Andrew Paul Brooks - Hidden Manchester

Andrew Paul Brooks is a Photography who has recently had an exhibition up at Urbis.

I hadn't heard of Andrew before nor came across any of his work but now I'm glad I decided to go see the exhibition.

From the photo's on display i got the impression that Andrew didn't like taking the obvious photograph. He tended to go out explore places and take pictures of places that people wouldn't normally imagine of shooting. For example there was images of sewers, courtyards and then city skylines - but not from the so obvious places.

When i was looking at the photo's the images reminded me of pin hole cameras - I doubt he used to a pin hole camera to shoot the shot but just the way the image is formed reminded me of such things.

When I got home from the exhibition I decided to research further into Andrew because of how much I liked his work. This is where I found more information about Andrew as a Photographer. Andrew is a 'conceptual digital artist and film maker - based in Manchester.'

On his website Andrew says;

"The crucial element to my work is atmosphere. . . No matter how much digital application is going on, the atmosphere and feel of a picture is always the most important thing."

Further reading into him on his website it say's how he comes up with such stunning and abstract imagery. This is down to how he captures hundreds of images to create a complete piece of work. Then, a meticulously developed sequence of cut, paste and rebuilding, moulding a new scene from his own vividly re-imagined viewpoint that is consistent, yet also a parallel with that of the perceived reality it represents. Andrew finishes off by saying; 

"The large scale of my stills photography enables a viewer to enter and explore each scene in depth and to constantly find new elements and hidden layers with the jigsaw."

Emory Douglas - The Art of Evolution

Recently I went and viewed an exhibition at Urbis which was based upon the artist Emory Douglas & The Art of Revolution.

Emory Douglas used to be a member of a group called Black Panther. During the exhibition on one of the walls there was a speech wrote on it which explained how the group name came along. It goes;

 "You know the nature of a panther is that if you push it sooner or later it is going to come out of that corner to try and wipe out who's oppressing it. This is like Racism, keeps everyone pushed into a corner."

A lot of Emory's work was based upon Racism, how black people don't get treated equally nor correctly.  Douglas' work was produced a lot of the time on the wall's of the ghetto. fences, doorways and storefront windows etc. 

When i viewed the the exhibition i found the art very striking and powerful. This was down to how it showed the past and how racism and fascism was such a bad thing back in the 60's - when i wasn't around to witness or experience such a thing.

Rick Poynor Lecture

"I'll be your mirror: A critical look at the design monographs"

Rick Poynor

On Tuesday 17Th March I went up to Sheffield Hallam University and attended a talk held by Rick Poynor. Rick is a British writer, he writes about graphic design, typography and visual culture.  Some of the things Rick has achieved/done in his career is; founded Eye Magazine, co-founded Design Observer, taught at such places as the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht and finally, stared in the film Helvetica.Rick Poynor is someone who has a great interest in design monographs, one thing he did mention about design monographs is that they are aimed at the 'star' people within design industry. One tip Rick advised us upon was that design monographs are no good to critically analyse. This is down to how there is no right nor wrong within the text and each piece is very opinion based.

Rick then moved onto talk about the monograph as a self-interpretation, this is where he started showing us different sets of books and

 there spreads. One that he did show us was The End of Print, David Carson, this was the most successful selling design monograph book to date, and what helped was that the book was set out in Carson style work, this resulted in type overlapping imagery and the type not being readable. But looking at it from a monograph perspective, Rick found it very hard to separate his work pieces from one another.

Another book that Paynor showed us was that by Stefan Sagmeister. In this book Stefan started the monograph by putting 'not another design monograph' on the front spread. This implies that he doesn't really take his monographs very serious. Another thing about Sagmeister which is interesting, is how he annotates his own work, this is a rare thing because you don't see many designers doing that.

Rick ended off by talking about the future of the monograph. This isn't an obvious conclusion due to the fact of the introduction of the web based information. Due to the internet being so easily accessed from such broad places and areas this results in that the monograph sales are going down hill due to the fact that the internet is cheaper and quicker.

Dan Ingham & Stephen Owen

Recently Dan and Stephen came into to do a talk to us about what they both have been doing since graduating from the course in 2007. The first positive they both gained was that in there results they both achieved Firsts and also, they both won D&AD New Blood 'Best in Show' awards.

The first tip they gave us, was that they recommended that we should be in college as much as we possibly can. This was because being in college it allowed us to produce more quality ideas instead of being at home and isolated, also this allowed you to get an input from other students on your ideas to see what they thought of the idea and/or how it could be improved etc.

Both Ste and Dan had the opportunity to showcase there work down in London, which consisted of over 2000 students and there work. They mentioned how this was a great opportunity to them due to the fact that they was able to build relationships with members of companies and more importantly show off there talents to the big companies down south.

Whilst down in London, this is where Ste and Dan both gained there awards for 'Best in Show.' There was over 2000 students which had an opportunity to win this award, which went out to 40 students, but both of them each won an award each which thinking about it is a great achievement - winning two of the same award, the same year, from the same college!

When they both got back from London they both started getting numerous of offers for jobs, but remarkably they both turned them down! The reason to this was that they both knew they could do better than just designing kebab house leaflets. You have to think this was a great decision because with the awards they both just won you'd expect them both to do miles better than that. Also how they both turned down the opportunity for money straight after qualification was a bold move.

After they had these job opportunitys they both decided to look for work placements instead of being stuck inside doing nothing and not using the skills they have. They had placements with such companies as Thoughtful and The Chase. They was both currently on placement with Mark Design and McCann Erickson

Further in the talk they started to talk about there life when they was in college. They mentioned that they both had a strong bond which each other, which is a great asset and this will be a great move because you never know when you might need someone's help in future reference. When they was in college they mentioned how they received negative comments and jealousy - which you wouldnt expect. This was down to how it was always them two getting picked for things, but if they work the hardest, put most effort in etc then they deserve it!

Glorious Talk

Recently Tom Shaughnessy from Glorious came in and spoke to us about the work they have recently been producing. Glorious are a multi-award winning design company based in Manchester who are currently ranked in the top 5 design companies in the whole of England, which is remarkable seeming they have only running three and a half years under glorious.

Tom showed us a handful of examples of work that he and the company have produced. One of these was for a reading room. This consisted of using bookmarks, but nothing developed of this idea due to them falling out with the company they was doing the brief for.

Another piece of work we was shown was based on Pay & Display tickets. They was briefed and asked to produce a clever idea that would generate awareness of an exhibition of designer/makers in an NCP car park through word of mouth. The solution they came up with was to use the car park tickets and then just put the 

details on the ticket in the style of a parking ticket. They actually re-created the typeface for this brief because this was better than any bitmap font, and also it would result in the typeface not pixelating.

Another brief which Tom showed us was for a company called Client Centric. The client asked them to produce a corporate identity for them and in doing so there company name got changed to REDdog. The solution to the brief was that they created a red dog who would perform various tasks for each item. For example on stationary he would be 'begging' on the invoice and 'fetching' on the address label and 'tickling tummy' on the compliment slips. 

Another piece of work that Tom shown us was a calendar for Karl's barbershop in Manchester. The owner of the company wanted something creating which would celebrate 40 years in the business. The final piece was a calendar which was run over the financial year (this due to that most customers are city professionals.) One object i like about the calendar is when pulling it out it's sleeve it acts like it's the iconic red and white barbers pole which is found outside the barbers. This calendar went onto win many awards.