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.