AS-A2 Project

Social Work Advertisement by Dave McKean

Dave McKean was probably asked to create a poster promoting the work of social workers and raising awareness of the severe and damaging consequences of depression and isolation, so he made this marvellous piece of art marketing that manages to do both these specifications with great as much precision and efficiency as a mercenary sniper.

The work is basically a map which I am hundred and seventy nine percent sure that the artist wanted us to depict some sort of journey for either the social worker or the client. I deduced this by looking at the work and seeing there were pictures located at several points of the map, for example, dotted at one point were several cartography symbols of a graveyard as it would appear on a map (exaggerated a bit of course) this is coupled with words of departure from the clients mother and is the artists way of making the reader interpret depression. Another example would be located at the end of the map where lie a bunch of cartography houses, now I’m not sure about this but I think the houses represent symbolically families and that the client or patient has recovered from isolation and had now reached the end of the recovery journey and is now at home (home being the place where you feel at peace or live with family).                                                                                                                    

The function of this piece of marketing would be to show isolation and open up peoples feelings to the emotion and causes that people like Sonya have gone through. The art designer seems to have greatly taken this into consideration as you can really tell that the feeling of discrimination and isolation are present because of the effects used and the way the characters are portrayed in the pictures, for example, the picture of Sonya sitting in her bed alone is in a Sophia or grayscale effect to show that this photo has a negative atmosphere or mood, where there’s no positive reinforcement as opposed to the picture nearing the end of the path with Sonya on the bus with other people and wearing  smile on her face.

The themes of this piece would be ‘social work’, ‘depression’ and ‘recovery’, using cartography the artist has managed to create a unique way of presenting the job of social worker as well as the previously mentioned journey of someone suffering from social isolation, the message I would say is delivered very clearly and the step-by-step process describing dramatic changes and story telling. Information is displayed cleverly by using symbols vital in the patient’s/client’s (Sonya) life, for example, a door is shown on the map after the death of Sonya’s mother, this is to show that Sonya has barricaded herself in and someone would have to open this door to get through (an obstacle essentially).

Through the layout you can make out the job of a social worker, you can really the difficulty and I think the art director has really managed to portray the specification of showing the advantages and rewards of helping someone, Again I think the artist has done a great job portraying this, because in the piece not only does Sonya’s life go from negative to positive, the emotion and mood also transform from grey to colourful as well as the symbolism and the message portrayed.

We choose to analyse this piece because it shows excellent use of imagery elements, typography and symbolism as well as more practical elements such as cropping to create an emotionally striking piece that is not as clichéd as most social advertisements which often use ‘shock advertising’ and show negatives instead.

Um..its not a horror movie I promise

Pioneer ‘Kuro’ Advertisement ‘seeing and hearing like never before’ by Lee Clow

Pioneer, when designing their latest technological breakthrough probably thought ‘how do we make this thing stand out’, they probably didn’t think the same thing Lee clown was thinking.

The word ‘kuro’ means black in Japanese and since pioneer is a Japanese company they probably wanted a name that people would recognise. However their hired graphics designer Lee clown took this to the next step and created a dark almost disturbing advertisement/montage/Piece of art.

Utilizing the newly developed ‘shock advertising’ movement he combined the slogan ‘seeing and hearing like never before’ he linked controversial themes, Photoshop and surrealism to create the pioneer ‘hand’ advertisement as its known now.

The advertisement depicts a strange realm where hands have eyes implemented in them, this is perhaps linked to the slogan ‘seeing and hearing like never before’. I deduced this by thinking about what the advert is trying to sell to the viewer, the answer to that (As it would appear from the advert) is a new innovative way of watching television, this also links in with the hand and the eye because we don’t usually have eyes on our hands and we see through the eyes attached to our heads, however the art departments message in this portrayal is that a new way of seeing could be through your hands (hands being freedom or the option to act; revolution or innovation perhaps?).

The hand and the eye are also very powerful symbols that portray the word of evil as well as certain conspiracy organisations and symbols of power. Not only that religions and cultures also use the eye symbol as a message reminding followers of the ‘all seeing eye’.

So from what I can gather from this work (about the artists intentions) is that that the client pioneer have constructed what in their mindset is a divine piece of imagery technology (KURO) and in order to capture this massive divinity they have told their art department to make sure the advert delivers this message.

Certainly you can see that the background in the advertisement is plain black, this could be to show a clean – cut or contemporary mood is present during the advert or to simply bring attention to the hand and eyes by focusing the viewers attention away from everything else. 

The use of Photoshop is also marvellous, super imposing; cropping and frame to frame stop motion pictures are all brought together  to create this piece of art and I suppose this is why we chose to analyse this certain piece. It is unique in a way (shock advertising and all) but also it allows to see what a graphic designer must be capable of and what they can do when under a set of specifications from clients, I’m sure the artist Lee Clown would have had plenty of way of doing things differently but in the end it’s the client that must be impressed, not only that but it also shows that symbolism is a powerful element when done with such elegance.

‘Intolerance Destroys The Fabric Of America’ by Jenny Tran

 Not much can be said about this artist because despite spending around half an hour looking through search sites I did not manage to find a single piece of information about this piece and there are too many humans ‘Jenny Tran’ to search individually through

The piece is a small segment of the American flag, its made to appear like it’s a piece of fabric and there is a missing patch near the center of the flag, what’s strange however is that there appears to be strings of writing aligned into the flag, upon closer inspection you can tell that the patchwork hole in the fabric is also constructed (or deconstructed) by the lines of comments.

 Background research tells us that the comments are actually racist remarks and forced opinions caused by written by some members of the American public, however not much is known beyond this point due to censorship maybe?

The piece as you can now imagine is quite controversial in a way, Jenny Tran is obviously telling us what she thinks of such people, quite blatantly.

Just south east of the patchwork hole there is a sentence saying ‘Intolerance Destroys the Fabric of America’, Intolerance would mean the inability to view other viewpoints or objects or people as acceptable, this is quite a strong message claiming that this will ‘destroy’ the fabric of ‘America’. This is what makes this so controversial, perhaps she was talking about the pride of certain Americans and judging by the patchwork hole only covering a small area, maybe she talking about the small population of people who are stirring hate and revenge from in their own country (patchwork hole is in near center of the picture, meaning that it as created from the inside ) against America belief of unity (The country was formed by the unity of workers and families from across the nations during its early years). If this is really what Jenny Tran was implying then we can assume that the lines of writing which are known to be comments and messages ‘flaming’ (the internet has used this word to describe angering or starting a argument on threads and forums and it is quite popular) other people and spread their intolerant viewpoints.

 We can also tell by the image that the flag is not a full American flag but a small portion of it, this could tell us that currently this virus (looks like code language being devoured by a program, matrix style) is only infecting a small portion of the picture, if we took on the fact that the flag in the background is actually a symbol of the American country then we could assume that only a portion has fallen to it, however we can also tell that lines of comments are spreading by the patterns their exhibiting, perhaps Jenny Tran is not only sending her viewpoint on the situation but also saying that this could go out of hand unless people learn to accept things and see things in another persons shoes and understanding them as well (being tolerant).

 It truly is a complex piece because mainly any information about the artist was hard to find as well as any information on the piece it self, perhaps it was offensive to some people making comments about their narrow mindedness, this is a good example of the rebellious, morality messages that can be transmitted from art.

Billie Jean ‘Vandal’ ’30 years of Nike project’

To celebrate 30 years of basketball and Nike, Billie jean created this collage, which was described as ‘almost like a breath of fresh air’ during our class analysis of it.

The work itself is as I described a collage of hand drawn images on what looks like squared paper, the kind of find in a math’s notebook, the feeling this gives the work is a familiar feeling, we have all been there in classes bored or just not understanding what’s going on so what did we do? We ‘doodled’. This really helped the audience connect with the work and it also draws attention to itself through this style.

We also decided that the symbols and images used in the piece seem to originate from the 80’s, a for example, there appears to be a space invader present near the bottom of the screen, a hand making a ‘peace’ gesture even vague implications such as the ‘85’ on the basketball players back might mean 1985 and if that’s not enough well you can see a massive ‘1985’ written right next to the shoe.

The work can be assumed to be titled as vandal; this is because the highlight of the work is clearly the ‘vandal’ type basketball shoes centred among the rest of the images. This is the key object and it really links Nikes 30^th anniversary, the theme of the 80’s and the idea of basketball being incorporated into society.

What I mean by that is that Nike had were largely responsible for the fashion of wearing basketball shoes casually, there endorsement and designs made the shoes ‘vandal’ popular among both basketball enthusiast and fashion followers in the 80’s, perhaps this is what the artist is trying to say, the message may be that Nike is still as innovative and quality as it was back then, that they can take designs and make them unique and ‘fresh’ every time.

We did not discover a deep meaningful message in this particular piece of work, however the uniqueness of its retro style is simple yet amazing, the artists skill at shading, contrast and patterns is amazing, also the patience and imagination it must have to visualize this piece and to construct it is a skill in itself.

The theme of all the projects in the ’30 years of Nike campaign’ is simply street style, using a large amounts of simple shades, media and familiar faces and symbols the artists in the campaign have created youthful, stylish, eye catching designs and Nike has acknowledged this by labelling each piece of work with a sticker that makes each design official. Also as i mentioned before that weve all 'doodled' before and maybe the message being sent is that freedom can be achieved through imagination and also the artist has said 'when your older you can develop your own universe', maybe he is telling all youth's stuck in their classrooms to be patient and stay imaginitive because that is what will help them build their future or their life (universe meaning living space).

Jasper John ‘Flag’

Jasper John is an American painter and printmaker, he stayed in south Carolina for 2 years, he claims "In the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn't know what that meant’. 

He started drawing at the age of three, then went to a university in South Carolina and then moved to New York for further studies, however he was then part of the army, he was stationed in Korea and Japan during the Korean war, maybe this is why the theme of most of his work is maps and flags.

He is also a known for utilizing ‘Abstract expressionism’, which was created after the Second World War and can be defined for defining art as ‘nonrepresentational’ meaning it can not be represented by any single viewpoint and that it can always be improved.

So being the abstract artist he is Jasper John’s work is quite well unexplainable in a way, for example, one his works labelled as ‘Zero nine’ is simply the numbers zero to nine laid out in a chart type format and decorated with oil pastel contemporary colours, the reason for this method or theme I can not explain, however the maybe the explanation is not needed, maybe we need to looking at the bigger picture here, Jasper John has always used numbers, maps and stencilled letters in his works according to Wikipedia and my observations and this overall theme is maybe what’s important.

He is best known for creating the painting the painting ‘flag’ which depicts the American flag and that’s all, the painting is quite detailed though and was created using oil and fabric collage techniques. Because the painting thing is so simple however the viewer may have trouble seeing the immediate message however being the individualistic artists he is he may have wanted it to seem different, perhaps the message isn’t in the painting, maybe the painting is what he believes, maybe the actual message is what this painting symbolises, this may sound a bit ‘iffy’ but the man did claim that the reason for creating this was because he had a dream about the flag.

The rest of his work is also abstract and hard to define, after all abstract expressionist are known to for different techniques and vague messages, they try not to hide messages into their work instead they focus on what their creation itself represents.

Perhaps this is why we were asked to analyse his work because its not obvious at first and needs to be viewed in a different light before it can be understood, also that and the ‘flag’ painting created by him is a directly link to Jenny Trans ‘intolerance destroys the fabric of America’ painting. This is because the flag was painted by Jasper because he believes (I think) that America represents freedom (he also won a freedom award recently) and unity and Jenny Trans message through her painting is that America (symbolised by the flags) is being torn from the inside by certain viewpoints and that this belief of freedom and unity are falling apart.

Stefan Segmeister

Stefan Segmeister is a graphic designer, who uses typography as his primary technique; he has studied in the University of Applied Arts and began his career at the age of 15 with a magazine known as ‘Alphorn’. The magazine was aimed at youths so hiring a graphic young graphic designer may have been a good move for the publishers.

Later he worked in Hong Kong for Graphics Company and after that his career really rocketed from here, he began working for clients such as HBO, Time Warner, Rolling Stones and Guggenheim museum. He is known to take a sabbatical (1 year of no work) every seven years and he is very serious about this because he refused to work on a poster for the Obama campaign in order to a sabbatical leave (gap year). During this leave he claims to refresh himself as a designer and experiment with techniques and work.

As a graphic designer his work is client based and he has a good client list to boot, he has designed the album covers for the ‘rolling stones’ album ‘bridges to Babylon’ and ‘the distance to here’ album by ‘live’ and also the ‘nine lives’ album by ‘Aerosmith’ and also has good contact with Lou Reed and David Byrne. This is impressive for someone so young to have grown up wanting to design music albums and reaching his goals.

He also teaches at the school of visual arts and according to Wikipedia his motto (personal belief) is that "Design that needed guts from the creator and still carries the ghost of these guts in the final execution” I think this means that a artist must use their beliefs and ideas in their design and use their instinct even though some circumstances might be against them and when they start creating their work they must carry on using these beliefs.

He created a poster for AIGA for their fresh dialogue talk, I am analysing this particular piece of his because we have studied typography before and I can apply my knowledge properly in this analysis.

So basically typography means communicating with design, this particular piece achieves this by the using a image of two tongue (tongues being a symbol of communication) with the title behind them saying ‘Fresh’ behind one tongue and ‘Dialogue’ behind the next. The background is plain white and covering this background is details and dates hand written into the background about the event the poster I advertising, it’s a rather simple concept but it is eye catching as the tongues are rather biological compared to the writing and text. The tongues being on opposite sides also goes along with the communication aspect that goes with talks and debates, you know being on opposite sides and it is pretty clever to symbolise this with two elongated tongues, however they still appear a bit phallic.

His other work uses the basic theme of typography and uses images such as patterns to communicate messages, for example the ‘talking chair’ piece by him is a chair with text sown into its backrest, these are fairly simple typographical techniques and perhaps its good in its own way because despite being fairly simple most of work uses various media’s and abstract techniques to create interesting pieces of work everytime.


He is Quite respected as an artist and has a reputation for being down to earth and level headed, he has gained a grammy but he still hasnt let the glory get to his head, it really shows that taking small, meaningful steps can make a powerful result and hopefully the graduate he teaches will spread attain his way of thinking.

David Carson

David Carson was brought into this planet on the 8th of September, 1952. According to Wikipedia he is ‘the most influential graphic designer of the nineties’, this would be hard to believe if anyone read how he started out.

He first took a 2 week graphics course in the University of Arizona then a 3 weeks course in another place, because of these short courses people may assume he wasn’t exactly motivated to pursue his career as a graphic designer at that time; they may be right or not. However when he met a certain teacher he was said to have been inspired and took his natural talent to the next level.

His career only truly took of during the 1990’s where he worked as a professor of sociology and he worked as an illustrator for surfing skateboarding and other Skateboarding magazines. However once he started working as the art director for a magazine known as ‘Ray gun’ he was apparently famous ‘world wide’.

"It's not about knowing all the gimmicks and photo tricks. If you haven't got the eye, no program will give it to you." this is a qoute by him and while it may be cruel to those with no talent, it shows his beliefs that 'gimmicks' and 'photo tricks' will only get you so far you need the idea or vision to go further, this is something he can get away with saying though because once he was started with his career in graphics, he literally taught himself all the techniques, his dedication and drive is admirable and you this carries on into his work and gives it a presence and character.

His covers featured some heavy examples of typography featuring several ‘mixtures’ of colour, shades and contrast. Distortions and mixed plains of vision were also present creating what Wikipedia describes ‘fractured imagery’. I think this term describes the style he uses very well because his layout scheme almost looks like a collage of colour and highlights; in fact some of his magazine covers don’t even look like traditional magazine covers.

 However some his work is very ‘talkative’ if I did have to give it a word, its filled with presence and communication like its a poster sending a message for example one of his pieces ‘ Do not be satisfied Do not be satisfied Do not-’. Id like to think, bear in mind his reputation as the godfather of ‘Grunge graphics’ and ‘Dirty type’, that he is sending some sort of rebellious message saying don’t be satisfied with what’s there, aim higher or something along those lines.

I choose to analyse his work as group and to research him because we have already covered typography as a technique and it was good to see it done right, David Carson’s work is nice to look at because of the distorted effects and techniques he uses in his work as well as the interesting layout he incorporates, mixing words, varying sizes into what could have been plain magazine covers with loads of text and headlines as well as created works which have a clear message such as one piece of his wok which claims legibility is not the same as communication.

Jamie Reid 'Never Trust a Punk'               

Jamie Reid is a British born artist who studied in Croydon and then went on to create screen prints then create artwork for the music industry. He is known ‘Anarchist’ meaning that he believes when a body of authority could potentially harm or has stressed its human relations with its rule, it should be abolished and replaced with a ‘stateless’ rule or otherwise known as ‘the peoples rule’. So basically the term ‘Anarchy’ means to reject rule or domination.

Jamie Reid was involved in protest and campaigns to stop the implications of rules and codes that limit freedom; according to ‘Wikipedia’ he was known to protest against ‘clause 28’ (limited the rights of homosexuality), the ‘poll tax’ in the United Kingdom and some changes to the ‘Criminal Justice Bill’. This shows that he is determined to show he not only respects everyone’s freedom but also is willing to act to keep it, quite an admirable character trait indeed.

As a graphic designer or illustrator he has worked with several punk bands including the ‘Sex pistols’, ‘Pretty Vacant’ and ‘Holidays in the sun’. He created a piece called ‘Never trust a pink’ and used it as a poster to promote a ‘Sex pistols’ album. The poster is basically the British flag in all its red, rich blue and majestic white as the background to a black and white image of the Queen Elizabeth who appears to have had her eyes and mouth blacked out. Firstly the name of the album this is promoting is called ‘God save the Queen’, this is quite contradictory as a queen who is not able to see or speak (according to this poster) couldn’t surely be able to lead? Perhaps the message is that the queen or more vaguely the people in power do not understand the problems of the people of their country (people being symbolized by their flag) or that the queen is actually a figurehead leading blindly and without a say in matters (thus having just her head in front of the flag unable to see or speak).

The flag in the background is detailed to the point you can almost see seams tying it together, it also appears to be blowing in the wind, this kinetic effect is more interesting to look at than a plain flag, this means that a lot of consideration was put in by the artist. The artists signature ‘cut out’ letters are also present in this piece, almost like a kidnapping letter as seen in movies, in fact its complete with a picture of a victim (the queen), she even has her eyes and mouth covered.

The phrase ‘Never trust a punk’ is written above the Queens Picture; generally the term ‘punk’ refers to someone young, inexperienced or rebellious, now there’s a few ways you can gather a message from this, you could think maybe he’s referring to the ruling authorities lack of understanding of everyday troubles and calling them punks (inexperienced) or maybe it’s some sort of rebellious threat or battle cry saying ‘were ready to take you down anytime’, I find it pretty vague and can’t really think of a solid message but there are different ways of interpreting it.

All in all its very colorful and great to look at without trying to understand the message its portraying, as a album cover its pretty cool, considering the theme of revolting and rebelling was pretty popular in the time it this album released. I think we were asked to analyze this piece because of its historic and cultural values as well as its artistic techniques.



Sara Singh

Sara is a illustrator who has worked under such names as Givenchy, Jill sander, Tiffany, Bloomingdales, Este lauder and MAC cosmetics.

Her technique is a mixture between drawing and the use of watercolour, she sharp lines during the outlining stage to get a general idea of her illustration then she proceeds to create the image using strokes and shades of watercolour.

She uses vivid brushstrokes along with a variety of colour when it comes to adding a dash of colour to her illustrations to portray her viewpoint, i deduced this from her quote ‘The body is endlessly intriguing and drawing is a kind of stenography describing it’.

Stenography meaning a ‘shorthand’ or a quicker way of describing led me to believe she uses drawing to quickly portray a meaning of a human body (movement language, emotion etc) and that which is ‘endlessly intriguing’ could be translated into ‘forever changing’ meaning there are an infinite ways of portraying these bodies.

She appears interested in models and photography, i deduced this by the way she draws females in her artwork, they usually have long tall bodies, long necks and defined facial features, also the angles and viewpoint present in most work are almost like modelling photos, which favor lighting, effect and composition.

Her work certainly appears to be unique and judging from various Interviews and her portfolio’s it appears that she takes great pride in her work.

 


Tim Marrs

 

 Tim Marrs is a illustrator, he handles clients from a diverse field, he’s worked for accountants and financial departments to children’s books, he knows that you need to have a wide reach and you need to make your style and spread it to very corner of the world if you want people to notice, maybe the world is a exaggeration, but you have to think big if your aiming for the top or even your being imaginative. ‘Big Think’ is a article website that Tim Marrs publishes his opinions on, he expresses his opinions about wars, freedom of speech and human rights, he also comments on topics such as religion and politics.

Tim Marrs produces collages, sketches and illustrations, he is most known for his work with Nike and his cooperation with Michael Jordan and his inclusion in his campaign ads which were made by mixed media montages.

His style is messy, even gritty as described by some, but this is part of the charm, the progressive colors and blending between medias he uses is unique, his illustrations are also high quality and he manages to take risks by collaging several shaded textures into backgrounds, it shows flexibility something which he probably needed in his work when he has such a diverse client list.

The work I am analyzing from his portfolio is his creation for a band called ‘rise against’, the band is a rock band that is known for their idealistic and rebellious songs themes and I think Tim Marrs has done a good job portraying the chaos in this album cover for their 5^th album ‘Appeal to reason’.

Checking for messages the artist is portraying through this work, I found one obvious one, the name of the album is ‘appeal to reason’, yet the cover shows a warzone as it appears with barbed wires, jets and tanks. Maybe the message is that reasoning is something that can be applied to certain situations, war may be one of them according or it may not also the baby with its umbilical chord which is connected to the power charger (energy and life), is about to have its connection cut, maybe this is related to abortions (morality, killing and reasoning also links in with this).

The art itself is also very impressive, the silhouettes of objects against the orange sky (sulfur filled, explosions) are striking if I have to describe it with a word, and with the limits a client can give, specially for a album cover for such a themed band, the artist has done a good job, the audience who this is aimed at were probably very interested in the cover and had their eyes caught by the art itself, it’s a good piece of work and I choose to analyze it because it uses textures, contrast and surrealism to a good degree.