Oldie but a goodie..

From Ms Paula Scher…

The best/worst political campaign ever? (delete where appropriate)

If you create a successful political campaign the idea is for the public to take it seriously….? Any public interaction is good though right?

For more fantastic campaigns and to make your own.

Foot in mouth…

I am what my Mother would refer to as ‘a bloody chatterbox,’ and having lived with my Dad for nearly 30 years she has built up a wealth of experience in spotting this particular personality trait. However the statistical likelihood of saying the wrong thing will undoubtedly increase the more you open your mouth…and those are the conversations that stick with you.

For example, on my first day working in a hotel I nervously tried to strike up a conversation with the prickly head chef…

“How are you?”

“I’m alright, you?”

“Yes I’m ok, probably better then you”

My thinking was it was a hot July day and he was stuck in a boiling kitchen with a load of sweaty men, I was going for sympathetic but this obviously didn’t translate so for the rest of the summer he considered me to be the stuck-up waitress, no matter how hard I tried to prove otherwise. Officially one of the worst first conversations ever. And it still makes me cringe.

I study communication, specifically visual and as the ways to communicate get more and more varied, the purest form of communication; conversation, tends to become more and more difficult, especially in a city like London where no really talks to each other.

The reason I am thinking about this currently is because of this book…(A School of Life essential)

The general idea is everything needs working on. Even the most natural forms of communication, it is indeed an art.

I get some funny looks reading it on the tube but I’m hoping it’ll save me from cringing at myself quite so often….

Mmmmm type…..

I figured it’s been a while since I posted anything pretty…in fact it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything…whoops…seen on CR made by Rick Banks

Money or Morals. The eternal struggle.

“There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money either.” Robert Graves

The man in the field to ask about this is of course Mr Milton Glaser. Here he is having a chit-chat with the equally stupendous Jonathan Barnbrook.

I found this particularly interesting as I have now officially ran out of cash. And my conscience doesn’t keep me warm at night so what’s a girl to do?

Democracy?

“A Naked Form of Blackmail”: Naomi Klein on Secretary of State Clinton’s Proposal to Set Up $100 Billion Climate Aid Fund for Developing Countries.

I absolutely despair at this, as should everyone. Have they lost their minds? Greedy bastards.

As per usual Annie Leonard predicts the future…

The Story of Cap and Trade

Witticisms of the South East

Sometimes it’s worth being an art student purely for the laughs.

Spotted at Lucky PDF’s exhibition at Area 10 Peckham.

Affluenza

Last weekend I attended another secular sunday sermon organised by TSOL where author and psychiatrist Oliver James spoke to a crowd of three hundred in the always damp but never dreary Conway Hall near Holborn. Last months sermon was led by Ms Ruby Wax, comedienne and tuneless entertainer. I left feeling amused but unfulfilled, which is highly unusual for a SOL event as there is usually always something that has got me thinking but it seemed Ms Wax was unwilling to give too much away.

Luckily Oliver was more than willing to share his knowledge on the subjects of selfish capitalism, Affluenza and our constant need to ‘keep up with the Jones’ which is something that always fascinates me about modern society, not because I am immune to it, far from it, but because it is the kind of thinking that keeps the advertising industry afloat. An irrational desire for what you haven’t got and believe that you need in order to be (considered) successful.

According to Mr James, a study showed that a UK survey of people asked, ‘How much would you need to earn to be happy?’ a large percentage said a third more of their income would be enough. The result was the same whether people earnt £2,000, £20,000 or £200,000. They all wanted a third more than they were getting.

So we are never truly happy with what we have.

I was reminded of a piece of work I did in art foundation that involved taking an old section of a bill-board and making it into something new.

I was given the section of a DFS advert.
A company I had been brought up to generally hate and despise. Because we were never that family. DFS was the second circle of hell. B&Q was the first.

So, my visual response to the DFS poster was rooted in this opinion and I began to think of the lyrics of a Talking Heads song;

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful
wife
And you may ask yourself-Well…How did I get here?

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.
And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!

And so I gleefully letra-setted the lyrics on top of the unsuspecting male model’s face sat on his newly purchased orange leather corner sofa, which he bought for an amazing £399 down from £599 with interest free credit (of course) and nothing to pay until the year 1 zillion. Bargain.

This also goes back to the poem I posted here not too long ago about desire. I see a pattern emerging….however I just can’t decide if it’s a dissertation subject or a practical project.

This week, Tim Harford talks about Frugality.

A-void.

Some things that have been going around my head of late;

Not everything which makes us feel better is good for us. Not everything which hurts may be bad. ~ Part of the conclusion of the last book I read, The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton.

An all too familiar dilemma in this blog post, perhaps I need to come out of the graphic design closet ~ Wisdom and honesty from Mr Dave Trott; as always.

I’ve rediscovered the book-wormish ways of my youth and so if I only get this for Christmas I’ll be happy.

More short and skittish blog posts to follow I’m sure….

 

Parlak şehir

2 weeks ago, I was sat with a Swede and an Egyptian on a roof-top terrace overlooking a glittering Istanbul skyline with a glass of red wine in hand talking to a Turkish design student about the political underbelly of design in her culture, having just come out for air from an exhibition in memorandum to Alan Fletcher. This was a typical evening during Istanbul’s graphic design week, it’s a hard life isn’t it?!

I was invited over with some of my course-mates to Istanbul for the Grafist International workshops which are held every year (this being year 13) in Mimar Sinan fine art university. Students came from all over the world (we met people from Egypt, Germany, Poland and Turkey to name a few) to take part and the workshops were led by Phil Baines, Petr Van Blokland,  Gülizar Çepoğlu, Memed Erdener, Dionysis Livanis, Piotr Mlodozeniec and Mehmet Ali Türkmen.

I was in Phil Baines’ workshop on type in the environment and the whole class collected typography from around Istanbul, my contribution is here on flickr. We then returned to the studio to make collages based on the photos we had taken.

In between the workshops (which varied from typography to poster design to branding depending on the lecturer) we attended lots of private views for various exhibitions that were happening as part of Istanbul graphic design week  including the memorandum for Alan Fletcher, a polish poster exhibition and a collaborative exhibition between Mimar Sinan and CSM (Something I would love to do with my university.)

The AGI (Alliance Graphique International) were also running conferences in the university at the same time (we managed to sneak in for free!) again with a very impressive list of speakers, we saw Fons Hickmann, Debra Sussman and Pierre Bernard talk on the first day. We also kept seeing Paula Scher (Pentagram New York) milling around all week which had me dumb-struck.

Name-dropping aside, Istanbul was and is amazing and vibrant and inspiring. We met some really, really lovely people and got to see what other design students are doing around the world. (Let me tell you now they are good, very good.) I was so impressed by the ideas that everyone came up with considering we only had 2 days and were completely out of our normal ‘working’ environments. We learnt so much about each others cultures and education and how that influences our design work.

Here are some of my favourites…a Turkish student who made a functional poster to stop rape…by making a poster that could be rolled up and used as a ‘friend.’

A German student who created a beautifully simple but powerful collage on the empowerment of women.

And here are the kitty cats we used to share our breakfast with in the morning, another thing I loved about Istanbul, felines everywhere and I am very much a cat person.

There was some incredible work on display in the university by a Turkish artist named Devrim Erbil who painted the most intricate landscapes of Istanbul.

I had an unforgettable time and definitely would like to go back next year when Istanbul is City of Culture. We are in talks to commemorate the experience with an exhibition and it would also be a great way to keep in touch with our new found friends.

We were also joined by the affable chaps from Pat and Trevor and on returning to London I went to the private view of This Is Why We Meet, a showcase of their latest collaborative project, which brought together students from across University of the Arts London (my university) from the individual colleges (LCC, CSM, Camberwell, Wimbledon, Chelsea and LCF) in association with Wieden and Kennedy. It’s refreshing to see these kinds of collaborations as they rarely happen between colleges unless between friends and in a university that is as competitive as ours it’s great to see this creativity brought together on one platform rather than produced separately in competition with each other.