Nans Shop

Here is a link to another photography project i revisited a shop back at home which is owned by A lady called Nan McGuigan its in the village where my mum grew up and i can always remember as a child being brought to 'nans shop' the shop is over one hundred years old now and has aways been in Nan's family. The reason i wanted to photograph the show is because is has changed very little since i was a child or even my mum it is a rare Little place that seems untouched by time walking into the shop was like walking back in time to when i was a child and visiting it

Follow the link below for the full album


http://s1199.photobucket.com/albums/aa475/amywineglass/Nans%20Shop/?albumview=slideshow

Photography project on gender

Here is a link to a sight where i will be posting most of my photography to keep it all neat and tidy the first album i have posted is from a project were i wanted to explore gender issue so was given a fantastic opportunity to photograph some great performers in Belfast

Here is the link to the online album


http://s1199.photobucket.com/albums/aa475/amywineglass/Sunday%20night%20in%20Union%20street/?albumview=slideshow

Contemporary Souvenir

We were asked to work on a project that the tourist board were developing called the Contemporary Souvenir, we could do what ever we wanted but the name had to remain i decided to work on a logo turning the c and the s into a symbol of Ireland the shamrock but trying to give it a modern minimal feel so it could be used on a wide range of products

I then went on to work on a concept for one of the possible souvenirs i thought that a range of limited edition traditional irish linen could be developed by local artist perhaps even as a yearly project for the art college. The linens would feature contemporary prints and would be function from scarves to linen book covers etc so would be both traditional because of the fabric but functional. My idea was that each edition would come from a particular county an the print would be influenced by famous landmarks in this area. The example i have sketch up are an Antrim edition featuring the Giant causeways imagery, i have used my Textiles artists name on these tag designs and mocked up a possible print.

Above are some ideas of how the tags would look each one will have a tag of the county with information on it as well as a layering of tags with information on the artist the the idea behind the print etc

First drafts for veet for men

These were the first ideas for poster for my veet project were i tried to use the wolf man as my poster boy i decided to take the project in a slightly different direction and make it slightly more sophisticated while still in keeping with the humour but here's a look at two poster drafts

Veet . . . FOR MEN?!

so we were given a branding project were we had to take a product which the general public had a particular view of and our job was to change that view, so inspired by my cyclist roommates i went for veet as men these days have a need for hair removal be it for cosmetic reasons or indeed for sporting issues. But when the cycling season came around my roommates were forced to use this 

not very manly at all to have to buy bright pink packaging really and after researching i discovered that veet do have a veet for men but its the "for men" part i have an issue with its basically veet for women but blue and "for men" stuck on it with very little effort i think for the product to work it has to be a completely different image for men and to appeal to men. 

So I decided to redesign the packaging looking at brands like Bulldog and soap and glory which are popular grooming products for me. I thought humour was the best approach to this so i went with the slogan 'Good riddance to bad hair' the bottle were made black with different silhouetted bad hairstyles on each bottle ranging from cousin it to the mullet, the outer box however was matte black with the new 'veet man' logo printed on in gloss so that it is distinct enough on the shelves to catch the shoppers eye but not too flash as to shout from the shopping basket "I'M HAIR REMOVER" so here are the new bottles and a poster design for the new Veet man

New logo

Packaging design

Hair parodies

Veet poster

Poster

The start of wineglass design

As part of the same project for the poster we also had to make up an imaginary company to brand our work with after playing around with my name i found very little inspiring me with it so i decided to be a little bit silly as i think that's where some of the best ideas come from so i decided to use my twitter name which is a joke in itself and went with Wineglass Design, and personified this with a little wineglass character to. I plan to work on animating the logo soon as after playing around with it, it has grown on me so i think that's how I'm going to brand my work for now so here it is, Wineglass Design...

And to show how the logo may work in the world of design here are some exampel of it on use on a webpage and the bottom image is of the branded poster tube for the Quote poster.

"The nature of space reflects what it wants to be"

This was a uni project in which we had to pick a quote and design a poster to that quote I chose the quote "the nature of space reflects what it wants to be" I wanted to experiment with the use of negative space and be quite clever with it so I research Noma Bars work and tried my best to create something that communicated my message clearly. I have gone with the slightly controversial subject of religion here after debating whether like Noma to use a well known figure to manipulate into an I mage I went on to work on a symbol of religion (after a few failed attempts at caricaturing the pope) and I wanted to play on the idea of the book being used as a method of control so I have incorporated rosary bead to make the book into a retro Nintendo controller thus the nature of the space of these two objects in the person hands reflects what it wants to be, a controller.

I experimented a bit with color and couldnt decided on one as they all worked quite well so i opted for the grey as i wanted to give it a slightly sinister feel 

And i also debating making the piece using photography but in the end went with the cartoon version but i did get this pretty nice image

Kevin Van Aelst

While taking a stroll around the blogs for inspiration i found this great designer Kevin Van Aelst, his work is really inspiring me to get my camera out and start experimenting with ordinary objects and their endless possibilities!

His commissioned work is largely centered around social issues and health and i really like how he manages to create a bold striking image and the meaning is very clear and often quite humorous.

This is his website

http://www.kevinvanaelst.com/art.html

how to you animate diabetic retinopathy?

well this was a brief for uni and the Cathedral eye clinic we had to make an animation aimed at young people to remind them to look after their eyes, so here was my take on it

Meet Boomp!

My finished storybook ended up begin a very simple idea it has been designed so that it can be a series of stories based around the little marshmallow like character 'Boomp' and his little friend Birdie. The idea i very simple its to teach children about emotions in the first completed story whee the little character changes colour to show hows he is feeling this also teaches children about different colours and feelings i think because the idea can be expanded in many ways to cover many different area to teach an entertain children. i am also working on turning 'BOOMP' into a short animation series and the progress of which i will post up here soon.

Here is just a few pages from the book i will upload the full book on file soon so you can have a look.

Childrens book project

I was delighted to hear that our next project in uni was to design a children's book something which is very much on my level! although as a sign of the times we are not being asked to design a physical thrilling page turner, but rather an interactive book for the ipad i was a little disappointed at this but i suppose that's the way technology is going and as designers we have to keep up or get left behind.

i have a great love for cartoons and children's animation already but i decided to go see what kids actually enjoy and went to a primary school, and was delighted to find we had a lot in common and had the same taste in books!

The books the kids enjoyed were books i had read as a kid when i was in that very school, always a favourite is Eric Carles the Hungary Caterpillar its one i can vividly remember as a child and its still very popular today. And to my delight also in the pile was a personal favourite Meg and Mog of which for 'research' i already have copies of both DVDs. i love the illustration style its clean bright and bubbly, i always remember Mog the cat because of his stitches like tail their simple little character that work well over various coloured backgrounds.

I

I have also come across another great children's book by Shaun Tan its a fantastic book called The lost Thing and it is beautifully illustrated i just got My copy in the post the pother day again for 'research' and the pictures don't do it justice.

Its a simple little story but the illustrations really take over there is SO much detail i could stare at it for hours, i love the way the type is Incorporated also it looks written on little bits of lined paper and cut and pasted on and fits in with the style of the book. i like this as I'm aware type on the books can be an issue of how to incorporate it to the illustration style.

However for our project we are aiming our books at an audience of roughly 3 to 4 year olds so the simpler the style the better with much more bright and bold colours and not a lot of type. So i would like to have mine more in the style of meg and Mog, I have a few ideas i am working on at the minute but from my research the children responded best to books where colour was the main theme.

Colour me happy was a great little book which aimed to teach children about emotions using colour each page was fantastically vibrant and all based on a particular emotion "when i am bored colour me grey" and the page would be filled with lots of different grey, blue and purple tones. I have got a lot of ideas from these books so its time to get sketching on my own i will up date with any progress.

Pharmacy practice

I am very lucky to be living with four Pharmacy students and it does sound like a sort of sitcom pitch when explained with an art student thrown in for some comic relief. 

But it also has given me a great opportunity to work with the QUB pharmacy society in designing some logos for their year nights out. i was first asked on the off chance if i might be able to quickly make some arm bands for the reps so that they stood out during an army themed night  out. So i of course agreed and took the theme and made up a medical/army themed arm band a simple dog tag shape with a bold red to stand out.

They like these little designs and i was then asked to design a logo for the t-shirts for a mystery tour that was coming up so again i got doodling and came up with with a few designs but they chose the blue logo below for their t-shirts and i believe both nights were a success and I'm quite happy with how my logos were put to use.

This was my first experience of designing something for a society that was going to be used and i wasn't given too many restrictions so i was free to create pretty much what i wanted but i still panic with my work when other people depend on it! but I'm glad they were happy with the logo's, next task is customising some mascaraed ball masks time to get the sketch book out again!

Pinhole Photography

In uni we made pin hole cameras out of everyday tin boxes, i chose a popular seasonal sweetie box which i renamed my 'quality camera"

This unfortunately isn't my camera my actual one was apparently that good of 'quality' that someone pinched it from UNI when I wasn't looking :( so there is a reproduction image of mine, luckily however it was very simple to make its pretty much all in the name a pinhole in the centre of the tins lid which was covered by a bit of blue tack as a sort of squishy lens cap 

It did take a lot of patience of working out the exposure time for the depth of my tin it was around two and a half minutes inside to get my images

As long as it took it was really rewarding when you start to get somewhere and I definitely want to experiment more with pin hole cameras, I will have to empty a replacement tin however which should'nt be a bother any form of chocolate brought into a student house will last no more than an half an hour if left unattended!

Anyway here are some of my images that I quite liked, before and after inverting the images

This work was created in November 2010

Crafted group project

Back in November 2010 we took part in group projects set around creating an event we had a seperate blog for this project so here is the link to the work for that.

http://craftedbelfast.blogspot.com

Imaging project

This is one of my imaging projects for uni, i decided to look at hands and how i could photograph them alone but give you a sense of the person they belonged to. But i just found that simple images of hands alone quite dull and not one to go along with the straight forward approach i decided to experiment a bit. 


My idea was to personify hands making them individual little people, and it could have perhaps been influenced by the fact i had watched the Adams family quite recently. Im really happy with the images their just fun to look at, the more you look at them in their poses the more they look like little people, i cant help imaging Madonna's 'vogue' playing over and i am realy tempted to create a little cat walk video with the hands struting and posing. My inspiration also came from the Guinness 'dancing hands' video which is fantastic, inspired by this i aimed to animate my hands in the photos so i have them posing, walking and even holding hands.

This work was created in oct 2010