Graphic Design: Type & Image Fundamentals

Lyric Poster - China Girl by David Bowie

Back in Feb I decided to refresh my design skills with a 15 week Graphic Design course. The course looked at Type and Fundamentals.
I studied art & design all through high school and went on to complete a certificate in applied and visual arts, I started uni studying a diploma in jewellery design before being offered an apprenticeship in jewellery. It's been nearly 20 years since I finished the cert and I felt a little out of my depths in the design world.

Living in Melbourne though has been a huge motivation to get back into something creative, it's such an inspirational city, hence starting of this blog.

Anyway enough of that, back to my graphic design course, which I completed a few months ago. Such a great course to get back to basics and to give me the confidence to know that when I am designing or creating for family and friends, I am on the right track.

Most of my work lately has been for friends weddings and engagements, designing monograms for the couple, something I will write about in another post. The 2 major projects we worked on in the course was a lyric poster and redesigning a book cover which was fun.

Book Cover - Space Demons by Gillian Rubinstein

Jeffrey Smart - Master of stillness

Way back, in year 10 Art, we did a project on an Australian painter and I chose Jeffrey Smart. This was the beginning of a long love affair with his work. 

He has been my favourite artist for 20 years now and on June 20 this year Jeffrey passed away at the age of 91 in Italy near the town of Arezzo.

Jeffrey was such an inspiration in my life and I have many of his prints adorning my walls at home.

Jeffrey was born in Adelaide in 1921 and trained at the South Australian School of Art between 1937 and 1941 and later at the Academe Montmartre with painter Fernand Leger in Paris in 1949. 

Jeffrey was the art critic for The Daily Telegraph in Sydney from 1952 to 1954 and was awarded the Commonwealth Jubilee Art Prize in 1951. He was the drawing teacher at the National Art School, Sydney from 1962 to 1963, before moving to Italy in 1964. 

His works have been included in international group exhibitions at the Whitechapel and the Tate, in London. In 1999 the Art Gallery of New South Wales held a major retrospective of his work. 

I have been lucky enough to see three exhibitions of his work: 

The Jeffrey Smart Retrospective Exhibition - Art Gallery of South Australia 1999 
Jeffrey Smart: The question of portraiture - Mornington Peninsular Regional Gallery 2009

Master of Stillness - Tarrawarra 2012

Jeffrey's style has been described as both surrealism and precisionism  although he did disagree with the surrealist label saying that it was the modern urban landscape that was surreal and he was just painting it. 

To me his work captured the urban landscape and industrial buildings  by celebrating their colour and grandeur. The people he painted in these scenes give a human quality to the painting which is intriguing. The people in his paintings were often friends such as Clive James and Germaine Greer.

It is with great sadness that I write this blog as I was never able to meet my hero. I will celebrate though because Jeffrey Smart left his mark on the world and it is a much better and more beautiful place for it. We are so lucky that he had such a long life and his enjoyment for painting stayed with him until the end.

Jeffrey Smart is my legend and one day I hope that I will have enough money to purchase an original!

Read more about Jeffrey Smart here.

King Kong

What can I say, this show was pretty great, so good I needed to write about it, not because the songs were the most amazing or the performances were out of this world but the design and concept of King Kong was absolutely brilliant.

Through work I was invited to see a preview of King Kong hosted by Virgin Australia.
I hadn't seen anything about the show except the posters and I had already decided I wasn't that interested, I had seen the movie (the most recent one) and didn't care for it much. But I was being offered a lunch before hand at The Sofitel and a ticket to the show, so why wouldn't I go if I wasn't paying? And who could pass up a couple of wines with work colleagues?!

Well I was so glad I went, I was blown away, this isn't your usual run of the mill musical it is so much more. Part of me now wants to be a set designer, what they created was truly awesome.
I wouldn't label it as a musical either but a show which caters for everyone, love it or hate it you will still walk away amazed.

Prior to lunch we were treated to an introduction from the producer of King Kong, Carmen Pavlovic, she explained the journey of how the show was created. It was amazing to hear from her. Through Carmen's brother she was able to get Massive Attack, The Avalanches and Justice on board to help with the songs, so from there I realised if these big music names were involved then this was going to be good.

The effects, the dancers, the singers and Kong are amazing. The lead Esther Hannaford who plays Ann Darrow has an awesome voice and not the typical stage show voice, she was mesmerising. But the star of the show was Kong himself. A giant animatronic marionette, he had 10 men controlling him onstage bringing him to life and three behind the scene controlling his expressions.

I was impressed by the design and creativity of the people that put this show together. It is definietly a work of moving art! Highly recommended even if you aren't a fan of 'musicals'.

Nice suprise

My fun & lovely cousin Kylie recently got engaged to a nice young man named Hamish, who we all approve of ;)
They both came down from the Gold Coast last weekend and Kylie surprised me by asking me to be her maid of honour (or in my case matron of honour). 

To ask me she gave me a little present that I wanted to share, which she made. I of course said yes and am looking forward to organising her hens party ;) and standing next to her on her very special day. Party Party Party!

Quack Quack Quack

A friend has been searching for flying ducks to hang on her wall for sometime now so I decided the other day until she finds them I'll make her some.

My good friend Pinterest gave me some ideas and my Dad who is handy with wood, cut me out some shapes. 

I googled the duck shapes and fitted the outlines on an A4 page for Dad to use as a template. I went with the more traditional style of duck you would have seen hanging on Grandma's wall back when you were a kid. 

Using fancy paper, I traced the outline of the wooden ducks, cut them out using curved nail scissors (this is handy when you have small curved parts), using spray glue I attached the paper to the wood cutouts.

Inspiration comes in small packages

So this is my second go at writing a blog, my first was about our Kokoda Trek which I enjoyed writing. Now that the trek is over and we no longer have our time taken up by training, I am now turning my attention to design & creativity.

In this blog I want to share my own creations, the designs I love and my inspirations. I think this will be a great way to document everything as well.

I don't know how often I will write but I hope to be consistent.

I've been inspired by so many designs, pieces of art and craft over the years but it's always people that inspire me the most. So I want to take this opportunity before I start putting up pictures of things to put up a picture of a brave, happy and determined little girl, the beautiful Becky.

Becky is the granddaughter of a good family friend and was diagnosed 9 months ago with Leukaemia at the age of 5. Since then she has been battling through chemotherapy which has caused other problems such as loss of muscle use in her legs and lower body and making her very sick which has caused her to have numerous blood transfusions to keep her well. Knowing this makes donating blood and plasma worthwhile.

Becky lives in a different state to me so her Mum keeps me updated on her progress and sends me photos of Becky - often with her wonderful artwork that keeps her busy. I even have a couple of Becky's creations pinned up at my desk at work. Becky has now finished her heavy dosage chemotherapy and received a trophy, she was very excited!

For me Becky puts life in perspective.