brettadamprocon3-blog

[brettadamprocon3-blog]

We are launching an online print shop in May and are now looking for a number of mancunian illustrators and graphic designers who want to sell their designs with us. 

Just submit a low resolution example of work with a small description and if possible a link to your portfolio to shop@2022nq.co.uk by midday on Friday 12th April 

[brettadamprocon3-blog]

The BBC have a sense of humour it would appear...

I found this the other day and I thought it was quite funny. The BBC launched this headline on their website on the 1st of April. Clearly mocking April fools day. The concept is really quite funny as it's completely ludicrous.  

[brettadamprocon3-blog]

I was talking to my flat mate earlier today and she was telling em about an exhibition that was on in manchester where a photographer had taken pictures of iconic buildings and scenes from around Manchester and altered them in post production to make it look like the Apocalypse had happened and Manchester had been destroyed. The images are stunning and beautiful in a twisted and uncanny way. Seeing the scenes of Manchester that are so familiar to me destroyed and desolate is quite shocking but there's a slightly twisted appeal that the images have. I'm so gutted that I didn't get to see the exhibition and see the images in their full glory.

[brettadamprocon3-blog]

R[G]DE - Redesigning [Graphic] Design Education - My review

I was asked to write up a review of my thoughts on the Redesigning [Graphic] Design Education conference that I went to and here it is:

Redesigning (Graphic) Design Education Conference, 14/03/12 University of Derby

I was selected by Joanne Greenhalgh to attend this conference along with Mike Holmes, a recent graphic design graduate of The University of Salford. I was intrigued by the concept of the conference and looked forward to hearing other people’s thoughts on the future of graphic design education.

Adrian Shaughnessy set the wheels in motion with a series of four provocations that spread across the day, his concept that we live in a post graphic design age was an interesting and thought provoking suggestion. His concept existed based on the idea that it is possible for anyone to be a graphic designer in our contemporary society. In our smaller discussion groups criticism of the idea was highlighted; coming to the conclusion that we are not in a post design age but a post format age. Design and ideas are still as important as ever but the method of delivery is so extensively varied that its format becomes only subsequential. These thoughts teamed nicely with those of provocateur Colin Davies, who talked about design being a craft. We spoke in our group about the break down of graphic design and the areas it can be separated into such as HTML5, research, idea generation, four colour process. All of these are ‘crafts’ in their own right and it is important that one embraces them as such.

He also spoke about how physical practice and the history of design should go together hand in hand to create a symbiotic relationship that will generate ideas and a ‘thinking practitioner’.

I took particular interest in Colin’s thoughts that, ‘Design if nothing else, makes the world knowable’. Design is a tool which enables a greater understanding of the world around us.

Throughout the day we had numerous tangential discussions that produced interesting thoughts and remarks, one of which was the reoccurring idea that collaboration between education and industry would be most beneficial to design education, as people from industry are at the forefront of design and shape its ever changing form. This led to a student based discussion of the methods of industry interaction, which furthered the group’s conversation onto The University of Salford’s DNA (Designer’s Northern Alliance). We also touched on how private colleges will alter design education’s future as the recent raise of tuition fees no longer makes them an expensive alternative to University education.

One of the suggested discussion questions ‘Academic critical thinking versus vocational learning’ was deconstructed during discussion and Mike Holmes developed an alternative approach ‘Critical vocation, thinking and doing’. I agree with this concept, both doing and thinking are equally as important within design but in education there should be more emphasis on following through on smaller ideas even if they don’t seem as strong. A phrase emphasised by tutors at Salford is “get it wrong now” when working in industry there’s little room for error, but while in education one is able to push concepts that may or may not work, therefore the opportunity and room for error should indeed be utilised.

Provocateur Rebecca Wright gave an enthusiastically optimistic presentation on ‘designing for happiness’, or more openly, deigning for purpose. Her speech engaged the room and looked towards the future of design education with optimism, suggesting that design education should prepare students for forthcoming changes in design promoting a positive embrace towards them.

Towards the end of the day we discussed that modern technology influences graphic design greatly. The present day graphic designer’s tool is most commonly the computer and this, along side the internet, has made way for a new method of learning. Social networking such as Facebook and Twitter has made it possible to share work and to research new design, though in many cases this new technology is not being used to its fullest. A more ‘blended’ learning experience that incorporates digital and physical learning was the prominent want of most students in regards to the future of graphic design education.

[brettadamprocon3-blog]

The official opening of MediaCityUK and The University of Salford's new building happened yesterday, the Queen and Prince Philip came to Salford for the occasion. Prince Philip opened the University building as he was the first Chancellor of The University of Salford. The Decode/Recode event was taking place at the same time and Prince Philip walked through the area the project was taking place in to see what we were doing. He asked a few students questions about the project and I was one of the student that got to talk to him. 

After he left the project continued. I worked on a couple of small pieces and re-added them to the central server so that they could be decoded and recoded further and mixed into other pieces.

[brettadamprocon3-blog]

The Plaque

Decode/Recode - Celebrating 100 years of Alan Turing

This will be the beginning of the film we think. The plaque is located between his feet at the statue in Sackville Gardens and explains about Alan Turing. We thought this was a good starting point and a nice introduction to the fim.

We have faded the whole plaque into full visibility to give it an essence of obscurity and hidden information. 

[brettadamprocon3-blog]

The ‘Jump Out’ of the Statue

Decode/Recode - Celebrating 100 years of Alan Turing

This is the clip of ’21st Century Alan Turing’ leaping out of the statue after the apple has turned green. He is now a physical representation of himself in the form of our actor and is about to embark on a little journey before slipping away again.

This has again been filmed and edited at a few angles so we can chop and change durin the final editing process.

[brettadamprocon3-blog]

Slightly embarrassing! At least the sound has been removed as it was not very comfortable sitting on the bronze statue. 

Masking the Bronze Apple - ‘The Jump Out’

Decode/Recode - Celebrating 100 years of Alan Turing

This scene has had the green apple masked and will be editied to show ’21st Century Alan Turing’ jumping out of the statue.

[brettadamprocon3-blog]

Masking the Bronze Apple - Fading Back to Bronze

Decode/Recode - Celebrating 100 years of Alan Turing

[brettadamprocon3-blog]

Masking the Bronze Apple - Fading Into Green

Decode/Recode - Celebrating 100 years of Alan Turing

For the scenes in Sackville Gardens, we want to run with the theme of Alan Turing ‘jumping into the 21st Century’. So to visualise this, we decided to make the bronze apple that the statue is holding turn bright green, to represent the statue ‘coming to life’ and Turing to be animated as a physical being (a.ka. Bretty!!)

A similar scene will be used at the end, but reversed, to show the demise of Turing after eating the poisoned apple. This is a visual representation of how he was ‘dropped from History’…of how History has abandoned him and how he has not, in the past, been acknowledged for everything he did…

[brettadamprocon3-blog]

I initially put together the stop motion video and then forwarded it to Amelia who applied the effects to it. I agree that the flickering light adds to its look. Though it was a pain to render almost 8,000 images into one clip 3 minutes long!

Edited Apple Scene

Decode/Recode - Celebrating 100years of Alan Turing

Here is the Apple Scene that I spent an age editing. It was quite difficult because of the changing lighting of the background as the apple was placed next to a window so it would rot quicker.

However, i think this probably adds to it and the changing lights make the apple look ‘jittery’ during the footage which was the effect we wanted to go for. I have masked out the coloured background to focus on the apple itself, highlighted the contours of the apple and increased the green to almost luminous. 

[brettadamprocon3-blog]

INVITATION

Celebrating the official opening of the University of Salford MediaCity UK Building.

23rd March 2012 at 1pm Festival Week 26th - 30th March 2012

[brettadamprocon3-blog]

I set up my DSLR in my kitchen for 2 weeks taking a picture of this apple rotting. My flatmates thought it was an odd request when I asked if I could rott an apple in the corner for 2 weeks but once I explained they were all very understanding.

More Alan Turing Filming

Decode/Recode - Celebrating 100years of Alan Turing

More pictures from our filming. This is from raw footage, none of this has been edited or had any sort of effect applied yet.

[brettadamprocon3-blog]

It's all starting to come together. It should be all done in the next day or so. I'm looking forward to getting it out there and seeing what comes back ones it has been 'decoded and recoded.'

More Alan Turing Filming

Decode/Recode - Celebrating 100years of Alan Turing

We have been continuing to film for the Decode/Recode event happening this week and it has taken up the majority of our time filing, editing, putting it all together. But it has been a lot of fun!

Some of the scenes we have been filming have varied in location and theme meaning there is quite a lot of varied footage to edit together. This is to fit into out theme of choppy, short, editied scenes to reflect the state of mind. 

Throughout the entire film, it should progressively more choppy and jumpy and less refined to symbolise the decline of his mental state of mind due to the hormone therapy.

One of the first scenes consisted of ’21st Century Alan Turing’ jumping out of the statue at Sackville Gardens, as if into the 21st Century, so therefore we filmed a large chunk of our piece in and around Sackville Gardens and his old place of work.

One scene was filmed around Urmston with ‘Turing’ riding a bicycle wearing a gasmask and in his PJ’s. This is to reiterate the idea of him riding to work on a bicycle wearing a gas mask because he had hayfever and also wearing his pyjamas underneath his tweed jacket.

There are to be intermittent scenes of Turing in the University building, sitting at a desk and writing down binary code and formulae from different angles.

Another of the scenes is of a decaying apple that we left at Bretts house to rott over a period of time whilst taking photographs every minute to be sure we captured the whole process. This is another scene that will also be intermittent throughout the film.

We have started to edit and put together the pieces now and have learnt a good few things in the process. We have been doing tutorials and a lot of research into After Effects so we could produce the effects we wanted and the outcome was how we desired.

More to come….and a lot more to do! :)

[brettadamprocon3-blog]

Roses Awards 2012

Last night was the roses awards. I entered this year as I did last year. I selected the Wot R U doin brief. Sadly I did not win anything but I did get chance to see the wining pieces. Sone of the work had very clever concepts. I particularly liked the Winner for the sprout clout brief which had used the popular card game 'top trumps' to create 'top trumps'. The work was comical and very well laid out. The concept was clear and the designs were fresh and appropriate to the game.

The night was as busy as ever. I think the turn out this year was even greater than last year. I couldn't stick around for too long but I stayed for the announcements of the winners and Napier University had a very good night wining several briefs.

[brettadamprocon3-blog]

R[G]DE - Redesigning [Graphic] Design Education

Yesterday I went with Joanne Greenhalgh and Mike Holmes to The University of Derby where and event called Redesigning [Graphic] Design was being held. Students and Tutors from art and design colleges and universities across the UK gathered to discuss the future of design education, focusing partly on graphic design.

Upon our arrival at Derby we were issued with bound notebooks to use throughout the day. They followed the square, circle, triangle and hexagon theme that all the posters and leaflets did.

The day was extremely informative and there were several though provoking talks on design and how its changing.

From before I started the graphics course at salford I realised that the profession of 'graphic designer' is a multifaceted one. There are so many areas within the term 'graphic design' that it can all become quite overwhelming. 

Throughout the day we split off into small groups and analysed what practises work well in design education and what areas need strengthening, I was amazed at the number of students who mentioned that they felt that the marking criteria and guidelines on their course were unclear or absent as I have never had that issue and I have never heard of any students on The University of Salford's graphics course say that they have had problems in that area.

We were asked to present our group's findings at the end of the day and to aid us we wrote out our key notes out. Mike Holmes and Daniel Lock (Loughborough University) presented our findings to the rest of the groups.

[brettadamprocon3-blog]

Google posted this link on twitter 2 hours ago. It talks about the happenings at Bletchley Park during the second world war. Whilst alan Turing was working there. It outlines the development of the first ever programable electronic device. The Colossus.