Pentacontakaitetragon

First little update with our fundraising efforts! 

This week we held a bake sale within our building in the reception area selling all lovingly homemade treats made by the team. It was an easy way for us all to be involved and it had a great success in raising money for our degree show, we hope more events like it will continue after our Easter Break as planned. After such a large number of donations on our gofund me page, we have decided to raise our target pushing ourselves even further.

On the same morning of our bake sale, we were finally introduced to our degree show by the Liaison team who worked hard to create the perfect concept and brand this year for our class. The name of our degree show is - Pentacontakaitetragon. A clever concept focusing on the creatives in our class, I'm excited to see how we now form this brand identity together in the coming weeks ready for our show.

NAP x

Degree show

With our university projects coming to their end and our studies winding down, the next task in hand is our final year degree show and preparing our ourselves and portfolio for work. Our degree show creation will be formed by the whole class, launching this task as a project and breaking down responsibilities to groups focusing on different aspects of the event. Liason, Curation, Corridoor, PR, Fundraising and Catalogue are a few of the groups assigned with their own roles and aims all working towards the same outcome of producing a conceptual degree show. 

As the Halloween fundraising event, I was involved with was such a success and so much fun to be involved with, I signed up to be part of the fundraising team. I had started to compile a list last year of fundraising events and ideas in preparation to hopefully make the task of raising as much money as possible a little less stressful. With our first meeting to discuss ideas and events, its clear the group have a lot of ideas too and so I feel hopeful that together we are committed to raising the money and making our degree show the best we can. As our first fundraiser gave us just over £200, we are a long way of the £4000 total needed, an agreement from the class to all donate £30 each should help gain more funds. We have also set up a gofund me page as our first step to hit our £1000 goal. With the page up and running online, we hope to receive donations from friends and family from everyone in the class. Our first target goal is set at £600 but we feel we may raise this after reevaluating after the page has been live for a week, depending on the exposure and progress.

You may donate here. Every penny really does count and we are grateful for any and all donations made.

NAP x

Amsterdam

This week we took a trip to Amsterdam as a class, to experience their aware design culture and visit the many galleries and museums. We stayed at the Hans Brinker budget hotel, so we were very close to the museum quarter and not too far to walk and see all of Amsterdam. Before the trip I was excited to experience a new culture and try new food, from my previous trips and travels with uni I have become more confident and adventurous, looking forward to traveling to experience new things. We were asked to document our thoughts and time spent from day to day on our shared tumblr site, check it out here.

Flower Market 

I spent around an hour in a great postcards and art prints shop, searching through every section of postcards they stocked to find the perfect inspiration to bring back home with me. After searching for so long the shopkeeper mistakenly took me for Dutch, perhaps from the postcards I bought.

Stedlijk Museum 

In the gallery, a few pieces by Dan Flankin was on display, he has an upcoming exhibition at the IKON gallery in Birmingham I previously saw advertised on my visit to see Fiona Banner's typographic exhibition. It was a great surprise and made me all that more excited to experience more of his art next month. The Stedelijk museum was my favorite gallery by far, I loved seeing well known and classical artists pieces of work like Picasso, Monet and Van Gogh side by side with modern art and photography by the likes of Andy Warhol and Litchenstien.

 Celebrating International Women's day with free roses from a hotel nearby the museums.

 Amsterdam // Jordaan

As a separate brief to the trip, we were asked to create a poster advertising the trip to students next year, inspired and influenced by our experience there. I was mostly fascinated by their creative use of typography and duel language which I saw in streets, galleries, museums, shops, cafes etc. I wanted to take inspiration from the Dada movement on display within the Stedelijk Museum, and create a typographic poster. I choose to translate the well known saying 'It's all Dutch to me' and with an interesting use of colour and layout to hide the quote, allowing the Dutch language to be the main focal point.

NAP x

Penguin Competition 2016

You know its nearly spring when this module is launched. This year the choices were A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, How to be a woman by Caitlin Moran and Emil and the detectives by Erich Kastner. Being a huge fan of the film, A Clockwork Orange I decided there and then which I wanted to design as its always been a compelling and favorite story of mine.

I wanted to create a contemporary and minimal design focusing on a certain object or obsession from the story, from developing my idea I felt milk was the right path to take. As depicted before in the re printed covers of 2000, 2005 and 2008 by Veronique Rolland's of a single glass of milk, I wanted to steer away from showcasing a glass of milk as much as possible, when the idea of using milk bottles came to me. I like the idea of representing each member of the gangs identity through the small differences in their clothing and styling.

I crossed over these concepts so that each milk bottle represents a member of the gang, with Alex being close and intimidating to the reader. I then added a glass of milk on the back cover to mirror the front design and layout. I added a straw to the glass representing Alex's cane and added a blue eye to the top, so as all famous scenes and icons of the film were illustrated. I believe the design incorporates the iconic and recognisable items associated with the story so far and can sit within the brand the film and book has created, yet gives a new conceptual element.

A week before the deadline a sudden burst of inspiration hit me and an idea formed for the 'How to be A woman' cover. I have always been a lover of stationary and follow both Ban.do and the company founder Jen Gotch on social media, a signature style of both is witty badges, pins and embrodiered patches. I was inspired by the emerging trend and felt it could portray the humor of the book with a stylish flair. I thought I would develop both ideas and try to submit both to the competition, this I have done with success.

NAP x