OUGD602: Social Networks

At the moment I have a Behance page displaying a few projects spanning photography, lettering, graphic design and portrait sketches, though I plan to update this with fuller projects and logo designs during this year as I complete more extensive projects.

One social media site I am utilising more is Instagram, and I started up a page dedicated to typography/calligraphy/lettering over the summer. On this I post videos and photos of my work and it is a good way of keeping a log of small pieces of work, sketches and development, as well as becoming a portfolio of work.

Another outlet for my typography related stuff I use is Tumblr, basically just extending what I post on to another platform. I just choose a selection of images and videos that I post on Instagram. (Below; mobile version & desktop)

While I am promoting my own work individually, a main focus is to promote our collective and utilising all social media sites we occupy is the best way to do this. We have spoken with several influential people who have helped us to engage with this better, including representatives of Independent Leeds and other artistic areas.

Scheduling posts and tweeting several times a day is important to keep followers engaged, so we have been trying to continue with this over the past few months.

The sites we use the most include Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and full projects we complete collaboratively are uploaded on to our Behance page.

OUGD602: VegOut and Outlaws Yacht Club

On Sunday 6th December our team attended two events in Leeds. Veg Out christmas fair at Northern Monk Brewery was a chance for us to sell some of our work and engage with the Leeds community at the venue we've confirmed for our first curated exhibition, Disposable Society. At our stall we had a selection of screen printed A6 christmas cards in packs of 7, as well as a DIY lino print section for people to interact with and create their own christmas card using one of the five lino cut designs we created prior to the event. We shared the workload between us in the week before, designing, printing, cutting, folding and organising materials.

For the day fair held at Outlaws Yacht Club and hosted/organised by &or Emporium, we decided to display our Fresher's poster pack and a poster for our upcoming Disposable Society brief in a unique way, using chipboard to create two stands which would hold the work. 

Our group split in to two to attend both the events as the times clashed; myself, Karl and Dan went to Outlaws Yacht Club which was a great opportunity for us to meet and get to know other artist collectives in the city.

We were also able to advertise our call for submissions for Disposable Society, our exhibition running in March, as well as our launch project, the Fresher's poster packs.

OUGD602: Live Art @ LCA Christmas Party

Recently I took part in Live artwork at the LCA Christmas party at Studio 24. It was good to see the space and bare it in mind as a possibility for future Goat exhibitions. I wanted to create a design with some relevance to Christmas, and my current calligraphy practice has been in the form of circles so decided to go with this to gain further practice and experience doing a larger scale piece on a wooden board I acquired.

The design I pursued contained text taken from a passage in the Bible, reinforcing it's often forgotten significance with Christmas, a christmas song lyric and the words 'christmas' and 'merry christmas', all in different calligraphic styles which contrast and together make a unified design as a whole.

Development // Colour testing on Photoshop

Rather than using the colours I did the initial sketch in I wanted to use hues more relevant to the christmas theme. To test these out quickly rather than creating loads of sketches which would inevitably use up a lot of time, I took the design to photoshop and used the fill tool to get an idea of what different colours would look like on each layer.

At the event \\ process shots \\

This gave me great experience doing live artwork which is something I want to pursue at festivals and other events throughout the year and later on in my career.

OUGD602: Menu Boards & Takeaway Coffee

I was recently asked by the owner of Hyde Park Book Club to come and recreate the designs on the menu boards and the Takeaway Coffee window sign. This was a great opportunity for me to start doing some commercial lettering work and develop my practice by working on a live brief. There wasn't much thought behind the designs other than to create a clear type hierarchy, something which the original boards lacked.

OUGD602: Goat Updates.. November

There's a few events in the works at the moment, with larger exhibitions planned for after the New Year and some smaller meet ups before the Christmas break.


- Veg Out
We've recently been invited to have a stall at Northern Monk brewery's Veg Out day event on the 6th December. Our plan is to design a selection of christmas cards with the intention of it being our first profit-making event. We also want to interact with young children at the stall so we're planning a 'design your own card' area using stamps.

- Outlaws Yacht Club
A chance to network with other artist groups in Leeds, showcase our work and let people know what we're all about. Same date as the Veg Out event, but in the evening of the 6th December.

- LCM collaborative night 'Screwface'
Thursday 25th Feb 2016 is the date decided on for the LCMxGoat Collective event 'Screwface'. We will be collaborating with a group of students from Leeds college of Music to put on a night dedicated to ambient hip hop music and artwork. We are taking care of the visual effects and pieces for the upstairs stage room in Belgrave Music Hall, and are creating the logo, posters, flyers and designing the tickets for the night as well.

- Exhibition space sorted for 'Disposable Society' exhibition
Early March is the hopeful date for our first exhibition as a collective, and we've secured a space at Northern Monk brewery to host the event. Regarding funding, we've agreed that if we can get 250 people through the door then no payment is necessary. A bar on the floor below will be functioning throughout the night which gives people more incentive to come and view the work with a drink, and creates a social environment to network and meet people.

OUGD602: LCA House Exhibition

A group of third year fine art students offered out a call for submissions with the intent on putting on an exhibition in their house featuring as much work as they could fit in. The exhibition included paintings, sculptures and a video installation in their basement, was a cool use of space and the house was packed out with people viewing the work and generally socialising. I submitted a small painting for this.. some photos of event below.

OUGD602: Hyde Park Book Club - Exhibition #1

Yesterday we hosted our first exhibition at Hyde Park Book Club, a small new café/bar on Hyde Park corner. Each of us in the collective produced a piece of work either individually or collaboratively, with the intention to display the work in the Book Club for the foreseeable future after the exhibition launch. We marketed the event on social media platforms running up to the 15th as well.

The piece I created was a take on modern abstract calligraphy based around and stemming from the idea of open books on a shelf or as seen from above. Here is a quick development of composition taken from an idea that sparked when I saw an open magazine pinned on a wall while lying underneath it. From this I opened a selection of books and slotted them inside one another with their pages open, an this developed into a simpler design using just one direction of diagonal strokes. The abstracted letterforms as content is a clear connotation of the words in books, the language.