Timeout

My first ever screen print.

The theme was: year 1971.

Had to browse quite a bit in the web and library to find something interesting and something that would stand out from others. Because there were quite number of people who produced prints of Disney-Land or Michel Jackson...which I think was quite predictable.
So taking that on board I started to dig.

By spending some time on research I got an idea to use a magazine cover from 1971, maybe not the greatest option, but at least not Disneyland. At first I thought of National Geography magazine and then Times and Rolling Stone  and so on and so forth...
Eventually I came across a magazine called Timeout and one of the covers really drew my attention and I decided to use it to produce my first screen print. A bit earlier before I even started to research we had a little talk in Art Gallery Of Wolverhampton about screen printing and some two significant print-makers and one of them was Andy Warhol who was not only a print-maker.

I had the honor to produce my own version of Andy's famous soup cans ;)

Think for the very first print it looks all right :) not as bad as I thought it's going to be, because messed up a bit during the second stage of the process...

My Space!

Have tried to produce a poster that would represent and define my space.

As my space is quite limited found this project very challenging and the factor that I am constantly challenging myself made it even harder for myself to produce what I have produced.

At the time when this project was taking place I was in process of moving houses and this circumstance had a massive effect on my work as well as influences from various sources...

 

This effect of bleeding ink really influenced me and it was a base of the whole idea of this work.

The color that I used was chosen simply because it is one of my favorite colors and by adding black I think it creates some sort mood of depressed harmony.And all the thing in the poster are positioned in a way to represent some sort of organized chaos....

Horizon cover

My complete design of 'Horizon' magazine cover...

This siluete of a man on a horse is a statue of Prince Albert located in Wolverhampton and so I thought that it would nicely fit on the cover to represent the city.

My main idea was to use a flat image on the cover, so when I started to manipulate the image I could not get desired effect, it was too flat and boring. Then I thought that I should try to turn the image upside down which made it look not as horse and rider, and I think it worked out quite well. And by adding some bleeding ink effect made it look energetic and interesting.

Also the main heading was meant to rise of the base of the image and the bottom of 'horizon' was sort of fading out but when I printed my first copy out it did not work out whatsoever, maybe that's because of not good enough knowledge of In-design software, so I decided to leave it as it is.

Experience W'hampton

By the given brief had to write an article about Wolverhampton and the Black Country of minimum of 250 words and to design page layout related to the subject.
It took me ages to figure the subject what I would like to deliver and at the beginning was struggling with that and made a mistake by starting to design layout without the title.
Eventually I decided to write body of text about  general stuff of Wolverhampton which was symbolically called "Experience Wolverhampton"

After I've done some research for inspiration I have come with this layout design. In this work I decided to use an image to complete my intended design and make it even more relevant to the subject. The idea was to have silhouette of Wolverhampton's skyline.

Based on my thumbnail produced this digital version, which did not turn out to be very successful and had to be improved. Got here a salad of typefaces, no aliments and bad composition.

After taking everything on board I started to work on design and composition and came up with some interesting ideas. I completely redesign main body text replacing randomly positioned columns around a quote with two nicely balance little columns, moving the quote away and aligning it with 'hampton'.
Also positioning 'p' and 'h' so that the are joining the big 'W'

Horizon II

Have been working and improving one of my double page spreads. In the previous post I posted a rough test piece of it, which must have been improved.

Particularly had some issues with choosing relevant type face for the article and the most difficult part for me was to decide where to position the introduction copy :D
For the main body text I selected light Helvetica type face and in the first draft for the sub-headings was used another typeface which now is forgotten because was advised to use not more that two different typefaces, otherwise it would be just a salad :D  So for the main heading as well as for sub-headings it was decided to use Didot type face which became one of my favorites.

In terms of layout design I did not want to use any images so instead I tried to use type as image, think these massive 'hello', ampersand and 'welcome' look quite balanced. I arranged them more to the left hand side so that the main body text would not be all over the place.
In this design I tried, with some difficulties, to align everything as much as possible. Such us introduction is aligning with the top of the 'L' and first two columns of body text with the top of 'W' and 'l' and so on...

Horizon

Working within supplied design guidelines I have to design and introductory section and cover to complete my zine.

Here is on of those less unsuccessful thumbnails that I decided t take further and produce a digital version of it.

Here I tried to manipulate with heading 'Hello and Welcome'

The idea was to position the ampersand behind 'welcome' in a way so that the top curve would align with 'hello' and the curve would replace 'O'. However when I started to do that in In-design it did not look as good as on the thumbnail. It turned out to be 'hell and welcome'.

 

So I added that poor 'O' but it still didn't look balanced so I decided to put it in an angle so that it matches the angle of that curve and doesn't really stand out of the overall composition.

(cover is still to come)

"À bout de souffle" (Breathlesss) by Jean-Luc Godard 1960

Seated in an uncomfortable seat spent an hour of my life watching a masterpiece, one of the great movies ever made. Did not know what to expect because have never seen a movie of Jean-Luc Godard and thought that I’ll give it a shot only because it was directed by one of the most influential directors of ALL-TIME even though I am not a great fan of that era.

To be honest I found the film monotonous, unentertaining and boring, but it still is one of the greatest movies. I think being black and white and dull story line in the film left me emotion-less, I understand the intrigue, particularly if you were alive and young when this film was showing for the first time in the cinema but it didn’t hit me the way it did others. However I can appreciate how it influenced and affected everybody down the generations and it still was directed by one of the greatest of all time.  I like movies when after watching you have to get yourself thinking and constantly get back to it and rethink over again and "Breathless" was not one of them, but it still is one of the greatest movies ever made.

Shinichi Maruyama

A must see...

Very energetic, powerful, beautiful and just wow photos of "water sculptures"

Clever Typography

Researching about typography have come across some very interesting pieces for some might be design inspiration. There are gathered 40 Creative Typography Logos created by talented designers. Those logos include wordmark and lettermark logo designs as well as some pictorial logos that have used typography innovatively.

It shows how the clever use of typography and characters can be when used in conjunction with white, negative, positive spacing, colors and accents to create a logo that effectively communicates to the world your business’ personality, identity, essence and individuality.

http://speckyboy.com/2011/05/11/40-creative-logos-with-clever-typography/

Some of my favorites:

ANT

3EE

 BLANK

 DOWNTOWN

SEVEN SPARROWS

 LOOK

 UP

Moscow Pin Map

Continuing cartography subject.....  

My interest in maps stems from a love of landscape. I've always enjoyed crowds and events that bring people together. For me maps are interesting for many different reasons; they can be interesting just to look at, to study and understand or learn things, to collect or create oneself and each of those has parts which are interesting on their own

 

Inspired by the inherent beauty and simplicity of lines and forms that arise from natural topography and build environment. And as a native Russian speaker and lover of maps and big cities I have produced my own version of Moscow's map.

Materials: Panel pins and cotton thread.

Size: A0

W'hampton Art Gallery Visit

Jan Mikulka “Jakub”

I thought it is a photograph but when I had stepped closer realized it’s not.

It is so incredibly life-like it caught my imagination with its minutely detailed and skilful rendering of skin and hair tones and very effective and I would even say powerful lightning.I don’t think I have ever seen such a stunningly amazing use of light in a portrait. I was completely blown away by it. It gave me an impression that portrait was lit up and if I stepped forward the portrait then I would be able to see much more details that I could not see because of the light and shadow falling on Jakub’s face. Because of the effective lightning I had a desire to push Jakub backwards to the shadow or pull him towards to the light to see his face clearer.

I was also touched by the slightly sulky expression, which makes him look very young.

The Black Cat

Had to read a famous short story "The Black Cat" by not less famous Edgar Allan Poe.It was first printed on August 19, 1843, in the Philadelphia edition of a newspaper called the United States Saturday Post.

I think this story is rather disturbing. Poe says that he is not mad yet how could he not be, he kills his wife and shows no shame! I think perhaps he was insane.

I also think that Pluto, the Black Cat, was a metaphor for Poe's drinking problem it

shows us how someone can change for the worse due to drinking.He was obsessed with the cat being the beast but he turned into a beast himself...

But at the same time this could be not about alcoholism but instead it shows the way in which the narrator avoids taking responsibility for anything he does, instead blaming it on the alcohol and the cat.

For lazy readers, can listen or download an audiobook here.

My first post, how exciting!!

I am a visual communicator beginner. Have recently discovered my obsession for maps. Am amateur traveler and photographer who loves big cities, metro, crowds, airports, flying and so on as well as mother nature.

My credo is “Imagination is more important than knowledge” Albert Einstein.

There are some world issues that bother me at the moment such as stupidity, alcoholism, corruption, human rights, racism etc.

Two favorite books that I have read so far which influenced and inspired me, and which I recommend to read to everyone who likes Japanese culture and J.S Foer are  “Shogun” and “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”.

On this blog I will try to gather stuff that I like, love, adore as well as cannot stand and hate or that influence, motivate, inspire, affect and makes me to experience mix of emotions.

Your comments and emails are very welcome.
Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy getting to know me because there's more to come....