Saturday 29 November 2008

rodchenko - a background

Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko was born on 5th December 1891, in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was an artist, graphic designer, photographer and sculptor. He was one of the founders of Constructivism art and was also part of the Productivist art group.

His photography work was unique in itself, as he usually shot his works in very high or low angles, his reasoning fro this was that “one has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again.”



In 1921 Rodchenko produced the first monochrome pictures of red, blue and yellow. He claimed that this was the end of painting.



He became part of the Productivist group in 1921, where started producing graphics designs for movies, posters and books. He also started photomontaging, after being inspired by the German Dadaists, and released his first piece in 1923.




He worked closely with Mayakovsky, his first photomontage illustrated Mayakovsky’s poem “About This”, they also worked together to design the Constructivists journal LEF.



Rodchenko’s work has influenced a number of images to this day. Most notably the Dutch punk band ‘The Ex’ whose vinyl covers for their album ‘Hidegen Fujnak A Szelek/She Said’ imitating Rodchenko’s portrait of Lilya Brik. Similarly Franz Ferdinand’s album ‘You Could Have It So Much Better’ imitates the same image.
Another album cover from Franz Ferdinand resembles one of Rodchenko’s images. The cover for the single ‘Take Me Out’ is influenced by Rodchenko’s poster ‘One-Sixth Part of the World’.



Friday 21 November 2008

new project: design time capsule

I will be using this blog to document my research for this project. For this project we have to design a box that is relevant to a design movement. I will also be keeping a sketch book to further add to my research and product development.

Thursday 13 November 2008

need more ram

I have finished every side of my cereal box, however when I tried to create the 3D version on my fantastic laptop a message popped up saying I needed more ram, so therefore I will have to finish the design on the college macs.

Wednesday 12 November 2008

all the sides

here be the sides:

Saturday 1 November 2008

about my cereal

I have decided to create a children’s cereal, for 4-12 year olds, as I feel that designing for this demographic will be more fun and flexible. The images I will use will all be cartoons, and I will be applying a comical theme to it, which is not uncommon for children’s cereal. I will be trying to appeal to both genders, although the end product might be more appealing to boys as I will be using strong contrasting colours and a male mascot.

All the images used will be drawn in Adobe Illustrator, and I will be using bold colours to add to the cartoony effect.

The theme of the cereal will be outer space. The cereal will be corn clusters, representing comets. They will be cinnamon flavour, as that is a very popular choice amongst children. The images on the box will be of the mascot, an astronaut, who is standing outside of his space ship. There will be a maze on the reverse of the product where the user has to find their way out; the walls will be formed of small comets.

I am yet to think of a name for the cereal, but I’m edging towards one that will relate to the theme of the cereal.