Durex “No Exit”

Came across this while researching for our new “Anarchy In The UK” guerrilla/ambient advertising brief. Clever.

Visual Thinking Final Video

Really happy we managed to pull something quite good out of the bag, it took us so long to think of something to do. The idea is that chalksticks aren’t actually chalk, so we tested the chalkstick against things that look a bit like chalk to show how badly it performed because it wasn’t those things. Then we tested a chalkstick against actual chalk to show that it was better than the authentic chalk. I’m really happy with the final video 🙂 and we think we’re gonna rename it “The Pretender”.

PIN-UP SHEETS

Sponge Day 2 – TYPOMANIA

Today we were looking at type, specifically the typography in and around street markets, as it is often more quirky, creative and unusual than that usually found on shops etc. We managed to visit Shepherd’s Bush Market, Portobello Road, Brixton Market, Spitalfields and Brick Lane. We had a very long list of words that we had to attempt to find examples of typography for, I don’t think I’ve managed the whole list, but I gave it a good try. Here are a random selection of images from today:

The Legend of Leigh Bowery

As I’m doing my Self Initiated Project about Club Kids, last night I watched a documentary about the legendary performance artist/fashion designer/pop star extraordinaire Leigh Bowery.

I think I’m now a little bit obsessed with him. He lived pretty much his whole life as a performance, as a persona. He was a fashion designer, yet he didn’t want other people to wear his clothes – he wanted to design clothes for only himself. He was essentially, the very first Club Kid, yet is hugely under-rated. He was well known for wearing completely bizarre outfits, and often for wearing nothing but a fake vagina (including a home-made wig). He just seemed dead cool.

I think the thing that I like the most about Leigh is that he is entirely about self-expression, looking how you want to look, doing what you like and being exactly who you like. I think underneath it all that’s what being a Club Kid is all about – having a really good time and not giving a fuck about anyone else.

INDESIGN WORKSHOP

Sitting around working off computers isn’t really my sort of thing to be honest, and for that reason I found the InDesign Workshop a little bit boring.

However it was very, very useful and I learnt completely from scratch to be able to make a decent looking piece of design on a programme I’ve never used before, which is amazing cos I take forever to learn how to use programmes.

I’m quite pleased with my finished piece, however I think it could be a little too close to the original.

“OUT OF ORDER” PHOTOGRAPHY BRIEF

In pairs we had to work to the brief “Out of Order.” In our pair we concluded that out of order meant “out of normal sequence” and we then found a quote regarding the topic – “order is never observed; it is disorder that attracts attention because it is awkward and intrusive.”

We decided to do something based around this and try and disrupt the typical order of someone’s day. To do this we went to Liverpool Street Station, and threw loads of balloons off a balcony. At the time it seemed like it would be much more disruptive than it actually was, people generally ignored them which was upsetting. Thinking back we could have definately thought of something much more distracting a disruptive to do, we just got a bit caught in the moment as we got the idea so late.

– pictures to come –

CORE CONCEPT: OLOGY-ORGY

We had to come up with a new science, a new study, a new ology of something. I actually really liked the idea we came up with – Dooretiquetteology. The study of Door Etiquette.

We did LOADS of research, filming people opening and going through doors, which was surprisingly hilarious (or maybe we just got too into it) and coming up with door opening techniques such as “The Tall Man Tunnel.” I really enjoyed all the research.

However, when it came to our presentation, we let ourselves down. This is partly due to a technology failure as we couldn’t play parts of the video research, and partly due to the fact we group couldn’t decide how to present the findings. Half of us wanted to go all out and make it really funny and get right into character etc, but the other half wanted to keep really serious. In the end it was a disappointing mixture of both.

I was quite happy we still got an alright grade at the end of it, but I can’t help feeling we could have done a lot better which is annoying.

INTRODUCTION TO VISUAL THINKING

We were again split into groups. We were each allocated a drawing material, we got chalk. The aim of the game is to make a 1 minute video explaining something about chalk or how it works etc.

We actually found out a really interesting fact about chalk – it isn’t actually chalk, it’s made from the same thing used to make Plaster of Paris which is Calcium Sulfate. So we came up with the idea of chalk being a lie, and probably spent too much time overthinking this idea.

We’ve actually got an idea that we’re going with now. The fact that chalk might be useless for a lot of things, but as chalk it is on top of it’s game. We’re gonna test out how chalk performs as lots of other (ridiculous) things, such as a cigarette, or eyeshadow. Obviously it won’t do very well, then we’re gonna test it as chalk to show that yes, chalk is shit at doing a lot of stuff but it is brilliant as chalk.

This was by far the project I’ve found most difficult, I’m glad we’ve got a decent idea that we can film cos I was really worried we were gonna end up with nothing.

INTRODUCTION TO PHOTOGRAPHY

This was our first solo project, and it was photography and despite doing photography for two years at A Level, I’m not a huge fan (probably because I did it at A Level).

The brief was “Space” and we had to present a space in a way that it hadn’t been seen before which I thought was a really interesting concept. However I found it very hard. Originally I went to Greenwich Foot Tunnel because I thought it would be really intersting, but as it is a tunnel, it’s spectacularly boring to photograph because it just looks like a tunnel.

I then went out and about in Kingston to find unusual things to take photos of. I ended up taking photographs of the stairs behind John Lewis. I don’t hate the photos I’ve taken but I definately think they could be much more interesting, there’s not a lot going on.