OUGD406 STUDIO BRIEF 1 - MARK MAKING EXERCISE

To get us started on this new brief we had a workshop, where we had to listen to all 7 of the songs individually, some with the music videos, and create marks on paper with 7" guidelines on them. We were given a different thing to do for each stage on each song, and had to pass our piece of paper onto different people several times for each song, so that other people also draw on my piece of paper so different peoples ideas of the song are merged together.

These are the different designs for each song I ended up with.

This design was for the song Dead Flowers by The Rolling Stones. The first stage we had to draw with continuous line, the second was with a shaky hand, the third with our non primary writing hand, fourth with our eyes closed, and the fifth was was with one pen in each hand. We only hand the song itself to draw from, and were told to draw shapes rather than actual things from the video. This was very interesting, especially seeing what other people had drawn on my sheet in response to mine and other peoples drawings.

This sheet was for The Maccabee's - Go. For this song we were told to only drawn circles, then just squares. the triangles, and then straight lines and dotted lines. This allowed us to draw more the feeling of the song, with more direction. We were also encouraged to use a different coloured mark making tool than was already on the page to highlight the different stages within the song. Here I tried to show the beat and flow of the song through drawing bubble like circles, or the goo in a lava lamp, as the song was quite flowing.

This design is for Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel. For this song throughout when the music was of a loud volume, we had to draw our images bit, and when it was quiet we had to draw small. One of our tutors adjusted the volume of the music to fit this. I didn't enjoy this quite so much, as I'd be half way through drawing something and the music would change and I'd have to alter what I was drawing. Although I suppose this is in fitting with the song as it is crazy and random.

This is the design for Let Forever Be by The Chemical Brothers, where we were shown the music video as well as the song itself. Our only task for this was to draw from the music video. In the video the screen often splits off into multiple segments, so I tried to replicate this by separating my page into different sections. I then created duplicate images to do with the content of the music video, changing their size a lot. It was interesting to see what other people had drawn into my grid, and how they had followed the grid rather than discarding it.

This is my sheet for Digital Witness by St. Vincent, which I really did not enjoy doing at all. The first task we had to use any object that wasn't a mark making tool, and dig into the piece of paper to make marks that way. The second one we had to fold the paper listening to the song. It appears as if my sheet has been made into a paper aeroplane. I didn't enjoy this as the St. Vincent music video is full of character and distinctive colours, and the song itself is very lively and exciting. I didn't feel like this method reflected the song well at all, and it was also very difficult to make marks on the paper without folding it in the first section.

This was a pairs task for the song Born Slippy by Underworld. One person had to hold the mark making tool still, and the other person had to hold the piece of paper, moving the paper to create the pattern, which was ever so confusing but very exciting. We were asked to do this method as this is similar to how a record player would read records. It produced very interesting, shaky imagery which would be hard to achieve otherwise. We chose to use completely different coloured pens for each turn, so we could distinguish between what each person had drawn. For this we were creating a sort of explosion above a cityscape, however I think I got a little carried away with the explosion part as it takes over the page.

The final sheet is for the song Reflections by Diana Ross and The Supremes. For this task we only write words to make the pattern. thinking about the typographic choices compared to what words we were writing. It proved difficult to create effective lettering in specific typefaces in such a short amount of time. 

These are some of the designs I thought were more interesting from other people in the group.

This was for The Rolling Stones song, I liked the dark squiggle down the centre of the page, and the almost rainbow style pattern above it, as it looks a bit like a tornado in between two hills, with a rainbow at the end, or the tornado going into some sort of tunnel. 

I thought this design was unusual as it was comprised all of objects rather than random squiggles and shapes. It also looks like it's been done with continuous line as well, which gives it a haphazard very linear feel.

This design is very bold and aggressive looking, with the different weights of uppercase words, and how everything appears scrawled and messy. 

The lines across the bottom of the sheet look like heart beats, and the dotted lines around them add emphasis and decoration to the lines, making them look like a pattern rather than just lines. I also think that the dots around hem lines work well with contrasting against the straightness of the lines, providing a different appearance to the page.

This design I thought was very powerful, with the use of black and red pen looking very gory and murderous. The fact that the paper was also split in half added to the aggressive style.

This design is more controlled, the the circles and squares all pretty regular. I like the use of blue and red pens, the colours contrast nicely and help to separate the different tasks. The dotted line also contrasts really well against the very structured squares and circles, also the looseness of the dotted lines contrasts with the formal lines of the shapes, the dotted line is free whereas the circles and squares are not.

I thought this design was interesting how it revolves around a centre line, almost acting as a mirror I suppose, as it makes it look like two halves to the same face, two different characters, although the designs on both side of the line are pretty similar.

Again in this design I think that the contrasting use of triangles, squares and circles work really nicely together, especially as they are grouped together into shape categories. The cross hatched background as well provides a backdrop for these shapes, with the smaller circles looking like raindrops or stars, making it look like a slightly unusual milky way scene.

This exercise has been of great use to me for thinking of initial ideas for this brief, and also showing me that for a design to wok, it doesn't have to be an actual object, it could just be a pattern that reflects the feel of the music, rather than a specific image.