Author: DemelzaB

Digital Workshop- (Week 3) Working with Colour

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From week 1, our digital workshops have been spent building up process books. These books give us somewhere to record the new skills we are learning in module 002. (Skills in screen-printing, bookbinding and in digital design software.) I have a feeling these 3 areas will soon come together…

In this weeks’ workshop, we focused on colour. I’ve learnt a bit about colour swatches in Adobe InDesign. Colour swatches are similar to the painter’s palette I am used to, only digital. I have found this process satisfying and much easier than I thought it would be! Computers have improved a lot since I left school 10 years ago.

Our lecturer Adam mentioned colour relativity. At college last year, I completed a project based on the work of Josef Albers, famous colour theorist and fine artist. He spent his life exploring the relationship between colours. I took a trip to the library and came across The ELements of Color by Johannes Itten. It is a handy paperback book that explains colour relativity in simple terms:

From The ELements of Color. The grey square at the centre appears different depending on which colour it is placed against.
The same colour is placed on a series of coloured squares. The result is the illusion of a variety of depths.
(In InDesign) The colour theme tool allows me to create colour swatches from the colours within any image.
I was then able to add these colours to the process book, taking them from my swatches. I created different themes such as ‘calm’, ‘neutral’ and ‘vibrant’. I placed them within rectangles that I drew using the rectangle tool.

For the next task, Adam asked us to experiment with a scanned image. We coloured in timetables of our week and scanned them onto the computer:

The scanner washed out the fluorescent colour from my highlight pen. Therefore, I needed to take a photo of the timetable instead.

I inserted the photo into the document by pressing Command+D (Ctrl+D on Windows) and selecting the file.

The first task was to replicate the timetable on InDesign, using the colours from the scan. I clicked ‘Table’ > ‘Create Table’.

I chose 24 rows for the 24 hours of the day, and 7 columns for the days of the week. After clicking ‘OK’, I needed to click and drag the table onto the page.

I used the colour theme tool to grab the colours from my scanned image. I added this to my swatches and named the group of colours ‘My Data’. This would allow me to find them easily.

The colour theme tool picks out a limited selection of the colours within your image. Since my image has many colours, I needed to add a few of them individually to my group of swatches.

I needed to use the eyedropper tool to select the colours from my scanned image.

I added this colour to the swatches by selecting ‘New Swatch’.

Adding colours to the table is simple! I highlighted the area I wanted to colour in by clicking and dragging. (The black area is highlighted) I then clicked on the blue colour within my data swatches:
For the areas of half hours, I needed to split the cells horizontally. To do this, I highlighted the cells I wanted to split. I clicked ‘Table’ > ‘Split Cell Horizontally’.

I wanted to add a key to my timetable. I typed the words in a list above the table. The list was too long for the box. This meant that a small red square appeared to tell me there is not enough space for the words. I clicked this red square and selected another area to place the words. I placed them in a box next to the first box.

I wanted to change the font to the style I was using for the process book, ‘body copy’. To do this I needed to select the text. I clicked on the first text box, pressed down SHIFT, then clicked the second text box. This meant that both boxes were selected.

With the text highlighted, I opened the ‘Paragraph Styles’ tab and selected ‘body copy’.

I highlight each word, one at a time. I then changed the colours to match the colours they correspond to in the timetable, choosing from the ‘my data’ swatches.

I wanted to remove the lines within the timetable. To do this, I selected the lines by making sure the lines in the square at the top of the page, were blue and changed the thickness of the lines to ‘0 pt’

I then used the timetable design as a template for experimentation. I played with merging cells, inserting images, bitmap images and adding colour.

I merged cells to give me a larger area to work in. I highlighted the cells I wanted to merge and clicked ‘Table’ > ‘Merge Cells’
I used the bitmap images from week 1 and 2 to incorporate into these designs.

Writing & Research Skills

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Literature Review

In week 2, our lecturer Luisa assigned each of us a female designer to research. The designer I was given was Rebeca Méndez. She is a contemporary graphic designer and fine artist. Méndez was born in New Mexico in 1962. Within her art, she focuses on environmental subjects, systems, cycles natural and human phenomena. She expresses her concepts through film, photography and installation.

Never Happened Again, Glaciers 2 – artworks: rebeca mendez (rebecamendezstudio.com)
Rebeca Méndez Rebeca+Mendez+-+An+Imaginative+Offer_7048257a-760f-4bf4-9847-59fcbf03743c-prv.jpg (640×426)
Life is Magnanimous: Rebeca Méndez and I – Alfalfa Studio

When searching for research material, my first instinct was to go to the Brookes library. ‘Library search’ on the Brookes website searches for journals, ejournals, ebooks, books in print and collections. I typed ‘Rebeca Mendez’ into the search bar.

All the results were for Law books.

I then searched in other places and kept a record of where I had searched.

Search History:

Library search no luck

Oxford Reference no luck

Bridgeman education no luck

Oxford art online no luck

I sourced 2 ejournal articles and was able to request them from the library.
I printed the article and used pens to highlight and annotate.

In week 3’s lecture, we were asked to write the first 100 words of our assignment.

We then shared some of what we wrote and received feedback. It was helpful to hear Luisa’s feedback for my classmate’s work, as I found myself making the same mistakes as them.

For example, a few tips she gave us to think about:

  • “One interesting aspect of the book…” instead of “It’s interesting.”
  • “The author recounts…” instead of “the author says.”
  • Avoid long quotations
  • “The article places emphasis on…”
  • Focus on the core aspects of the interview.

Within this week’s lecture, we began by watching Ways of Seeing. This is a documentary from the 1970’s with John Berger. We watched part 4 and made notes.

John Berger / Ways of Seeing , Episode 4 (1972) – YouTube

This is a BBC documentary, aimed at the wider general public in Britain. Berger delivers the documentary in a didactic style.

WAYS OF SEEING MINT BERGER JOHN PENGUIN BOOKS LTD PAPERBACK SOFTBACK 9780141035796 | eBay

The series was made into a book, which has interesting design features.

Our lecturer Luisa then asked us to describe in 50 words what the documentary is about:

(my response)

John Berger talks to us about the images we see around us everyday. He uses the phrase ‘publicity’ to talk about images used in advertising, and in the media around us. He makes comparisons between these images and the oil paintings of the past. He explains that the images used in publicity do not relate to our lives, but to an imaginary future that we are encouraged to strive for.

She then asked us what we thought of the format of the video:

He talks to us in a didactic style, like he is revealing something we have not considered before. He is filmed against a blue backdrop throughout the video. The simple background keeps the audience focused on his words. We are shown snapshots throughout that relate to the subject he is talking about. It is effective in helping us make a visual connection by seeing these examples. By showing us the scenes of factory workers, we are forced to see the reality of our lives in direct comparison to the scenes of glamour we are being fed by publicity.

The purpose of this exercise, as well as teaching us design history/theory, was for us to practice our writing skills. We need to learn to write in 2 ways: analytical and fun/interesting. This writing exercise helped me to prepare for the literature review next week. Giving us a word limit of roughly 50 words, encouraged me to think about writing in a concise way.

We then looked at artwork by Dora Maar:

Untitled (Hand-Shell)
Dora Maar – Exhibition at Tate Modern | Tate
Luisa asked us to write 100 words in response to the image.

The image first reminded me of the hand washed up on the beach at the beginning of the film Jaws (1975). I felt that I was not very imaginative in this exercise. I wrote in the first style I thought of, which is to analyse a piece of artwork. This meant my writing sounded very essay-like. I asked myself ‘How can I tell more of a story within my writing?’

Intro to Photography (Workshop part 1)

DemelzaB Leave a comment

Having studied photography briefly in college, I had a basic understanding of DSLR cameras. Today we had 3 hours to be introduced to photography and capture our objects using a variety of set-ups. This was a fast-paced session, packed with lots of information.

Our lecturer Hannah explained that the camera is a machine that takes in light. As a photographer, our job is to control the light going into the camera. This is done using shutter speed, ISO and aperture. When you alter one of these, it affects the other 2 settings.

Letting in too much light makes an image over-exposed and too little light creates an under-exposed image:

(Left to right: Under-exposed, correctly exposed, over-exposed) photos by Guy Henstock | Photographer Oxford

We learnt about a camera feature I had never heard of, called exposure compensation. This is used to balance the light in an image when a scene has very dark and very light areas, for example, when a scene is lit from behind.

With analogue cameras, the ISO can only be changed by changing the whole film to one with a different ISO rating, but digital cameras allow you to change the ISO from shot to shot. A good ISO for a cloudy day would be 800 and for a sunny day would be 100. A low ISO gives a smooth grain, as the camera is letting in less light. Using a high ISO will give you more noise, though you need to use a higher ISO when shooting in a really dark room for example.

Aperture refers to the size of the opening of the camera. A smaller opening = a high aperture, for example f/22. This would be suitable for photographing landscapes. This gives a larger depth of field, meaning that the camera is able to focus on foreground, mid-ground and background. A larger opening, and therefore low aperture, such as f/4.5, is best for portrait photography. A low aperture focuses on the foreground and these photos will have slightly blurry background.

8 Low-Light Tips For Awesome Night PhotographyThe Work Smarter Guide – Redbooth

Example of a mode dial

How to Understand Your Camera’s Dial Modes and Settings – FeltMagnet

Hannah explained features of the Canon cameras we use at Brookes:

Tulip symbol = macro (to capture tiny details)

Running person symbol = shutter speed

Flash symbol = night time/ low light shooting

M=manual function

AV= aperture priority

TV=shutter priority

MF/AF= manual focus/automatic focus

RAW for very large photos, e.g. the side of a building. They take up a lot of memory and you cannot process RAW images inside photoshop. You would instead need to use a RAW converter, such as Adobe camera RAW.

We learnt to work with tripods, which is something I had never done before. Using a tripod is an important technique in photography. When holding a camera by hand, we have a natural shake that can cause blurring in photos, especially when using a long shutter speed.

We used 4 different set-ups to photograph our objects. Working in pairs, we took several photos in 1 area, then moved to the next. For example, in 1 set-up we were using a chair draped in fabric and metal studio lights. These lights get very hot, so we used heat protective gloves to handle them. We had the choice of using one or both lights for a photo. Moving the bulb back and forth gave a spot-light effect or a more balanced light. We had the option to light part of all of the object.

My classmate photographing her object.

Another set up had a plinth and sheet hanging as a background. For this set-up we used studio lights with diffusers attached to the front. This set-up reminded me of a school photo shoot.

The 4th set-up allowed us to add colour gels to filter the light through. These were LED lights. They were the easiest to use, as the switches were the same on the back to 1) change the warmth of the light and b) change the brightness to lighter or darker.

LED light set-up gave us the option of using colour filters.
Classmate using the set-up.

It was interesting to experiment with shining light onto the background and seeing the effect compared to shining the light directly onto the subject. The black background created a theater look and made dramatic photos.

Class hand-out