kierangeary-blog

[kierangeary-blog]

ayyyy

I actually did stuff this time!

Uni Stuff #3

So this post’s studio case study is going to be Kin Design. Kin is an “interaction design practice“, meaning that they specialise in designing real world events and exhibitions, stating that “[they] create relationships between people, information, spaces, and things” (this is however not exclusively what they do). They have a very extensive portfolio boasting work with big names like Nokia, ITV, D&AD, addidas as well as museums like the RAFM and Imperial War Museum. But that’s only half of the story, Kin keep a research journal, acting kind of like a blog in the sense that they post any side projects and addiditonal thoughts about things they have discovered/learned. I very much admire this, the openness and sharing of knowledge is always commendable, especially when it’s executed as well as it is on Kin’s website - everything is very well organised, well written and informative. As stated earlier, Kin are known for their interactive installations at museums, they use bleeding edge technology to immerse the viewer/user into becoming a part of the installation, driving interest into the content that is being presented to the user in an intuitive and unique way, making the experience more memorable and leaving an impact on said user. My favourite of their exhibitions is one they made for the Imperial War Museum. It’s just so damn creative. It’s aesthetically pleasing, and although abstract, the form of the exhibition is relevant (even if from the bottom it does resemble an imperial star destroyer), and the concept is just fascinating. From my understanding they use the lights inside the sculpture as a transmission device, the brighter the light the higher the frequency, just like a radio wave, they then use an optical sensor as a reciever to take that light data and translate it into audio. Genius. Pure genius.

Personal Stuff #3

Haven’t been up to much really, just the usual. I’ve been watching a documentary series about design called Abstract: The Art of Design, its on Netflix its really damn good. They basically shadow an influential designer (in a variety of fields) while they work on a project and explain how they think and why they think that way, it really gets me inspired to make things even though I’m trash at making stuff. Apart from that I just got a new Surface Pro, which was likely a terrible idea because I can’t draw for shit, but it’ll be fun to see if I do anything interesting with it, if not then I can return it at the end of the month. I sketched a bit on it and it feels weird compared to what I’m used to (i.e. cheap printer paper and pencils), but its definitely a lot of fun to use. I sketched this komodo dragon, its trash but it was fun to draw...

Today in good music: The Unicorns - Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone?

Cheers for reading!

[kierangeary-blog]

oops

“I’ll try to keep [the blog] updated weekly“ - Me, Jul 5th 2018

Well the whole weekly thing didn’t quite work out. I’ve been back at my job as an IT guy since then so I haven’t had a day free to do work/update this blog (he says). I’m back now however so I’ll be getting a move on with my referral brief and in turn this blog.

Uni Stuff #2

I really only did a few days work total since the last blog post. I managed to mock up one of my initial ideas and give it a thourough evaluation and I started to put together the pieces for the second idea. You can see the result of the mockup below...

And before you ask, yes the shaking at the end was intentional, I went and added that because of how shaky it was during the action not realising to do it at the begining too so it’s a little inconsistent. Anyway, you can probably guess how It was made, I took a little cutout of the Bauhaus signet and a little party horn thing, put them against a sheet of paper and photographed each frame...

I was surprised how good it looked even with the awful color choice and lighting due to British weather. I’ll be making an improved version today, maybe with even more/better colours! That’s all I’m really willing to show at the moment, I’ll keep you posted when I make something nice.

On the other hand I completely forgot that the task for this blog was to actually find some cool studios/companies/people that I like in the world of graphic design, so I’ll go ahead and do that now by introducing the wonderful Truba. Truba is a relatively new animation studio by Greg Sharp who is creative director and Nina Knežević, a producer. I found Truba through a series of music videos they produced for the band, Unknown Mortal Orchestra which I found visually interesting. Sharp’s has a very distinct visual footprint on the works that he directs, it has a very comic-like colour pallete, with flat colours and interesting lack of use of outlines, relying on the contrasting colours to define the shapes in the frame. The music videos mentioned earlier are relatively simple in terms of animation, they have a few short repeated elements that are copied throughout the scene with some minor changes throughout, this creates a much slower pace than expected, but it make the viewer take in what is happening on screen in more detail. Sharp says in the description of their We’re Not In Love... video that the reason the animation is simple is because of “extremely ‘cosy’ deadlines”, but the effect it gives on the pacing and overall video is still interesting and unique. Truba does more than music videos though, they have done a lot of work with [adult swim] to make some interesting TV idents as well as featuring in their “Rick and Morty Exquisite Corpse” short. Finally, they have some original series/shorts which also have interesting premises. They say they mostly use Flash to animate their work, opting for traditional frame-by-frame animation over keyframing. To conclude, this studio is interesting, it has the “one man’s vision“ kind of feel to it, one creative vision that knows exactly what its doing and exactly how to do it and because of that the work they have been producing thusfar is interesting, creative and innovative in my opinion. (I know I said “interesting" a lot)

Personal Stuff #2

To be perfectly honest I’ve had a free hour here and there since I’ve been working, but I didn’t want to overwork myself so those free hours have been spent watching either Star Trek (TOS) or running. You obviously know Star Trek, its one of the biggest Sci-Fi franchises of all time, second only to Star Wars. It’s quite nice to see how small scale it was back in the day though, where the newer itereations of the franchise are more concerned with being badass, the TOS was more concerened about raising some interesting scientific/philosophical/moral questions. Albeit TOS isn’t perfect by today’s standards, that’s mostly down to its presentation and some cheesy dialogue, but for what it was, a 60s low budget Sci-Fi adventure show, it was pretty damn good. I’ll be moving onto TNG after I finish TOS, which I have high hopes for!

I also went to see Mission Impossible Fallout while I was visiting my dad one weekend, which was okay. It was kind of exactly what you would expect, there’s not a whole lot to say about it.The only thing I think that’s worthy of note is Cruise’s final “fight scene” in the helicopter with all the crazy mounted cameras, which was pretty cool. I’d reccomend it if you’re into that kind of thing. Apparently some of it was filmed at Thorndon Forest!

Today in good music: Yes - Close To The Edge (Yay, more prog rock!)

That will conclude this blog post. Thanks for reading! Have another picture of Zippy.

[kierangeary-blog]

start

I don’t really know how to start this whole blog thing off, but I guess I’ll start by saying hi, I don’t know how, but you’ve managed to find me! Good job!

I’m a design student at NTU at the time of writing this first post (we’ve been asked to start a blog as part of our transition to second year). It’s pretty standard to state what your intentions are for these kinds of things so I might as well do it too, I expect to post some bits of things that I might be working on, be it sketches/drawings that i impressed myself (if that actually ever happens), pieces of uni work, or some occasional personal projects that i engage in every once in a blue moon. I’ll also try to post about stuff that’s happening in my life, but I’m a little antisocial so it’ll likely just be posts about music, film, books, design or videogames that I’m enjoying at the time.

I’m a little late in actually starting this blog, but I’ll try to keep it updated weekly. 

Uni Stuff #1

I’m currently doing my referral project since I struggled to keep up a little bit last year, I’ve chosen to do a TV identity/advert for the “100 years of Bauhaus” campaign. So far all I’ve really done is say that in my sketchbook with some pieces of work produced from the bauhaus that I think are interesting and I would like to use somehow. The campaign already has a very strong visual identity with heavy use of their logo in almost everything they promote, its a very striking typographical logo which is essentially just three thick black rectangular shapes, one with hard angled edges and the other two being smoothed out to represent “100”. It’s a good logo to be honest, it’s stylish, original, it embodies the minimalist teachings of the Bauhaus as well as being a really flexible design so you can really be creative with how you use it. I’m not sure if I want to use it/an altered version of it in my work though, or if I’m even allowed to. Since its so rectangular and block-y (I don’t think that’s the right word but oh well) they use it a lot as a frame for header images on their articles and images on their social media, which is not a new idea but it works well for the most part.

I also can’t really tell if the campaign having such a strong visual identity is limiting my creativity or giving me a leg up. On the one hand I am kind of forced to stay within the boundaries that they have already established if I want the look and feel to stay consistent with the rest of the campaign, which can potentially be limiting, but at the same time that could potentially be a benefit since I already have a place to start generating ideas from, which might help me initially. 

Either way I’m committing to the Bauhaus theme and TV ident, because I feel it’s a topic that’s in a grey area for me in the sense that I know about it but not too much about it where I’ll be drawn to do certain things rather than exploring, but I’m really enjoying exploring motion graphics and want to continue to play around in that area a little bit more since I didn’t really get an opportunity to incorporate it into my actual work before the animation project in first year. 

above: first entry in sketchbook.

I guess people like to hear about your hobbies in these kind of things so here we go, I run a fair amount, and as a result of that I listen to a lot of music, I like to listen to as much a variety of music as possible (my Spotify library is a bit of a mess). I try to listen to at least one new album a week, so I’m going to be copying a YouTuber that I like by having a “today in good music“ section of my blog, this time it’ll be Pink Floyd’s greatest album, Animals. Give it a listen! Music is a big part of my life, it’s most of the driving force behind my work, I normally can’t work without some kind of background noise, sometimes it’s TV, but most of the time its music.

Apart from running and listening to music I watch some movies and play a few videogames if i have time. I haven’t really been keeping up with films so far this year though because I’ve been trying to get through my game library and haven’t really seen much I might find interesting in theatres. I wont make this post any longer than it needs to be, so I will just say that if you’re into videogames in the slightest, you need to play Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight. Its a marvel of game and art direction and deserves every recommendation possible.

Thanks for reading this far! Sorry I didn’t have a lot of work or anything interesting to show off, I’ve been slacking off for a few weeks to be honest, I kind of stepped back into some bad habits since I’ve been home, but I’m gonna try and do at least a few hours of work every day from now on, so I should have something interesting to show next time. It took me a few hours to write all this up, so in the future these posts are likely to be much shorter. As a reward for making it to the end, have a cute picture of my dog, Zippy.