bellabellatobin-blog

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This is amazing!!! I especially love the recycled brown paper bag with cutouts ahhh

FINALLY… the zine is complete!

Today I finished making my zine, after numerous attempts. I was only able to make one other copy that I am happy with, as the hands on process made it very difficult to mass produce. I will also bring in one of my earlier attempts to our exhibition as it is almost identical to my final with just a few colour changes here and there, meaning that I have more work to share with the class. 

After completing this assignment I felt a sense if accomplishment, I am very happy with how my zine turned out. I also showed my creative, Nicola, who was very happy with the end result. 

Finishing this final assignment gave me a chance to get on tumblr and reflect upon all my old posts. I think it’s a very nice platform to be able to look back on my previous work and see how far I have come throughout this semester. 

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above: collage of all the doodles I did in the lectures

below: proof I actually listened in the lectures

REFLECTING

When I started this course, I hadn’t really set any specific personal objectives, except to make stuff and continue to develop my own style of making stuff. I definitely feel achieved in both of these goals. We were given so much freedom within the ‘ask more questions’ and ‘ask me anything’ project, and I think it was because of this freedom that I was able to develop my own style of making stuff. Especially in the first assignment, I feel like the questions we wanted to ask = the things we’re most interested in = a reflection of the way we think, and therefore the way we make.

Prototyping and publication design were the biggest practical takeaways from this class for me. We explored a lot of different prototypes, from initial layout prototyping to comprehensive image and visual prototyping. This also pushed us to experiment as much as we possibly could, which I think led to great outcomes in our final zines. I’d love to experiment more with publication design and making all different types of zines, if there’s one thing I learnt it’s how many types of zines you can create!

The lectures also added some really great context to the activities we were doing in the workshops. I loved learning about the Bauhaus school of design, and particularly the amazing women that came out of it. For example Anni Albers, I saw a comprehensive retrospective of her work last year and didn’t know that she was from the Bauhaus! I had such an appreciation of her work back then, and now learning about how the Bauhaus and how they restricted the women from creating to their full potential really disappointed me. On the other hand, learning about the Guerrilla Girls was really uplifting for the future of women in art and design!

The collaging activity that referenced the style of M/M Paris was something that made me think differently about the way we design. I think this activity really took me out of my own head and stripped away any preconceived ideas of how to create and design. Mixed with an element of risk and surprise, the letterform outcomes from this activity were all so varied and interesting.

The people that inspired me this semester:

Beci Orpin, the creative I interviewed. Super inspiring to see a creative at work, and the type of ‘at work’ where she loves it but it will also pay for her meals and rent.

Karen and Andy, thank you so much for sharing your wealth of knowledge and hands-on experience.

Everyone else in the course! Everyone thinks so differently and it’s been super cool to see what everyone can create when they’re working in the same space - from things as simple as the workshop activities to the fact that together we’ve now produced 200 professional interview publications, which are all completely unique and so different from each other that you’d be surprised we all just went through the same course.

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it’s done!!!!

despite several mishaps today as I was finishing the last little bits of the zine, I finally have it completed.

I decided to follow a blue, pink and yellow colour scheme throughout (mostly), referencing the colours of beci’s work.

each page features a cutout which exposes something from the next or previous page, which I think makes the zine flow really nicely! these cutouts also reference the collaging beci is known for.

most visuals are beci’s, and any additional ones were created by me in gouache (beci mentioned during the interview that she is painting more now). the visuals I created are meant to act as frames for her work or the text, letting those be heroed.

the “all day donuts” visual on the inside of the front cover references the sign on her husband’s restaurant, which is in front of her studio. this sign is what first caught my eye when I visited her studio and sort of acts as a “front door” for the zine.

although the finished zine looks quite a bit different to what I had expected it to look like this morning, i’m still really happy with it!

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the front cover: from prototyping to final print

at first I created quite an “artificial” front cover, using found images and a preinstalled type on indesign. however the continual prototyping pushed me to experiment more with both cutouts and homemade font styles.

my final front cover features beci’s name spelt out of different coloured felt shapes, which I cut up and glued before scanning in. below that is a circle, which will be cut by the laser cutter to reveal a swatch of blue gouache from the next page.

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The creative I interviewed, Beci Orpin, a few years ago talking about what happiness is to her. Nice message at the end about going at your own pace and how everything will work out in the end, exactly what I needed to hear when looking at the huge amount of work I still need to do to pump this zine out!

You are so damn Inspirational Beci. Seriously.

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formatting time!

this is the first long publication I’ve ever made where I have full artistic freedom so it’s actually been really hard trying to figure out exactly what aesthetic to maintain throughout. I’ve warped a lot of text to follow curves, to reference how beci’s designs lend themselves to loose, simple shapes and curved edges. 

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Making visuals! A big work in progress...

I’m trying to stick to three colours: a light blue, light yellow and pink. Hopefully then, if i’m not able to find a riso printer that will finish the job in time for friday, a normal print run will still get a similar effect!

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This is soooo interesting!! Seriously considering printing via Riso after looking at this :)

24/05/19

Progress #4 - “Ask me anything!”

- My prints have arrived! Since Ashley owns a Riso printing studio I thought it was only necessary to get my imposition printed by her. I could not be more obsessed with how they turned out, the colours are so bright and vibrant. She also gave me some goodies to read :)

My next step in the design process is to CMYK print images of her artwork over the Riso prints, and then to bind the zine together. So far I have explored binding through sewing and stapling, but I have time now to really experiment with what ways I like better.

The Riso printing process is so intriguing and interesting, and I would really love to have a go at this in the future. The Risograph makes a stencil of the image by burning tiny pixel holes into a paper master. The master is then wrapped around an ink drum, and ink is pushed from the drum through the master on to the paper. This all happens one colour at a time, so the paper goes through the Risograph once for each colour of the design.

If anyone else is interested in getting their zines and posters printed this method, I highly recommend Ashley and Helio Press:

Website: http://www.helio-press.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heliopress

Instagram: @heliopress

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prototyping and experimenting with cutouts!

because I want to include lots of cutouts in my final design, a prototype really helped me see how this would work and what considerations I need to make when formatting my indesign file.

for example, the cutout is obviously two sided, so two seperate pages on the indesign file will have a shape missing from them. also, the part that the cutout reveals should be thought about really carefully, because it can look ugly/a bit weird if it’s revealing a random patch of text from the next page.

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starting my zine today eeeep!

I’ve put all the text in, and some early visuals including some sketches beci gave me in response to questions. 

I’m still trying to figure out the accompanying visuals I design, and how to make sure I’m not unintentionally copying beci’s style of work, but also ensuring that what i create acts as a complement to the images of her work that i’m sourcing. 

right now I’m experimenting with cutouts through the entire zine, which reference the collaging that is central to her practice. 

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Today I interviewed my creative, Beci Orpin, and visited her studio!

Here’s some images from her studio, so colourful and amazing.

Now I have to type up the 18 minute voice memo I have and shorten it down 😪

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collaging last tuesday ✂️

out of all the typography classes we’ve done so far, this one definitely made the most impact on me. rather than seeking out typefaces that were already there, like we did with “architexture”, this one required us to think a bit more critically about what we were seeing and what it could become. So many of the letters that other people had stuck up were so inventive, they made you forget what the cut up image actually was!

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After today’s lecture I remembered that the Carlton bookshelf we were talking about is actually on show at NGV so I checked it out :) The composition actually reminded me of the collaging we did in class; it sort of looks like it was created from a collage of bright cut up shapes! 

Also after Karen and Andy mentioned the forgotten women of the Bauhaus I visited the ‘Designing Women’ exhibition (below left: Patricia Urquoila, below right: Elliat Rich), super cool seeing female designers heroed! #yeet

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architexture

this week we spent some time walking around rmit, finding typefaces in the architecture. some of them stood out straight away like they were meant to be there (eg the I or O!) but others we had to search for. some of them also changed depending on how you looked at them! for example the triangle pictured in the top row could be an A, V or D depending on your perspective.

this activity really made me think about how the way we communicate is intrinsically linked with the environment around us!

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Tin & Ed - graphic designers to start, now installation artists/illustrators/AI, light and media artists/designers. such a varied practice and I love how they collaborate with each other as well as with all other fields of work!

the first creative/creative duo that I sent an email to and they’ve already replied!!

“hi bella,

we won’t be in melbourne during that time, however we are happy to do a Skype interview if that still works for you, let us know!

chat soon

Tin”

Now to figure out what questions to ask before a Skype call is organised eek!!

EDIT: although we had some initial conversations, an interview with tin&ed didn’t work out in the end as they’re just too busy right now. 

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Away last week so couldn’t attend classes but here’s some pics I took during the week of some design that caught my eye.

1. MoMA, exhibition being installed, the black shapes on the left in particular are reminiscent of the typefaces everyone was exploring in class using simple shapes

2. BOOOOOK by Bob Cobbing, simple sans serif font which has been stretched out in a really interesting way, love the composition

3. disposable plastic bag from a deli, most delis in New York all have a unique bag design, some have smiley faces or bouquets of flowers illustrated on them, most have the text “thank you for shopping here” or “have a nice day”! So uplifting and a nice example of good every day design that has elevated the mundane design to something beautiful :) (these deli bags have also been featured in the book PLASTIC PAPER by Sho Shibuya, great read)

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does good design have a lifespan? 

Finished, and managed to avoid burning the house down in the process (big yeet)!

After a lot of deliberation I decided to write my question in matches. I felt this medium reflected the essence of the question down to it’s simplest terms. As the question progressed, the matches got more and more burnt, their entire lifespan being depicted in the image. This adds another element to the question - matches are well designed, but they have a short lifespan. 

So what do you think? What’s the connection between the quality of design and its lifespan? Is there one simple answer, or is it more complicated than that? Does good design have a lifespan?