Sherlock Holmes

see more on Graphic Exchange

Post it stop motion

The Power Gap

great video by Demos and Airside

My work on Eye blog

A blog post written by Gulizar Cepoglu about Grafist 13 in Istanbul  … see the post here.

Peephole Pizza Guy

found on

everythang.wordpress.com/2006/10/24/5-most-innovative-ideas-ive-seen-in-advertising

Conran Octopus

I’ve been at my placement for 3 weeks now and they’ve got me straight into designing. Im working with Conran Octopus, who are based all the way in Canary Wharf. They design good quality lifestyle books. The design team is very small (one designer, one editor and a few freelance picture researchers) so I have a lot of involvement in the work.

During the first week I helped re-design the cover for a paperback cook book. In the second week I came up with a few illustrations in Illustrator to go in an interior design book. I also had the opportunity to go along to a photo shoot, for an upcoming book for Leon restaurants. Although shooting food meant a lot of washing up, I got a lot of insight into the decisions made by an art director and photographer. I’ve been going to the photo shoots for most of the third week. I particularly enjoy being at the shoot because the photographs are not your standard pictures of well presented food. There is a humorous undertone to the whole book and it looks at food in a fun way, making it accessable to all. I can’t wait to see the book when it is up on a bookstore shelf. In the meantime its back to designing this week.

The set up at the ‘studio’ and this months issue of Creative Review have now got me interested in the environment in which designers go about their work. Some of this leads to where I would like to eventually work.  I am interested in whether an open plan studio encourages or disrupts the creative process. There are of course many stages to the creative process; from research, generating ideas and ironing out details on a final outcome, which can’t all be put into the same bag. Also the same formula can’t work for all studios. But I’d like to find out which works best for me during the my year out in industry. From what I’ve read so far in Creative Review I think it is important to have a bit of individual thinking space as well as somewhere more open for people to communicate and interact. I am waiting on a copy of Adrian Shaughnessy’s Studio Culture at the moment, to get stuck into.

The set up at the ‘studio’ and this months issue of Creative Review have now got me interested in the environment in which designers go about their work.

I am waiting on a copy of Adrian Shaughnessy’s Studio Culture to get stuck into.

teşekkür Istanbul

Istanbul … trams, funicular, kofte, Grand Bazaar, Blue Mosque, baklava, Sultanamet, Spice Bazaar, fishing at Emininou which carries on till dark, Tophane, Taksim restaurants, Galata tower and the beautiful Mimar Sinan University. Just a few of the memories from the city.

Workshops begin on the second day. We were split into groups to carry out our briefs. I was in Gulizar Cepoglu’s group, with an amazing brief; to record and present our experience of going from the europrean side to the Asian side of Istanbul.  A talk at the begining of the workshop allowed us to understand what was required from us and we got to know others in our class. People came form all over, Germany, Egypt, Turkey, Greece. It was a strange experience to be the only one in the group from London! The workshop was explained in two laguages, first in Turkish, and then translated into English, quite a job for Gulizar. The work we produced needed to explore the relationship between screen and the page. At first I was a little shocked as I hadn’t had a brief like this since 1st year. But I was surprised, and glad, to learn that in order to communicate our experience the layout would be very important. It was refreshing to solve something that I would have classed as an ‘Illustration’ brief, using what I learn as an information designer.

Istanbul is a great mix of old and new, and it is absolutely crazy how different the asian side is to the european. Only a 15 minute boat ride away, and lifestyle, attitudes and wealth, goals, beliefs seem to differ vastly. The European side is more cosmopolitan and the Asian far more traditional. My work focused on how I felt as an outsider, familiar with some asian culture, but alien to the languages around me. From crossing the road to avoiding shopkeepers who persistantly invite you into their shops or restaurants, to the language on shop signs and restraunt menus that meant nothing to me. Trying to find my path through all of this, became the basis of my project. With a visualisation in mind, I recorded all that I saw and heard to later produce a page that showed my expereince.

Once I had my excperience, I had to stick with this and focus on the best way to communicate it. With just 2 and a half days for the entire project, including the trip to Asian Istanbul, it was important to be decisive. The environment for working was great. The studio had inks, letraset and letterpress letters readily available, and a group of hard working people around to keep me motivated. As I spoke little Turkish, communnication was interesting and still possible by small words, hand signals and gestures. I find it interesting how this can help visual language skills. We can still understand each others work, and without the assistance of words we get a kind of true feedback on what the work is communicating. For this reason I am now seeking an internship in Europe.

Grafist 13 gave us the opportunity to view the work of the tutors, and visit a number of exhibitions in and around Istanbul : Polish poster exhibition, Alan Fletcher tribute exhibition, City and Art exhibition with work from CSM, and the Bienal Gallery. A week of exhibitions keep you in the right frame of mind, but the best by far was the City and Art exhibiton. For me the work was more bold, risky and adventurous than what I have seen in London. Highlights included Five minutes more ( a huge, matterss stimulating the physical and emotional experience of wanting just five extra minutes of rest. You could sink into it but getting back up took a lot more effort ) Paparazzi, Fat carpet and Sisi Arabesk. The opening night and atmosphere was very relaxed, and it made the exhibition far more enjoyable.