beetrood en situ

here is the polaroid pic of my little mascot on his way to the awards ceremonies / reminding people to go.. Basically, the idea is that you stumble across him in random places and are prompted to get some tickets and go to the ceremony. I love the feel of a polaroid photo - no amount of photoshopping can achieve the same effect - but it does have its technical problems too. Namely the close-up restrictions - you have to be 3 feet away from an object for it to be in focus so my little beet was always a bit small and blurry as you can see for yourself.

beetroot mascot

I wanted a somewhat surreal mascot - and a beetroot it has somehow become. Apart from the fact I've had some technical problems with it going mouldy every few days, I reckon it has been a good choice. Lots of scope. Here is a pic of my chosen logo...

blog

my blog has been suffering recently... too many pots on the boil (if that's the correct expression) and I've found myself writing in my journal instead. We have been given a new brief, and I have decided to do the branding and media campaign for a fictitious music awards ceremony called the Beet Music Awards (Best in European Electro & Techno - geddit?). Anyway, my logo is a beetroot, and I've spent the last few weeks taking polaroid pictures of him in various incongruous locations on his way to the ceremony... construction site, road, grass on a traffic junction.
Today I plan to take some photos for the website (whose interface will change every time you open it) and to design the backstage pass, tshirt, ticket, wrist band and stamp for the awards night... I am currently on the look out for 1970s patterns that I can photograph for the backdrop/.
I have been inspired by some photos of Sonar music festival, which I used to go to in Barcelona. They have an interesting campaign - quirky and irreverent.

beards

If there is one thing I've learned whilst working on this project, it's that fake beards are a bugger to make look normal. They either look like flying monsters or extremely rude, and a mere slip of ones hand in photoshop is enough to make them look weird and ghastly. Thankfully, I found an interesting book cover from 1975 which substitutes the beard for some rather dated but innovative type...

vegan poster

OK so we have to re-design a poster for our new project. I found a horrendous poster for World Vegan Day (lots of logos, a bad map, poor use of typography and graphics... the list is endless) and I'm going to re-design into a series of four posters which are ironic and a bit toungue'n'cheek. I want to play on the stereotypes of vegans being hairy, smelly hippies who only eat lentils and show that people should look beyond the stereotype. I want to do a poster of a woman's hairy legs (which is logistical nightmare - what I've done is to take a poster of my legs and hopefully with a bit of clever photoshop give myself some hair); a bowl of lentils and a big beard (which I plan to get from a joke shop). Sourcing the pictures has been the big nightmare. I also have to re-design the World Vegan Day logo. Lots to do.

Russian Beans

I worked on my bean packaging this week... I took some photos of some forks in my kitchen; photoshoped them to make them look grainy, turned them into black and white and did the same with some beans - some by themselves and some in groups. it was rather messy. I then arranged the beans and forks in ways which paid homage to some pioneering Russian Constructivist posters at the time... used black, white, red and green as well as strong diagonals, collaged photography and an allusion to Lizzitsky's famous red 'wedge'. It's pretty much finished but still needs some tweaking to get it just right. I have bought some brown stock which I want to distress with tea / crumpling which I will then print it on to. I'm then going to put it on an actual can and take some photos of it.

hand symbolism

A bit of bumpf I found on Russian Constructivism...I am interested in the idea that in RC objects carried universal meanings and symbols. I've found a lot of posters using hands a potent symbols for the workforce - and that they are the means by which a new society will be constructed. I want to use a fork in the same way with my baked beans.
'Constructivism was a movement that was active from 1915 to the 1940s. It was a movement created by the Russian avant-garde, but quickly spread to the rest of the continent. Constructivist art is committed to complete abstraction with a devotion to modernity, where themes are often geometric, experimental and rarely emotional. Objective forms carrying universal meaning were far more suitable to the movement than subjective or individualistic forms. Constructivist themes are also quite minimal, where the artwork is broken down to its most basic elements. New media was often used in the creation of works, which helped to create a style of art that was orderly. An art of order was desirable at the time because it was just after WWI that the movement arose, which suggested a need for understanding, unity and peace. Famous artists of the Constructivist movement include Vladimir Tatlin, Kasimir Malevich, Alexandra Exter, Robert Adams, and El Lissitzky.'
The pic is an example of a fantastic poster by Gustav Klutsis using the hand imagery.