OUGD504 Design for print: Leather research

OUGD504

DESIGN FOR PRINT

LEATHER RESEARCH

Vegetable tanning is an ancient and traditional craft process that tanneries have passed down over the years, using both ancient recipes and more recently state-of-the-art technology.

Vegetable tanning shows off leather in it's most natural state and you can really see the skill in the tanning process and also the finished product.

The transformation from raw hides into a material that will last a long time is a process that happens slowly in wooden drums or in tanning pits. Vegetable tanning is the most enviromentally friendly way to tan leather, there are no chemcals used respecting the environment due to the use of natural ingredients rather than chemicals. It is an astonishing process based on the use of natural tannins, using modern technologies and machinery but mainly it relies on the slow passage of time.

Among the various tanning methods, vegetable tanning is the most traditional and the most recognisable, it is the only form of tanning that is able to give leather unique characteristics, retaining the natural flaws and markings. It is also the most environmental-friendly. It is able to join comfort and look, fashion and tradition, uniqueness and versatility in the product.

Raw materials used for vegetable tanning are natural tannins, available in liquid or powder form, obtained from different part of plants including woods, barks, fruits, fruit pods and leaves. The most common tannins are obtained from Chestnut wood (Castanea sativa), Quebracho wood (Schinopsis lorentzii), Tara pods (Caesalpinia spinosa), Catechu (Acacia Catechu), Chinese gallnut (Rhustyphina semialata), Gambier (Uncaria gambir), Mimosa bark (Acacia meamsii), Oak wood (Quercus sp), Sumac (Rhustyphina coriaria), Turkish gallnut (Quercus infectoria) and Valonia Oak (Quercus macrolepis).

ADVANTAGES OF VEGETABLE TANNING

Vegetable tanning is environmentally friendly; meaning any leather products that have been vegetable tanned can be recycled.


Vegetable tanning is an age old tradition, so most tanneries have very skilled craftsmen producing and dyeing the leather.


Due to the natural tannins used, vegetable tanned products are unique and have their own life, they are not the same for their entire life, but they change, continuously, for the better developing a patina over time.


The colours that vegetable tanning produces are rich and warm tones that look completely natural.


Vegetable tanned leathers are more valuable and thus sold at a higher average price compared to chrome tanned leathers.

DISADVANTAGES OF VEGETABLE TANNING


The average process time of vegetable tanning is quite similar to chrome tanned leather but it can take up to 60 days to produce certain leathers.


Products that have been vegetable tanned are more expensive. They require much more skill to tan the hides, this means they are of better quality.


The colours you can produce from vegetable tanning are limited


Direct heat can cause vegetable tanned products to shrink or crack

OUGD504 Design for web: Numiko lecture

OUGD504

DESIGN FOR WEB

NUMIKO LECTURE

Numiko are a Leeds based company who have worked with a multitude of high profile clients who want website and other digital media. Below are some notes I have taken from the talk.

Designing for screen by Matt Tweedle and David Eccles.

Digital agency in Leeds.

What do they do?

Digital things

public and entertainment sectors

dont sell thing and make produces that are usable and meaningful.

Clients: channel 4, bbd, disney, design council. nhs, university of leeds, nspcc, water aid, cancer research and nesta

Why are the limitations of web?

too many limitation

designers need to be able to code

designing websites all the time must get boring

web designers lack an understanding of esign principles

you need to move to london to work on high profile projects

we believe these are all wrong.

Limitations that are disapearing

typography

responsive grids

scaling vector graphics (SVG)

html5, canvas and open GL

connection speeds.

Designers don't have to able to code.

Not boring, web is constantly evolving with technology and a host of new exciting challenges. Maturing industry, we take design seriously.

- Clients.

Nesta

Make stuff do things.

Cube, a single pixel the start of digital making. 

Considering what else it can adapt to like mobile phone apps.

WaterAid

A lot of illustrations, type and colour.

Commuincate a need  for water and it's impact.

Lewis Hamilton

A timeline of his life.

Modern and personal.

Social networks to promote his personal life.

Similar to design for print.

Iconography is a good foundation to do all of the stuff for web.

The Lottery

Office for National Statistics

Channel 4

IPTV

Film 4

BBC

Design Council

Discover. define. design, develop, deploy.

Understanding audiences: who they are, what they need, to understand their digital lives, to understand your organisational needs from a digital platform. to ensure we're answering the right questions throughout the project.

Developed personas for people / potential target audience to consider user  needs.

Finding the right balance between something that is over the top and intuitive  To something simple and is aesthetically pleasing.

Clear - Flexible - Simple - Creative.

User-centerd.

Mobile first. 

Device agnostic.

GUDING PRINCIPLES.

 Focus on content: reduce interface debris and focus in delivery of content

Make it simple: functionality should be designed to be entirely intuitive and obvious

Embrace less is more: strive to achieve the same functionality through as few visual elements as possible without sacrificing clarity.

Be consistent: use concisistent design patterns to reduce user thinking time

Consider context

Be bold

Development for a client or website.

Proposal: 3 weeks

Final: 6 - 8 weeks

Not many designers on a project, they have some what ownership. For placements they work on live breifs and get placements for two weeks.

Skills

Typography designers.

Illustrations / Digital illustrations.

I really enjoyed this talk, it showed all the possibilities you can create in web which is was a source of influence in the production for this module.

OUGD504 design for print: Leather journal visual research

OUGD504
DESIGN FOR PRINT
LEATHER JOURNAL VISUAL RESEARCH

OUGD504 Design for print: Chronologies of print

OUGD504

DESIGN FOR PRINT

CHRONOLOGIES OF PRINT

CHRONOLOGIES OF PRINT

HOW PRINT CHANGED THE WORLD

If something is printed we believe it is true and correct – although we are more media savvy now.

Standardises information

Documentation. Communication. Reproduction.

200AD

Woodcut

East Asia

Bulks expensive stock

1400AD

European print

650AD

China

Book

Religion – Buddhism

Maps

Japanese

Woodblock

2000AD

Communication. Reproduction. Documentation.

Knowledge is power

1000AD

First movable type

1450

Guttenberg Press

Literacy boomed

Beginnings of the class divide

Trickle down theory

Nationalistic

15^th – 18^th Century

Production of printed books boomed

Fueled by countries with formulated religions

Same time as scientific boom

Everything becomes visual

Glyphs developed through laziness

Text & communication

Marshall McLuhan

-       Medium is the message

-       1911-1980

-       New technologies

Individuality

Democracy

Capitalism

Nationalism

Linotype

1884

Line casting

Revolutionised the printing press

Development of keyboard and technology

Linotype: The Film 

1^st etching

Religious theme

Suits of armour

Mass communication

Moulin Rouge

Lithography

Not supposed to be attractive

Advertising

William Morris

Victoriana

Excess

Asian influences (middle-eastern)

1917

Crafts movement

Propaganda

War changed everything

1936 – Spanish civil war

1941 – War poster

1930 – Modernism – Mondrian

German reform

Propaganda

Clean

2 colour separation

Versatile

1930s poster

Clean lines

‘Keep your teeth clean’

Communication. Reproduction. Distribution.

Daily Star

-       Propaganda

-       Anti-Muslim

-       Believed

Andre the Giant

7 ft 4

Afraid of snakes

Fight with Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts

Lost all support and respect

Shepard Fairey

“Street artist”

‘Andre the Giant has a posse’

Obey

Community

Low Fi

Obama Print

-       Print changed the world

OUGD504 Design for print: Print Processes research

OUGD504 
DESIGN FOR PRINT
PRINT PROCESS RESEARCH

I sourced most of my information for my print book from theses two books as well as online resources.

The choice of print process is related to the choice of print materials. The main printing processes can be defined according to the printing surfaces used. Letter press is a relief process, where the image to be printed is above the background; this raised surface is inked by rollers and then pressed against the paper to make the impression.

Screen printing

The use of stencils to apply an image goes back centuries, but it was only at the beginning if the 20th century that this was allied to the use of a screen, giving the process its name. It is perhaps the most versatile of printing processes. Basically, it is the process of using a stencil to apply ink onto a substrate, whether it be t-shirts, posters, stickers, vinyl, wood, or other material.

Originally the screen was made of silk hence the name 'silk screen printing' in current times synthetic fibres such as nylon or polyester are used. the screen is stretched tightly over a a metal/wooden frame. Stencils and cut outs can be used to create basic shapes and patterns however the use of light sensitive coating on a screen allows people to expose art work such as photography or computer arts directly on to the screen which allows for a higher level of detail. Ink is then spread across the screen with the use of a rubber squeegee that squeezes the ink through the screen. The blocked areas of the screen do not allow the ink to pass through thus creating your desired art work.

Screen printing lends itself well to printing on canvas. Andy Warhol, Rob Ryan, Blexbolex, Arthur Okamura, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Harry Gottlieb, and many other artists have used screen printing as an expression of creativity and artistic vision.

The fact that the process can apply a very thick film of ink on to a large sheet makes it ideal for posters. Also, virtually any type of material can be printed on to such as wood, fabric, glass plastic and metal. screen printing is therefore used for metal signs, CDs, teeshirts, bottles, transfers and many more. 

Screen printing has a distinct appearance because of its thick ink. Although this is an advantage of most screen printed products it does however mean that small type does not always reproduce very sharply. Fine details of photography is also not well suited to this process, the nature of the course screen mess that halftone screens of 50 are normally the limit. Large bill boards are often printed in sections by screen printing but are viewed from a distance so the course screen is not visible to the naked eye. A huge advantage of screen printing is the wide array of colours you can make such as fluorescent and metallic.

Letter press.

Letter press was the main printing process used until 1970s when it was over taken by offset lithography and is essential now a redundant process within commercial use, however this doesn't hinder the amazing potential and beauty of the process.

Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing using a printing press. A worker composes and locks movable type into the bed of a press, inks it, and presses paper against it to transfer the ink from the type.

Composition, or typesetting, is the stage where pieces of movable type are assembled to form the desired text. The person charged with composition is called a "compositor".

Traditionally, as in manual composition, it involves selecting the individual type letters from a type case, placing them in a composing stick, which holds several lines, then transferring those to a larger type galley. By this method the compositor gradually builds out the text of an individual page letter by letter. In mechanical typesetting, it may involve using a keyboard to select the type, or even cast the desired type on the spot, as in hot metal typesetting, which are then added to a galley designed for the product of that process.

After a galley is assembled to fill a page-worth of type, the type is tied together into a single unit so that it may be transported without falling apart. From this bundle galley proof is made, which is inspected by a proof-reader to make sure that the particular page is accurate.

The working of the printing process depends on the type of press used, as well as any of its associated technologies (which varied by time period).

Hand presses generally required two people to operate them: one to ink the type, the other to work the press. Later mechanized jobbing presses require a single operator to feed and remove the paper, as the inking and pressing are done automatically.

The completed sheets are then taken to dry and for finishing, depending on the variety of printed matter being produced. With newspapers, they are taken to a folding machine. Sheets for books are sent for bookbinding.

OUGD501 Lecture Notes: Censorship and truth

OVERVIEW

• Notions of censorship and truth
• The indexical qualities of photography in rendering truth
• Photographic manipulation and the documentation of truth
• Censorship in advertising
• Censorship in art and photography

Five years before coming to power in the 1917 October revolution, the Soviets established the newspaper Pravda. For more than seven Decades,until the fall of Communism, Pravda, which Ironically means “truth”, served the Soviet Communist party by censoring and filtering the news presented to Russian and Eastern Europeans’

Aronson, E. and Pratkanis, A., 1992, Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of 

Persuasion, New York, Henry Holt & Co., pages 269 - 270

Kate Winslet on the cover of gq with elongated legs

Robert Capa death of a loyalist soldier 1936

Mexican suitcase containing contact sheets and negatives of photography. 

‘At that time [World War II], I fervently believed just about everything I was exposed to in school and in the media. For example, I knew that all Germans were evil and that all Japanese were sneaky and treacherous, while all white Americans were clean-cut, honest, fair-minded, and trusting’

Elliot Aronson in Pratkanis and Aronson, (1992), Age of

Propaganda, p. xii

‘With lively step, breasting the wind, clenching their rifles, they ran down the slope covered with thick stubble. Suddenly their soaring was interrupted, a bullet whistled - a fratricidal bullet - and their blood was drunk by their native soil’ – caption accompanying the photograph in Vue magazine

Persuasion - ‘a deliberate and successful attempt by one person to get another person by appeals to reason to freely accept beliefs, attitudes, values, intentions, orations’.Tom L. Beauchamp, Manipulative Advertising, 1984

JEAN BAUDRILLARD

‘Whereas representation tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum. These would be the succesive phases of the image:

1.It is the reflection of a basic reality.
2.It masks and perverts a basic reality.
3.It masks the absence of a basic reality.
4.It bears no relation to any reality whatever : it is its own pure simulacrum.’


Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, 1981, in Poster, M. (ed.) (1988), Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Cambridge, Polity Press, page 173

‘In the first case, the image is a good appearance: the representation is of the order of the sacrament. In the second, it is an evil appearance: of the order of malefice. In the third, it plays at being an appearance: it is of the order of sorcery. In the fourth, it is no longer in the order of appearance at all, but of simulation’. 

Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, 1981, in Poster, M. (ed.) (1988), Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Cambridge, Polity Press, page 173

‘As we approach the likelihood of a new Gulf War, I have an idea and it occurs to me that the Digital Journalist may be the place for it. As we all know, the military pool system created then was meant to be, and was, a major impediment for photojournalists in their quest to communicate the realities of war (This fact does not diminish the great efforts, courage, and many important images created by many of my colleagues who participated in these pools.). Aside from that, while you would have a very difficult time finding an editor of an American publication today that wouldn't condemn this pool system and its restrictions during the Gulf War, most publications and television entities more or less bought the program before the war began (this reality has been far less discussed than the critiques of the pools themselves)’

Peter Turnley, The Unseen Gulf War, December 2002, at http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0212/pt_intro.html

The "Mile of Death". During the night of the 25th of February and the day of the 26th of February, 1991, Allied aircraft strafed and bombed a stretch of the Jahra Highway. A large convoy of Iraqis were trying to make a haste retreat back to Baghdad, as the Allied Forces retook Kuwait City. Many Iraqis were killed on this highway. Estimates vary on the precise number of Iraqis killed during the Gulf War. Very few images of Iraqi dead have been previously published
 

“It is a masquerade of Information: branded faces delivered over to the prostitution of the image” 
Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did not Take Place, 1995, p.40


‘The claim that the Gulf War of 1990 would not take place (1991), followed by the assertion that it did not take place, seems to defy all logic. Such statements are anticipated by the earlier claim (1983) that the only future war would be a hyperreal and dissuasive war in which no events would take place because there was no more space for actual warfare. The underlying argument is that the Gulf War was asimulated war or a reproduction of a war. Whatever its human consequences, this was, for Baudrillard, a war which consisted largely of its self-representation in the real time of media coverage’

Macey, D. (2000), The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory, London, Penguin, page 34 

‘Most of the reporting that reached American audience and the west in general emanated from the Pentagon, hence severely lacking balance, as proven by the total blackout on the magnitude of the devastation and death on the Iraqi side. A quick statement of the number of dead (centered around 100,000 thousands soldiers and 15,000 civilians) sufficed for main-stream media audience. It is no wonder that this made-for-TV war started at 6:30pm EST on January 16, 1991, coinciding with National News. Alas, much of American audience today cannot distinguish between computer war games and real war, between news and entertainment’.
 

‘Two intense images, two or perhaps three which all concern disfigured forms or costumes which correspond to the masquerade of this war: the CNN journalists with their gas masks in the
Jerusalem studios; the drugged and beaten prisoners repenting on the screen of Iraqi TV; and perhaps that seabird covered in oil and pointing its blind eyes to the Gulf sky. It is a masquerade of information: branded faces delivered over to the prostitution of the image, the image
of an unintelligible distress. No images of the field of battle, but images of masks, of blind or defeated faces, images of falsification. It is not war taking place over there but the Disfiguration of the world’
Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, 1995, in Poster, M. (ed.) (1988), Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, Cambridge, Polity Press, page 241