Extended Practice: OUGD603 / Extended practice - DR ME workshop and final pieces.

OUGD603.
DR ME WORKSHOP.
THREE BRIEFS.

Today we were visited by design studio DR ME. DR ME is based in manchester and works mostly with both digital and hand made collage.

We were set 3 briefs by DR ME to complete within a day, this would help us learn how to work under tight time constraints. We were asked to complete the briefs keeping in mind the focus of digital collage. When working on the briefs we worked in pairs for the first two, I worked with Lizzy Gosney. For the last we were required to work and experiment by ourselves.

BRIEF 01_

Create a gig poster for band Odonis Odonis.

When creating the Odonis Odonis gig poster we mostly played with the colour of the band and music. As a punk band Odonis Odonis are very loud and out there, expressed in their colour choices, already implemented which can be seen on their website. We also noticed on their online platform, that they are very much into manipulating imagery, whilst using a bright, almost clashing pallet of colours.

With this in mind we went into photoshop with the intention of manipulating and combining two images that we felt represented the sound of the band.

The first shown below is an already manipulated photograph of the band itself, which me and Lizzy thought really started to showcase the distortion of current photography used by Odonis Odonis.

The second image in the combination was a fluoro piece that appeared like a temperature photograph of some sort which could have possibly been inverted. However we felt that the linking of the bright fluro colours and distorted biographical photo would be a great representation of Odonis Odonis.

As the combined images were so strong we had to find a way to input the information onto the posters without it getting lost in the background. Inspired by punk, and a throw it together sort of aesthetic, we put the main information in speech bubbles, using hand rendered type created by Lizzy. The added information, location, show time, ticket price etc, supported but didn't take away from the titles, in a black box that appeared as part of the background image.

BRIEF 02_

Create a record sleeve cover for Evian Christ's Duga-3 mix.

For the second brief we were asked to create a record sleeve. The first thing that myself and Lizzy did after listening to the song was write down all the ideas, themes and visuals we got from the track.

When listening to the track we were very inspired by the sound which had inspired the whole musical piece, the tapping of the Duga-3. We began to think about what other sounds it replicated.

On researching the Duga-3 we realised that the structure was nicknamed the wood pecker as the constant tapping sound was almost an echo of a wood pecker hitting a tree. Lizzy also compared the noise to the sound of a helicopter propellor spinning around, and so these were the two visuals we were inspired by.

Although we didn't take inspiration straight from a woodpecker, we were inspired mostly by the wings of birds, and how these could be used in a visual format to resonate the blades of a propellor. We looked for a bird with wings that were quite visually striking. We were particularly interested in the feathers of a blue jay.

With the visual of a helicopter propellor in mind, we printed out numerous copies of the feather, cut them out and arranged them into a propellor like formation, which we then scanned back into the computer.

We then played around further with the visual of the feather propellor in photoshop and tried to implement more of an industrial feel to it by adding steel details.

We did however feel that the product so far was too plain and so we thought about how to bring another visual element in. I suggested reverting back to the original symbol of the Duga-3 and incorporating this into the backdrop. Even more so I suggested that we warp the photograph in the background, to create the vision that the structure is almost being sucked into the propellor, which in turn gave the still propellor some movement.

We also tried out the image in black and white.

We did however feel that there was an issue with clearly being able to see the warped effect on the structure and so we came up with the idea of playing with opacity and allowing the Duga-3 to show through. This is the final image that we came up with together and were very happy with the product and concept behind it.

BRIEF 03_

Create a collage based on anything.

For the collage, I was abit stuck with what to do as the brief was so vague. I therefore began with one photo of some wolf face paint I had done on halloween. It was this photograph that set the tone and story for the rest of the collage.

I don't frequently work in photoshop and so this was a great experience to be able to get used to the program again by myself. I placed the photo in photoshop and began randomly experimenting with the wolf theme.