Being part of the Auction 13 team has been hard work, but really rewarding and enjoyable. Liaising with designers has been a great experience and receiving their designs was so exciting.
We received 25 brilliant postcards to begin with and raised £197.14, which is amazing – we never expected to raise that amount of money!
I had my eye on one postcard in particular, and after a bidding battle, I won it:
I placed the highest bid of Auction 13 (so far – we still have 8 postcards live at the moment) and it was worth every penny – it’s beautiful.
Alan Kitching‘s letter pressed postcard is a sample of his newest typographic maps which are currently on show at Pencil to Pixel in New York. I noticed it from Vicky Heinlein’s blog post which was retweeted by Eye Magazine:
I’ve loved Alan’s work for a while now – it’s so simple, bold and colourful. I’m so happy to own an original print of his and will definitely be getting it framed!
Thanks to Alan and all of the artists involved with Auction 13 – we can’t thank you enough. We know you’re all super busy, but really appreciate you remembering what it’s like to be a student and helping us out. Hopefully I will be able to do the same in 20 years or so… who knows?
Remember, there’s still 8 postcards to bid on, ending tomorrow from 6PM – Seb Lester, Design by St, Elmwood, Catherine Zask, Manny Ling, The Caseroom Press, Deutsche and Japaner and Jack Crossing. Get yourself to ebay, bag a unique piece of design and support Lincoln’s Graphic Design students – Show Thirteen.
Yesterday Jack & I travelled to London to visit Pick Me Up, the graphic arts festival at Somerset House. Last year Jack went with his sister Emma and her boyfriend Alex, and we met up with them to see what was on show this year. En route to catch the train I realised I hadn’t brought my camera with me – I was so annoyed with myself! Knight to the rescue – Jack let me borrow his iPhone but I hadn’t ever used one before so they’re not the best photos ever, sorry.
We hadn’t booked tickets online as we wasn’t sure what time we would be going so had to wait in the queue for a bit but it was a gorgeous sunny day so it wasn’t so bad!
When we finally made it inside, the first thing I saw was Maricor Maricar‘s beautiful stitched typography which I’d seen on Behance. (This happened with a lot of the work – great to recognise something you’ve seen online but actually see it in the flesh!)
Around the corner was some great work by Hattie Stewart:
A set of magazine spreads overlaid with patterns and doodles – so much detail!
The room was full of people admiring the work and Daniel Frost’s people caught my eye as well as that of a little girl on a scooter…
Anna Lomax’s work caught my eye for a different reason:
A neon fry up and some fluorescent price tags – very British!
Fluoro was quite popular, also featuring in the striking risograph prints by Rob Flowers:
Striking for other reasons…
Malika Favre’s Kama Sutra alphabet for the Penguin Classics book. Some were a bit naughty but they’re simple, striking and brilliant!
We then went upstairs and the first thing I was was this lovely print by Dayjob – it was obviously the tri-dar in me:
A nice little range of prints.
Brothers of the stripe were showcasing some great prints…
… as well as a lovely eclectic alphabet.
Fatherless print posse were screen printing through out the day:
Awesome and colourful prints – I liked the overlaying.
Facestamp by Human after all provided an opportunity for you to do some printing yourself…
A variety of facial feature stamps with different styles by several illustrators – good fun.
Fun was a general theme throughout the room with portrait booths, fayre games including hoop-la and an ideas machine:
Then we ventured into the collaboratives and gallery side rooms off the main area…
…Puckleduster had set up a mini tattoo parlour offering temporary tattoos whilst Nelly Duff had an eccentric gallery with quirky frames and Anthony Burrill prints:
SOMA had some cool parcel tape:
and I loved Hazel Nicholls’ Nice biscuit design – ‘It’s nice to be nice’. I also loved Untitled’s alphabet candles…
…whilst Jack & Alex admired their prints – one of which was on printed onto leather.
In Handsome Frank’s room I found a lonely fluoro poster shouting FREE at me, so of course I picked it up (pick me up pun haha):
But it wasn’t the same story in the shop – I resisted buying any of these tubes filled with lovely prints:
I was well behaved, only picking up a few freebie leaflets and business cards and I signed up to a couple of mailing lists too:
As I’m sure you can tell, I had a great time! Saw so much, loved so much and even persuaded Jack to take my photo next to the giant Pick Me Up pencil (which I am amazingly colour co-ordinated with)!
Pick Me Up is open until 28th April and I recommend going if you’re around London. I’ll definitely be going again next year.
It seems like a long time ago now, but before Christmas I started working on the ISTD Sound Bites brief. After listening to several of the clips, I found swearing was a common theme and an interesting one at that. I’m not really much of a swearer, but I definitely learnt a few words during this project!
I packaged my work up on Tuesday and this weekend it is auditioning at the judges houses – has it got the ISTD factor? Let’s hope so – keep your fingers crossed for me!
Mind your language! is my dictionary of swear words and taboos from around the UK. It’s A3 in size for a big impact, like the swear words contained inside!
I used a selection of woodblock type to create the titles, quotes and end paper pattern of exclamation marks.
I divided the UK into sections to make it easy for the reader to navigate the dictionary: Scotland, The North, The Midlands, The East, The South, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The left hand page contains the definitions and the right, the experimental visual of the word:
Barstarrd
Raining (Pisssin it daaaaan)
Muva fucka
It was good fun listening to people discuss swearing and then transcribing how the words are spoken. I’d never really thought about it before, but found it interesting to hear about the changing attitudes to swearing – generations and regions all have different opinions. One word could be considered very offensive in one area but be part of everyday language in another.
Arrrsss
Shittt
Cockney rhyming slang – Brahms & List (Pissed)
Flippin’ eck
Nack Kerred
My tutors, Philippa and Barrie, said that when they were marking it for assessment, they were sounding out the words – which I can just imagine and makes me smile. I hope everyone reading this had been doing the same too, even if it’s just in your head.
As part of the definitions, I wrote some examples of how the words would be used in conversation – that was interesting! Ha
This tastes like shit (adj.) Can you stop talking shit? (adj.) When he had me by the throat I was absolutely shit scared. (v.) Oh shit, I’ve missed the bus! (interj.)
All good fun! So what’s the conclusion? Whether you think swearing is inappropriate and show a lack of vocabulary or is a healthy way to emphasise your feelings…
… everyone’s got an opinion on swearing!
To finish, I japanese stab bound my dictionary:
This project was stressful, but fun. They’re just words, but they have so much power! I originally had more planned, but figured 83 pages was enough of a challenge. Swearing is interesting and I think I’d like to look into it again in the future – another thing to add to the long list!
Fingers crossed, the judges won’t be offended and will see the fun side (and brilliant typography ). Fingers crossed for good news!
Until then… What do you think? If you want to see more, there’s a few more photos on my website.
As I mentioned before, I had such a great time at the St Bride event and the ‘goody bag’ items did not disappoint either! I arranged all of my goodies neatly:
Firstly, the event programme:
It was simple typography with lovely fluoro pink detailing.
The Monotype type spec booklets went like hot cakes! The problem was that some people were being a bit greedy and taking one of every colour. You can see from my photo here, that there were about 14 different booklets so by the time I got to the table there weren’t many left! I thought it was really unfair so I choose just 3 so that the people behind me would be able to get some too…
I mentioned that I met Justin, whose blog I have been following for a while. He was manning the Fenner Paper stand, from which I picked up this really handy booklet about paper sizes, pagination, binding and folding techniques:
The last stand in the room was from GF Smith who gave us some lovely paper stock samples:
The great thing about GF Smith is that they don’t just give plain bits of paper for samples, they present them in creative and innovative ways. They collaborate with studios to produce something beautiful, using genius folds and die cuts.
I also picked up an amazing samples box, designed by SEA Design:
The burst of yellow is lovely with the silver and white!
And last but not least, some bits and bobs from the speakers:
Desmond Jeffrey by Spike Island and City Edition, L’automatica and Peter Nencini…
… and October Press.
If you haven’t already, you should definitely give my posts on the talks a read: Part 1 & Part 2. Thanks to all involved in the event.
So carrying on from my last post, the first speaker after lunch was the ‘nicest man in Graphic Design’, Anthony Burrill.
I’ve seen Anthony talk at Leeds Print Festival back in January, so knew he was a great speaker and he also gets Brownie points because he replied to my emails back when I did the D&AD brief! ha
He talked about Adams, the print shop in his country retreat village, Rye, and used a great little comparison – when he first discovered the type in Adams (which sells odds and ends and everything) it was like in the Wizard of Oz when things turn from black and white to technicolour! Haha Magical…
Anthony also shared his ever growing collection of google images that he has collected of his work in different scenarios – David Cameron coincidentally next to an adapted version of Anthony’s famous ‘Work hard and be nice to people’ poster haha
Anthony then went on to tell us about some of his more recent work, which I hadn’t seen before. He’s been quite busy collaborating overseas:
Colby printers in LA produce awesome(but trippy) fluoro posters and Anthony worked with them to produce this:
He also spoke about his trip to Sao Paulo, where he met Claudio a local printer and experienced some dangerous campervan driving, thinking: ‘I’m going to die and it’s all because of typography!’ Haha what a great quote!
He worked with Claudio (who spoke to English) to produce this poster:
… which is the only poster they printed as the machine broke! That was bad luck, wasn’t it? It translates into ‘Work hard & be cool with people’.
Whilst in Sao Paulo, Anthony worked with his friends Mesa & Ladeira and a group of young people to produce a series of posters:
This one says ‘Glass Half Empty’ and then at the top in small ‘It is half empty because I drank it’ which I thought was nice (and also appropriate to a poster I was working on at the time).
Anthony finished with his oil & water poster, which if you haven’t seen it, shame on you and you need to watch this video. I love the poster but thought this little sketch from inside Anthony’s sketchbook was interesting and lovely:
Such a great talk! Like I said, Anthony is just such a great guy so I think it’s pretty impossible not to enjoy his talks. But another thing that was lovely – it was actually a special day for Anthony…
Catherine Dixon had made him a birthday cake and we all sang to him – it was a bit surreal if I’m honest ha But not many people would ‘work’ on their birthday, would they!? He said that his wife asked if he wanted to go for lunch and he said he just wanted to go and talk about type. Pure dedication.
So Anthony’s a bit of a hard act to follow, but Dylan Kendle from Tomato was the right man for the challenge. Obviously I’d heard of Tomato, but not of Dylan specifically so it was great to see and learn about his work:
He began with a haiku, which he creates regularly from tabloid newspaper headline cuttings. He used these through out his presentation and I thought they were really, interesting and just reinforced the importance of words in our lives!
I loved this typography created for the Blossom Hill TV adverts for showing in between Dallas. This one says Pinot Grigot:
Such a great visual!
Next he showed us a Japanese music video which Tomato worked on to represent the rain cycle which was really interesting. I recommend you watch it – here
And another Haiku from Dylan:
I think it looks great printed just in white onto a coloured stock – still newspapery but more designery. He then spoke about a 24 hour project which Tomato worked on which included woodblock type and slang words:
I think these are the Caribbean slang for posh & rough. An interesting contrast.
Dylan then spoke about making a numeral typeface from shapes which had some really interesting forms:
Here it is in use on the Nouvelle album artwork, which you can see more of here:
…Black and white with a hint of colour… lovely!
Dylan then talked about his modular typeface, Reduct, which is really interesting because if you don’t like how it’s made, you can make your own version. I guess it’s the lego of the font world?
Dylan finished by showing some AMAZING adverts for BBC Radio 4. I love the Zadie Smith one – definitely a must see:
Beautiful!
The next speaker, Gee Vaucher, brought traditonal woodblock type back into focus. She spoke about wooden type being a thing of beauty (agreed!) and how in her work she uses whatever it takes to say what she wants to say.
For her book You can’t see the trees for the wood, she investigated which trees woodblock letters were made from and printed them, making other words from them too. I thought this was a really interesting concept – printing the word ‘Pine tree’ from woodblock type made from Pine wood… it just feels right?
I absolutely loved the style of Gee’s work:
The overprinting of the two colours is just lovely…
… and works really well to highlight certain details e.g. the holly berries here:
I wrote down a lot of quotes from Gee which I found interesting:
‘Printing for me, is anything goes.’
‘The minute you go electronic, you lose control.’
‘Kids are being pushed into an electronic micro chip age.’
‘Take the history we all carry – it’s such important information.’
And my favourite:
‘Letraset seems like cheating.’
She was a great character and a very interesting lady to listen to!
There was a quick tea break before the next speaker, Peter Nencini began…
I found Peter’s experimental approach to creating symbols and letters really interesting. He is a self taught typographer who has exhibited his quirky and unusual work all around the world:
He likes to use items and help them to ‘escape their original use’ to take on another purpose, which I think is a great way of thinking. Below is the typeface Primer, which he produced for a furniture retailer:
Unfortunately as the day had started to run behind schedule, Peter’s talk was cut a bit short but you can see more of his work here.
The next set of speakers were a mixture of students and tutors who had collaborated to explore ‘letter press in education’ and produce a travelling exhibition called 6×6.
I had already heard a bit about this project, as Lincoln was one of the Universities involved in the project (alongside Brighton, Camberwell, LCC, CSM and Glasgow) but was interested to see the outcomes produced:
The project asked the Universities to look at the process of letterpress and communicate what is special about it and why it is important to have access to traditional letterpress as well as modern day digital technology.
Typically, when it was Lincoln’s turn to speak, my camera started running out of battery so I wasn’t able to photograph everything! None of the students involved were able to attend, so a statement from Barrie and Philippa was read out whilst showing the posters:
From this point on my camera was pretty much dead, but luckily I managed to squeeze 2 last photos out of it during CSM tutor and host, Catherine Dixon‘s talk.She spoke about her trip to Brazil, where she connected with people in the Favelas (slums) and her experience of seeing young people using print to make their lives better.
She showed images from a class of young boys who have produced a book of striking, simple imagery and type.
It was an emotional story which I think tugged on everyone in the rooms heart strings, but just makes you realise how letterpress, typography and graphic design can really change peoples lives.
It was long, but SUCH a great day. Jack & I left feeling truly inspired by everyone that had spoken, so thanks to all speakers and organisers! If you’re reading this and you didn’t attend this event – you missed out and you need to go to the next talk at St Brides!
I mentioned in the part 1 that at lunchtime we were able to pick up some free bits and that I’m going to do a separate post on them; that will be the final instalment in the Letterpress: Something to say series of posts – so look out for that…
RT @auctionthirteen: And that's it - Auction 13 is finished! 29 brilliant designers, 31 postcards, 3 months, 8 students and £308.63 raised!… 2 days ago
). Fingers crossed for good news!
