Diving in a sea of tourists

This blog went appalingly empty of any recent event. Uhm... I am going to talk about this in my essay/oversized post or whatever I will make before Tuesday, better to leave it at the moment.

Moving to this post's subject, I am somehow busy with the London book project, not exactly my cup of tea, but kind of interesting. No idea of how it is going to end up, I have got pretty much few ideas, but confused. So far I have done well enough, I am up to my expectations and I have to say it is inspiring, it goves me various hints in trying out different things, then I guess this means it works as planned by the tutors.

Therefore I decided, following Lora's invitation, to take a little trip to Central London, something I do less and less lately, I have to admit, and took a fair amount of random pictures.

Unsurprisingly, it has been a very good idea, even though at the moment I was cursing every single tourist I came across - thousands of them, everywhere! - because I got inspired and collected more useful material than I could imagine. Now it is all about using it wisely, the real task. Here are some examples of what I made playing around today. Oh, time lapse is great!

Compressing five weeks in few lines

First stage

So the ISTD project started apparently well, at least I thought it did. Well, I was wrong.

I still have to say that I enjoyed every bit of it, studied typography as much as I could, went mad for grids, got some very interesting idea... Unfortunately though, my tutors did not seem quite pleased with whatever I was doing at each single step of the work. At first my design process was upside-down, because I quickly had strong ideas about formats. Afterwards I was not going around all the time with my research to visually back up my development. Then I was not experimenting enough. Soon after that, I went too far in experimentation, so I should revert back to something more conventional.

This is pretty much what actually happened. The result of all of it has been that I got quite stressed and I produced a very dull outcome, in my opinion.

What did I learn then? To follow my own judgement much more, stop giving limits to myself, listen to tutors less and less - they are not telling me what to do, they are giving hints out of their own opinion, nothing more and nothing less. It took me a seriously long time to get it, but hopefully this time I will stuck with it.

Second stage, kind of...

First experiment, failed

Second experiment, crazy but interesting

"Offensive" development...

Back to the first stage, updated

Last stage, the dull book

Why I have been away for so long

 

Long holiday, fulfilling life, countless engagements, lack of inspiration to write... and the ISTD project!

Now, how can I write about it just after it is over and be fair? No idea, I think it is going to be difficult.

First approach: I wanted to do it so much I could not wait for the briefing session to take place.

The tutors, Paul and Ben, chose to go for the reinterpretation of Flatland, a Victorian novella by Edwin A. Abbott, quite interesting and unusual. As the brief from the ISTD asked, we were supposed to produce a new edition of the novella which was not necessarily a book as we could generally think of it. Apparently so a huge amount of freedom on our side, especially considering the organization's conservative approach toward typography, according to both Paul and Ben. Five weeks to submit an almost final version of our idea, at least close enough to clearly see the potential of it and if our skills were at a remarkable level to go for the real ISTD assessment.

Brief clear, strict timetable made up by the tutors, to help our time management, because of the relatively short time given to work on the project. Everything started out smooth and exciting, off I went, research and first rough ideas in few days time. Piece of cake, I was so excited I could not ask for anything else. Little drawback: it had been clear from the very beginning that I would have spent the next five weeks just deep inside Abbott's paradoxical universe and nothing else...

A very long time...

I just can not believe it took me so long to make up my mind and get back here writing. I am not in the mood yet, if I have to be honest, but I suppose it is better to start somehow something I have to do.

Where did I leave it? Two and half months ago, straight before handing in my pdf for term 1, it seems.

Result: 57%, average (some 65, more 55). Disappointing, no more, no less. Slightly upsetting at the beginning too, no more after a while and a more careful, less emotional, analysis of my outcome. It pretty much looks like shit. Not disturbing, unsettling shit however, which would not be so bad after all, but just like soulless, useless shit. Maybe an accountant could achieve similar results after some little efforts. This is what makes me really sad in the end and understanding why I ended up creating such a worthless piece of work does not make me feel any better.

Cool enough, I can find a good number of ways to blame on my tutors for my disappointing results, like I have been listening too much to their generic/general, foggy advices. I tried to create a pdf that does not steal attention from its contents because of a too flamboyant look. I tried to be tidy and keep it simple. I tried to make it functional and easy to navigate. I tried to keep it in the mood of the variables, to show a bit of subject knowledge.

I ended up in total, unmistakable dullness!

Fair enough, it is still better than I could expect, considering how much I disdain each one of the variables given. Unfortunately, it is a further example of how dull my works can be most of the time.

GDF project: my pdf is done!

Happiness in a solitary Sunday! Even though I did not really struggle through the project so far, despite my preliminary remarks, I must say I am extremely happy with the results of this first stage of the whole project. I am satisfied with my pdf, the final version is very pleasant, I think I achieved what I was asked for and even though it is not perfect by any means, it is a good work. Beside it, it is still Sunday, so I can relax a lot now, give the last cares to the collages and write some posts here. Holidays are already starting at this point!

St. Brides Library Talk. Or how much I love Typography.

It happened some weeks ago, true, but I could not miss to talk about it. The visit to St. Brides Library has been great, in my opinion. Not that we did much during it, I would say we did not even see a lot of stuff, but it really did not matter. Mr Roche, Head Librarian of St. Brides, led a lecture about the history of printing, spreading through nineteen centuries, from the invention of paper by the Chinese people - the wood-based paper, to be precise, what we still mostly use nowadays - then to the Gutenberg bible, up to today's latest technologies for printing methods. His talk was amazingly detailed and all-embracing, for the relative short time available, it made me fall in love with printing and typography even more than I was already. Moreover, the quick look I had at the Library itself gave me a clear idea of the incredible amount and quality of the material that can be found in there.

I guess I would visit St. Brides more and more during next term, it is exactly what I need for the ISTD project I managed to get a place in!

Students' protest: Britain turns Nazi in Whitehall

In the heat of the moment - way of saying: I was frozen down to the bones - I thought I could write a lot of harsh things about what happened last Wednesday to us who were protesting in Whitehall, so I decided to take a little time to think. Nevertheless, what I came out with some days later is surprisingly identical to what I thought while I was still there: the only difference between us, some 5.000 students aged between 11 and 40, and thousands of jews in Warsaw in the early 1940s was that we were not wearing a yellow six-point star on our chests. A sickly well organized Nazi police just took human rights away from us in Central London, just few yards off Parliament Square and in sight of the Winston Churchill monument. How ironical. In the last 70 years Britain pestered the whole World telling how they alone stood against Nazism at the darkest time, to end up using the same methods and philosophy. I guess this is what happens to peoples that never experienced a revolution in their history, they become as docile as cattle, so they do not see what is wrong in kettling them...

GDF project: I am not dead!

Wow! I can not believe it is weeks I did not write anything. Problem is: it has been a very busy period, many events, quite a good amount of work to carry on, plain laziness as usual... No, not really this time. On top of it, I have barely took a couple of pictures in the last three weeks, which is not helpful to illustrate what happened around me.

To make a long story short, let's talk about the GDF project, that is where I left the blog last time. I was not happy at first, but not in despair though: the variables I got were not the best possible ones, but once it is done, there is no point in complaining, better facing the issue and go head-down to work.

Luck has been on my side, my groupmates are great, each of them in his own way helped me to get the best out of this assignment so far. Their positiveness is contagious, we get along very well and we have fun, boosting productivity continuously. Group tutorials with Karl are running smoothly, I enjoy them and they are extremely useful, keeping me on track week after week. Friday's workshops with Darren and David pushed us that necessary step forward every week, thanks to the confrontation with other groups' works. Jo and David in their own workshops add valid technical details and give some hints that should be taken in better consideration by a lot of people I see around...

Last but not least: the support I get everyday from my partner is priceless.

My whole environment right now is just perfectly fitted for the purpose of studying productively. So any possible failure is just my own guilty fault, I guess. Great, this is the way I like it to be, no excuses whatsoever.

Overall evaluation of the course so far: I love it!

This is page 16 of my presentation, a little worthy trick.

FdA works: Feeling like in a tailored suit

I remember a Mastercard TV advert of the "priceless" series which was going more or less like this:

at 25 a man (a bourgeois/middle class man) desires a good suit;

at 40, he (the bourgeois again/upper middle class man now) grows to desire a tailored suit;

at 50, to not wear any suit anymore (really top class, eventually).

Apart from carrying a lot of meaning, in my personal idea, it makes me think about tailored suits, which, by the way, I would love to wear. The closest thing to them as feelings it can give to me that I came across recently is the first assignment of this term: an advertisement for a global corporation targeting 5-10 years old children through the message "Be more confident". To be concise:

global corporations make me shiver in disgust;

in my opinion, advertising that targets/uses children is simply immoral and, just to say, I find children really annoying;

the message itself sounds terribly empty to me, kind of a deep void.

I am confident this is going to be amazing!

The research workshop to introduce the assignment was actually pretty good fun. I liked the group I will work with for the next weeks and we enjoyed our time and did quite well along the day. The hints given us by the workshop itself were definitely useful, first of all making completely clear what we have to deal with from now on.

Outcome of the first week in the job: ...! It will get better, I am sure it will... soon...

How to disappoint myself, the easy way

"Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life: for there is in London all that life can afford."
Samuel Johnson

Easy to guess, what you dear readers can see just above is the application of a huge step in technology that makes everyone's life better and way easier and most of my precious Photoshop skills utterly useless and consequentially worthless, nevertheless I love it. Lazy people of the World, stand up and clap your hands to the Photomerge function!

What you can also see right above is part of the result of a two hours session of photography I generously granted myself today in the surroundings of my beloved home. Having blamed myself - and of course mostly my sweet partner - in the last two weeks, at least, for owning an apparently great digital camera and leaving it to collect dust in some remote corner of our room, I eventually remembered to take it with me today when I stepped out for a walk. Predictably enough, the weather was not any good as it was instead in several recent days, in which I forgot the camera home ending up swearing consistently against my outstanding stupidity.

Fair enough, I could still cope with the seriously awful natural light of a shady day, not bright, not dark, just bad. Basically that kind of light that would piss off every even slightly experienced photographer. Not to mention my lack of knowledge of the set-ups of the camera itself, having used it probably just twice before and got away both times out of plain luck. On top of those tiny details, I should probably say I was not in the mood at all to take pictures, not properly concentrated on the task and annoyed already by the look of my designated subjects, mostly trees, which were gloriously showing their best autumn colour variations just few days ago, and today were almost bare, being so late in the season.

None of the previous issues discouraged me anyway and I went on with the plan.
I have even been quite lucky about the location, noticed some very interesting spot and had plenty of time. And I even found the one an only not hyperactive and overanxious squirrel in the UK, I guess, which allowed me to take around 15 close ups of it!

Final result: 162 pictures of which barely ten are decent...

Just to take a look a little closer