Design Factory (Part 2)
A live brief set by the Design Museum to design a city guide to London which ignores the usual landmarks and hotspots, in order to take the visitor on a journey that explores, investigates and experiences London from an alternative perspective.
I chose to look at how with modern technological advances that we are seeing put into mobile devices such as ones mobile phone we see that the viewer, although encompassed within a particular space, is not engaging with that space, instead he is being governed into a predetermined digital route, mapped out and displayed at arms length, missing out on creative nourishment for the imagination, and thus starving the creative thought process.
People are not questioning the relationship between emotions and physical space, which is something that the Situationist International addressed in the late 60s with the drift through the city known as the derive, which is an attempt at analysis of the totality of everyday life, by means of passive movement through space.
The aim of the guide is to entice people to drift through the city in order to explore and discover, seeing everything from a different perspective, allowing its user to feel refreshed and creatively inspired. The guide is split into three sections, the first aims to inform the user of the theory behind the derive and how to use the guide. The second shows examples of derives I undertook myself and the third is a blank section allowing the user to add their own experiences/notes/photos.
Design Factory (Part 1)
Design Factory is a live brief set by the Design Museum for participation from students.
For the first part of the brief students were asked to visit the exhibition 'Design Cities' at the Design Museum, choose one designer, research him/her thoroughly and produce a non-functional sculpture from the motivations and beliefs found in the research for under £5.
After choosing Adolf Loos to research it became apparent that the sculpture would have to function. Loos began to establish an intelligent building method supported purely by reason, he believed that everything that could not be justified on rational grounds was superfluous and should be eliminated. Loos’ recommendations for pure forms for the economy and effectiveness came from his branding of ornamentation as a crime, as written in his ‘Ornament and Crime’ book published in 1908. A sculpture that had no function would be branded ornamentation in Loos' eyes.
On these findings I built a simple functioning stool from recycled wood. Total cost £4.49 (for wood glue).
Circle: A Public Space
This project was initiated by the LCC letterpress workshop who invited past and present students to create an interpretation of a type speciment sheet. The project asked students to select a typeface, research it and produce a piece of work which would allow the resources of the workshop to be displayed.
My study was based upon the circle, a key element of Futura. During one week of September 2008 I observed and wrote my thoughts on the happenings and surroundings of five public squares in London, with the focal point being the circular section of greenery at its centre. This lead to me producing a 16 page letterpressed book printed in an edition of 125.
This book was exhibited and on sale at the St. Bride event 'Letterpress: A Celebration' and 'The Changing Face of Letterpress' exhibition. Books are still available, please contact me.
Book Co-op
Book Co-op is a collaborative project with Elliot Hammer from Action Committee. The idea behind the book co-op was to create a place within our university for students and teachers alike to exchange books or written material in order to create a network of books which can be read, returned and taken out by anybody in order to freely spread written language.
If you would like a book co-op in your university or organisation, or alternatively if you have any books you no longer need/want or any written pieces you would like to donate to the book co-op then please get in touch.
Black Box
A collaborative project with Elliot Hammer, consisting of two stages. The first part with Tim Hutchinson and Ben Prescott of Bark Design, in the form of a workshop for the 3rd year Typo/graphic students at the LCC.
?The So Called Utopia of the Centre Beauborg? was written in 2007 by Luca Frei. It describes a social experiment in Paris which was given to the Parisian to develop a culture independent from the Parisian bourgeois. Although this was a fictional account of this event similar ideas have been realised on this model. During 1969-70, first year sculpture class at the Central School of Art undertook a radical experiment in which the students were given no restrictions other than the materials with which to work with. This was repeated every day for a year during which time no critical feedback was given.
Black Box draws from these experiments in order to challenge and motivate students beginning their final year by providing them with a range of social situations which require a solution. It also aims to provide a reference point to which the progress of the students may be traced.
The second stage of the project saw Elliot and myself set up Black Box Press as an ongoing project which seeks to create dialogue and community through print based collaborations.
View the online invitation to the project.
All images taken for this project were by the extremely talented Harry Watts.
To view all imagery and read more about the project please visit the Black Box website.
4th Dimension Qualia
A project in collaborative project with Simon Hessler
in which we each chose a ?modern thought?; Simon - Qualia, myself - 4th Dimension (space-time). After extensive research individually on our chosen subject we came together to discuss how we could combine these two theories and what would happen if we did.
We theorised that in the 4th dimension, the lack of physical properties of objects makes sensory experiences - in theory - impossible because the 4th dimension, an intangible space, means one would not be able to identify common 3rd dimensional objects due to the lack of qualia. If something were to give a sensory experience, it is not definite but a personally interpreted experience, since there are no boundaries or definitions of any properties. There are no rules of how something should taste, look, smell or feel like, to you, the floor you?re standing on might feel like water but sound like Joy Division and look like a yellow banana, but to somebody else it might look, feel and sound like something completely different.
To visualise this we created plaster moulds of fruits negative space and asked people to tell us what they thought that space was representing. The answers varied, and some were totally unrecognisable. We then interpreted these results into a series of posters (one of which is pictured to the right) and produced a book to accompany them which would describe the project and the two theories.
This work was displayed at the Pinboard exhibition; New Cross, London - August 2008.
No Place Like Home
A group project set by Europa Design. Working in collaboration with Elliot Hammer, Cian O'Sullivan and Daniel Mather.
Over the years the Elephant & Castle has famously been condemned as an 'eyesore' of London, and an area in need of regeneration and redesign. We were asked to design a commemorative plaque for the Elephant & Castle of 2008.
Our group went to the slowly disappearing Heygate Estate and noticed a number of things were missing. We decided to design/mimic a 'Missing' poster/plaque to generate some focus from the community to the objects that had been removed.
The plaque - designed in Microsoft Word using Arial - to the right reads:
MISSING!
HALF A BRIDGE
LAST SEEN NEXT TO THIS HALF
SENTIMENTAL VALUE
COMMUNITY WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE TO SEE IT
RETURNED
PLEASE CALL: 020 7525 4992
Good Type, Bad Type
Asked to consider the opinions and issues discovered at the LCC so far regarding typography; what is the criteria for good typography and how can this be utilised.
During this period of the course I was particularly interested in Swiss modernism which influenced the making of this 22 x 17 inch broadsheet.
Transitional Spaces
The brief for Transitional Spaces was dealing with spaces in London that were to be observed: the people, the objects and everything else that interacts with the space. My designated space, ASDA car park on the Old Kent Road.
After observing the car park for several days it was clear that the project had to be about cars, in consequence monitoring all cars that entered the car park on a set day for 2 hours. The outcome had to be represented with two A1 posters, one colour, one black and white.
Opting to use letterpress to produce these posters gave a texture resembling the grittiness of the car park itself, which was also reflected in the colours as they mixed with the lead, which could not have been reproduced with a digital print.
This work has been featured on Many Stuff's blog.
(More pictures coming soon)
5 Hat Racks
Asked to find five genuinely discarded objects from the environment I accumulated a variety of objects: a lampshade, an exhaust pipe, a builders hard hat, a candle holder and a bottle of Magners. The project had two parts, the first being to run these objects through a system known as the 'Five Hat Racks' which consist of: location, alphabet, time, category and hierarchy. Each system had to have an A1 visual outcome for each object, this was aimed to make us look closer at our objects and become familiar with them.
The second part was to take these same five objects and run them through an emotive set of categories and produce another five outcomes that could be a size and format of our choosing. Some of the emotive categories were as follows:
Temperature / hot - cold
Intrigue / fascinating - banal, dull
Sentiment / soft, tender, alluring - hard, tough
It was during this point of the project I started to become frustrated, after having a few bad critiques by tutors about my first set of posters I started debating whether the categories listed above were actually emotive, in my opinion they are descriptive. Being able to emphasize my hatred towards the project in this emotional part of the brief I decided to show this by breaking the objects into pieces using a hammer. Questioning why we were doing a project like this on a graphic design course that specifically focuses on typography, it dawned on me that this project was more 'fine art' than design. This lead me to design/photograph the objects in the style I did, purposely mimicking and ridiculing the brief with a parody on fine art.
This work has been featured on pH Magazine's blog.
Lick Me
A project set during the summer break between 1st and 2nd year. Each student was given an object, mine a large polystyrene ball. The project was to keep the object with you all summer, become attached to it and produce a piece of work related to that object.
'Lick Me' was a poster made to make people aware of the interference of chemicals within peoples foods due to polystyrene packaging. The poster was made with small white polystyrene balls, some - of which were coloured with permanent marker - red and black and individually laid onto double sided tape.
The aim of the poster was to entice people, encouraging them to lick the poster, with a message that is visible further down the poster warning them of the dangers and the chemicals that pass into their bodies when heat or liquid come into contact with the polystyrene.
Ken Garland Interview
This interview took place on the 26th of October 2007 between the hours of 11:30 and 13:30. The interview involved Ken Garland and myself. It was conducted at Ken Garland's personal studio in Camden, London.
Please download the interview [PDF].
Vogue Brands
Logo identity for online clothing retail start-up, Vogue Brands.
The website designed by E-scape Interactive can be found here.
Black Box Website
A website created in collaboration with Elliot Hammer to make images available for participants in the Black Box workshop as well as to publicise the workshop to a wider audience.
You can see the website here.
Letterpress LCC Website
The Letterpress workshop at the London College of Communication needed a website that could be easily updated to inform people of upcoming events and classes, as well as showcasing a range of student and project work completed in the workshop. Using a content management system supplied by Indexhibit the website is easy to update for the client during the busy academic year.
You can see the website here.
Harry Watts Website
Harry needed a website that could be easily updated from his current base in Brighton. Using a minimal design that enables the photography to be the centre of attention, combined with a content management system supplied by Indexhibit the website has achieved effortless use from both the user and the client.
You can see Harry's website here.
About
James Allen is a London based designer currently studying in the 3rd year of the Typo/graphic pathway at the London College of Communication (formerly the London College of Printing).
Please download my CV [PDF] for further information.
To understand my inspirations and interests please visit my blog.
Contact
To contact me please send an email by filling in the form below. Please note: all boxes marked with a * must be filled.
Links
A randomly ordered list of links to close friends and those that appear on this site. (please note: all links throughout this site open in a new window)
- Varvara Zaytseva (under construction)
- Elliot Hammer: Action Committee
- Harry Watts
- Phil Baber (under construction)
- Cian O'Sullivan (under construction)
- Simon Hessler
- Jon Leverrier (under construction)
- Lee Bosio
- Black Box
- Letterpress LCC
- Hei Cheng
- Vogue Brands
- Europa Design
Listed below are blogs that I read on a regular basis and highly recommend you see. (see link in the navigation for my personal blog)
Copyright
All the pictures and writing on this website are under the copyright of © James Allen. You may not use any content taken from this site without prior written permission.
