzcocks and Magazine, shown in The Art of Punk, has always seemed closer to post punk graphic design than to what is commonly understood as punk, even allowing for Bestley and Ogg’s precautionary advice that “there is no one standard punk visual language” and that “a notion of a pure or authentic punk style is difficult to justify.”
For example and in regards to famous worldwide record covers / albums from various punk bands, it is no accident that the stencil-based graphic identity of Crass, one of the most highly politicised punk bands, is so well coordinated and trenchant as a result and due to their use of simplistic imagery, text, stencils but highly effective and intriguing to the reader / listener through the approach of collating a set text, shapes, style and colour palette etc.
Throughout this era of punk and punk subculture there is an old slogan and rallying cry that insists, “Punk is not dead.” Bestley and Ogg certainly believe that. Their book ends with examples of more recent punk design. Punk over the years might, as they say, have employed a fairly broad set of graphic conventions, but they remain as consistent and constrictive over time as those found in heavy metal. Kugelberg deduces from punk a more general lesson for today: “Form a band, start a blog, become an artist, a DJ, a guitar player, an editor.” No one can argue with that, though many might see it as a stretch to claim that, in 2012, these possibilities derive from punk’s mid-1970s example — unless, perhaps, one was to view punk prophetically as a form of science fiction. Interestingly, this is just how Savage does regard punk: as a “jump cut” into the future. “People in Britain see punk in terms of social realism and rock music. It was pure science fiction and it was very informed by J.G. Ballard and by The Man Who Fell To Earth, among a lot of other things.
In the last few years, there has in which been a revival of interest in the music that came after the mid 1970s punk. As a result, bands such as and from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers to Franz Ferdinand commonly acknowledge their debt / debut to post punk original such as gang of Flour / The Clash. In relevance to this, the latest issue of The Wire magazine has an ad for a compilation of underground Brazilian groups citing the British post-punk bands Joy Division, The Slits and The Pop Group as influences. There have in fact been further collections of post-punk music, along with British music critic Simon Reynolds’ 500-page history of the genre from 1978 to 1984, with the invigorating title Rip It Up And Start Again. It’s a brilliant book. Reynolds, who lives in Manhattan, started researching it in 2001 and it has arrived at exactly the right moment to benefit from, and propel, the growing wave of interest. He argues that post-punk music’s explosion of creativity equals the golden age of popular music in the mid-1960s, but that it has never received its full due. Aspects of design has in which always continued to portray and be a key part or / within the record-savouring experience for many music fans and so it remains today, as previously noted in a recent Momus interview / article, within society towards the punk subculture there is in fact an immense continuation in the fascination with record covers of the post-punk period. For example, Dot Dot Dot has in which gone onto published pieces regarding / about the record sleeve designs of XTC, John Fox, Scritti Politti and Wire, to where its editors where in kids when these original records came out.
Seaming as quite inconsequential as they are only record sleeves, after all, but to me especially what truly makes post-punk so interesting and inspiring, even now, as Reynolds shows so well, is the exceptional range of cultural influences of that truly shaped the music, including its refusal to stand still, its disinclination to cede any ground, especially to commercial priorities, along with its intellectual energy and artists ambitions, where all of this is in which reflected in the most inventive, audacious cover arts of the time, through stating and mentioning that: the seven Post-punk years from the beginning of 1978 to the end of 184 truly did see the systematic ransacking of the 20th Century modernist art and literature as the entire punk period transcribes and looks like an effective / influential attempt to replay virtually every major modernist theme and technique via the medium of pop music etc. Commonly, most / any visual survey of post-punk graphics that concentrates solely on album covers overlooks a crucial part of the story. The discovery that it was possible to record, manufacture and distribute records relatively cheaply spurred the development of a thriving independent scene. The 7-inch and then 12-inch single with picture sleeve went through a great flowering. The year of 1978 saw the arrival of an advance guard of lo-fi synthesiser singles that heralded a new direction for electronic pop in the 1980s: T.V.O.D. / Warm Leatherette by The Normal; “Being Boiled” by The Human League; United by Throbbing Gristle; Cabaret Voltaire’s four-track Extended Play; Paralysis by Robert Rental; Private Plane by Thomas Leer. It can actually be quite hard to convey the excitement that various records generated among music fans at the time, as a large part of it was the feeling that the usual channels had been bypassed. Only committed readers of the music press were in on it. The audience had taken control of the means of production and anything seemed possible. It was a new kind of do-it-yourself electronic folk culture and the kitchen-table designs that gave this sensibility an image that were raw but thrilling. The photo of crash test dummies, borrowed from the Motor Industry Research Association, and use of the Din typeface to represent Daniel Miller’s Warm Leatherette underscores the cold, sociopathic lyrics about the eroticism of a car crash (“Hear the crushing steel, feel the steering wheel”). Listeners instantly registered the song as a homage to Ballard’s cult novel Crash. This Ain’t No Disco breaks its own remit by featuring a few singles, but it largely misses this side of post-punk music. However, one of the pleasures of Reynolds book is its excellent picture research with the assistance of British music writer Jon Savage.
Claire Smyth AAD010 Introducing Studio Practice : Graphic Design and Illustration (Art Direction Contextual Research)
Within todays society, magazines tend to usually choose to not going to set out to simply just decorate their stories individually (on their own), as generally / commonly, their goal is to in which combine a range of visual imagery and language in order to effectively enhance the story’s meaning. In regards to this, design variations are a result of that desire and not a cause that is in and out of itself, as especially on a magazine (posters / advertisements / covers / pieces of graphic design) staff, art directors and copy writers tend to spend a tremendous amount of time brainstorming a wide range of different ideas and ways to enhance an image, story or emotion from choosing the design style, selecting related content features and honing the story’s tone of voice etc. To then effectively translate that process to the likes of web design, the use and execution of different frameworks can give immense flexibility within a given format, especially as custom fields for styles within content management systems at the individual post are a start. However, the ability to write custom CSS doesn’t automatically mean that a blog post or price of imagery has been art directed, as art direction tends to transcend custom blog posts, as it is seen as something different and extraordinary through elevating and enhancing a specific meaning.
Art direction brings clarity and definition towards pieces of work, through helping it convey a specific message to a particular group of people, along with combining art and design to evoke a cultural and emotional reaction of which is generally composed within and influenced throughout the likes of movies, music, digital advertisements, posters, websites, magazines and just about anything that we can interact with. As a result, without art direction, we can in which be left with dry, sterile experiences that are easily forgotten. For example and towards certain environments, can a New York subway ad about the homeless provoke you to donate money? Why do you want to beg Clarice Starling to turn around, even though you know she can’t hear you? How do candles transform a regular meal into a romantic evening? which in great relevance to these statements, the continued importance of art direction is in fact solely about evoking the right emotion and creating that connecting to what you are seeing and experiencing. By contrast, when considering art design within aspects of work, design is in which the technical execution of that connection through recognising if: the colours match? Is the line length comfortable for long periods of reading? Is the photo / image / design in focus? Does the typographic hierarchy work? Is this composition balanced? For example, if someone was to tell their partner / spouse that they love them, but say it with a frown on their face, they may get mixed signals or if they say it nonchalantly while watching tv, they may not fully believe it. However, when they say it with a genuine smile and a bouquet of flowers, the meaning will be and come across as so much clearer, which as a result works hand in hand to deliver the point both emotionally and physically as design is perfection in technique; art direction is about the important, yet sometimes the intangible combinations of design, emotion and effects is what in fact truly powers the design.
The widely varying role of art director adds to the confusion around the difference between art direction and design. At one extreme, some agencies hire art directors who are terrible at design but understand it well enough to give direction to designers. On the other hand, some agencies have the role art director as the next logical pay grade in the path to become an experienced designer. Most workplaces are somewhere in between. Many smaller agencies don’t employ an art director for many reasons. That fact misleads us into thinking that art direction is an optional part of the creative process. However, the opposite is true. Art direction is so crucial that it is never skipped, only inadvertently and subconsciously performed by designers who often aren’t ready for that type of responsibility.
For example and in great relevance towards art direction as a whole within the creative industry, famous successful art directors (graphic designers) can in which include the likes of Fabien Baron.
Over the course of his 30-year career within the creative industry, celebrated French director, art director and magazine editor Fabien Baron has in which to this day overhauled the image of five major fashion magazines, as well as crafting various visual identities of multiple blue chip labels, including brands such as Calvin Klein, Balenciaga and Burberry. Throughout Barons work, his instantly recognisable signatures – bold, elegant typography arranged around expanses of white space have in which become very mainstream over the years, influencing the design for everything from the Gap’s sales signs down to Tomato soup cans, which as a result he has then went onto win numerous industry awards, particularly for his work on designer fragrances.
Growing up in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, Baron learnt typography and layouts from his father, who was an art director for several French newspapers. At the age of 20, after studying at the École des Arts Appliqués in Paris, he left to try his luck in New York City and landed at GQ after a meeting with the editorial director at Condé Nast, the late Alexander Liberman. Thereafter, he was introduced to the world of advertising while working at New York Woman, a magazine published by American Express. As a result of his progression / influences, Baron was soon counting department store Barneys as a client and eventually became art director at Vogue Italia, where Franca Sozzani had recently landed the top job. It was here that Baron really developed relationships with fashion designers. He went on to join the late editor Liz Tilberis to reinvent Harper’s Bazaar in the early ‘90s, followed by Vogue Paris and Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. In between, Baron launched his own advertising agency, Baron & Baron and has also co-designed a line of furniture and eyewear. In April 2018, shortly after his resignation from Interview it was revealed that Baron and his wife, stylist Ludivine Poiblanc, had filed a $600,000 lawsuit against the magazine for outstanding invoices. As a result / with eponymous agency, Baron’s role now extends far beyond that of an art director. “Developing strategy is our job now — we have to create business plans and strategies,” he told BoF. “It’s not just shooting a campaign. Now we have to consider the why, the how, the market, the business, what we spend. The list goes on and on.” Throughout the past year in August 2019, Baron was appointed to the creative team of Ports 1961 to lead on the brand’s visual identity amid its turnaround, with Karl Templer helping its fashion direction to where he has gone onto produce various art direction imagery and pieces of work being advertised to members of the public globally and within the United Kingdom especially.
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