Camera Lens Calendar!

This is the worlds first camera lens calendar designed by Sharad Haksar for his clients. His objective was to "create an innovative calendar that strengthens my profession as being a creative photographer".

Since the camera is the most visible sign of a photographer, I think his idea works perfectly. The biggest problem is, only his clients can get their hands on one! Aaargh!

Research Methodologies

Recently I've been indulging myself into hard bodies of text (sad, I know!) trying to understand different methods and techniques of doing better research. I was pleasently surprised at how little I knew about these techniques.



Design Research: Methods and Perspectives is an excellent book by Brenda Laurel that interestingly explains the perspectives designer's should consider when doing research. Below I have mentioned some of those methods of research and I will be elaborating each one progressively throughout the next week or so, so stay tuned!

1. Experimental

2. Qualitative

3. Quantitative

4. Speculative

5. Experiential

6. Performative

7. Discovery-Led / Poetic

8. Formal / Structural

9. Procedural

Sliced Bread! (Notebook)

The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread!

Could taking notes have been more delicious? This is a 12 slice/notebook set which has been packaged for convenience. Each delicious slice has a number on it (1 to 12) so you can use each notebook for the related month.

I can't wait to get my hands on one of these!

PDF Making Workshop

In our all day PDF workshop, Mark and I created a basic and informative pdf document. We used a 3 column grid, Arial Regular and Bold in 11pt and 22pt fonts. I think our choices of composition and imagery could have been better, but overall I think the design is straight to the point. (PS: we did have a lack of time!)

You can view our results below:

Typography at it's best!

There was a launch of a new Turkish-language edition of the New York Times' International Weekly. To advertise the launch, the newspapers commissioned this incredible animation - a typographic tour starting from Liberty Island, across various bits of Manhattan, before arriving back to a gorgeous view of Istanbul rendered in type.

The typography hangs together beautifully, and the level of subtle detail rewards re-watching. The waves, rippling banners and flags are a lovely touch, just noticeable enough to add to the sense of place without distracting you from the overall theme.

Here's a link to one of the adverts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ8CUcvPT6s

3D Workshop

We were given an opportunity to attend a workshop involving moving objects and creating narratives using 3 dimensional objects. Jesse Wine, a 3D sculpture artist studying at RCA, conducted the workshop. We were given random objects (mostly carrots, unusually!!) and told to create a narrative using these pieces only.

Here are some of the 3D narratives I created with Dilbert and Adam:

Carrot Face (Or balls?!!)

The Olympic torch!

A mass 'carrot' murderer...

Crop Workshop

Below are my results from the cropping workshop with David Sims. There are 11 images, each with a crop style to determine a detail.

1. Crop to Define

P: The crop defines the emotions of the image
M: Takes away the atmosphere of the image
I: It definitely makes the image more definitive and focussed

2. Enhance Emotional Impact



P: The emotive impact of the image is enhanced considerably
M: Crop takes out reason of emotional impact
I: It creates a comparison between the cyclist and driver

3. Make Look Distant

P: The blur creates a distinctive close-up effect
M: The close-up and focus is poorly defined
I: You get a good 'cut n paste on top' effect with the heads

4. Discreet

P: The crop creates a good correspondance between the two babies
M: The crying baby isn't actually discreet?!
I: Both babies share a common perspective

5. Depersonalise

P: The crop gives the impression that the man is Scottish whereas in the main image he is in fact carrying an England flag.
M: The wrong information is presented
I: It suggests the viewer is unaware of the actual theme of the image

6. Crop to Abstract


P: All the cyclist's faces have been focussed upon
M: You can't actually tell whether they're cycling or not, very misleading.
I: All the heads create an abstract image effectively

7. Bold & Exciting


P: The circular shape increases the boldness and creates an exciting view
M: The feature and originality of the image is lost
I: The crop creates a totally different entity

8. Narrow Angle Vertical


P: The crop creates a great angle of the people on the train
M: The diagonal shape is pretty weird and would be especially for an article
I: This crop works perfectly with the image above

9. Narrow Vertical



P: The crop creates an open story, it could be used for many narratives
M: The crop takes out the important factors of the image
I: It creates a very clever composition

10. Wide Angle Horizontal

P: The crops makes it more dynamic

M: It doesn't tell the full story

I: It captures the emotion perfectly

11. Close up of Detail

P: The crop gives a more dynamic effect to the camera in the image

M: The main aspects of the image have been excluded

I: The story is untold until you view the entire image

Clothes with a Story

A clothes company that tells a 'Stori'! It's amazing how just an image says a whole story.

8 Types of Bad Creative Critics!

Don't we all just love critics who don't know s**t?!

VCT Collage: Systems

Our subject was to create a system using newspaper cut-outs which would somehow show us a definitive form of systems in newspapers. We decided as a group to carve ut all the parts of the front page of a newspaper each that had any form of information on it, i.e. headlines, body of text, nameplates and images etc.

We were confident this idea would bring up a good graphical representation of a system and demonstrate the relationship that newspapers commonly share in their own respective and systematic forms.

We collected all the cut-out frames and placed them on top of each other. This created a very interesting piece that formulated a connection between each frame. It almost seemed there is an inter-dependant attachment between them that has been created to visualise a very logical, but complicated order.

From this outcome, it became clear that the design of the system of all newspaper layouts are very structured and comparable, hence the similarity between the five newspaper frames in our final piece.

What we can determine from this exercise is that there is a system that works within all newspaper front pages that make them all complementary of each other. The grid system and choice of placement is very similar, despite the fact that their information and agendas may be of totally different conceptions.

Letterpress Workshop

In our letterpress session, we were introduced to the terminology of the trade - Picas, Beards, Shoulders, EM and EN spaces etc. letterpress is harder than it looks, and very time-consuming.

But nevertheless, this was a great chance to learn a style in Graphic Design we wouldn't get a chance to study in many places. Anyway, we were assigned to a group and here are a few images of our steady development.

We used different shades of green for 'Grass Greener' and the rest of the design was a mixture of green and silver. The final outcome was excellent and it was a really enjoyable induction, albeit a little hard to understand!

TRENDSETTER - Identity

This is an Identity and graphic application for TRENDSETTER: a small dance event/venue in London designed by Paul Hollingworth. The concept behind the identity seems to be derived from the name and nature of the event itself.

The design seems ever-changing, ever-shifting...The concept of illuminating the characters is a great idea and mimic's the crowd's attraction to the event.

Image Workshop

In this session we discussed the process of collage and produced images that create an interesting and weird piece of visual communication.

We looked at various themes used in collage, eg. composition, editing, contrast, rythm, texture, repurposing, juxtaposition, surrealism, narrative and humor.



We picked one of the themes and produced a collage to demonstrate this theme.
Here are three collages I created, each one in response to a theme:






Narrative: In this collage, the focus was on Peter Crouch and the England team running out of steam with the World Cup in South Africa so close.




This collage carries the story on from the first one with a little satire. Darren explained how 'less is more', that being the reason for a lot of white space.



Finally, here's my collage of four pieces produced in response to Darren's "as many as you can in 20 minutes" challenge. To speed things up I chose to create a 'stressed' and 'happy' set of collages.

Typography Workshop

In this workshop we looked at the history of typography, its forms, and how it has created a meaning over time.

What we learnt
1. Difference between fonts and typefaces
2. Font families
3. Etymology
4. Letterforms
5. Frutiger's Grid

Research Workshop

In this session we were asked to find different ways of collecting information about other students in the class. Working with Adam, we decided to find a way to understand what other people would do if they were invisible. We believed this would alow us to understand their inner 'personalities'!

The idea was fairly basic where a student would draw a quick doodle on what they would do if they were invisible.

What we learnt from this workshop was the importance of gathering information and data and presenting it in an ideal method.

Addictive Behaviour (VCT)

This is a poster designed by fine artist and experienced Illustrator Matthew Richardson of the Heart Agency in London.

The poster has a mixture of different media, moods, subjects and cultures. It's called 'addtictive behaviour' and was created for the Guardian newspaper.

As we know, addiction comes from every kind of pleasurable behaviour like drinking, smoking, sex and food, and i think the artist was trying to create a rendition of the film 'Mad Max' in this poster which tells a story of brakdown of society, murder and vengance, and that all these addictions lead to this style of life.

Collage Workshop (Inspiration)

This is an interesting piece of collage design and animation from artist Igor Skaletsky and a drummer Evgeniy Labich. Stop motion animation is based on photos representing every stage of making the collage. Parts of the drummer’s live performance are arranged and mixed in one track. It's definitely worth a look.

Here is the link to the animation: http://www.selfburning.com/base/0001/14/01/

Text and Image (VCT)

This poster depicting President Barack Obama as Heath Ledger's "Joker" character from "The Dark Knight" sparked controversy after it appeared on the streets of Los Angeles in August 2009.

An unknown person or group created this satirical poster calling Obama a "socialist" as they probably believe he is promoting a somewhat socialised theory in the USA.

Here is a link to a news report on the issue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GStMLFMdRcQ

Why Obama and the Joker?

I think they believe President Obama is destroying society like the joker does in Batman because he is promoting a kind of socialised system of health care in the USA and many people are against it. It's caused confusion and debate and some people have even labelled it racism (which I don't think it is), and others have said its subversive, or trying to create unrest, therefore making the creator the Joker!!!

At the end of the day, there is freedom of speech, but how far can someone take it? After all, Former President George W Bush has been depicted as everything from Count Dracular to a chimpanzee!!!

Periodic Table of Typefaces

This is a Periodic Table of Typefaces in the style of all the thousands of over-sized Periodic Table of Elements posters hanging in schools and homes around the world. This particular table lists 100 of the most popular, influential and notorious typefaces today. The execution of this design could not have been any better! This is a must buy for any designer!

It was designed by www.squidspot.com

Creative Logo Design

Some people underestimate the power of a Logo and what effect it can have on their business.
As usual, the best way to master the exceptional logo design is to learn from the best. Above is a collection of some greatly designed conceptual logos with a message in each one relating to the company/event name. Fantastic!

Have you seen better? Why not leave a post and let us know...

Clever Ad

A great example of clever advertisement...!

Networking

A Company that organises the creative world to make things happen...
Creative thinkers - the people with the most ideas - often struggle the most with organisation and productivity. Behance is a website that organises the creative world.

How do do they do this? Well they research the most productive creative people in the world and discover how they do it. They then translate that knowledge through the power of design into a product or service that helps push creative ideas forward. Behance is based in New York City.

I have already uploaded my portfolio and I would strongly reccommend others to do so too. It's an excellent way of advertising your work and recieving feedback from other professional creatives from around the world.

Visit my Behance Portfolio to get a better idea of how it operates

www.behance.net/abdulmateen