Shelter

For our next project we were assigned to create a poster for the homeless charity "Shelter" for a bus shell . I researched homeless statistics not only for UK but worldwide and different charities such as, Oxfam, Centre Point, Emmaus and many more. This project was a real eye opener to see the importance of what goes on around you everyday. I came across loads of upsetting images of adults, children and old people and made me realize that yes, it could really be me or my parents, grandparents,siblings, nieces and nephews. Reality really hit me!

For my final pieces I wanted to show a lot of feeling through them, not necessarily by giving it the 'shock' emotion, but I wanted it to touch peoples heart and be one of them posters that  will make you, take a double look. I thought of how to pursue this and came up with including children; a face of a child as children always touch peoples hearts by being so young, clueless and innocent. Seeing a homeless child and a child being uncared for immediately touches my heart one way or another . I drew out a sketch of a little girl in rundown clothes, head down, holding a teddy bear (signifying a child) and a penny box; standing outside a window shop during christmas. I wanted to give it a Christmas theme as it is the most warm,loving season of the year where everyone is with their loved ones and friends and eating good food, sharing presents; really just a happy time of the year. So having a poster of a child during christmas alone in the cold, I believed it would be ideal for my final piece. After  receiving feedback for my tutors, I realized that the image just said "Poverty" instead of "homeless"by the way I structured it. I was then stuck, because I just personally thought that they were both the same! 


In the end I just threw myself into it. A friend of mine and I went for a stroll round Bournemouth see if we can find any homeless people. Funny enough, we found ONE! Our plan was to approach them and speak to them and maybe give them some food or money or whatever they preferred in exchange for their time. But this one in particular didn't seem like he was in a good mood. We tried to take some pictures on the sly, although we felt bad because I felt like I was just simply taking the piss, as if I was taking pictures of a statue. But the deed was done and I managed to take a few good shots. The guilt was eating me up so after a while we returned to give him some food and money but by the time we went back he was gone. 

After going through the pictures I just imported them into photoshop and started playing around with them... I always loved the quote by Ghandi "Be the change you want to see in the world", so I definitely wanted to use that within my final pieces. Within my poster I wanted to show how corrupt the world is and that homelessness is everywhere! So at first I came up with the image below

I liked it! but it just didn't say "homeless people". I wanted to include the pictures that I took but I also liked what I did with this one, with the world being cracked as if to say corrupted and the red not only symbolizing 'Shelter' but I just thought of, danger, alert, blood etc. So I decided to use my picture as a background image and fade it out . 

Perfect! But then I needed a second piece. So decided to play around with them a bit and in the end came out with 3 final pieces, using 2 of them as a choice of leaflets and one Final Poster. 

Final Poster

Leaflet 1 

Leaflet 2 

Adobe InDesign

Unlike the image-editing and graphic software like Photoshop and Illustrator;  Adobe InDesign is used  to create pieces such as posters,flyers, brochures, magazines and books. It is mostly used by graphic designers. 

Using InDesign I created my first project assignment, which was to create a book using all the different techniques we have recently learned. At first I thought it would be quite challenging as I wasn't very clear on InDesign, but I pulled through and I proudly created my first, very own book :) 

My Book in IND

My Book FINISHED

Side View 

Inside.

Book Binding

French fold

French Fold Book Binding is created by folding a piece of A4 paper in half, then fold it again in half, creating pages. You can either leave it folded or bind the non-folded edge using Japanese binding wire or spiral bound. 

Concertina Binding

Concertina Book binding is created by cutting out two seperate pieces of paper according to how many pages you want and folding them together in an accordion style bind.  

Adobe Illustrator

Although Illustrator and Photoshop have many things in common, unlike Photoshop it is

used more for logo graphics than image editing. As a vector based drawing program, it functions by creating curved paths connected and motified by anchor points. These anchors are edited by their handles, which never leave the structure of the file. 

Experiment 1

After we where shown on what we could do on Illustrator, I created my own Halloween font as it was the week before Halloween using the warp,twirl, pucker,crystallize and wrinkle tools. I then created the swirls around the letters using the pencil and path eraser tools.

Experiment 2 

Letterpress

Letterpress is the printing process of text and image, invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century;using a press with a “type-high bed”.This process was used through out into the, 19th century and then mostly used for books in the 20th century. 

Letterpress machine

My own letterpress 1

My own letterpress 2 

The letterblocks are  thoroughly inked up by your chosen colour of ink, before placing them however you want on the bed. 

After placing your chosen paper carefully over the letterblocks, you roll the bed into the press, which will apply the pressure to give you a result like above.

Type & Tape

Type & Tape is the first practical task we were given at the beginning of term. We had to create our own unique font out of nothing else but duct tape. In a group of five we sat down and put our ideas together. As a group we chose the best one. We got creative and used different colors of tape as well as making each letter different levels.We named it “PacFont”.

Adobe Photoshop!

A program that I love and adore! When Adobe was making this program they knew exactly what they were doing! Adobe Photoshop is one of the most popular image editing programs there is. From altering images like photos,downloaded icons or even scanned artwork; with its large selection of tools you can create your own image from scratch. 

1.As you can see the first image is badly damaged with creases and scratches and folds all over it.

Before

2. I used the clone stamp and healing brush, to get rid of the damage; and the dodge, burn and blur tool to adjust the different shadows in the background, as well as on the bodies.

I successfully managed to restore the picture back to its original state.

After

Before

4.Using the same tools as before, It was quite easy to fix the scratches on the bodies. But the most difficult was the eldest boys face. As a deep scratch cut right through his eye, there was no way I was able to fix it. So I had to copy and paste his left eye onto his right. 

After