Draft statement of intent

PERSONAL STATEMENT

One of the most satisfying and motivating discoveries i‘ve had while on the course was the realizations that type can be pictorial in itself, can be used as a primary element to create an image.

Typography has personality in the same way drawing does, it can be expressive, it has spirit, can convey mood; it is its own broad palette that can express any number of things.

I believe that one of the reasons why figurative typography or text-as-image is so effective is because letterforms are universally comprehensible, the form is set, the viewer/audience know the reference points, therefore you can move much faster in communicating ideas.

Within works of this kind there is also an interesting relationship between form and content, within the image the typography functions not just as readable text but as texture, exploration of this challenges the traditional opposition between visual and verbal / seeing and reading, and treats the surface as both theoretical content and sensual form.

As a viewer what I respond to in other artists’ work is the sense of an active artist or creator.
I have a long standing interest in the area of graphic design, and my personal response, inquiry and feeling indicate that design gets better, it gets more interesting , it gets more expressive, and reaches out to the audience better when there's quite a lot of the artist/designer in it

It is arguable that what got me interested in visual art in the first place was when I realized that there were individuals making conscious decisions of what I, as a viewer, should be looking at - and that those decisions are often careful, considered and meaningful acts of communication – that there was a reason why a certain image looked the way it did, or even an act of auteurism; the designer/illustrators’ personal expression in the form of design.

It was at that point that I began to interpret, and pay attention to work, instead of just reacting to it without thinking, and started to question why a certain image looked the way it did. And how those individuals who created the work, their mentality, their own way of thinking, own preconceptions, their own view of the world, manifested visually.


Artists whose work I consider influential and tend to return to have work where the animating principle behind it is strong design;

Paul Rand, Alvin Lustig Chip Kidd, Saul Bass


And one of the common links between the design, photography, popular cinema, and animation that I enjoy is those that seek aesthetically appealing thoughtfully considered forms, in an attempt opens and increases pathways for effective communication



STATEMENT OF INTENT

The projects that have worked for me; Text as Image project from year one, the Editorial Illustration project from year two and the Sequential Narrative, for which I did an A-to-Z children’s book, all include the common factor of being broken down into smaller pieces

Therefore I intend to set an editorial illustration project based on a weekly column by Andrew Sullivan, in addition to the column published weekly in the Sunday Times, Sullivan runs an influential and widely read current affairs blog The Daily Dish, with prolific sharp and substantive posts on a range of issues Iran, US Politics, Haiti, Financial Crisis; many of which are complex subjects - thus a strategy would be to break the writing down further into key words.
Parsing broad current affairs issues into small scale and manageable parts hopefully would encourage direct solutions but also allow me to digest those issues, and in the process of visualizing them, give it my own voice and become a more personal response.

One possible avenue for exploration is that the format of Sullivan’s blog allows for imagery, although there rarely, if any, use of interpretive illustration he has a ‘Face of the Day’ feature which uses high quality human interest photojournalism, as well as charts and information graphics.


The primary media I intend to use is photography, augmented by Photoshop.

However, typography, as discussed and as an overview of my portfolio would suggest, is in essence my primary medium and most natural technique, and I would like the project to take the form of text-as-image brief

I intend to use a variety of sources for the typographic elements – digital type, found type, wood and metal type, and select, apply, and manipulate them in a range of contexts, but primarily I intend to illustrate typography out of a variety of organic or quotidian materials, photographing results (not unlike the work of contemporary designers such Stephen Doyle or Stefan Sagmeister)

Of particular interest to me is the use of photographic trompe l’oeil effects, creating tactility and dimensionality on a two-dimensional surface, conveying a sense of materiality, and inscribing the material onto image prompts a different more physical engagement with the imagery.
In particular Chip Kidd’s collaborations with photographer Geoff Spear will inform this part of the practice as well as fine art photographers such as Wynn Bullock, Aaron Siskind, or Edward Weston and Ansel Adams.





TIMEPLAN

The editorial structure Sullivan’s column is published weekly on Sundays - separating the allocated time into smaller briefs.

Week 1st Feb Digitize Work/write Statement

Week 8th Feb Self promo/Group Publ/

Week 15th Feb

Week 22nd Feb WIP self promo

Week 1st Mar

Week 8th Mar

Week 15th Mar

Week 22nd Mar

Week 29th Mar - Easter

Week 5th Apr - Easter

Easter 12th April - Easter

Week 19th Apr

Week 26th Apr

Week 3rd May

Week 10th May

Week 17th May