Review of Urban Design

Kid Acne's exhibition at Sheffield Millennium Gallery wasn't what you might expect from a conventional exhibition. You would expect to see many different forms of art but not necessarily street art. Kid Acne is originally a street artist / graffiti artist and is now seen as Sheffield's foremost urban artist and his murals can be seen all over the city. His exhibition 'Kill Your Darlings' takes huge inspiration from the disposable nature of graffiti. 

   The exhibition is all about not being to precious about your art. Kid Acne said 'painting outdoors means the work doesn't last forever - it cant be bought or sold. This often makes the experience more enjoyable.' This message definitely resonates through the exhibition. Normally when you go to an art exhibition you only see the final pieces of work that the artist wants you to see, what made Kid Acne's exhibition more refreshing was that he showcased everything, perfect or not.Being able to see his sketchbooks that he's kept since he was 14 was also a novelty. Even if some of the ideas weren't finished he decided to still show them off, its all about not being to precious about art. One of my favourite  things about his sketchbooks is that you could see how he was trying to develop his style  "wanted to refine his style into chunky lines - felt this was too contrived, the natural gestures of his drawing gave the characters personality- embraced these quirks and drew with a single line" . I like that he has decided to show these subtle tests of style instead of only the finished product.

   Whilst walking through the rooms you could really see transition from street art to film making and more commercial screen prints and record sleeves. Even his commercial work still reflects his DIY attitude. I was particularly interested in his CD and record covers, his illustrations were so sketchy, they didn't have a glossy finished look like most media art you would see, this is mainly down to the way he works. He said he mainly works on the spur of the moment with the materials and equipment he has to hand. I like this about his work and I think it makes for better art when its not over thought and planned to much.
   Most of Kid Acne's work was very fun and almost like childrens cartoon illustrations. However I found some of his work quite dark and strange. His 'Stabby women' series was developed after seeing an exhibition by the fashion photographer Helmut Newman, the women are meant to enpower woman. The characters show mysterious warrior looking women mostly wearing masks and capes and brandishing weapons, a lot of them also have injuries and are wearing slings or on crutches. Although i can appreciate the artist flare in these characters, they are very good illustrations, its what the images show that is slightly controversial. Some of his canvas work showed the women dominating each other with whips, they're made to look very aggressive characters. Kid Acne said ' Ive become interested in what their [stabby women] belief system may be - took inspiration from witchcraft, freemasonry and paganism'. This is very visible in the outfits the characters wear. 
  Despite me not liking much of the 'stabby women' collection, my favourite work out of the entire exhibition was a set of 3 skateboards with a stabby woman graphic on the bottom of each one. It wasn't so much the illustrations I liked, It was more the idea behind it. the imagery on skateboards gets worn away and by putting your artwork onto the bottom of one this stops you being too precious about it. This is obviously the message he wanted everyone to take away from his exhibition and I think it is a good message to remember. I also like that even in his commercial work he still wanted to retain his own style and felt it was to contrived to force his work into a different style. I think I could see this influencing my work in the future.

Induction Day.

On my induction day at college we did a team building / get to know each other project. The brief for the project was 'Origami Safari' and the main aim was to plan and construct a stable 3D animal from limited materials. We could really only use paper, card, wire and little glue and masking tape. We worked as a group of 5 and began by discussing ideas about which animal we would be able to constuct in the time we had from the materials we  had available. We originally looked at insects such a beetles and spiders and then started to look at animals like giraffes and sea turtles. After drawing out and discussing how we would make both a giraffe and turtle we would get the best outcome from trying to construct the turtle. Once we'd decided this we then delegated the turtles different body parts between the group and began to construct a small scale prototype. My task was to creat the tutles legs, another member of the group also did this so we could compare and see which would work best. The prototype make us realise it wasnt as easy as we had anticipated. We didnt finish the small version but it let us see what we was doing wrong and what needed to be done differently. The legs and the shell were the main problems as the legs wouldnt hold the weight and the shell wouldnt take the right shape. When we moved onto the final construction we did a lot of things differently. We put strands of wire down the inside of the legs that were made of rolled up paper. This still didnt strengthen them enough to hold the shell, head and tail so as a last minute addition we had to add a block of cardbored as a stand in the center of the constuction to support it.  I think we all agreed that if we had to redo the project again we would of chosen to do the giraffe and make it out of a series of tubes. The main benefit of the project was that it got us all communicating with one another by making us work as a team.

Impacts on the design process.

Copyright, moral rights & intellectual property have a huge impact on the design process. Firstly, if a client supplies their own images / copy, they are asked to sign a form to ensure the the own the copyrights and other rights to all materials we publish or that they have obtained all necessary permissions. This then transfers any liability from the business to the customer. We have no disclosure agreements to protect both the client and ourselves from any conflicts relating to intellectual property and moral rights.

Design Process

The affect the structure of a business has on the design process.

Sometimes the structure of a business can affect the way the design process progresses. For example a well developed and structured business is less likely to need a full branding service. They are most likely to already have well established branding in place with restrictions and corporate guidelines. Corporate guidelines would include things such as font, colour scheme, images and logos. In contrast a new business just starting up would need a lot more help from the designer as they would have no identity in place. They would most likely need to be given more communication time and would probably need to give more information on the brief.

Design process

Creative Thinking

Design Supply Chain

Purpose of a Design Brief

Design briefs are very important to the design process because they help you to fully understand the project you are about to undertake. There purpose is to allow the designer to gather essential information from the client in a clear effective way and to help understand the aims, objectives and milestones of the project.
However, there are many different forms a design brief can take, for example it could be; an email, a phone conversation, a face-to-face meeting. I prefer an email as it is something you can keep referencing back to and it acts as proof of what the client has asked for. It is also useful if someone else is also working on the project as then they have access to the same information as you can.
The most common information you would find in a design brief is what the client expects from the project (such as a business card, logo design, poster, website ect) and useful information to help you reach that expectation (colours, images, font ect). Sometimes a client will have corporate guidelines that need to be followed and these bring certain restrictions like document size, company fonts and colours.