Stephanie Fung: Foundation at LCC - Brief 1

Foundation at LCC - Brief 1 - A New Hybridity

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Hello, I have decided to show my works during the past year at foundation course at LCC. It has been challenging and if anything I have learnt how to handle workload at a fast pace. Rather than teaching us how to improve our skills with Adobe products and typography (which is what I initially thought we were going to learn at the start of the course) we were taught how to think outside the box - that's so cliche but it honestly helped me to not produce the most obvious thing.

Another thing to note is that my sketchbooks this year are not too aesthetically pleasing as my ones from A level. This year I have produced 12 sketchbooks whereas last year I had one book per project. And guess why? It was all through the mass experimentation and documenting everything I did.

Anyways, I am studying in the graphics design pathway and I love it, in fact the course is very open to how we interpret the briefs and we could include photography, film or 3D with a graphics slant. The works I have produced this year aren't my best but they are a stepping stone what I will be learning with my degree course.

Over the next few days I will be showing you my thoughts and behind the scenes to my projects. Feel free to leave any feedback below.

Project 1: The brief was to produce 10 hybrids in a way in which they are all different but is coherent like a family.

Recently, urban areas have been a strong interest of mine. My primary research from museums contained many layering techniques which lead me to research an artist who used a layering technique within the city. Stephanie Jung focuses on creating movement from one image by duplicating the same image repeatedly. Although I enjoyed reciprocating her technique, there were no differences between my photos and hers, hence I decided to explore further.

I also discovered that my reason for loving London was too general, thus I decided to pick out certain aspects which draws me towards the city. The reason was movement within the city as I enjoy the atmosphere that the people bring. Following that, I researched another artist called George Perec, who did an experimentation where he sat in a café for the whole day and documented his surroundings. As a response, I documented everything from bus rides to a day in Café Nero. This enabled me to narrow down the broadness of my personal interest towards London to a café setting.

The process became a bit tedious because I found it hard to record everything as people were moving so fast, e.g. counting the amount of people wearing black shoes. I was also able to conduct statistics from what I saw and was able to recognise the frequent gestures, language or body language in London.

Next, I decided to classify my documentation into the 5 senses. Then I created a collage by using primary photographs as a background and I layered words on top of the image. Moreover, I tried to be too clever with the presentation of the collage as I wanted to push the message that you will see so much when you are idle and you will miss small details if you rush. However, the idea was too complicated because I was throwing everything together and it made the piece lose personal meaning.

Therefore, I decided to rethink about I wanted to show; I wanted to show the little details that I experienced whilst being idle in the café. Hence, I chose ten details from the collage and decided to drop the imagery altogether. The ten details I chose were: frowning, sun rays, 38 bus, short bob, awkward eye contact, singular customers, flickering light, 2:1 men to women ratio, jazz instrumental music and the creaking door. Furthermore, I decided to make the presentation of each detail simple by just focusing on typography. As a layout, I used the Café Nero’s loyalty card and made an A2 poster from it because the presentation reminds me of a cabinet. I also classified the 10 details into the 5 senses. Moreover, I made the fonts the same vertically to create another typology of font.

After receiving feedback from my first draft, I was told to make individual cards for each detail and to also my final piece card size instead of an A2 poster. I also redesigned the icons four times in order to create the best result; this included making the icons simpler by only using typography. By getting rid of the imagery and choosing one typeface it made the piece easy for viewers to read as it is an info-graphic piece. Resizing was a problem however because it became pixelated as I sized my designs down to card dimensions. The solution was to redesign all my designs once again but at 300 dpi and save them all as TIF or PDF rather as a JPEG. It was a long process or trial and error with the designs however I am happy with the final outcome because all the text is clear.

Above: All my prior designs.

Above: My final pieces.

Overall, I found the process for this project challenging because my practice was too broad and it was difficult to narrow down my choices. However, my work was able to develop into something more personal and I do believe I have made a successful hybrid of typography and movement. If I were to improve anything it would be to include all the 5 senses within my final outcome because I do not have taste and smell included. I would also have liked to try documenting other areas of London because I feel that a café has restrictions on what I can experience within London.