Leeds Met Creative Arts Festival. A Creative Event In Itself.

On the 9th of June the Leeds Metropolitan University Creative Arts Festival 2011 opened. It was a chance for all the art and design courses within the university to exhibit their Degree work to the public.

I didn’t quite know what to expect when I arrived at the exhibition (having skipped my own degree show at Newcastle) but what I found was an extremely well organised and creatively thought through exhibition that encouraged you to take your time and view all the work on display.

Walking across the entrance to the courtyard the first signs of the exhibit begin to appear. A sculpture made up of different colour and material cubes, representative of the departments building design displays the name of the exhibition. The piece is brilliant, eye catching and bold. Its concept fits well, reflecting the building as well as the exhibition.

The exhibition ticket (top image) featured a series of symbols, white patterns on a colour background. Each symbol represents a different exhibition and the symbols are used throughout the building to guide visitors to each of the exhibitions.

Floor guides feature the symbols alongside cubes mirroring the design of the outdoor sculpture. If you know which exhibition you want to go to you simply find your symbol and follow the prompts. This could be the coloured cubes dotted around outside, the stacked white cubes inside and then you know you are on the right floor as your symbol is featured on the stairwell. Excellent!

For the more spontaneous guests just there to have a nosy there was another option to pick where you wanted to go. The wooden object below is like a game. You drop a ball in at the top and it can land in a number of slots, each representing an exhibition, where it lands is where you go.

Each of the exhibitions featured their own little quirky additions. I hate to admit it but the architecture department looked like it hadn’t really made that much of an effort in comparison to some of the other courses displaying work.

The interior design exhibition had balloons in the entrance. Each with a tag tied to the string at the bottom of the balloon. They made you want to interact and pull down a balloon to find out what it was all about. Each tag had a persons name and details on one side and a very apt, considered quote on the other. A fabulous first impression that wasn’t let down by the quality of the work on display. The interior design room was the one that really got me excited. Some of the display ideas were fantastic.

The graphic design room had the best ideas for getting the designers details out to the public and for getting feedback to the students direct from the public (typical clever clogs!).

A notice board at the entrance of the exhibition featured a tear off block of plans. The plan was a floor plan of the exhibition space, numbered to show the different display areas of the artists. On the back of the sheet was a key, a list of the designers and their contact details, blogs and websites. I really like this idea! A concise way of getting a huge amount of information across and a memorable addition to the exhibition.

Alongside the plans was a series of hooks, on each of the hooks was a little tag with phrases such as ‘this got us chatting’, ‘this touched me’, ‘this required skill’ and ‘this got on my tits!’ Visitors could take a tag or two and hang it on a hook next to each designers work. This was my favourite part of the exhibition. The students who created the work were around the exhibition and the look of delight on their faces when they walked in and saw that people had liked their work was fantastic. After all the hard work that had gone into the production this simple feedback technique was fun for visitors and exciting for the students.

I visited the exhibition to see my sisters degree work and finding a ‘this got us chatting’ tag on her work made mine and her day!

Gravity Meet Your Archenemy

This is the tagline for the Gel-Blur 33 trainers by Asics. I saw the ad for the product online and instantly wanted to blog about it. Such a simple, clever concept that fits the brand image and product perfectly. Well worth a watch!

Little Miss Google

The day before a project hand in at university tends to be rather stressful but when I found myself on Google I stopped, smiled and had a bit of a procrastinate. To celebrate important events and dates Google often changes its header picture for a day and on this day (9th May) it would have been the 76th birthday of Charles Roger Hargreaves who died in 1988. The English Author wrote and illustrated the Mr. Men and Little Miss series so this little gesture by Google is a fitting tribute to his work. The books have sold over 85 million copies worldwide, I had many of them myself as a child so happening upon these creations was a real treat.

If you didn’t catch them yourself here is the full set of 16 drawings that appeared on the website.

Nike–The Landscape of Advertising

I came across a series of stills from this advert online and at a quick glance down the page I thought I had come across a great art installation or a cleverly designed landscape. In fact it was all artificially computer generated to advertise the Nike Mercurial Vapor Superfly 3.

I wish that this was a piece of art! It would be an incredible feature to an outdoor landscaped space. The different affects it would produce day and night would be incredible. In the day, it would cast beautiful shadows and at night glowing like this would create a great atmosphere in the space. Maybe Nike should produce this in real life, it would be great for advertising.

The advert was produced by Post Panic for Nike  and you can watch it for yourself below.

Twitter Has Landed

As you can tell by the new bar that has appeared at the right of my posts, I have finally joined twitter! It took me a while to get to grips with WordPress so I get a feeling I will find Twitter just as tricky!

I thought it would be appropriate to do a twitter related post and after a quick search came across this great little idea…

 

 

This is the TweetingSeat by Chris McNicholl, an interactive park bench that creates both a physical and digital connection to its users. The bench has its own twitter feed, every time someone sits on the bench, a log is created and photographs from two cameras are taken of the users and how they interact with the bench and the environment.

I don’t know if the bench has its own wireless that allows others to sit on the bench and update their own twitter but I hope it does! This would be great as you can log your location on twitter and tell the world you are tweeting from the TweetingSeat.

More information on the TweetingSeat is available here.

QR Codes In The City

Looking at human interactions and communication in the urban environment is something I have begun to find fascinating. As technology develops and becomes both well known and accessible, people are beginning to interact with each other and the inanimate world in different ways.

QR codes are like barcodes that can be read with the aid of a camera phone and barcode reader app. By scanning the barcode information can be sent to the device or the user can be directed to a specific webpage. QR codes are popping up all over the place but I particularly like the way they have been used in the advertisement below.

The poster was spotted by Michael Surtees in New York and was posted on his blog (Design Notes). The poster is advertising an exhibition and uses the QR code, replicated to form a striking image. There is also a code at a lower level that can be scanned by passers by to get more information on the exhibition.

The design is extremely clever, and could almost allow the advertisement to be wordless. Those intrigued by the image can simply scan the code and get all the information they need!

Autumn Colours 2011

Trend watching is relevant to all designers, particularly forecasting future styles. Rebecca Taylor  , has produced a selection of pantone colours to detail what she thinks will be prominent in fashion collections this autumn. The colour selection is created for Pantone by reviewing the collections shown at New York fashion week.

The images shown here represent the female palette, there is also a male palette which varies slightly from that of the female palette. Each of the colours has been selected from an individual shows, more information on the chosen colours is available on olybop.info.

Streetwear Shop Window You Control

A group of Hyper Island students were asked to come up with a way of connecting a streetwear brand to music or art. The solution was an interactive display window.

Using a backlit projection screen and heat sensors to detect the users, as a person moves in front of the window they get to control how the person on screen acts. Data can be input by users so the personalised set of movements you create can be named. As a marketing project, this is perfect. The clothing brand is aimed at those who engage in urban sports such as free running and skating so being able to see the items in action is great.

The video above shows the window in action.

For more information click here and for behind the scenes images and footage of the project simply click here.

Absolut Advertising Art

Absolut vodka have always maintained a connection with the art world what with their limited edition artist designed bottles but now they are taking even their advertising to new artistic heights. Each of the designs featured here are hand painted, often by street artists including Ozmo, a well known Italian graffiti artist. The artists work is usually site specific and uses a mixture of shared sources to make his work. His piece for Absolut (top left) was no exception.

The chosen wall in Porta Ticinese, Milan has seen a number of transformations. This includes designs by the Musician Skin, the Designer Alessandro Guerrier and the Architect Gio Pagani.

I wish more of this kind of work was happening in the UK. The idea of site specific advertising, especially with the involvement of prestigious designers and artists is fantastic. The concept certainly has more depth than the standard billboard and provides the chance to make a creative statement in a locally relevant way.

City Branding At The Guggeheim, Berlin

Looking back at my trip to Berlin in March, there are many things that stood out. The grabber games machine below is one of them and is perfect for my MA research into city branding.

I spotted the grabber machine at the Guggenheim in Germany. It was part of an exhibition called All Access World by the artist Agathe Snow. The machine is covered in the branding for the exhibition and in each of the balls that can be won is an item that was also available in the gift shop. Each prize is also something that in some way represented Berlin such as a Brandenburg  Gate cookie cutter or elastic bands shaped like a number of other memorials or buildings in Berlin.

Placing this game on the street rather than in an exhibition would create a great branding tool for the city. Locating it near different points of interest, with relevant prizes inside.

More information on the exhibition is available on the Guggenheim website.