The making of OBVERSE

Limited edition posters available at the show! As well as other prints and zines from Camberwells finest!

OBVERSE

Everyone come to Obverse on Tuesday! This is Kyle Platts (a final year Illustration student at Camberwell's) show!

I am part of the Obverse Team, been liaising with the illustrators and press, designing the catalogue and signage for the show.

Check out the Obverse Blog

Su Blackwell

I contacted this lovely lady a few weeks ago about doing a placement with her, and I've just got a reply from her today! She's a busy bee at the mo but she said to pop down to her studio in January for a chat about a possible placement! Woo!

call sheet

 

I'm very chuffed to have my name amoung these creative geniuses.

Container Plus

I'm designing the posters for a sound exhibition at LCC in January. The exhibition is called Containment, and all pieces will relate directly to the this theme. These are some initial ideas I'm experimenting with.

A spot of jounalism

 

Every now and again I contribute to Mint Magazine, my latest article is about the illustrator Kyle Platts, warning the content is not for the faint hearted: bad skin, hotrods and dead people.

 

http://www.mintmagazine.co.uk/art/kyle-platts-informed-by-bad-skin-hotrods-and-dead-people/

 

you're keeness has been noted

I'm helping out at Nexus Productions on a Johnny Kelly stop frame animation!!! So excited!


Procrastination from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.

Creative Collaboration

I went to the Creative Collaboration talk, as part of Enterprise Week. This is some of the helpful stuff that was discussed.

 

Bracket is a consultancy which encourages skills development around collaborative working, and an agency that brings freelancers together to work collaboratively on commercial projects.

 

1+1=2        1+1=11

Alison Coward, the creator of Bracket highlighted some of the reasons why it is better to work with others:

- it can be lonely working on your own

- you can save resources working with other people

- it's more economical, as you you can split costs 

She also highlighted how working together you help you tackle big problems within communites, such as environmental issues, homelessness and mental health. Her last words echo what I've been feeling since the last talk,  "Get together to help the community, work on interesting projects." 

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HOUSE is a collective is a multi-disciplinary creatives, their uniting aim is to foster collaborative thinking and provide a platform that not only showcases innovative art and design, but also creates an environment that enables an exchange of knowledge and skills.

They embody this through their agency structure where they host events, curate and produce spaces, and provide a retail platform connecting and exposing creative talents of the future to the outside world.

Theo Bridge and Barney Heywood from House came to talk to us. They were very open about how new they are to this, that creating House has been, and continues to be, a huge learning curve for them. They describe themselves as having a "spirit of naivety" and it is something they treasure, they are unaware of the limits and this leads to more exciting ideas,  "Don't be scared of being ambitious."

They say the fact that they have come together opens more doors for them, being able to say 'we' rather then 'I' makes them stronger.

They held their first event at London Design Week this year, called PopUpHOUSE. It was a huge success, thanks to the great events they had planned, and their accidental location - 1 berwick street.

They originally wanted to be situated in East London as there was lots of events happening there, after further discussion they thought that this could be counteractive, having to compete with these other events could make it harder to attract visitors. So they decided to set up in central, Barney had noticed a vacant space off Shaftesbury Avenue and enquired into it, to their delight the space was available and they were able to use it for free! 

What they hadn't counted on was the footfall this location would attract, situated on the corner of Wardour Street the space had a constant flow of people waling past, the space had huge floor-to-ceiling glass windows which meant passers by had a clear view of the exciting events happening inside, and couldn't resist going in.

They are having a second PopUpHouse in Bristol at Christmas, they say  "it is a smaller event but important to keep embodying what we do."

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Creative Capital helps London–based artists and people working in the creative and cultural industries source the latest information on continuing professional development.

They are a network of organisations providing advice and support across a diversity of art forms. Whether you are an artist, practitioner, creative business or arts professional, they can point you in the right direction to continue developing your skills. We share knowledge and promote best practice, keeping a focus on life long learning.

They can help you through a whole process: project vision, timelines, goals, budgets. Whenever you need help, clarity with where your going in your career, Creative Capital is a good place to start.

Former head of D&AD Student Awards - Ian Willingham is behind Creative Capital, his top advice for us: 

1. Make friends with geeks. Make them number one on your hit list.

2. Learn digital, the world is going digital, even if you don't like it you need to adapt, your portfolio needs to include digital if you are going to survive in this day and age.

D.I.Y         D.I.T = DO IT TOGETHER

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Recommeded links:

- Incube8

- Glug London

- ECCA

- Creative Boom

- Meet Up

- Ecomodo

- Playground Creatives

- Millco

- Universal Everything

Community Work Spaces:

- The Cube

- The Hub

- The Trampery

- Jelly

Crowd Funding:

- Sponsume

Recommended read:

Raw talent

One of Camberwell's finest Illustrators Kyle Platts is putting on an exhibition at The Bear on the 30th November showcasing some of the most talented up-and-coming illustrators.

Kyle is executing a really interesting concept that makes the exhibition even more enticing, he has paired up 14 illustrators and asked them to duplicate the work of their pair - the results will be exhibited alongside the original.

I've had a sneak peak at some of the work each pair is going to have to reproduce and there are some tricky illustrations in the mix. Really detailed fine liner drawings that are going to be very labor intensive, and collages which will mean hunting down the exact materials used to make the match. It is going to be a challenge for the illustrators, but an exciting one at that!

Kyle is not looking for exact replicas, but wants to celebrate individual mark making and the result of your own hand through comparison between duplicate and original. His exhibition poster shows Kyle himself attempting to copy his own hand, duplicating the face he first drew on the otherside.

It's going to be a good show, well worth popping your heads in!

Using your creativity for positive change

Today marked the first day of Enterprise Week, a week full of free talks, practical workshops and guest speakers, it is part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, with 7.5million participants globally.

I attended a talk at Chelsea, 'Using your creativity for positive change'. It has broadened my thinking about the sorts of places I want to work this year.

There were two companies that really stood out to me today, firstly UnLtd - a charity which supports social entrepreneurs, anyone with an idea that could change the world for the better. 

They have a brilliant team who can provide a complete package of funding and support, to help you make your idea a reality. 

They are lottery funded themselves, which enables them to offer grants of up to £5000 to help you start something that will benefit society.

 

Common Ground are a design agency who's aim is to generate positive social change. Common Ground is run by two CSM graduates.
What was really impressive about them is that they only graduated two years ago and have already started up their own company with an aim for positive change. Bruno from Common Ground was really honest about how hard it is been, they are having to learn how to run their own business whilst also learning how they can help society, and they are not earning any money from it yet.

Common Ground is funded by UnLtd, this has allowed them to work on many different projects in the 7 short months they have been around.

One to One

So I had my one to one with Kaye, the Camberwell Digital Media Technician, I took the opportunity to ask about a variety of computer related things and she taught me some really good stuff:

- InDesign stuff like style sheets & baselines

- how to save and resize images for the web

- the significance of all those saving formats
(jpeg, png, tiff, gif...)

- how to prepare files to be sent to printers
(very important for my placement at Walker Books)

- And the best thing she showed me is how to make an
interactive PDF. Thanks to Kaye I will now be able
to insert my animation into my PDF Portfolio!

Flying high

These are some illustrations me & my sister made for our housemate Penny for her birthday! It's the 3 of us attached to hot air balloons, we stuck them to her bedroom wall to surprise her when she got home!

Alternative Fashion

I had the pleasure of working with two of my favourite people, the talented Rachel Penn and my very own flesh and blood Tida Finch. The girls had made some stunning garments and wanted to photograph them. I got called into model for Penny whilst Tida modelled a dress her & Penny collectively made.

Tida looking hot to trot.

And here I am below (after almost getting run over on my cycle ride here), in a dress painstakingly knit by Penny. It took a lot of jumps to get this shot.

InDesign

I took advantage of my UAL card and the fact that I live 5mins away from Camberwell College, and snuck into an InDesign workshop there. I'm not sure if this is allowed (as I am an LCC student), but there was only two other people at the workshop so I figured my attendance was appreciated! For my upcoming placement at Walker Books they said I need to know how to use InDesign, so I was paying full attention! The workshop was really good, I learnt all the basics - especially loving the placeholder text & how easy it is to write along different shapes (after having a lot of trouble doing this on photoshop)!

But I still felt like there was so much more to learn, so I arranged a private tutorial with the teacher for tomorrow so that I can become a bit more of a pro!

pa rum pa pum pum

Last year Dan (the guy I'm currently interning for) made some really gorgeous xmas decorations, based on illustrations from his victorian wallpapers. They went down a treat.
This year he fancied making a few instrumental pieces. So gave me a selection of trumpets, french horns and tubas to screen print onto wood, the designs would then be laser cut into individual decorations.


Dan gave me the freedom to choose colours; I went for a grape, petrol and maroon colour. At 10am I started a 10hour print-a-thon and enjoyed every minute of it! Radio 6, Dan's sandwiches and chats about the worst jobs kept us going. Here's Dan working away...

He makes me really good sandwiches.

And here are the prints.


The colours came out really nicely on the wood. I did two pulls, in the same direction to maintain the appearance of the grain to give it a slightly aged quality.

Creative Jobsearch Workshop

14/10/10

I went to the Creative Jobsearch Workshop at The Hub, it was really eye opening. A fact that really stood out to me is that only 10% of creative jobs are actually advertised, and everyone is applying for that 10%.
The workshop made me realise the significance of networking. It wasn't until this moment that I realised that all my placements so far have been found through networking.

DH Logo

These are some initial ideas, inspired by the Amazing Jumbo wallpaper, a character in Dan's work that really stands out as being quite iconic.