Brief 6 : Business card development & Identity

I've been developing Beth's Identity trying to remain to the key rules I've set out below:

-Serif typeface, feminine curves, elegant letters.

-Bright bold stock to represent the sort of photographs she takes. 

-30% removal of stems of letters to relate to behind the scenes photography. 

-Extensions to crossbar of certain characters to emphasise her delicate character. 

Below are a collection of Beths Photographs;

  

I've been experimenting with the typeface Otama, working with Beth Owen as her title, I want her first name and surname to flow into each other creating a link between the two words and a focus point in the centre of her branding. I've removed 30% of each side of the title I've been working with, so that when die cut her business cards and theme to her branding will sit within a parallelogram. I removed the same angle and percentage from the W following the 0 to keep the angle and direction of the eye focused on the sections that have been removed.

Brief 6 : Research and Progress

Brief 6 : Beth Owen

I've been having regular meetings with the photographer Beth Owen discussing her personal branding and putting together a concept to brand her as a person.

"Beth Owen is a fashion based photographer specialisig in studio portraiture and the behind the scenes documentation of fashion based events. Since starting her degree in Photography during Septemeber 2010 Beth has developed her style from studio fashion to clean and contemporary portraits. Collaborating with a number of fantastic creatives along the way has allowed her to develop this bright and unqiue style. Beth began photographing backstage at fashion shows in 2011 and since then has worked behind the scenes at shows around the country. Her most recent role was as one of two committee photographers at Leeds RAG Fashion Show producing promotional material prior to the event and capturing the action back stage on the big night! This exposure has lead to the photographers work being published in several local magazines and newspapers as well as the new up and coming magazine URBAN COCO and TATLER online. After graduating Beth hopes to continue working in the studio producing fresh new portraits for publications as well as continuing her backstage work documenting the even bigger fashion shows!

The project displayed at Beths final exhibition, prior to graduation, comes from her new passion for portraiture. The underlying concept is the representation of faith and religion with a unique and contemporary twist. Beth chose to create the portraits with very subtle iconography so that the audience could interpret the work in their own way. The still lives shown in this print support the portraits to create a body of work around the artists interest in the topic. Beth took initial inspiration from the shapes and sights at York Minster before further researching into religion all over Europe and how the same religion differed visually in individual countries. The photographers main focus was to create aesthetically pleaseing images in her own unique style that captured the audiences imaginations and allowed them to interpret the series how ever they chose."

The concept I started to think about was what does behind the scenes mean?, what is behind the scenes photography, and how can this be portrayed through her branding. After meeting Beth alot and discussing some of the idea's I've been having I think I've really started to understand who she is and whats shes about.

Behind the scenes, is a sneak preview of something yet to be revealed, a snippet, a snapshot a quick glimpse of something you may not necessarily are meant to see. Her work is very vibrant and studio shots reflect this with vibrant colours and photographs that are positive and deal a lot with portraiture and photographing people. When you can see any form of subject in full view you are seeing 100% of it, I started calculating what a behind the scenes, a snippet/quick glimpse of something would be as a percentage, I think to quickly catch something with your eye 30% or less is an accuracte predicition. I started experimenting with an idea of removing thirty percent from the typeface otama.

Brief 4 : Tickets and Promotional Material

The idea for our publication is that its an educational book to be realised with a promotional event, so far this event is going to include a lecture on the content of our book on the date of 2013's summer solstice to tie in with astrology relating to the Egyptians beliefs. To keep consistent to the artwork I've been producing I've designed the tickets using the same stamp border, Tickets will be sent out to selected museums  universities and book shops and customers will receive a stamp on entry. I havent developed the colour scheme as of yet but I think this will come together as my final images begin to progress.

Brief 4 : Laser cut Plaque

I went to laser cutting this week and experimented with a similar technique to etching my hieroglyphs  using the heavy raster function on 6mm mdf I created grooves in the wood that would be suitable as a tester to print from. In the same fashion as using wooden block type or lino tile I reflected my design on a horizontal axis and laser cut the wood to be coated then printed. My results are below.

The first set of images were printed using quink ink and acrylic white paint, I found that the ink soaked into the wood far too much and the results were much too blotchy. Also It definitely proved to me I needed a new set of rollers.

After experimenting with quink ink I got some proper rollers and some thick lino printing inks to use as an alternative  I found my technique hard to perfect, as the texture of printing inks constantly changed because of the nature of the wood soaking sections up. Originally I started printing with the wood face down onto the stock but as my results weren't too accurate I switched this method around placing the stock onto the wet wood, face up. This gave me much better results, however I think as an overall printing process this works fantastically to gain small blemishes and textures within print, but type becomes illegible and hard to read.

spray paint + lino inks

Brief 4 : The 8 side of Pyramid Khufu

I've finishing the outer design for the print I'm design below and I need to finish the inner frame. The inside is going to consist of an illustration of what I'm talking about a digram and an explanation paragraph with key. This will be consistent throughout the whole series of posters.

In terms of colour the grey and red one is the one I adore the most however I think yellow and blue is more appropriate to Eygpt, I want to keep the colours quite psychedelic and almost faded and aged alike to the real postage stamps.

Brief 4 : Sacred Shapes Re-vamp

An updated version of some of the sacred shapes I've created for mine and Oli's publication;

These are going to play a massive part the concept for the layout of our book.

Brief 4 : Stamps

I've been collecting images from across the internet of Egyptian stamps to get some ideas for the limited edition posters that are going to go with the pack. I love the way their laid out with thick boarders and two or more typefaces, one Eygptian arabic and one english. I think It would be really nice to produce some artwork in a similar style to correspond with our publication, I think the style of these stamps could work really well with the technique I've experimented with in laser cutting.

http://www.timstouse.com/EarthHistory/Egypt/GreatPyramid/interestingfacts.htm

Interesting facts about the 8 sides of a pyramid to use within y first test piece.

http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=27990.0

The Concave Faces of the Great Pyramid

Aerial photo by Groves, 1940 (detail).


In his book The Egyptian Pyramids: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Reference, J.P. Lepre wrote:

One very unusual feature of the Great Pyramid is a concavity of the core that makes the monument an eight-sided figure, rather than four-sided like every other Egyptian pyramid. That is to say, that its four sides are hollowed in or indented along their central lines, from base to peak. This concavity divides each of the apparent four sides in half, creating a very special and unusual eight-sided pyramid; and it is executed to such an extraordinary degree of precision as to enter the realm of the uncanny. For, viewed from any ground position or distance, this concavity is quite invisible to the naked eye. The hollowing-in can be noticed only from the air, and only at certain times of the day. This explains why virtually every available photograph of the Great Pyramid does not show the hollowing-in phenomenon, and why the concavity was never discovered until the age of aviation. It was discovered quite by accident in 1940, when a British Air Force pilot, P. Groves, was flying over the pyramid. He happened to notice the concavity and captured it in the now-famous photograph. [p. 65]

This strange feature was not first observed in 1940. It was illustrated in La Description de l'Egypte in the late 1700's (Volume V, pl. 8). Flinders Petrie noticed a hollowing in the core masonry in the center of each face and wrote that he "continually observed that the courses of the core had dips of as much as ½° to 1°" (The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, 1883, p. 421). Though it is apparently more easily observed from the air, the concavity is measurable and is visible from the ground under favorable lighting conditions.

Ikonos satellite image of the Great Pyramid.

I.E.S. Edwards wrote, "In the Great Pyramid the packing-blocks were laid in such a way that they sloped slightly inwards towards the centre of each course, with a result that a noticeable depression runs down the middle of each face -- a peculiarity shared, as far as is known, by no other pyramid" (The Pyramids of Egypt, 1975, p. 207). Maragioglio and Rinaldi described a similar concavity on the pyramid of Menkaure, the third pyramid at Giza. Miroslav Verner wrote that the faces of the Red Pyramid at Dahshur are also "slightly concave."

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http://www.world-mysteries.com/mpl_2.htm - amazing link for source material 

http://supadu.com/images/ckfinder/133/pdfs/Booklets_Guides/ARABICegyptian_Phase1-Bklt.pdf

http://www.neiu.edu/~fldept/Pimsleur_Arabic_(Egyptian)_I.pdf

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Below I've started to construct my own stamp on Illustrator working similar to the ones i've collected from around the internet. I thought the relief of a stamp could work really nicely in tying in with hieroglyphs and the cutting of pyramid walls. I've imitated the 1920's stamp with both Egyptian Arabic and English however the typeface i've used is called alhambra and is an imitation of an Arabic set of letters however it read english.

The artwork I',m started to produce is for the limited edition posters, promotional material and jigsaw puzzle. Each plaque is going to imitative a different style of stamp and each contain a different interesting set of facts about the pyramids. This particular one is going to be about the 8 sides of pyramid Khufu, a common mis-perception.

 

Crit Boards

Below are some boards for a crit held with andy looking at where we're up to with our work so far, I really need to catch up on my briefs but have made some successful progress on most of them, I need to Finnish some briefs catch up with others and stay focused on getting all my work done for the deadline.

Brief 4 : Star Constellation Puzzle

Another piece of relavent context I picked up today was a puzzle of the star constellations, I found it in a charity shop and thought I'd pick it up out of interest in relation to our brief.

In terms of concept building and other deliverables I intend on taking some of our final artwork to print, mounting it on thick mount board and using the laser cutter or jigsaw cut the print into pieces of a puzzle. As an educational pack with event running alongside I think a jigsaw puzzle would be a good educational deliverable.

Brief 4 : Sacred Geometry

I've been spending alot of time looking into the geometry relating to the pyramids and exploring the construction of the pyramids of giza. Geometric shapes that recur throughout life's complexity have been used in the construction of the Pyramids of Giza and are shown below. I've vectored logo's of the symbols we intend on using for our publication. These will be short points about shapes that relate the Pyramids construction.

The pages from the book below were a very big inspiration.

Below I've started to make some of the symbols that need to be used, I've tried to keep them as basic as possible using a thick weight.

Brief 4 : Orion Theory, Planets, Constellations and Painting

Other than researching the Egyptian Pyramids, Our main theory talks about the position of the pyramids of Giza and their alignment within the star constellation. I've been collecting digrams and imagery to work from relating to space, nebulas and the constellations. Below is a brief bit of information collected to do with the main theory we're working with.

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/piramides/esp_piramide_22.htm

The Orion Theory

Before proceeding, it is important to clarify that Eric Wilson did not personally hypothesize the theory unto which we shall soon focus.

The theory was originally presented by Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert in The Orion Mystery. Subsequently, the hypothesis has been espoused on several television specials and documentaries. 

Robert Bauval discovered what Egyptologists have overlooked for centuries.

He simply superimposed the constellation of Orion (which Dynastic Egypt considered the celestial counterpart of their god Osiris) onto the terra of Giza and surrounding regions. The idea was that the three belt stars of Orion: Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, coincide precisely via angular alignments to the three pyramids at Giza: Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure.

If this correlation were correct, then one would expect that other structures might coincide with the other stars in the constellation. Indeed, Bauval claimed to have located two such structures. (For reference, all pyramids correlating to the Orion constellation shall be referred to as "Orion Pyramids". Those include the 3 pyramids at Giza as well as the pyramids at Abu Ruwash and Zawyat Al Aryan). 

According to Bauval, the remains of a pyramid north of Giza at Abu Ruwash and similar remains south of Giza at Zawyat Al Aryan seemed to correlate to the stars Saiph and Bellatrix. Saiph is the star considered to be Orion's right knee and Bellatrix is Orion's left shoulder (using Orion's perspective rather than Earth's). 

Wilson was intrigued by Bauval's original proposal, but apparently found an incongruity. It appeared that Bauval had incorrectly placed the superimposition of Orion onto the topography of Giza. Wilson found that based upon the precise relationship of angulation between the three pyramids at Giza and the stars in Orion's belt, the terrestrial coordinates for Saiph and Bellatrix would not place them at Abu Ruwash and Zawyat Al Aryan, but elsewhere.

Even more intriguing, Wilson discovered that the pyramids present at Abu Ruwash and Zawyat Al Aryan aligned perfectly to the right ascension and declination (celestial latitude and longitude) of the stars Rigel (Orion's left knee) and Betelgeuse (Orion's right shoulder).

In other words, Wilson discovered that by swiveling the constellation so that the star Rigel lay over the pyramid at Abu Ruwash, and the star Betelgeuse lay over the pyramid at Zawyat Al Aryan, the angulation became exact! 

Using the Global Positioning Satellite System (Wilson was able to enter his knowns - i.e. the positions of the pyramids at Giza), and calculate the longitudinal and latitudinal positions of Orion's stars relative to their right ascensions and declinations. Then it was simply a matter of letting the United States' 24 orbiting satellites show the way, as they did for us in December, 1996. 

Not only did the GPS confirm Abu Ruwash and Zawyat Al Aryan as the stars Rigel and Betelgeuse, but it predicted the true locations for Saiph and Bellatrix. Wilson succeeded in locating these positions and found evidence that subterranean remains still exist, and/or structures one existed, at both sites. 

However, Wilson calculated the terrestrial positions for the stars that make up Orion's head (Meissa) and dagger (M42/M43). Additionally, Wilson located the terrestrial position for the star Leporis in the constellation of Lepus (adjacent to Orion).

All three of these sites exhibit curious evidence in support of The Orion Pyramid Theory. 

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Below I have collected a variety of images of space to get me inspired to create artwork for mine and Oli's limited edition posters to go alongside our publication. I've been intending on going on a research visit to Jodrell Bank in Cheshire, a very large satellite dish which is open to the public and provides information on the stars. I've been chatting to a few different people who suggested I go down to Vernon Street and rent out their books on the constellations as they have a huge range of material. 

 

Outside of our the FMP, I've been working on a space themed painting in someones house for an art event taking place over the weekend. Even though this isn't part of my FMP I've been working with spray paint to create geometrical patterns and shapes relating to space. I think this process off splattering and layering paint could be an awesome way to quickly produce covers that are completely unique. 

Brief 4 : Tutankhamen

Today I was on the Market and spotted a couple of Egyptian bits and bobs on a second hand stall. For subject matter and imagery to draw I picked up this Tutankhamen head for a fiver! I watched a documentary on the 19th dinesty of royalty within Eygpt covering Tutankhamen so I thought this would be really relavent to sketch from in relation to mine and Oli's brief.

I plan on Photographing this head from a variety of angles to draw from or produce some collage from. This will be documented as I go along.

King Tut is chiefly known for his intact tomb, discovered in Egypt's Valley of the Kings in 1922. Since then, his remains have held millions in awe over the mystery of his life and death.

NAME: King Tut

OCCUPATION: King

BIRTH DATE: c. 1341 BCE

DEATH DATE: c. 1323 BCE

PLACE OF BIRTH: Egypt

PLACE OF DEATH: Egypt

ORIGINALLY: Tutankhaten

AKA: Tutankhamen

AKA: Tutankhamun

AKA: King Tut

AKA: The Boy King of Egypt

AKA: The Boy King

AKA: The Boy Pharaoh

AKA: Boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun

Brief 4 : Liverpool World Museum

Today I went to the Liverpool World museum to gather some further research into the world of the Egyptians for mine and Oli's brief. The trip was well worth while and I managed to get loads of photographs to draw from, The plaques that were in the museum provided a really good understanding of what I was looking at whilst at the same time will be really good information for me and Oli to use.

Brief 4 : Vector Digrams & Publication Planning

Today me and Oli had a briefing and crit between the two of us and refined some of the roles and tasks we need to be completing. We also came up with a complete plan and layout of the content for our book as you can see below. 

My role within our team, is mainly working with creating the diagrams and vectors for our book whilst also completing some illustrations and collating information/images for Oli to lay out. I've spent a lot of time researching and getting really interested in the subject matter we're using so now I've started to work with this within Illustrator as you can see below.