Design Cafe (anag. signeD faCe)

Yesterday, me, Matt, Mike and Sara started up the Goldsmiths Design Café.
We put a lot of effort in and I think it really showed. It looked great, the food was amazing (home made soup courtesy of Mike, home made bakewell tart courtesy of Matt) and we got some really positive comments.
We are raising money for our degree show at the end of the year and so far have got off to a good start.

What Rhymes With Worm...

Finale

Colour charting cont...

Colour charting

Colours. Look at the colours.

Painting = Progress

What's funny is that usually, I have around a month to develop, produce and get sick to death of a project to the point I hate it more than anything I've ever done in my life. However, I have actually managed to achieve this within a 4 day period.

Although, I did research what message the colour of a rose carries and it was quite interesting.
Here is a sample:
Red Love, Beauty, Courage and Respect, Romantic Love, Congratulations, "I Love You", "Job Well Done", Sincere Love, Respect, Courage & Passion

Pink Appreciation, "Thank you", Grace, Perfect Happiness, Admiration, Gentleness, "Please Believe Me"

Yellow Joy, Gladness, Friendship, Delight, Promise of a new beginning, Welcome Back, Remember Me, Jealousy, "I care"

Orange Desire, Enthusiasm

Lavender Love at first sight, Enchantment

Blue The unattainable, the impossible

So this has actually given my project some kind of substance. I'm just not sure how relevant it really is. Or if it's just plain dumb.
Oh well, truck on.

Sexy Cigarettes

Eugh, no thanks.

Oooh, how appealing and delicious.

Lippy

I have stuck to my guns over the mark making project.
The design concept for this project is based around lipstick marks acting as a messaging tool. When they are left on a mans collar, they say "I'm sleeping with your husband". When they are left on a wine glass in a bar, they say "I'm here to meet a man". (All opinions and conclusions are those of the blogee and in no way reflect fact or truth).
From there, I wanted to look at sending specific messages through different mediums in the lipstick. The idea I ended on was to design lipstick that's colour is specific to a certain meaning and then if stamped on to something, passes on that message.
Sooooo, that's what I'm gonna do.
Maybe take the colour from flowers, I know the colour of roses has a certain relevance.
Something like red=love, orange=friendship, yellow=goodbye. I will have to research that a bit more thoroughly/at all.

THAT is ugly.

Well, my direction has changed a lot over the weekend.
I meandered down the route of nature, metamorphosis, growth etc. but eventually I got so lost in all the absolute bullshit I found myself trying to rationalise that I had to about turn.
SO, I started to think about what I literally found to be an ugly thing. And I ended up at smoking. (Not to be confused with I ended up smoking. Although I did buy my first ever pack of cigarettes. And got IDed).
Then I started to question how smoking (therefore cigarettes) could be made uglier.
By making the actual cigarette ugly, you would potentially put people off smoking, which is not an ugly thing, it's a positive thing...
So I am thinking that creating an appealing, 'beautiful' cigarette would result in an even uglier design. WOULD IT???
Because I now only have 4 days to rationalise, design and produce this (plus the other brief), we'll say it would.

Blogging feels productive.

I still don't bloody know.

Lipstick on Your Collar

Matt has been kissing most things within a kissable distance today.
As well as being a bit odd, this has also been a bit of an inspiration towards the mark making project. Lipstick marks have quite a sleazy connotation, lipstick on a collar, on a wine glass. They are evidence of an affair, proof it wasn't dinner for one last night.
This could be an interesting direction to consider. Accusative mark making.

Making your Mark

The second project I am considering over the next week is focused on mark making. How marks are made, what process occurred to put them there, what affect it has had on its surroundings...
Using footprint as an example, I want to look at how an incidental mark can illustrate a place and how I could use this process as a design technique or tool.

Walking through uni, I noticed there are heaps of scars and marks on the walls from previous décor/careless maneuvering. I have absolutely no idea where I'm going to go with this, but they were almost like memory marks, a record of what had been there before.

Maybe I will make a photo album out of them. How sweet.

What is 'Ugly'?

I DON'T BLOODY KNOW.
I'm trying to dissect what is standardly considered beautiful to create something ugly.
I am finding it a lot more difficult than I thought. My original concept was to take something I consider beautiful and change an aspect of it (eg the material/shape) to transform it into something beautiful.
As a sort of model of this idea, I have been looking at squares as the ultimate beauty. They are symmetrical. They are perfect. They are structured.
So by slight distortion can a square become ugly?

The outcome has ended up almost as a comment on beauty, or at least our perception of it.
Considering beauty from the Cleopatra complex.
To be honest, I don't think she was all that.

Past

Collage; The Art of Those Who Can't Draw That Good.

Devon is a Place on Earth

Thought I would share a couple of pics from my summer in Devon.

I feel these select few completely capture the essence. Eau de Devon.