Setting up the exhibition

Having finished the props me and Dan were anxious to see if the rest of the class would approve. Thankfully they did and everyone seemed impressed with the outcome.

I was present at the printing and laminating of the work on Monday so I knew how the worked looked but was unsure of how it was to be displayed.
On arriving at the exhibition I found that the group had already started looking at ways in which to hang the work. One thing that was for certain was that the work was to be hung from the ceiling of the shop as apposed to being stuck to walls.

An initial idea was to have four pieces of work stuck and hung together. As there is three pieces of work each this design would have left an odd number so it was revised.

The pencils that me and Dan completed were placed as a centre piece in the middle of the exhibition. They were arranged on a pile of screwed up paper.


Me and Martin were assigned to stick sheets of plain paper to this wall, as well as paper containing letters which combined spell out words related to our course. We have decided to allow this area of blank pages to any children who visit the exhibit. We will have a sign inviting people to have a go at drawing or designing and idea themselves.


The revised system for hanging the work now uses three boards rather than four. The work is hung from the ceiling using a strong fishing wire.


The image below shows Sav and Kiel hanging the pieces of work.


This how how the boards look after hanging. Descriptions of the work will be hung below each piece of work. The boards are placed according to light sources throughout the unit.


The image below shows the production of the 'Idea Board'. This is a wall of white paper covered with concepts drawings relating to the work on display. Dan and Ryan contributed most of the sketches although pretty much everyone who attended drew something on the wall.

The image below shows Dan and Ryan completing a painted banner that will be displayed in the window of the unit. This is just a simple collection of pages with single letters painted on each page. It continues the theme of the text within the exhibition.

The picture below shows the sofa which Teresa acquired from a second hand shop. This is for the visitors if they feel the need to sit down. It appears that Dan is a big fan of the sofa.

Leading up to the exhibition

The pencils have come along way since my last update. Me and Dan have been working non - stop over the last week to complete the three pencils, the paint splats and T-shirts for the whole exhibition group.

We are very happy with what we have accomplished in terms of the quantities of work we have produced. Both the pencils and paint splats look great finished with the addition of Dan's airbrushing.

Having made the first pencil already I found the process of making the other two a lot quicker and easier. The images above and below show the two completed pencils models that had been mostly covered with paper machet and primed ready for painting.

The image below shows some of the creative mess involved in producing the props. We had to make sure everything was well covered due to the quantities of paint involved.

The picture below shows me hard at work applying paper machet to the bottoms of the pencils. This was then primed, ready for paint.

The image below shows the second and third pencil after two layers of poster paint had been applied. Me and Dan applied about three layers of paint to each pencil.

The image below again shows two of the pencil models after a few coats of poster paint.

The image below shows the second pencil model after applying a grey coloured paint to the top and bottom.

The image below show the red and yellow pencils ready for air-brushing. We added a pink colour for the rubber.

The two images below show Dan at work adding highlights to the models using his air-brush.

As well as adding highlights, Dan also added shading to the model. The image below shows Dan holding the finished yellow pencil.

Below is a pile of finsihed splats that Dan made, painted, air-brushed and varnished using PVA glue.

The image below shows what we have managed to accomplish over three days. We have completed three pencils and eleven splats. The next stage of our production line is the fourteen T-shirts for the class to wear for the exhibition.

The shirt below is our first attempt at creating the shirt design. Having seen the amount of time the shirt took to dry and prefering the smaller splats as apposed to the large splats we decided to revise the design.

For the backs of the shirts Dan ironed on the exhibition logo using an iron - on transfer paper, whilst I created a stencil ready to paint on the text.

Having cut the stencil from a sheet of plastic I proceeded to add paint to the design, keeping to the colours originally set by the graphics team. The image below shows the combination of the logo and text on one of the spare shirts.

This is how the shirt looked when Dan tryed it on. We were quite happy with the way the logo sits on the back of the shirt.

The production line. Ironing and painting until we had fourteen shirts ready to flick poster paint at. Having spent a large proportion of our day on the shirts so far we were just hoping for the best.

The images above and below show the effect of the paint flick/ splatter. The image above shows one of the shirt designs in progress. To stop paint running through to the back of the shirt we decided to make cardboard incerts to stop any leakage. The picture below shows a finished shirt hung out to dry.

Week 12

Props

Who could have thought that making a single prop would be so difficult. When taking on the job of creating the giant pencil props for the exhibition I thought that the task would be farely simple. I was wrong!

The prop itself looks good but I still haven't started painting it. The majority of the paper machet is done, but sections had to be re-done as the paper had bubbled up. I have no doubt that I will have two finished pencil props by the time we have to set the exhibition up. Now that I have had the experience of making one I hope that the next will be a lot easier to make.

The last layer of paper machet is drying as I type this, so I am hoping to paint the majority of it this afternoon. I will upload pictures of my progress.

Rota

Me and another member (Dan) of the exhibition team were asked to produce a time sheet for the class so that they could list the times and dates that they wanted to work at the exhibition. We have a preliminary rota and I now have to simplify it so that we know exactly how many people we will have working each day. When I have done this I will send it off to the group leader to be approved and finalised.

This is my final portfolio which I had wire bound. I am very pleased with the outcome and the whole design looks quite smart and professional. I chose to bind my portfolio with the wire because it gives the portfolio a sketchbook like appearance and finishes the whole thing off nicely. I chose the black wire to fit in with the colours of the design.

I have also finalised my Business card. I have kept the design simple my using the brand image on the front side, with a small text label of my name. The back has been de-cluttered and I have scraped all of the un-neccesary symbols and colour blocks.

I feel as though I have made a good contribution to the exhibition module so far and I am looking forward to seeing how the exhibition will look when we open in a few weeks time. By then I will have my props finished and boards of my work will be printed, ready for hanging. Between now and the exhibition my tasks are to complete the props, finalise the exhibition rota and to set up the exhibition.

I have enjoyed the module so far and I hope that the exhibition is a success. I am happy with the brand I have created for my PDP elements and think that these will help me to promote myself and my work when it comes to finding employment.

Week 11

This week I produced the pages for my portfolio. Rather than have just plain pages with the work stuck straight onto them I decided to do it the hard way by framing each picture so that it looked recessed into the card.
This took a long time to complete so I hope that when it is bound everything goes according to plan. I used a thin card for the inner pages and a thick card for the cover.


One of my favourite parts of this portfolio design is that the front cover has a window or open frame so that the first piece of work inside the portfolio also doubles up as the cover image.

I have also been finishing off the production of my website this week. It has taken me approximately three to four weeks to get everything properly running. I am farely happy with the final result and feel it is a good start to getting my work out there so that people can see what I can do.

http://jonathansmithdesigns.squarespace.com/

The design of the website again follows the same branding that I outlined at the begining of the project. The main colours of the site are red, black and white. I have tried to create a simple, professional looking website. I do not think it is far off but a few more tweeks and it could look better. I have used galleries to show both my 2D and 3D work. These two pages are probably the best on the site. The work I have uploaded so far is the same work that I am displaying in my portfolio.

Week 10

Now that I had an idea of what my portfolio could look like I needed to do some research into ways in which I could bind the pages and cover. As the portfolio would be quite thick I needed the binding to be wide enough so that the pages could still move freely.

I have had work bound recently by a local company, so I enquired as to whether they would be able to suggest any form of binding suitable for this application. I asked whether the portfolio could be bound using a wire binding method and they assured me that it could be done, as long as the machine that is used could punch through the thick card covers.

The previous binding I had done was for my Major Project. I had two copies of my dissertation bound using the thermal binding method. This method uses a heated machine to melt a resin in a pre-made cover. Once the resin is tacky the pages are placed into the cover and the whole thing is left on a cooling stand. As the resin cools it bonds to the page edges, securing them to the cover.


There are many ways in which books/portfolios can be bound. I wanted my portfolio to look professional, but it had to be functional. I have considered wire binding, plastic comb binding and thermal binding.

I was very impressed with the professional quality of the thermal binding on my my major project but I do not think it would look right with this application. It looks good with formal documents that have a uniform design but I would like something that looks a little more creative and in-keeping with the design.

Another consideration of mine was to use a plastic comb binding method. A machine is used to punch holes along the edges of each page and cover. The same machine then attachs a plastic comb to the pages to hold them together. This design is very functional, but again I do not think it is right for the portfolio theme.

The last option I looked into was wire binding. Looking at examples of wire binding I could see that it resembles the design of a generic sketchbook. I liked the idea of this design as it fits in with both the design of my PDP elements, as well as the theme of the group exhibition.

The method of wire binding is the same used to comb bind, just substituting the plastic comb for a wire comb. Although it is the same principle, they both give different effects.

Week 9

Designing my portfolio

I want the design of my portfolio to blend in with the identity that I have already established with my Buisness card and CV.
My idea at the moment is to produce a bound A4 book using plain black card. I have already established a colour scheme of red, black and white. I will add red and white stripes to the cover as a contrast to the black.

The cover will have a window in the middle which will act as a kind of photo frame. This is where I will display the 'common' image which I created specifically to be used as an identity.

My task this week was to convert my three chosen pieces of work on to the A3 format. I have had a few problems with the images I want to use because of the original resolution which they were produced. I am confident that this issue can be easily resolved once I render the images at a larger size.

I have also continued with the pencil prop. I have had to add more layers of paper machet in order to fully prepare the surface ready for spraying.

Week 8

This week I was asked by the team leader to produce some renders/images of how we would produce the layout of the exhibition. The images are very much like our original concept although a few of the ideas have been altered or left out due to limitations. There is fewer props in these images than what there were in the original concept ideas.
These images were created and rendered using 3Ds Max. Another group member (Dan) has produced more renders using photoshop. All of these images will help to organise the preparation of the exhibition.

Week 7

This week my task has been to come up with a method to create a giant pencil. The giant pencil will be used as a prop to exaggerate the studio theme. If the construction of this pencil works we may want to create other giant props such as pens, erasers and other stationary items.

I originally decided to try and create a smaller scale model. I started off by cutting six panels from a large corrugated card box. These were used for the side panels. I fixed the panels together using brown parcel tape.


The eraser was made from a circle of card and another piece of rolled card stuck together. The fixing for the eraser was made using two rolled up sections of newpaper. These peices were then placed and fixed to the side panels using the brown tape.

I had planned to leave the model at this size but I decided to make it bigger. I cut another six panels from another lage box and stuck them to the original model. The tip of the pencil has been made using six triangles stuck to form a point.

I have started to paper machet the model. Once it is dry I will see if it needs anymore layers. If not I will use spray paint to cover the whole thing.

Week 6

This weeks task

This week it was my job to produce an initial rota of when people were willing to work in the exhibition. As a group we felt it would be best to split each of the days into a morning and afternoon shift. I produced the register on excel and listed everyones name alphabetically. I printed a single copy to hand around so that people can write down what times they were prepared to do against their names. I will make a copy of this register for everyone once the times have been finalised.

Business Card revised

I have made a few alterations to the original card. I have added a watermark of the image to the text side of the card. I'm not sure whether this improves the look of the card or whether it is just distracting.

I will probably look at different layouts to use for the text side of the card. I may also change the text type to give a more professional look.

Buisness Card Design

This was the first design I came up with. I wanted to keep the design simple and the layout minimal. I only have the most relevant information required on the back as I wanted to keep text to a minimum. The red and black stripe and text help to give a relation between my buisness card and CV.

CV Design
I've tried to keep the design of my CV as un-complicated as I could. I have used the image I created to head the page. I am hoping that the striking red colours in the image will catch the readers eye. The uniform red and black stripes help to tie the CV and buisness card together.