Time Planning

In todays session, we looked at why Time Planning (Time to daydream) is important? And how we are able to adapt to it to help us dealing with a large amount of work?

• It clears the mind for the creative thought process.
• In functioning a professional practice. Large agencies have whole planning department, small agencies/ self employed are (amongst other things) the planning department.
• No planning = No professional practice.
• Missed of deadlines, angry clients, sub standard work, missed opportunities and stress!
• Stress/Burnout 

How is Time Planning possible?

1. Tool #1 - Love list 
2. Tool #2 - Know yourself 
3. Tool #3 - Plan ahead 

So in small groups we were told to layout/draw our every week timetable which includes our weekend. It must include time for us to work, leisure and a wish list must be fitted in. We used a colour key to highlight, red for work and green for leisure. There is our timetable below.

List of things to do in life 

1. Travel the world
2. Learn to play the guitar/piano/keyboard  
3. Become a Graphic Designer 
4. Learn/improve my language Chinese - read, write and speak more (Cantonese) 
5. Practice cooking  
6. Draw more
7. See more galleries
8. Meet up with old friends 
9.  Become more confident 
10. Developing skills in Graphic Design 
11. Learn to drive
12. Have a healthier balance diet 
13. Exercise more (Badminton)
14. Graduate from University

Research of websites/apps for time planning 

• Doodle.com
• Teamweek.com
• Time planner app on iphone
• Producthunt.com
• Timeful app 

What's Happening in the World in November?

In todays PPP session, Penny wanted us to find out some events that students could go to during the month, November. Following on our previous lesson about 10 things that inspire us, we had to explore events that could be inspirational for other students to go to. Within our small groups we researched and discovered some November events happening locally, internationally and online.

1) Leeds International Film Festival
Is a festival located in Leeds, an easy local destination for students living or travelling  The Leeds International Film Festival is the biggest film festival in England. It was discovered in 1987, and at November time they hold various venues throughout Leeds. This is a fantastic way for students to discover and experience a variety of films across the whole world. This could expand their knowledge of different culture backgrounds and the way they view things. It's destination point is perfect if you live in Leeds or leave near it, overall it would be a good place to experience with friends and families, it is on the 5th to the 19th of November. To find out more information visit their site: http://www.leedsfilm.com/

2) Day of the Dead
The Day of the Dead is a Mexican Festival celebrating Life, a tradition which commemorates many of their ancestors who have preceded them. There have been many Day of the Dead themed weddings  which are very famous as it embraces the Latinos and non Latinos for their special day. Also the way that they use makeup to represent this celebration is fascinating, as they apply a combination of the darkness and colours to create a vibrant but sinister looking skulls. Thus emphasising a Beautiful Death. There is also a lot of music and dances to this celebration, this demonstrates how fun the change of a brand new culture experience it will be. This event is based in Dia De Los Muertos, Mexico, it is on the 1st to 2nd of November. To find more information about this event visit their website: http://www.mexicansugarskull.com/index.html

3) Bonfire Night
"Remember, Remember the 5th of November" is a chant that has been repeated many years on during the month November, especially in Great Britain. This is also known as, Bonfire Night an event or tradition that celebrates the failure of Guy Fawkes' actions on the 5th of November. Bonfire Night is an amazing experience to celebrate with friends and families, as you can set up fireworks to the sky to admire the different explosions of colours in the night sky or go to an event which you can watch.

4) Movember
Movember is a great opportunity to have an excuse to grow a moustache for some guys. Movember is an event celebrated in England at November, as it raises funds and awareness for men's health and charity. This events starts as soon as you shave on the November the 1st, you let your facial hair grow and groom. Until 30 days without shaving, it will becomes an amazing moustache, by this you could help men live happier, healthier and live longer. For more information here is a link to their website: https://uk.movember.com/

Be a Sponge: 10 Things that Inspire me

In todays PPP session, Penny Lee wanted the class to explore what things: website, blogs, pinterest, Instagram etc. That inspire us to do our type work, like they're style, colour, layout and so on. We got into groups and wrote down on our big sheet what kinds things inspire us in our life.

In our group we wrote down how many famous people from the internet such as makeup artists, how films like Tim Burton and his art style inspire us, how the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the art work there inspired us. i.e, Buddha, Poppies, and Rob Ryan. Artwork of food also inspire as chefs can present food in such an artist way. There are some of my inspirational sites, people, blogs etc...

10 Things that Inspire Me: 

1) Yorkshire Sculpture Park - After visiting the "Yorkshire Sculpture Park" with the year group, to do some research for our study task to create a new symbol.  It left me inspired and amazed, this is due to how creative it was to combine sculptures within a natural environment. I especially loved the Poppies sculpture, the idea of making the Poppies into a big stream coming up to the bridge and the craftsmanship of it was truly fascinating. Also Ai WeiWei Tree sculpture was really interesting as the tree looked quite realistic, especially how the rusty material was selected well to match the theme of nature within the park. This inspires me to do my work within a mix media format, as I want to explore how I can make things as powerful and impressive by combining two different themes together.

2) Michelle Phan - Michelle Phan is a famous makeup artist, on Youtube. She has about 8 million subscribers, She is inspirational to me as she explains how your face is a canvas. And teaches her viewers how to transform your face into an amazing piece of artwork. And she has many tutorials on how to produce them. She is also a very good artist as she does shorts animations based on her life experiences, not only her art style impresses me but the story she tells and imagination intrigues me. It makes me want to improve my drawing skills and makeup skills to, by following her techniques.  

3) Bentomonsters - Bentomonsters is an instagram page, by a mum who likes to create these amazing lunch boxes for her two boys. She is inspiring as she transform food into art pieces, to me food art is a very artist field. However, her style is not the fine dining style, it is more the cute and japanese influence bento boxes or lunch boxes. Taken to a completely new level, the way she uses the ingredients are stunning as she creates cartoon characters such as: Baymax, Totoro, Snoopy, Hello Kitty, Winnie the Pooh so on. This inspires me to get my work to this funand playful professional standard and have a perfectionist style as her work photographed looks remarkable.

4) AH-HA Studio - AH-HA Studio is a Graphic Design Studio which has a very individualistic style to their work, which brings out each clients uniqueness. The work that they do is very minimalist, simple and abstract. This can be emphasis by the photography which is presented in their website: studioahha.com. Compared to other Graphic design based Studios, they have an uniqueness working with paper. Their style is a combination of paper, graphics and photography. They also work in many different fields as they can do: business cards, interior design, packaging, logos etc. This inspires me to become more varied in my work as I can develop and be more advance, due to having experience doing different types of professions.

5) LCA Peers - During my few weeks doing this course, I believe that my Peers in my class are very inspirational. When we critique each of our work, I receive a lot of feedback on how my work can be improved and made effective. This is due to the cross-cultural/influences and the variety of backgrounds each person brings to the class. Also their artwork is also inspiring as it makes me want to improve my skills and also take what they have create to my own work.

6) Andrew Bannecker - Andrew Bannecker is a Graphic Designer, I discovered him in a illustrative book that I got given for Christmas. I found his work most interesting as I like simple and minimalistic style of artwork, thus I want to make my kind of work like that. So I did a bit more research to him and found his website (http://www.andrewbannecker.com/). Not only he is a professional Graphic Designer, he also does animations and illustrations. He also does a lot of advertising for well known companies like Starbucks and Oreo. He inspires me as I want my work to be shown like his, working for companies who like his style of artwork.

7) "The Secret life of Walter Mitty" - Is a fantastic movie, that I would recommend as it has aspects of typography and a creative arty imagination. This movie stars the actor Ben Stiller, as a man called Walter Mitty. He has a typical boring life style, however it has humorous scenes of him imagining himself doing a lot of crazy things that would never could happen realistically. Nevertheless he does find himself going on an adventure of finding a photographer with the last piece of film or picture for the publishing magazine for it to be completed.

8) Leeds - Leeds the city is also very inspiring as we did some research for another brief for recreating a logo for a international or national brand and producing a map for people who do not know the city well. During exploring the city there are many artistic places there to get inspiration of, such as the galleries, statues, events etc. Therefore, the surroundings/architecture/posters are quite inspirational, as there is a lot of art within the city.

9) Cereal - Is a website full of photography which was suggested by another group. So I thought to explore this and I really like it. The layout of the photography is organised and simple, it has a clean and fresh look to it and the colours are very sharp and varied. This inspires me to make my photography skills just as good and capturing simple but effective pictures for my work.

10) Disney's short film "Paperman" - The Disney short film 'Paperman' by John Kahrs is very inspirational to me as it combines computer-generated and hand-drawn animation techniques. It also won an Oscar for its creativeness. The reason why I adore this animation, as Disney have finished with their signature hand drawn 2D animation and I especially loved that style. So I was so happy when I saw this as it was so simple but effective and I though the story line was very loveable, appealing and engaging which is Disney's main purpose of its animation stories. Therefore, I want my work to be inspired by the hand drawn style and graphics as well.

Penny Lee Talk - The John Peel Lecture with Brian Eno

During the first PPP (Personal and Professional Practice) session, with Penny Lee. She gave an introduction to the class about her and what she did etc. She explained during her years of travelling aboard and working with various people/artist/designers from other parts of the world, helped her grow in the profession she is now in. Penny repetitively informed to the class how she kept pushing herself to do more in her life, thus developing her skills in Graphic Design. Now because of this experience, she has expanded her knowledge and created new techniques in Graphic Design. Therefore, making her more varied within producing her work. This has been inspiring as this talk made me think how I could do those type of things that Penny has experience, by boarding my knowledge of the world of Graphic Design.

Penny also recommended the class to listen to a radio podcast called, "The John Peel Lecture (2015 with Brian Eno)". In this lecture it analyses the way we see art culture in the world, Brian Eno aims to presents how individuals in society and organisations engross within this specific culture. He does this by making his audience and listeners relate to artists, broadcasters, gallerists, promotors, DJs, managers, lawyers and fans etc. These figures in the world symbiotically link parts of a single huge structure that we call Culture. He mostly outlines some of his knowledge on this uncertain conservation, thus investigating the mutual connection rapport between the between the elements and components that combine to create our culture today, and define how cultural processes creates a balance for essential and the significants on todays society.

Brian Eno, is a famous English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist. He is known to be one main developer of ambient music. Eno is one of these influential people, and displays how he confront problems of the world. He begins the podcast with "My way of working is always to not set a goal and reach it. But to see what I can do and what I can do anyways. Its a different way round of doing it I think". When he follows on when he was writing a strange sentence about the creative industries and he thought, industries is not the right word for what he is doing. A genesis of that term of this understanding way, is that there are people working in the creative industry that are always desperate to get money from the Government. They try to convince the Government and talk them they're an industry. If you are part of an industry it means you are part of the economic frame work and ultimately express as a single number one or the number one jobs you had. Therefore Eno expresses this as calling this "the beginning and end of the Arts". These things can't be evaluated that way are not worth anything. Eno gives an example of an educational secretary, as she said that "It's a good idea that students don't need to learn about the arts and humanities because they don't offer good job aspects as the STEM subject. A STEM is interesting as it stands for: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, But the idea of things that its important. These centre STEMs leads to everything else which are important part of the economic mill. This is what makes Great Britain great and successful. However, compare to the subject, Art it is seen more as a luxury, thats why there are mixed attitudes of the Arts beginning an economic entity. Then Eno reference another persons ideas of the Arts, Nicky Morgen, the message which was important about the Arts, that its untamed, random and individualistic. There is nothing to improve of to encourage about the Arts, as many people think that the Arts is an unfettered individuals go to.

Then Eno wants to highlight the two questions he wants to answer which are: "Is Art a luxury? Is it only a luxury or does it do something for us? Or is there a way to create a situation of which the Arts to flourish? He emphasises that we need to rethink how we talk about culture in general, and what it does for us and what it actually is? Because there is a complete confusion about it, for example Eno did an experiment and puts us in his shoes, that if you talk to 20 scientist and asked what do you think science has done. You'll pretty much agree but with 20 versions of the answer. That its about understanding something about the world. In another similar situation if you talk to 20 artists and ask what does Art do? You'll probably get 15 different answers and a couple of repeats. Overall, we are all engaging the creative industry but the centre is a subject that no one of us has a clear idea about. What are we doing when we make Art or consuming it? Then Eno gives a definition on what Culture is, "Art is everything you don't have to do" meaning there are certain thing you have to do like live, eat etc. But you don't have to create a baked a sausage roll and so on. So everyone has a basic function that everyone has and animals which is Eating. But unlike all animals we do embedding and embellishment, we make food that we eat complex, complicated and create it to be a stylised active. We wear clothes, but we don't have to wear good labels ones like designer clothing: for example, Marc Jacobs, Chanel etc. We have clothes as an essential needs, but we stylise, experiment etc it. The same goes with Movement, you don't need to run, do the tango, dancing etc. So even though movement is a basic and automatic thing, we elaborate it into something an area of stylistic. So the basic activate is movement. What we like to do is stylise it in different ways and communicating is the same way. This because we has humans and we live in our own groups, we do more than communicating we write epic poems, pop songs, sympathise and advertising. We do additional stuff on top of communication. And all of those stuff has characteristics, which is highly stylised and is not randomly stylised. As we have a deep care or what we are doing i.e, dying hair, thats why us human invest a lot of their things on appearances. Its a fact that everyone doesn't dress randomly, they might think its stylisation but Eno wants to persuade them its that they are part of this broad definition of Art and they are using it without knowing. There are the things that people do which are part of Art: perfume, tattoo, graffiti, needle point, slang, vases, doodles, still life and boob job. These things are unnecessary, we can all live without it, but in fact we all engage with them. So the first question why it is important why we do it? Notice its not all of us wealthy people in terms of global wealth who are doing it, everyone is doing. Human group are spending much time and energy stylising. Others people stylisation of things. So the question is what is it for? Danny Hilliest asked what is the most interesting question, why do we like music? This is a mysterious question that you can imagine, why do we have preferences, different genres we prefer, which song is better than that song and so on. Like different preferences we have a very fine distinctions about things that we prefer, atheistic things. It doesn't have much function, especially with industries, we're all doing it and thinking it. So what are we doing?

Children is an interesting subject that Eno brought up during the podcast. When you watch children play, they are mostly playing a game called let's pretend. Like this stick can change you to a frog, but if you have that bottle top I can't fly anymore. Children playing is important because it demonstrates them learning, and if we don't let them play they don't develop well. This is the process of children climaxing. The meaning of lets pretend is lets imagine, a child's imagination is the central human trick, which is in a completely different scale of animals. Other animals have little imagination, we can change environment, scenery etc. To see if it works, thus brings us to experience empathy. The feeling what the world is like in somebody else's head. Children start this world building and they can do whatever they want to do. This exercising a great talent of imagination, thus become more human, where children grow out of being animals and transforming into humans as they spend lots of time imagining. The significants of Imagination is that young humans are imagining the world and making this into a learning process. In an alternative its creates a future, makes a bridge, football teams, designs, parties, Government, that everyone can imagine. So this is the point children learning is similar to adults learning Art. So we don't all stop playing we continue it but we do it through by Art. The reason for the list, is that we all want these things because they are all doing the same thing.

Eno tells the audience he read a book called "Mans rage of Chaos, Biology behaviour in the Arts. And he reads a quote out, "Art is exposer of tensions and problems of a false world, in order that man problem of the real world." Therefore if you go on further, the exposer of the job and freedom of a new world might recognise them in the real world. The idea of Art has a serious function in our lives, one of these that Eno has experience is when he was on a bus. He over heard these old ladies talking about a TV soap opera and during one of the episode, one of the characters turned out to be a lesbian. Because it was a soap opera they were able to talk about it naturally. But if it were someone connected to them if would be a different situation. Overall, they were able to discuss this piece of Art work, the issue of it so naturally. Meaning Art is creating a little or alternative world.

Novels have this creation of being in a different world, as they are filled with imagination. Which you can imagine yourself being effected dramatically. Charles Dickens stories were quite shocking and received empathy, as the higher class people where about to understand the lower class people situation in their world of working and for survival. The higher class people realise that the lower class had the same sort of feeling and emotions, this is a distinct social effect. Similarly, it builds a world that doesn't exist or imagine. By increasing the ability of the world, but it is also looking back to the way that you are in, compare to film and writing. The messages is being invited and you are able to learn something about it. For example that Eno gave to his audience, Hairstyles are one way or the other way. That you belong to a world where this particular hairstyle exist, this broadcast something which is receiving positions and thinking in a certain position, which therefore identifies yourself. This is what we call identification.

So Eno questions his audience, is what Art is doing for us? Is it giving us a chance to have feelings about things not dangerous. Art is a place where it offers a safe environment to have quite extreme and dangerous feelings and a reason you do that cosy or know that you can switch it off. Art is a simulator and offers a simulator worlds like playing a simulator game. Eno carries on this topic by referencing a book called "Keeping together by time", this book talks about the intense pleasure humans feel in the muscular coordination, i.e dancing, marching and so on. We're a lot of people who synchronise themselves. This is the same with the old ladies on the bus, synchronising living in a culture which is changing very quickly. Thinking a month in our life time, the amount of time changes in the 14th century which comes to terms. Eno explains how everyone has different experiences, cars, medicine, fashion and so on. Not everyone is experts in everything we need ways of being in sync and Eno believes what culture is doing, is part of the creative arts.

Eno defines Culture as a set of collective rituals, that we are all change in. Why the explanation, GMP, the most important thing all the people in the community has created culture and keeps us together.  He might be correct important job, Where does Art come from? Painting, was Eno's period show went to watch, he saw 70 artists that he never heard of were very good and so much was going on. Some people or artists survive in history some don't which is very small percentage. The one reason why some artist go down in history because of the help of collectors, money, handlers and rent salons. These are places to advertise or display won, Galleries hold competitions against other Galleries and so on. They produce all these work that Eno calls them scenious (Talent of a whole community) and genious (one person).

British Pop culture scenarios has all sorts of talent and companies come altogether get something which is in the eco system. These are represented in levels which are higher and lower. It takes only one things in the eco system to make it all crumple. Thats why they are able to to bring it back by constantly rebalancing. Culture is like this, especially British musical culture is like this. So people have thought of new ideas which are articulated individually but is generated by communities. So it naturally celebrates individuals very keen on names.

Eno then begins his story as he describes how he did it in his way self made man. It was 11 years old, attending a catholic grammar school, then went to a few working places, made it to Art school which he explains that 5 years of it was absolutely invaluable time so he left, then went on to the dole. But Eno didn't want a job for live because he was scared that he would be trapped in a job and he had a goal of becoming an Artist for sure! Eno stayed in the dole and was doing odd jobs, until great fortune struck him by meeting Roxy music, he expresses how lucky he was. Then soon after other great fortune came as he met John Peel, who came to his shows and broadcasted it on the radio. A writer called Richard Williams wrote about them and it was a big piece of writing. Eno indicates how John Peel was his key figure in life as well as the NHS and Library service. Eno mentions how those things are significant institutions that had been place by people who idealistic socialisation of things.
Like the BBC radio and internet is a way of communicating and scholarships. These are forms of social engineering appealers and they representing a generous a future to find it time now. Now is a new area for resources and economic sacristy, as there is competition moving into an era of abundance and corporations. We're super productive and as we alternate. Even less connected to productions because of automatism which means humans are less necessary to must process. In a world of ultra fast change it really speeding up but somehow stay coherent. Eno believes we are going to be full artists than we are now.

The social side is the basic income and everyone should get a wage which will ultimately get rid of poverty for anyone who is homeless. Which tells our future, and makes an open source of movement where people producing ideas, keeping ideas and able to share it.

Study Task 01: Design Studio - "Getting to Know People"

In Study Task 01, we were all selected into groups to research 12 Design Studio. Within our groups we had to investigate or explore our given Design Studio and then put together a 3 minute visual and oral group presentation. 

This presentation of our selected Design Studio had to include the following: Who are they? Where are they based? What do they do? How do they do it? and What makes them unique? 

The Design Studio that my group got given was called the "Studio AH-HA".

Studio AH-HA - Information

Who are they?

Studio AH-HA is a communication and Graphic Design studio established in 2011 by two female creators called, Coralina Cantante and Catarina Carreiras. Thus highlighting how this studio is an all produced by women. 

Coralina and Catarina both met each other during university and during the following years travelling aboard they have been obtaining new ways of exploring Graphic Design. This was helped by working along side their design idols: Sam Baron and Fabrica's Design Studio, Located in Treviso, Italy; Rem Koolhaas & the Office for Meropolitan Architecture, located in Rotterdam; Hjalti Karlsson and Jan Wilker at Karlsson Inc, Located in New York and finally Ian Anderson & Experimenta Design, located in Lisbon. 

Where are they based?

The Studio is based Lisbon, Portugal. This indicates how they work on a international scale. 

What do they do?

The studio aims to pursues a variety of creative interests across a different types of mediums: from interior design, naming and identity work, advertising, new media, traditional and fine print, retail and product design, photography and illustrations.

How do they do it?
When creating their work, they have an ever-changing cast of collaborators. Studio AH-HA has a holistic approach towards, design and branding. By working with their clients through every step of the process. Investigating their inspirations, ideas and motivations. They are able to create together a whole new fresh, engaging and appealing brand message.     

What makes them unique?
As a Studio they have a individualistic style in their work that brings out each of its uniqueness. The work that they do is very minimalist, simple and abstract. This can be emphasis by the photography which is presented in their website: studioahha.com. Compared to other Graphic design based Studios, they have an uniqueness working with paper. Their style is a combination of paper, graphics and photography.