Week Two - Industry Today
Geo-tagging studio practice and company analysis in your city.
My Location
I’m from Warwick which is a small historic town in Warwickshire. I’ve lived here all my life apart from the three years I spent living in Birmingham while I completed my Undergraduate degree in Photography. Coventry and Birmingham are the closest cities to me so I have plenty have places to gather inspiration for my practice.
Geotagging Task
Select a design business that you admire, which is located close to where you are based.
AG Photographic and Photolab, Birmingham
AG Photographic and Photolab is film processing and printing lab based in Birmingham, established in 1946. They specialise in film processing, fine art printing, mounting, framing and a wide array of specialist photographic consumables and products, with a customer based all over the UK and the rest of the world. They aim to provide services and products to professionals, enthusiasts, students and artists. This is where I get all my 35mm film photos developed and printed, I always find that the service is great and it’s a quick turnaround.
Fargo Village, Coventry
Fargo Village is a re-purposed industrial space in Coventry city centre, designed for creative and independent businesses. It opened in September 2014 with a mixture of mobile catering units, cafes, a brewery and small boutique shops housed in repurposed shipping containers. Throughout the year FarGo Village hosts many different events and festivals such as; food festivals, dog shows, classic car shows, dj sets, independent makers markets and record fairs.
Brief 1: Perspectives
The first brief requires us to produce a quadriptych, which is a polyptych of four images. Each panel of the quadriptych must respond to the questions:
Who are you? (Name, background, influences, what makes you you?)
What is it that you do? (Showcase a pivotal project or moment in your practice.)
Where are you? (Does your geographical location have an impact on how you work?)
Why design? (What does design mean to you? Why does it fascinate you?)
Initial ideas
For my initial ideas for my quadriptych I am going base it off what I wrote down on my blog last week for my who, what, where and why.
Who? For the ‘who’ I wrote about how I love music and collecting records. I spend a lot of my free time going to gigs and festivals and browsing the record shops. So for this panel of my quadriptych I am going to do something surrounding this. I might draw a record or record player or I might draw something relating to live music like a crowd or something to do with my favourite festival (Glastonbury.)
What? For the ‘what’ I wrote about how my creative background is actually in Photography and not Graphic Design. I got my BA in Photography from Birmingham City University and I’ve always been interested in photography and art. In the brief it says to ‘showcase a pivotal moment in your practice’, as I am still quite new to Graphic Design I wouldn’t say I have a pivotal project just yet. However, I do have some digital portraits that I have completed that sort of lead me into the path I am on now, so I could include these somehow. I could also potentially showcase one of my Photography projects that I believe was a ‘pivotal moment’ in my practice.
Where? I live in Warwick which is a small historic town in Warwickshire, I have lived here all my life. For this panel in the quadriptych I already have a good idea of what I would like to do to
showcase Warwick. I really like those illustrated maps of towns and cities that have all the popular landmarks on them so I think I am going to create one of these for Warwick.
Why? For the ‘why’ I wrote about how design is a way of expressing yourself, your thoughts and ideas. It’s a way to escape into another world, use your voice and tell stories. This is the hardest panel for me to think about visiualising.
Brief 1 inspiration / research
Below are a couple of artists that I like and that inspired my idea to create a an illustrated map of Warwick for the ‘where’ panel of my quadriptych.
Brumhaus
Brumhaus (Alexander Edwards) is a Birmingham born artist that I discovered at ‘art in the park’ which is a big art festival in my neighbouring town, Leamington Spa. Alexander has always admired Birmingham’s varied and ever changing skyline, he is inspired by modernist art, design & architecture. Particularly artistic pioneers like Picasso and Paul Klee of Bauhaus (hence the name.) Brumhaus’ work shows a unique perspective on cityscapes, landmarks and suburbs from locations across Birmingham and the rest of the midlands. When the company Alex worked for relocated, his commute became an opportunity to take in the built-up city centre and he started drawing, saying “it was a labour of love initially.” The ‘Old Library’ sketch gained some interest online and was a catalyst for Alex to consider going at it alone. So after gradually dropping from full-time to part-time he finally took the leap in 2017. What starts out as a compositional pencil sketch, of either a real view or a montage of individual elements brought together, is finally developed as a digital artwork. The final pieces are created as giclée art prints. These pieces of art are geometrical, abstract and are unique.
I decided to buy one of these prints at the market to remember my time I spent living in Birmingham while I was at university. I went for ‘Brum Cityscape 2.’
Harborne
Danni Simpson
Danni Simpson was an artist that I actually discovered on Tik Tok, she is an Australian artist who specialises in commercial murals and illustrations. It was her video of the city map illustration of Manchester that I first saw and I really loved the detail and scale that went into it. She clearly does a lot of research on the city she is illustrating and the longer you look at the prints the more you little details you notice.
Manchester
Jewellery Quarter
A few years ago Danni picked up a pencil and started drawing Mandalas to deal with her anxiety. Eventually the drawings got bigger and bigger and she was asked to do a mural at her local bar where she was living in Australia. From that mural Danni dedicated every minute to growing as an artist and took every opportunity that came her way and it has led her to where she is today. Over the years she has showcased her art in cities all over the globe, including a huge project for the 2018 Commonwealth Games held on the Gold Coast, Australia. Danni has also worked her way throughout Europe designing numerous murals for cafes, bars and restaurants. As well as murals, she has also worked alongside top high street labels creating their digital illustrations and designs.
Manchester
Glasgow
Reflection
In particular I really like the maps that Danni Simpson illustrates as they have so many little details in them and really show off the character off the city she is looking at. I would love to create something like this for my map of Warwick to go on the ‘where’ panel of the quadriptych, however I firstly think it might be too detailed to fit into a piece of work like a quadriptych as all the images need to look good together. Secondly, creating something like that would take up so much time and with this brief only being three weeks and the whole module only being twelve weeks I don’t think I would have the time to dedicate to making something like this.
So for my map I am going to keep it a lot more simple, I am going to chose a section of the map in Warwick the majority of which will be the town centre. I will then draw out this section of the map and just illustrate on the most significant landmarks such as the Castle, the Lord Leycester hospital and the best pubs/food spots.
Brum Cityscape 2
Coventry