Monday 11th April 2011:

I decided that although writing out ‘Beautiful’, etc, in a ‘mouldy’ style was unique, I didn’t feel that this was efficient enough to portray my idea. I therefore thought that I would carry out the idea given to me in the peer review and write the words out using yoghurt so that this could actually become mouldy and then I could take photos.

I found a suitable font for both the word ‘beautiful’ and for ‘ugly’, as I wanted to explore both of these further, and wrote both of these out with both fonts. I wanted to print these out to paint the yoghurt on top of. However, when I started to do this, the yoghurt seemed to be sinking into the paper, and so this probably won’t get as mouldy as I want it to.

I decided that to make the best of this idea, I would need to have the yoghurt ‘sitting’ on top of a surface. I therefore decided to print onto photographic paper. When I did this, the writing came out in quite a strange way but this was actually very interesting and so I took photos. I like how you had to have light shining on it from a certain angle to actually be able to read the words. This could perhaps represent that beauty is within everyone, you just need to look closely, and vice versa with the word ‘ugly’. This could portray both the bully and the victim, and that they both have the same traits but one uses certain ones more than others, etc. I could perhaps try a few more experimental printing methods to see what other effects I can create.

Once I had enough photos of these, I then painted the yoghurt on to the words. This seemed to work a lot better than it had on paper, as the yoghurt actually stayed on the paper. I will now leave these out and wait for them to (hopefully), so mouldy, before taking photos.

This idea was also inspired by the work of typographer Sean Freeman, who has, for example, used actual cream to create the word ‘cream’. His work is really effective because he uses really unique materials, and creating the words ‘beautiful’ and ‘ugly’ from yoghurt relates well to his work.

I then decided to find some sticks and stones and to write emotions and insults on them. I thought that this would be an interesting thing to do because my organisation name is going to be ‘Sticks and Stones’. I wrote insults on the sticks to represent the bully and what they may say to someone, and then I wrote the emotions that the victim may feel on to the stones. For some of the insults, I carved them into the sticks to perhaps show that these insults can hurt and can scar someone forever. It could also represent self-harming – a consequence of bullying. I used pen to write onto the stones. This didn’t work particularly well for some of the stones, and so perhaps I should’ve painted onto them. When I print out the photos, which I have taken, I could maybe write into the photos to clearly show the words.

I set up a composition of the sticks and stones altogether to show how the bullies and victims interact. The sticks are mostly around the stones to perhaps show how the bullies can all gather around the victim(s), making them feel trapped. I could explore this relationship between the bully and victim further to show the difference in control and vulnerability. I think that these photos have actually turned out quite well and are a unique way of representing bullying. I particularly like the photos that had direct sunlight shining onto them because this gives it more of a ‘playground’ feel – where this situation may actually take place.

I also set up sticks and stones to write out the organisation name: ‘Sticks + Stones’. I think that these have worked well and I could use these when further developing my logo ideas. I feel that they’re easy to read, but I will perhaps need to ask a few people to see how they react to them. For my final pieces, I could look more at using real objects to create type and images as these seem to have been quite effective and received well so far.

Target for today: Write the word ‘beautiful’ using yoghurt and leave out to become mouldy so can take photos. Write on sticks and stones and take photos to represent organisation name and also to explore insults and emotions further.

Target for tomorrow: Annotate sketchbook in more detail and use tracing paper to write on so that these annotations are easy to read and that the background/ image can still be seen.