Yesterday

Yesterday was my last proper day at college this term.

I made this in VX to visually explain I have a creative block:

And later on made this:

Spacey mayonnaise

Three hours, chewing gum and describing higher education.

I forgot to post about the first batch and now the second batch of  booklets is ready for binding.

from the booklet:

At the beginning of a three hour morning class [at the RCA] I invited 11 individuals to summarise in one sentence their thoughts about higher education. Then, each person got a piece of gum to chew on for the duration the class. This booklet shows the chewing gum in the aftermath of the three hour long chewing with the notes each participant made at the beginning.

I chose chewing gum both because its brief lifespan helps frame the duration of the exercise and as a reference to the importance of ‘using our mouths’ — reflecting on the academic environment we are in. 

Chewing gum documentation

Here are two examples of the work I am producing to express how we may give new value to things commonly discarded.
Each image documents different pieces of chewing gum in the aftermath of being chewed on for three hours by different individuals (students and staff) at the Royal College of Art. Before giving them chewing gum I asked each participant to sum up in one sentence their individual experience of higher education. These sentences are super imposed on their perspective gum.

Visual research incomprehensible

Here is a work in progress photo from today.

I am mixing up references in an attempt to explore the way I enjoy visual art.

Visual research abstract animation

This post means little, this befits the brief which asked us to create a 10-15 seconds animation with no characters or narrative.

Helvetica Neue Condensed - so it does not keep you up at night...

I am of course being a smart ass...

Look everyone! Storyboards!!!

Twitter header image

I used an image taken by Gabriel Coppolla and turned it into my new Twitter header image.

Experimentations with vector graphics

This is what doodling on Illustrator looks like for me

Photos of the new booklet from 8DIX

I received these images of the first print of the new promotional booklet from Luca

Those spreads looks yummy!

Back cover

8DIX delicious combo!

We are designing a new press book for 8DIX. I am told that fashion labels often print very simple versions of these publications. We are trying to make it special.

A spread from the press book - as uploaded to 8DIX facebook page

Welcome shower curtain

I am making a shower curtain based on my dinosaur holding a flag image which I developed in 2012 .

I can't make up my mind which colour to make the big Dino...

Thank you gifts

Those colourful boxes were in fact thank you gifts I made for staff and tutors who helped me in my three years at Central Saint Martins.
They are brightly coloured they have a private message and each has a box of plasters within. The name of the person they were given to set in Letraset (Helvetia bold condensed).

Photos curtesy of Rathna Ramanathan

20 colourful boxes

What a sight...

What are these bright coloured boxes I am making??

Coming along nicely!

Washproof Plasters

I am reimagining how to say thank you. I don't want to ruin the surprise so will not elaborate.

Ben Fosket - Dinosaur

I was one of the winners in a competition to design a debut classical album cover as a part of the series 'Debut Discs' by NMC in 2012.

I received a couple of complimentary copies in the post today and feel very proud!

Designing a business card printer for the degree show

I am finally happy that I have most of the details necessary for the design of this printer.

With help from Angus Main the system is now fully operational since Monday. All that is needed to make the printer print a business card at the press of a button is to plug it into a power supply!

The printer is currently reserved for external assessment and the result of this is that I can only start working on building it physically next week. I make what I can in the interim.

Front view of the printer

Top view with section cut

Back view

Designing my final first of three hand-in booklets

I have not logged much recently, and foolishly as it would have helped to have my ongoing impressions to hand at the moment. So here is what I am working on presently - my final hand-in document. I am planning to make three booklets two dedicated to my major projects from Unit 10 (Talk Over Tea and the joke Dispenser) plus one more dedicated to the smaller briefs I am or was involved with this year (CSM degree show identity + another project I am doing with CSM research department).

The deadline is May 12th (nine days away) and I should be finished in time - I am trying to feel calm, which is a challange.

Indesign screen shot of the overview of the booklet dedicated to Talk Over Tea (WIP)

Where are things with the joke dispenser

SU asked me to send them a short description of my project so far and include photos so:

Last year I began researching what social capital is and to test it in real life by making small adjustments to the way I behave in everyday situations. The first notable change I made was with beggars on the street. If anyone asks me for money in the street I give it to them in exchange for them going on tape to say what they will do with the money. Once they do and I pay them I upload that video to Twitter and tag the council this happened in:

Traded £1 with a homeless so he'd tell me what he'll do with it #BeggingBargain @camdenTalking https://t.co/doJXyUXxXD
— Gilad Visotsky (@v_gilad) August 19, 2013

My next stage was to go go outside and beg for myself, only I begged in a way that challenges the relationship we usually have with people holding signs on the street:

It went very well, I got over 40 jokes in three days, here is an unedited sample.

The next stage was to take this all this content, or the system in which I generated that content, and apply it, or compile it in a way that makes sense. I decided to do it in the context of where I am studying Central Saint Martins college. The reason for this is my conclusion that if all the contributions were made at one location it will make sense if seen one after the other - it is a way to get to know the people of that place. 

I began to design an experience based around this system. The core idea is that if you participate in this experience in any way, you get something meaningful in return.

And so began the journey of making this thing happen. I have invested in a coin acceptor, and with the help of 4D technicians Angus and Sion, wrote a program that plays a video when a penny in put into the system.   

Programming the coin acceptor

Building the Kiosk

The kiosk has wheels!

behind the screen 

For each penny inserted into this kiosk a joke is played. If someone chooses to participate by contributing a joke (which means finding me and recording it) they will receive a 10p voucher.

Here is a demo of how it works

CSM canteen vouchers for joke contributors 

And finally, today I have painted my Joke dispenser with the first layer of paint, during this process I tweeted and was asked to share this with the SU blog.

today: watching paint dry... (!!!)

Success!!!!

I managed to print my cat jokes properly using the thermal printer!!!!

Turns out I had the Arduino plugged in all wrong. I changed the wiring according to these instructions, then continued to use the code from aidafruit. In order to print the jokes properly (previously words got broken into new lines) I am now using bitmap images at 384px wide, thus controling the font, characters, line spacing etc. I can even print images!

I am using images instead of text to control the text appearance

The correct way to wire up the Arduino (from adafruit)

In this old printout you can see spaces appear at beginning of new lines, and words broken into the next line  

Vouchers for my joke contributors

After talking to Ian yesterday I have made 10p vouchers which I will give to anyone who contributes a joke for my project.

I hope no one can fake these bad boys!

Working on Talk Over Tea Posters and Table Tents

I am redesigning the posters and table tri-folds to mirror the changed way the service will work as of tomorrow.

Posters 

tri folds

Designing the Joke dispenser + more badges

I have a list of things to get done by tomorrow:

For Talk Over Tea:

• Redesign posters for Talk Over Tea
• Redesign TOT table tents
• Make more Badges
• Print more logbooks

For the Joke dispenser:

• Design the exterior
• Make 10p vouchers
• Edit videos at 1028x768

And finally for the Science (Cat Joke) book:

• Figure out splitting printed lines
• have fun with my thermal printer!

So far today, I have made progress on two of these points. I have made more badges and began designing the Joke Dispenser.

The photos of the progress are below.

I need to make more! 

Provisional front of the dispenser

cog themed design (I need to reason it out though - not quite there yet...

The vinyl cuts are designed in Illustratur 

The supreme rule of the universe

Last night I dreamt my aunt sent me an email with the title 'The supreme rule of the universe' and this design:

I posted it to reddit where it was not appreciated, and finally settled down for creating an 8DIX version and posted it there:

Today I need to write down many things

Insert from my diary:

–  where am I with regards to the cat joke box project
– where am I with regards to a penny for your joke project
– where am I with regards to talk over tea project

I will start with the left latter as it is the freshest in my mind.

# Talk over tea
I just finished working on a third or fourth variation for the talk over tea logo. I want to play with negative space and at the moment, I am trying to make a teacup superimposed with the word talk and have that the handle serves as the capital O for ‘Over tea’.
It isn’t going very well… Tomorrow is the first day when talk over tea will be running.  I got a second number for texts, so that customers do not have to use twitter. At the moment I’m thinking that I should promote people to use what’s app.
I have printed three logbooks for tomorrow they have places to enter date, time, name, location, order and further comments.
I am fairly apprehensive, as I am aware there is a lot that can go wrong. I have made plans to do other things during the day tomorrow in case talk over tea does not prove popular. Right now the’ worst’ thing that could happen is if #TOT proved extremely popular. I would not know how to deal with too much demand. But I will cross that bridge when I get to it. I really hope that it will prove easy to enlist help from other third years (or final year MA students).
it just occurred to me that I now have time to make quick designs for a talk over tea tray. The tray will be 50 cm over 35 cm it will have the words talk over tea carved into it somewhere and will have four dips for takeaway cups.

Log book mistake printed on see through paper

My three plain and proper log books

Inside layout - plain and to the point

I am struggling with the whole logo concept - I may just stick with a logotype or my older variation of the logo

Tray design

# Penny for your joke
I have a bag with four castor wheels, I bought from screw fix yesterday.  Tomorrow I will spend the day waiting for customers to request drinks from the cafe. In the meanwhile, I told one of the technicians downstairs that I will spend the day with him building the exterior of my joke machine. Made out of MDF, it will be a 1.7 m tall device, I haven’t got it written down but I am pretty sure it will be 60 cm wide and 60 cm deep. I have recommissioned my old Toshiba and they hope to install processing on it so it can run the joke program. If all goes well, I will have the parts ready and I will be able to assemble everything over Easter Break.



# Cat joke machine
 I have in my hand, envelope which contains a USB A to B cable, there are five thermal paper rolls and an AC power adapter inside it. I bought all of these with the intention of using them to power the thermal printer which I have a university. They should allow me to  to interact with my printer with much more ease than I currently have. I still haven’t used the RFID module which worries me a bit. I don’t know how simple it will be to use it, and I doubt that I will be able to connect it to the printer by myself.