rhaxmys

[rhaxmys]

Some more follow-up with pattern creation: these are some based on some more objects found on my desk - a hair grip and an origami giraffe. Both of these were drawn in illustrator (and are much higher quality because of this) and ‘patternated’ in photoshop. I actually really love these and would be interested to draw and create more!

[rhaxmys]

Another recent and small project, relating the last one somewhat - we were tasked with getting a library book from the university system and looking distinctly at ornaments, symbols and other shapes that could be used (or adapted slightly to represent numbers and numerical values other than the traditional ones - using ‘2′, for example. The book I chose happened to feature a lot of elements from the western hemisphere during the sixties, and provided some interesting material that I tried to loosley adapt early on to distinguish possibilities for numbers. The first image shows my end results for numbers zero to nine, and the following features my loose adaptations and development.

I feel pretty satisfied with the final outcome, because I feel like I have created valid symbols that could represent different numbers individually - but more than that, I feel that the numbers fit together with a certain style that ties them together. Some are more complicated than others but my main intention was to create forms that were simple to work with. This was clearly somewhat distorted with some shapes but I think they have a linear progression of complexity so it doesn’t look particularly separating or jarring to work your way through them. However, I think it will be constantly jarring because the whole point of this project is to try and replace numerical shapes that are going against something you learn as a child!

[rhaxmys]

The aforementioned whisk pattern. It sort of has an old childrens’ book feeling to it, but this might just be the way that I drew it. I think it is definitely interesting though!

[rhaxmys]

So, with another year brings another university task - this one is clearly a bit different to the others. This was a simple challange really, a task to use found objects and re-purpose them in a completely different situation and environment. The objects I used were really quite interesting once put through this. I ended up using two bottle openers (incidently, both found in a cracker), and a tiny whisk. After drawing them in other situations, we were also challanged to draw them in some form of pattern - which was something I found more difficult with the objects I had. However, just as the session ended I had another idea about creating a pattern which I will be attempting shortly, and will post here once completed!

I have also been meaning to say that for anyone out there paying any form of attention to this page, I want to start keeping more frequent updates on here for work that I do - especially with work created at an intermediate stage, or showing any kind of development. In fact, the sort of stuff I want to show is like this work here that I have shown. Furthermore, I also have set up another blog for a slightly different purpose: dittyshoodles.tumblr.com focuses more on personal and silly doodles that I do whenever I can in my free time. I also want to keep that one more updated too...

Who knows, I may have to pack it in completely - I would like ot think I should be able to post occasionally. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that though...

[rhaxmys]

Tonight Matthew I’m Going to be...

This was our last project before christmas! And it was an interesting one to finish with to say the least. We were tasked with creating a book cover (we got to choose from a list) in the style of a given artist. My given artists was not one I knew, but he was a big name an in era that was one of my favourites, the Bauhaus. Herbet Bayer (1900 - 1985) was an Austrian graphic designer, and later in life a painter, sculpter, and exhibition designer. He was mostly known for his graphic design skill for the Bauhaus that spanned from around 1919 to 1929, and in this time he was a student and also a proffesor of graphic design. I found his work very interesting since the Bauhaus was a key interest of mine, and got right in deep into finding out the sort of work he did and trying to replicate them and/or expand on them to create work in a different but clearly inspired light. I got right to work, but originally I had problems choosing a book. From what I had learnt in the last project, I wanted to fully knowledged about the book I was picking to design (or at least partially), so this limited my choice of books to Macbeth, Murder on the Orient Express, 1984, or Bridget Jones’s Diary. I did not have much of an interest in any of them, but I was worried that I would not be able to pick another book because I would have to read it and then design a cover for it in a week, and there would not be enough time. Fortunately however, I decided to chance a different book and picked Ray Bradbury’s classic short story of Fahrenheit 451. I did not know anything about the book but since I discovered how short it was, I decided to try and find a copy on the internet and buy it if I could not download it. Luckily, I found a PDF of it and read it the same day and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and decided that I wanted to design it more than any other books that I’d thought about.

Once I had the book down, I started working on a design for it. The final design had to be presented on neat paper bound around a book, and so before designing I had to find a book to use and wrap the design around it. I had a copt of I, Robot on my shelf and thought it was a nice size for a typical book and set up a Photoshop document immediately. I actually finished my first attempt at designing the book cover the same day again, but my lecturer saw it and did not think it was in the right style that I should have been going after. At first I disagreed, but I went back to the drawing board and redesigned it with more of a Bauhaus feel and it looked much better. I was using a stark white at first which did not help, but I used an off-white that was more common in Bauhaus to emphasise its clean aesthetic but not to be too harsh compared to the rest of the content on the pages. I also tried to use a lot less red as I had done initally and combine it with a soft yellow and try to get a mid-colour that worked well with the themes of the book. I designed the twin circle graphic by hand and loved it, so I recreated it digitally and thought it worked perfectly, especially once combined with the title text. I also had time to write a brief synopsis for the back of the book too, with some reviews given in the usual fashion. Once it was finished once more, I printed it off and wrapped it around the book. It seemed to be a huge improvement on the other one, but I kept the design of the other one to showcase it. I actually had one or two other designs in the middle that show the changes I gave it too, but the final stands alone and I was very proud of it overall.

In fact, I have been proud of all of the work that I have done over the first semester. Every time I make a new post, it is nice to reflect on the work that I have done over three months and think that it came together really well - I have not ever worked in an environment in the way I have in university. Surrounded by people who think in the same way, who can give tips and advice on how something looks and how I can do the same - it is something that I have really enjoyed and I continue to look forward to next year, when we start working again. It is obviously a busy time and I do have to really concentrate on working hard but it is definitely something that I like doing, and have a passion for. I hope the projects are just as interesting in the new year!

-Max.

[rhaxmys]

Making it Visual - 17/11/17

As it turns out, perspective drawing is something that I have looked at for quite some time but never known about in a technical skill. In fact, as a child I would try and draw accurate drawings of cars and trains and I figured out most of the elements from basic perspective rules, but had no conscious thought about it in what I was doing. And I had a strong sense of familiarity once this project started, and I finally learnt the technical rules and terminology for all of the things I had had an insight into ten or fifteen years ago. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed doing this project and improving my perspective skills and again, would love to do more if needed and if there is time. Of course, this post does not actually exist for a full description for the project - this post will be comparing the work of two particularly notable artists, M.C. Escher and Vincent Van Gogh.

  It is clear that Escher was a technical genius, when it came to his artwork at least. Master of drawing, lithography and mathematical woodcuts that are impressively impossible to look at and follow. Because of his keen interest in mathematics, he obviously had a strong link with perspective. In fact, he became so involved and engrossed in using it that he would use perspective and followed produced many drawings that not only followed perspective perfectly, but took it beyond the point of real life and started using it in scenarios that could not possibly exist. Some of which include two-point perspective prints such as Relativity (1953), Waterfall (1961), or Belvedere (1958). It’s hard to exactly describe Escher’s work but within his visual illusions, what makes them so is the fact that they are completely technically correct, but obviously could not exist - he exploited the rules to find the absolute limit of what is actually possible. In fact, he did go beyond rules occasionally (a notable example of this is Balcony, 1945) but only when needed, and everything else was done to the same standard as the rest of his work and still consistently had a running aesthetic and format that make them still obviously created by him. I personally think that Escher’s use of perspective was beyond expert, but fascinating since of his extremely consistent and considered use of even the most basic features of perspective. It is clear that he typically worked with more of a mathematical approach to his artwork, and stuck prolifically in what he knew and went from there to create something beyond perhaps even what he imagined (a notable example of this is his self-portrait , Hand in Reflecting Sphere). I have a lot of admiration for him in this respect, and if attempting perspective work he is someone that should be looked at intently and analysed. If I ever needed to do any more perspective work he would definitely be a strong inspiration for me.

  To contrast, Vincent Van Gogh used perspective in a very different light. Obviously he developed his artwork in a vastly different way to Escher, and lived in a slightly different era of human history, but since perspective is such an old concept his use of it would not be hugely different regardless of the time difference between them. Also, he did not always use it in all of his paintings - but partly could have been because of his style of working, and surrounding circumstances whilst he was an artist (especially the negative views of his work). When he did use it though, his following was particularly confident and flawless. One of his most famous uses of perspective is an oil painting of his room, known as The Chamber - and the use of one-point perspective is beyond the level of expert, the level that I believe Escher reached. But the key difference between the two is when they reached the point of doing perspective at a moment’s notice. Escher, as mentioned, looked at applying the rules in ways that still were correct but obviously only in a virtual and visual way. However, Van Gogh would use multiple vanishing points but still worked in one point perspective, but just uses the different points for different objects in the room. For example, returning to The Chamber, Most of the objects in it are all clearly pointing towards one particular point - except the bedside table, and the chair on the left of it, which clearly point somewhere else on the page. If you line up the bed, wall, windows and the other chair in the room, they align to a point roughly on a line of third (from the left). But the bedside table lines up somewhere on the other side of the piece, and the second, smaller chair points to somewhere in the middle. Van Gogh also was addicted to absinthe and as a result often painted the colours yellow, gold, and orange a lot more powerful and intense than they would have been in real life. Moreover, because of his addiction, it could be fair to say that his style was loose almost sloppy, his excessive alcohol abuse perhaps levels affected him so much and left him drowsy in between times whilst he was not drunk. Maybe he even painted when he was drunk.

  Regardless of any of this, Van Gogh seemed to have a different perspective on, well, his rules of perspective, to Escher. Van Gogh would acknowledge all of the rules but not follow them to the exactness of Escher - I believe he would have had a much more relaxed way of using the rules, perhaps partly due to even his opinions of his paintings. On the contrary, it is clear that they both worked with not just perspective, but used it in a way that gave them some of their most famous works that they ever made. And it is not uncommon knowledge that Van Gogh did many paintings, and in fact Escher created over two thousand drawings and sketches over his lifetime. As I said not too long ago with Sagmeister and Rodchekno, there are specific elements that cannot be compared, but some of the undertones offer very interesting and significant comparisons. And I’d like to think I have got an interesting one here!

  -Max.

[rhaxmys]

Look, It Moves! - 04/11/17

  How Do You Feel? - https://vimeo.com/249185131

  This time around, we were going to try animation. The brief was simple - work on a thirty-second long video, using either a stop-motion technique or digitally drawn onion-skin process. I’ve always been interested by animation, even as a child I used to try and set up stop-motion scenes using a camera phone and toy cars in my kitchen at home, but I never really had the means to go any further than this. In college, I did a similar project on animation, creating a promotional video/ advertisement for a hypothetical fruit drinks company called ‘Jooce’, and I’d like to think the project went very well. The only problem is, I lost the full version of the animation due to a hard-drive crash. I actually still have copies of the original photos, so I could re-do the whole rendering, sound editing and formatting of the animation, but it would be a very lengthy process. But still, I have a small amount of experience in animation nonetheless.

 However, this project was a bit different - for the Jooce video, I actually had a designed purpose for the entire project, whereas for this one, the animation could be for anything, with any subject matter, so long as it did not contain (or the focus was not on) people. As it happens, during the first lecture I actually had a base idea of what I wanted to do, and it all started from a current pet hate. At the moment, there seem to be an endless amount of saturated, un-original and ultimately repetitive videos featured on YouTube labelled something similar to ‘ODDLY SATISFYING VIDEO’ or ‘YOU WILL FIND THIS RELAXING’. They typically feature processes done in industry that are heavily mechanical, or require years of learnt skill; or some sort of basic digital animation that fits together well, or is well designed. The appeal of these videos is not that they are particularly relaxing to watch, but they are labelled as satisfying to view. And because most millennials like things that are completely unusual and different, they are labelled as ‘oddly’ or ‘weirdly’ satisfying. Another, similar style of video are those called ASMR, which feature even more basic processes that are just amplified to create the same, ‘relaxing’ effect. Personally, I myself cannot see the appeal to them, and my idea of relaxing is somewhat different, but how can millions of YouTube viewers be wrong?

 Regardless, my idea played off of this contemporary content, whereby I would have someone carrying out some design processes, but then they slowly start to go wrong, and the whole thing changes - and perhaps the viewers would find it especially (and humorously) unnerving and distressing, particularly when juxtaposed to the first second of the animation. I wanted to follow a few paths initially, just to have more of a complexity to the structure of the animation. I storyboarded the ideas, and drew up exactly what I wanted to happen - I was going to have a colouring book, cutting a pizza, making some paper cubes, and mixing paint, with the title sequence, How Do You Feel? carried out in a calligraphic stroke throughout then duration, and being scrunched up at the end. I was ridiculously eager to start working on this idea and set to work, creating huge storyboards and following each section perfectly. I was well over the thirty second time barrier, but I wanted to work on it so much that it did not really bother me.

 I brought all my work to the critical talk at the project midpoint, and was told that my idea was far too complicated - which I did mostly agree with, but to myself it made quite clear sense - and to cut it down to a more sensible time and idea. So, I went away and did one of these: I cut it down. I focused on just one idea, which was the colouring. Looking back, I really wish I could have worked on my original idea more but I understand that I probably would have not had anywhere near enough time to complete it, especially to the standard that I would have wanted it. This came apparent when I was working on the props for the edited idea - it hadn’t occurred to me how long it would take to do. I had factored in recording and editing time, but not pre-production, which added to my slight downfall admittedly. This is why, in the final animation linked at the top, the ‘colouring pages’ are absurdly basic. It would have worked as a sort of spoof if other activities that were just as basic, but there weren’t and it did not have the same effect. Having said this, I definitely think there are strengths to the animation - I’d like to think this is an original spin or take on this new, frankly expired phenomenon, and hopefully a funny one. Also, at the least for the first half the quality and consistency is very good, as is continuity - it was done over two days because of the length of time required to take the photos.

 So, the final result turned out better than expected. It was definitely over the suggested thirty seconds (one minute and fifty-five seconds to be exact), and perhaps this did not do me any favours, but I’d like to think that it tells a strong narrative and more or less hit the point of what I was aiming for. Moreso, I definitely feel like I have become more experienced in working with animation, and would like to try more if I get the chance. Also, considering that I have had close call with timing, I have learnt that pre-production is a very valuable thing, as does envisioning how a final project will look, and how it will stand up next to everything else it could potentially be compared to. Contrary to this, there are particular elements that do stand up to the crowd. I am proud of what I’ve done for this project, and I think it was definitely worthwhile.

-Max.

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Animation name: How Do You Feel?

Setup: Nikon D3200 on a ninety-degree clamp stand. Edited in Windows Movie Maker, all sounds used are royalty free. Full video on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/249185131

[rhaxmys]

Seven Steps - 1/12/17

Another magazine type project was inbound with a partner, but this time we did not have control over what it was about - instead, we were challenged with picking a random subject out of the ‘hat of destiny’. I was partnered a talented illustrator, Hannah, and out of the hat of destiny we pulled the following question: How did Romans Heat their Homes? The point of this project was to be given a subject we knew nothing about, so that before we could start designing it, we were forced to fully immerse ourselves in the subject so that we could have better ideas that fit much better for our final pieces. And it definitely worked - before we fully started this project I honestly had no idea about how Romans heated their houses. After doing it however, I now know that some Romans could not afford it; some used what was called a Hypocaust, which is a primitive central heating system; and how a modern central heating system works. Furthermore, I used Adobe Illustrator to create some of the graphics used in the final magazine, including a whole diagram about central heating, and prior to this I doubt I would have had the abilities that I now have using Illustrator (I did not even desperately like it before now, it has definitely grown on me).

Unfortunately, this project was somewhat disturbed by a visit to Manchester for the first few days because of a uni fair, and not much was accomplished, but I did do a lot of research when I came back, and within a few days I caught up with Hannah and compiled my research into a more reasonable, readable, and sensible format. Once this was done, I could start working on typing up said research and we started working on pages once we had presented our information to our lecturers. After looking through all of our information, we decided that a more old-fashioned feel would suit our magazine, and so Hannah volunteered to paint backgrounds we could use for information, including a rough map of Europe for our introduction. It turned out great, so we kept using them once she had painted them. A lot of work for me in the beginning was getting to grips with using my drawing tablet, a Wacom Intuos Pro, and Adobe Illustrator to create repeated graphics we would use often - such as the stickmen. I got on with it pretty well once it was set up and as said, designed a whole diagram for a modern central heating system. I had to follow a few other diagrams, but it was necessary to replace a drawn one that Hannah herself had done. There was nothing wrong with her diagram, but it was particularly faint and hard to see against its arranged background. We thought about doing another background but we did not really have time, especially since Hannah was due to go to a wedding for a few days also. But we made it work without a problem. Fortunately however, because of our times apart from working together we were given a levy with the amount of pages we had to do - seven was preferred, but six was acceptable.

In the end though, I think the backgrounds we have linked with the information arranged as it is worked very well together. I honestly think that the pages are works of art all by themselves - particularly the Insuale page. I really love the background for it, and I had fun editing it along with the drawing of an Insulae that Hannah did. I put them together in Photoshop and they just worked superbly well. In fact, a lot of the pages really came together as I started editing them and I grew more and more confident in how good it was as we kept going. I did do most of the digital work but it was a fair divide of the work, especially whilst Hannah was away. In fact, the whole project was finished by Thursday morning and the hand-in was due Friday afternoon. We put some finishing touches on it and handed it in on time. Of course, not all of the information was directly relevant to the question but it was engrossing once we got into the subject matter and it all fitted together neatly and flowed well. Moreso, it seems to set the scene of the Roman era and it gives insight into information that would have been otherwise left out and potential readers may not have known about it. Also, the Hypocaust worked quite simply and we found it easy to explain in one double page rather than drawing it out over seven.

-Max.

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Seven Steps [Brief 5] 20/11/17 - 1/12/17

Hannah Breese (Illustration) & Max Wilkins (Graphic Design)

Images shot with Nikon D3200 with standard 18-55mm VR lens; pages created in Adobe Photoshop and exported as a PDF in Adobe Indesign. Low resolution preview here - Full HQ PDF available at the University of Cumbria ISSUU page.

[rhaxmys]

Old School - 20/10/17

What a project! I think I speak for most of the other students when I say that it was intense to say the least. We were challanged to do twenty-one individual tasks - including stitching together books, embossing paper, constructing letters; and even (depending on whether you were an illustrator or graphic designer) copying already created artworks with extreme accuracy. All within two weeks! The purpose of the project was to develop skills in presentation of work (which included preservation of work) and the making of things that could set us aside from other artists these days. The tasks given and mediums used could be described as outdated and obselete but that was the point, if not given away by the title of the project - to make us aware that doing things digitally is great, but not the be all and end all. Sometimes for the effects and themes you are trying to achieve, a manual process is required or more applicable. However, this is not the point of this post. The point of this post is to talk about the work of one ‘old school’ designer and compare them (and their work) to another, more modern designer. These two designers have been left up to us to choose, and my choices were Russian contructivist Alexander Rodchenko and New York based Austrian Stefan Sagmeister.

Alexander Rodchenko (1891 - 1956) worked with graphic design, and is known for designing propaganda during the Russian revolution before turning to photomontage and painting in later life. In fact, a lot of 20th century graphic design is inspired by much of his earlier work. Russian constructivist propaganda from the revolution fascinating, and Rodchenko is no exception. The design would have been done on a harshly constricted budget, rationed materials at best, and with next to no time for production, and it shows today - a lot of the examples of his work and other works from the same era have completely disintegrated or are almost completely degraded. Moreover, the work would have all been done originally and by hand. The typestting would have been manually done so, and the imagery would have been photographs or cut out of whatever magazines they would be able ot get a hold of. Even the paper would have been cheap, and extremely thin (which is why mostly they have not lasted at all). Nevertheless, the work was outstandingly influential with the tide of the revolution and generations after.

This influence might also be to do with how the work was designed - a lot of black and white to show defiance and oppertuinity for improvement, with striking notions of bright colour (particularly red, blue and green) to further encourage these themes. Not only this, but the type of language used was influential by itself - perhaps one of his most influential and known works features a woman calling with the text “КНИГИ [ЛЕНГИЗ] ПО ВСЕМ ОТРАСЛЯМ ЗНАНИЯ,” which translates to Books! (Please) in All Branches of Knowledge. Obviously it could be phrased better, and perhaps it could be more literally powerful if better language was used. But I like to think that because of the poor and borderline desperate conditions, the fact they took the time, effort, and resources to create something that gives such a message has more power than any words they could use. And quite frankly, these sorts of messages put together in flyers and posters at that time gave them so much power that it obviously did not Russia in the same way after the revolution (and Rodchenko’s death). In fact, his work went beyond its purpose and stuck the interest of many designers succeeding him: for their 2005 album You Could Have It So Much Better cover, the alternative band Franz Ferdinand were heavily influenced by the Branches of Knowledge poster, featuring a girl in the same pose but screaming Franz Ferdinand rather than the original message. But still, designers dilute and mix.

Stacking up against Rodchenko and others from the Russian revolution is a tall order, but Stefan Sagmeister may be up to the challenge. Born in Bregenz, Austria in 1962, he has lived long enough to work both manually and digitally, but in more recent works will combine the two and usually end up with a digital result. He co-founded a design firm with Jessica Walsh in 2010, and along with other designers have worked for clients such as Snapchat, BMW, 7Up, Pepsi, and even RedBull. In fact, Sagmeister & Walsh have worked for so many clients in a variety of media that they are reknowned as being some of the best graphic designers in the world. Sagmeister himself generally takes sabaticals and breaks every seven years but nothing keeps him out of the line of the design industry for long. Obviously, Sagmeister is far from being in the same position as Rodchenko. His work is technically speaking infinitely more advanced, taking advantage the rise of the digital age, along with processes that would look alien to Rodchenko. Not only this, but because of his status and profit from his (and other) works, he does not have any issue with buying and using the best materials money can buy, time and time again if necessary. This suggests that Sagemeister’s work has a completely different meaning to that of Rodchenko’s, or at the very least, does not have the same level of desperation, nor a feeling of trying to change the world. Having said that, they are not entirely different.

For one thing, Sagmeister is known for creating work that is certainly left-field, and going the extra mile. In 1999, he designed a poster for a lecture for AIGA-Detroit & Cranbook Academy of Art: and all of the details of the event (ticket prices, location, time, even the sponsers of the event) were scratched into his body by his assistant and left to scar and show the information. For one thing, I think this is one of the most outlandish and insane things ever done in graphic design history, but Sagmeister does not suprise me in achieving this. Furthermore, it would have hurt surely to just write his name, but literally all of the information from a traditional exhibition was cut into him, spanning from just under his collar bones to just above his crotch, at least two feet of his body. Sagmeister has often been questioned on his approach and design of the poster since, and his response is seemingly “If you want to be original, you must be able to take the pain.” Despite English not being his first language, he manages to find the most succinct and flawless words to use in his work. Furthermore, despite his calculated and consdiered use of langauge being the exact opposite of the desperate, rushed messages from Russian constructivism, they have something quite interesting in common: the wanting to change the world. And, as it stands, both designers seemingly have done so in their own way.

Comparing Rodchenko and Sagmeister is difficult in some respects, given their different pathway into design, surrounding circumstances, and influences of their time - in fact, Rodchenko may well have influenced Sagmeister. But as mentioned, their desire to stop people in their thoughts and their tracks is palpable and identical. The only differences are from the lives they have lived, and peroidical influences. This does not mean however that you could swap the two and put them in each other’s cicrumstances and expect equally as iconic outcomes, but you can bet that such a happenstance would be interesting to explore. Regardless, no matter the level of technology, or language, or even how potentially threatening the subject matter is, I firmly believe you can draw similarities between two graphic designers from anywhere - their work will stand out and shine above others. It will be stunning and striking and give them all of the credit that they deserve. Two designers we can say this is clearly true for are Alexander Rodchenko and Stefan Sagmeister.

Either way, what a project!

- Max.

[rhaxmys]

On Location - 6/10/17

Following on from the fresher’s mystery tour, On Location has been our first real project. I was partnered with fellow student Alice Levy, and we were challanged to pick a place in Carlisle and design a stylized, twenty page magazine featuring the chosen location as a main theme. I thought about looking around the Market building in Carlisle, and Alice agreed this would be an interesting place to look into, because it definitely is a fantastic building - listed as Grade II, in fact, and the only remaining indoor Victorian market hall.

Carlisle market is that it has a great historical aesthetic (with a fully-documented history to go with it), and plenty of unique stalls with lovely proprietors, but it has an underlying problem: it is virtually almost completely empty. There are easily more stalls and proprietors than people, even at its busiest of times, and when me and Alice walked around taking photographs, it is not hard to see the lack of people (furthermore, we were asked by the market hall managers to not take photographs of people without permission, but it would have been much harder trying to photograph the people in there full stop).

We talked to some of the proprietors about their stalls and business, and none of them really had good news - in recent years, they mostly said that people just came less and less. One of them had moved stalls a few times, but she said the decline of customers was inevitable; slow, but steady. I wanted to know what they thought was the cause of the decline, and they all gave different reasons: some blamed the digital age and internet shopping, but I think the real reasoning is more in depth than this.

Sweet Musketeers is a stall inside the market hall that is on the far left (from the front entrance), and owned by one of the proprietors we spoke to. His stall was costing him almost six hundred pound a month, and whilst he had a great display of sweets business was nonexistant for him. He spoke about how most of the people in the stalls are barely behind them for more than three days a week, since some days the hall is so empty they do not see any point in coming in. For one thing, it seems like a vicious circle - the less busy the market hall is, the less people it attracts and less of the business owners want to come in and man their stalls.

Worse still, the market hall now has a direct link to both Wilkinson’s and TK Maxx, both of which are larger, retail stores that are able to sell almost anything and everything the market can offer at a cheaper price. Unfortunately, shoppers have to walk straight past the market to get to these shops, and most of the stall owners see them walk straight past (they always say that heaven is so close to hell). But because of this, people do not even think to go in the market because they do not have a need.

Beyond this, the market from the outside can be a bit misleading. It has two street entrances, but if you are new to Carlisle, they are not immediately obvious. The first looks just like a frontage to TK Maxx and Wilkinson’s, and the second looks like it is closed off for maintenance. This means that if tourists and out-of-towns people come and have a look around the town, even if they think to have a look at the grand, Victorian market hall they have heard about, they might just walk straight past it altogether.

Alice and I were left feeling sorry for the struggling, stoic proprieters of the market, and we really wanted to show it in a respectful and promotional way that would appeal to people of all ages. Having said this, we also wanted to show it for what it is, a struggle for the business owners that may cease to exist if it keeps going unsupported as it does, since it is not getting any sympathy from anywhere else. The magazine we created was fourteen pages (we did not find enough content for twenty, but we focussed on making fourteen great ones), and we’d like to think we did a great job.

- Max.

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On Location [Brief 1] 25/09/17 - 6/10/17

Alice Levy (Illustration) & Max Wilkins (Graphic Design)

Images shot with Nikon D3200 with standard 18-55mm VR lens; pages created in Adobe Photoshop and exported as a PDF in Adobe Indesign.

Low resolution version here - Full HQ PDF available at the University of Cumbria ISSUU page.

[rhaxmys]

22/09/2017 - Carlisle Fresher’s Mystery Tour

As it says at the top of the blog, I have just started UoC in Carlisle (at the Brampton Road campus), and in the first week we were challenged to go around the town and take pictures of different places and sights to see that really make Carlisle, well, Carlisle. Especially since many people haven’t visited the city often (or at all), and it was a great way to hang out with new friends and see a lot of the town all in one day.

We had a checklist of twenty-five things to take photos of, and I almost all of them here (these were all taken on my DSLR; some of the others were on a friend’s phone), and some extra ones that I also put in because they seemed to fit with the project! Regardless, this is the start of hopefully many posts of work to follow in the future!

- Max.

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Camera used: Nikon D3200 with 18-55mm VR standard lens.

Group members: Max Wilkins, Daniel Coates, Jenni Fearn, and Charlotte Briggs.