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Reflective Journal

During this unit I have been studying vinyl records. I chose to study vinyl records because I have a real interest in them and I enjoy listening to music. Throughout this unit I have been experimenting with lino printing. I first did lino printing in college and I enjoy it so much. Most of my research has consisted of reading articles online, reading articles in magazines, reading books, taking photo and doing drawings.

Due to studying records I’ve had to visit many record stores. I’ve mainly been focusing on the record stores in Norwich but for my report I had to contact record stores further afield such as London to get more information. I got lots of responses that helped a lot with my report. I think if I had more time and funds then I would have liked to have visit record stores down in London and in other various places. I did take a day trip down to London to go to an exhibition called The Infinite Mix which was all about video footage that accompanied music, even though this didn’t contribute much to my report it did contribute a lot to my practice as I have been looking at what inspires artists to create their record sleeve designs, so it was nice to see what inspired film artists to create their music videos. While I was down in London I did get to visit one of London’s most popular record stores called Rough Trade, while I didn’t manage to get to speak to the owner I did get to have a look around the shop and take some photos.

My time management has gotten a lot better during this unit, especially when it has come to writing my report. Unfortunately, I haven’t used the print room as much as I would have liked for lino printing, but I have been doing lots of lino printing at home. When I finally got round to using the print room I knew my prints would come out a lot better than the ones that I did at home but I actually preferred the prints that I did at home better than the ones that I did in the print room because I preferred the effect and there was a lot more texture in the prints which I quite like. I also liked the vintage look that my home prints had as they didn’t come out completely perfect like the ones that I had done in the print room. During the next unit I would like to use the print room more and also maybe do some screen printing as that was another thing that I was interested in doing at the beginning of this term but then I got so into lino printing that I never got round to creating work for screen printing.

Thinking about it now I do wish I had booked some time on the laser cutter. I researched the possibility of creating records using a laser cutter and it is possible, you can make a record using a laser cutter and some wood. I found this quite interesting and I think it’s something to think about doing during the next unit.

The tutorials that I’ve had throughout this unit have been really useful, I decided to stick to seeing the same tutor each time, which was Robert. Even though we had the option to choose whatever tutor to had for our tutorials, for me it was helpful to stick with the same one as I could take back work and ideas that we had discussed in previous tutorials.

I really enjoyed doing the group work, I was in group 5 and I feel like we worked really well together. I think our publication really brought everyone’s work together nicely. Our display, I thought, looked really good with everyone’s separate publications merged together with the different objects that we all brought in. The objects that we used were related to each member of the group’s separate projects. We made good use of both of the event days by doing a workshop on the first day, where we filmed people creating their own narratives using objects and text that we had laid out for them that related to each member of the group’s separate projects. On the second day we decided to show the outcomes from the workshop, which consisted of showing a short time lapse of people’s work from the day before.

I decided to write my report in the style of an editorial, so I had to write an article. I decided to go with an editorial report because I planned on interviewing lots of people and I thought that writing an article would be a great way to gather my research. I have been looking at many articles, online and in magazines, mainly articles from music magazines. I have mainly been looking at MOJO music magazine, I’ve been looking at the layout out of the articles and how they are structured. This helped me with the layout of my article.

When I first started this project, the sleeve art was my main interest but then that slowly got overlooked by record stores, I became more interested in the independent record stores and how much they are used. I’ve also been concentrating more on the popularity of vinyl records and looking into the recent craze. I’m glad that I did concentrate on these aspects as it was easy to gather information as it meant I could simply email record store owners and vinyl enthusiasts about it. If I had just concentrated on the sleeve art then I would have had to contact several designers, which over the Summer I did manage to find quite a few emails and send some emails asking if I could ask them some questions but I never got any responses. When I had my first tutorial at the beginning of this unit it was suggested that I move away from the sleeve artwork and look more at the record stores and their owners and customers, which I did but I still carried on researching the artwork as well, as it was important to my practice.

Talking to record store owners was a great experience for me. I loved hearing about their thoughts on vinyl and their own personal stories of how they became record store owners. I also posted some questions on a vinyl record forum page and got lots of responses from vinyl enthusiasts, it was also nice hearing their views on vinyl records.

I’ve been turning my lino prints, drawings and paintings into record sleeves. I’ve been using Adobe Illustrator to create record sleeve templates and then put my designs onto them. I had this idea of going into record stores in Norwich, recording different sounds and then getting them pressed onto vinyl and then designing a sleeve for them, I was thinking the collection could be called ‘The Sounds of a Record Store’. I have mainly stayed focused on Soundclash records in Norwich, I’ve done many lino prints and paintings of this store mainly because I like the look of it and I love the colours. If I had more time I would probably have done lino prints of all the records stores.

As well as looking at the drawings, paintings and photography that you see on record sleeves, I have also been looking at the typography. I have kind of just been creating my own style to accompany my lino prints and paintings.

Overall I’ve really enjoyed this unit, I think my time management could still improve so that’s something I need to work on during the next unit. I also want to make more use of the facilities available to me as I really liked working in the print room.