More photos from the course

Here are two blog posts and great photos by a super talented Russian fellow student - Osa Pavlova. And if you can read Russian, it might all even make sense to you!

http://osa35.livejournal.com/61340.html

http://osa35.livejournal.com/60944.html

Day 5 - Publishing

Task: Someone's written a book about me - design a cover.
This will be a historic biography. The illustration shows me standing on top of
St Paul's Cathedral.

Come up with a book store, and an appropriate shop window for it.
I designed a 24/7 vending machine which sells e-books, called Load-a-Book.

Design a club flyer for Putney Library.

The daytime version.

Night time version.

Logo for 'First Impressions' photography publisher.
My design is formed around a camera lens, and the elements form a type of still life composition.

Task: Make a book.

I made a narrow handbag size hardback book which looks very cute and girly.

Inside, it contains information about various STDs with illustrated popup pictures.

Day 4 - On the street

Task: Find an unintended face.

Task: Find a piece of unintentional art.

The tree had almost engulfed the sign, and formed a frame around it.

Task: Place a plasticine object in the environment.

Task: Create a memorial.

This was a Royal Mail sorting office building. We made an envelope shape from parcel string.

Task: Place a message in the environment.

We found boarded up windows in a small building around the sorting office. 

These reminded us of a chalkboard, and another institution, school.

Day 4 - Polarization

Task: Design a postcard from London. Something that you really love or hate about the place.

Currently living in pretty much centre of town, at Waterloo behind the ambulance centre, I've grown to hate the constant noise. My postcard would feature a mix tape of London sounds, including motorbikes, sirens and rubbish collectors emptying bins, what a treat!

Back of the card

Task: Design a vinyl toy character to exaggerate a certain trait of your 
personality. 
Being a very visual person, I accentuated they eyes, which are slightly sticking
out.

Task: Picture with Black & White theme

Task: A government poster to discourage (or encourage) people from
having fried Mars bars.

Task: Make a hat for someone who's a Saint/Sinner, Happy/Sad/ Rich/Poor, Popular/Unpopular, Success/Failure.

I chose Success/Failure. The top side is (meant to look like...) a bowler hat, representing someone who's respected in the society and successful.

The inside hides a darker secret, a prisoner's hat. A symbol for a failed person who's despised by the society. It could also highlight the fact that the person might feel like a prisoner keeping up their perfect image and successful lifestyle.

Task: His & Hers towels for a transsexual couple

My towels were quite a gender neutral colours. With the symbols cut out, this shows their previous gender which belongs to their past but it's still present in their everyday life.

Day 3 - Fragmentation

Task: Visualise fragmentation.

Task: Create a stamp set for Mars that's been colonised.

I wanted to use the four basic elements in my stamps to remind people of their previous home planet - Air, Fire, Earth, Water. This shared history might help unite various nationalities and races. First I experimented with simple lines and patterns to represent each one....

Task: Create a stamp set for Mars that's been colonised.
...but in the end I went for a really minimalistic design. Each stamp only has one line at various heights, and a coloured block to represent each element.

Task: Create a 'Kebab House'.
Based on 'The Kebab Lamp' designed by Committee.
Interestingly Ikea has come up with a similar idea, possibly
inspired by the original Kebab Lamp.

Task: Create a bridge connecting East and West.
A Greek gate with pillars, representing reason and origins of Western civilisation,
opposing an Eastern pagoda style gate highlighting spirituality.

Day 3 - Time

Task: Book cover illustration for Stephen Hawkins' 'Brief History of Time'.

Task: Design a clock face for yourself.

As a reference to my occasional poor time keeping - personally I'd diagnose it as phobia of being early though - the digits on my clock face might as well be all jumbled up.

Task: Write 'time' in a way that describes the concept of time.

Task: Redesign infinity symbol.

I thought of a laser beam bouncing from two opposing flat surfaces infinitely.

Task: Gift for someone who's only got 30 minutes to live.

I came up with this rather infantile idea of eating burgers and taking drugs.

Task: What would you see in a train if it was moving at the speed of light?

I painted a picture of a green field as seen from the train window, all the colours blurred into one. Apparently Einstein's answer to this question was that everything would look normal, as you'd be used to it. So it was a trick question really!

Task: Come up with a famous person, and an appropriate way of disposing of their ashes.

I thought of a Formula 1 driver, say Kimi Räikkönen, whose ashes would be placed in a racing helmet, and shot to space. This way they'd get to travel incredibly fast for an eternity.

Day 2 - Medicine

At lunch time we were sent to Hunterian Museum at The Royal College of Surgeons in Holborn to draw some inspiration from. This unique and somewhat gruesome place charts the history of surgery and celebrates our understanding of the human and animal body.

Task: Design an artificial hand.
I used a computer mouse to replace the right hand, highlighting the notion that human beings are nowadays completely lost without constant access to computers and mobile phones.

Task: Design a shopping bag for the museum shop.

Task: Design and package sweets to be sold in the museum shop.
The chocolate eggs can pulled from the inside of the toy chicken. The eggs are different sizes as they are in different stages of development, as seen in the museum.

Day 2 - Technology

Task: Crest for Bill Gates.

Most people on the course came up with the same Windows logo concept!

Task: Tattoo for a robot.

Task: National flag for 'cyberspace'.

Task: A monument for the failed inventor Arthur Pedrick.
I created mine from cardboard, which would get destroyed in the rain in a few 
days. The exclamation mark symbolises ideas.

Task: Send a message to outer space to deter aliens from entering the earth.

Day 1 - Value

Task: Create a bank note for the country you come from.

I used a swan swimming in a lake as the character, as we're so close to the nature and it's often used as the symbol for Finland. The waves represent thousands of lakes, and the wavy round shape in the middle comes from an 'Aalto maljakko', which is a vase designed by Alvar Aalto, a famous Finnish architect.

Task: Make a sign for a homeless person begging for money.

Task: Come up with a credit card that you would like.
I made all the numbers and logos very small, and placed a space for a photo in the middle. User can pick any photo they want, and they can change it whenever by flicking through to the next one using the touch screen.

Task: Modify the photocopy of a 10 pound note.
I coloured it brownish tone, to show the age. I placed it into a decorated frame which can be hung on the wall, predicting how paper money will soon be history.

Task: Make a piece of jewellery Fidel Castro will endorse.

I made a necklace which acts as a cup for drinking rum. It's made out of 

recyclable materials, and has a star shape cut out from the red base, as in the 

Cuban flag.

Day 1 - Language & Typography

Task: Letter shapes randomly on paper. 
Using a typography sheet provided, we were asked to draw certain letters on a sheet of paper, finally forming word 'chaos'.

Task: Create an album cover for a band called 'Chaos' with an album of the same title.

Task: Create an image by using cut out letters and copy from newspapers. 

My collage came to represent the heaviness and oppressiveness of a big city, in contrast with lightness and freedom of a hot air balloon.

Task: Recreate the famous 'Welcome to Las Vegas' road sign. 

I reworded mine to the famous saying, to emphasise the nature of the city, and the red curtains represent the aspects of show business, and things that happen behind closed curtains.