Wednesday 6th April 2011:

Today, I had a look at the typographers Sean Freeman and Si Scott and responded to their work in my sketchbook looking at the contrasting words ‘beautiful’ and ‘ugly’. I wanted to focus on these words because I am quite taken by the phrase ‘calling me ugly, won’t make you beautiful’, which I think is a powerful message which could be aimed at the bully.

I also wanted to respond to the ideas from the peer review where they suggested using mouldy cheese and barbed wire for the word beautiful to represent that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I felt that these ideas would relate well to the work of Sean Freeman as he uses relevant things to the word he is illustrating. For one piece, he used real cream to create the word ‘cream’ and smashing glass, etc, for the word ‘Fear’.

Although the word ‘beautiful’ being created using mouldy food or wire would look better if actually created using these objects (and then taking photos of it), I decided to draw these out in my sketchbook first just as initial ideas. I think they work quite well, however, it was quite hard to draw ‘mould’ and so, as thought, it would probably be better to actually create the word using mouldy food. Also, this would probably project a stronger message. I also tried to draw these words in the style of barbed wire. This was also quite hard to illustrate and using actual wire would perhaps be a better idea and something to explore further.

I then looked at the delicate and detailed work of Si Scott and responded to his work only using the word ‘beautiful’. However, perhaps I could also use the word ‘ugly’ to yet again represent that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. For one of my images, I cut out small shapes out of the word to experience the delicacy of Si Scott’s work.

I then wrote out the word in a ‘flowy’ style using white on black. I think this is still quite effective even though it’s quite simple. Perhaps I could highlight more of it with a brighter white. I will consider using black as a background more in future work.

I then used ‘gold leaf’ for the final image. This stands out quite a lot but I think that it could have turned out better than it has. I think that against the black it works well and represents well the meaning of the word.

I then created a few more logo ideas digitally. I don’t particularly think that any of these work that well. However, they are quite good as initial ideas, which have potential to be developed. I quite like the brown and deep blue as the main colours and the difference in font/ type for ‘sticks’ and for ‘stones'. I quite like the design on the top right of the second page as it’s simple, however, perhaps the ‘sticks’ could stand out more. I will probably scan in some of my drawn ideas and go over these digitally as perhaps this would convey my ideas better and be more effective. Also, I will need to keep in mind that perhaps the background of my logos could be black (instead of white), and so will need to create a logo which will work on multiple backgrounds.

Target for today: Look at typographers Si Scott and Sean Freeman and respond in sketchbook and come up with a few more logo ideas (digitally).

Target for tomorrow: Sketch a few more logo ideas and prep more sketchbook pages.