Reasons to be Cheerful

...the Life and Work of Barney Bubbles.

Paul Gorman, journalist, author and owner of fashion label The Look Presents, came to talk to us about Barney Bubbles; the radical graphic designer of the 70s and 80s. Although radical and highly acclaimed, Bubbles was an incredibly private individual; never signing his work or attending interviews. In fact Bubbles, whose name is actually Colin Fulcher, only ever gave one interview throughout his whole career - and poignantly only 2 years to the date before his death in 1983 - to The Face magazine, and provided them only with a collaged portrait (below) rather than a photo in order to maintain his anonymity. His career was not really recorded of celebrated until long after his death, and much of his work is still being identified.

Bubbles embraced messiness; his work and concepts influenced many designers, for instance Peter Saville. He is most renowned for his distinctive contribution to the graphic design associated with the British independent music scene.

I've admired the work of Barney Bubbles for a long time now, however I did not realise the vast array he had produced - or even the fact that he wanted to remain away from the public eye. I'm not sure what my opinion is of his choice to remain private, but I do feel that it was a shame he couldn't step forward and take credit for the amazing work he had produced. It is true to say he was a very troubled man; he suffered from depression and long-term financial problems, which eventually led to him taking his own life. I think it is significant to mention that his death occurred just 2 months before the introduction of the Apple Mac computer - Bubbles worked entirely by hand and rigidly stuck to using grids, despite his work being quite "messy". However by the time his death, design styles had changed - there was less of a need for his quirky style, which led to rejection from some clients. This definitely contributed to him wanting to end his life long before it could have been celebrated. I think this is quite a poignant thing; I would hate to find myself becoming less and less popular due to the changing of styles. I feel it is important to remain open and not too close-minded with the way that you approach your work; but also maintaining those elements that are recognisable to you. In the current age of the digital and ever-evolving technologies and design techniques, this is a really difficult skill to hold on to, and something that I will need to refine when leaving university and taking on work in the outside world.

Zines, zines, zines.

I was really excited when I discovered Teal Triggs was coming to speak to us, as during my dissertation research I had come across her name quite a lot, and her research work on fanzines. Also, I had received her “Fanzines” book as a gift, just a week before I discovered she was due to visit, which was even more exciting.

Fanzines is such a varied subject; and also very hard to define. Teal helped to explain what exactly makes a zine, and referenced a lot of really interesting pieces during the lecture. This was really helpful, as it is an area that I am looking into for my dissertation, and until now have been unsure as to what they actually are. More importantly, she spoke about the rise of the webzine which I am writing about as my dissertation topic. It was really helpful gaining first-hand insight into what the internet and online publishing will mean for the printed fanzine from someone who is so knowledgeable about the subject. I was pleased to discover that she had a similar viewpoint on the subject as me; that the internet will not mean that the future of print is dead, but more that it is a tool to help promote and distribute it. A really interesting and highly influential lecture.

Further to this, I recently purchased OWT creative's first zine, "Beginnings". The design group studied Design and Art direction (like me) at Manchester School of Art and have since set up the design collective in order to help young creatives in the North West and showcase some of Manchester's most exciting talent. The issue shows the five members of OWT's interpretation of the word Beginnings. Produced in a limited run, each 52 page zine has a hand-screened cover and centre spread as well as being numbered in its run of 100.

I loved their responses, collected in a beautifully compiled publication. They have since released issue two, so keep your eyes peeled for further work from them.

Maximum Meaning, Minimum Means

Earlier this month I visited an exhibition of work by Abram Games, one of the twentieth century's most influential graphic designers. For over 60 years he produced some of Britain's most iconic images, for instance the "Blonde Bombshell" ATS poster of 1941, below.

I was really impressed with the body of work Games has produced during his career. His clients included London Transport, The Financial Times, The United Nations, Guinness and Shell. His influence even reached the infant television service in 1953 when he created the first moving BBC on-screen symbol. He created 100 posters during his role as Official War Poster Artist.

Games used a lot of clever and interesting devices in his work, for instance when signing his pieces he would sometimes incorporate elements of his designs in his signatures, as apparent in the poster he designed for Guinness, below.

Another feature of the exhibition I enjoyed was being able to see the sketches and developments he created when designing his posters. Games fervently documented every idea he came up with, creating hundreds of tiny thumbnails for each poster he designed, in order to aid his development. He sustained that if the design worked small-scale then it would work when placed into the public eye, because it is how you would initially view his posters; in small scale from afar. This is a habit I need to put into practise myself, as I often find myself rushing straight to the computer when creating my initial ideas. I think it would help my work greatly if I were to sketch all my rough plans out first and allow the pen and paper to develop the ideas that are in my head.

Your help is needed!

I am currently in the process of writing my dissertation on "the value of print in a digital world". I would greatly appreciate anyone's input to this topic so if you could follow the link below and complete my survey I would be very grateful!

"Click here to take part in: The Value of Print: A Survey"

Thank you!

Made by Me

My new website!

http://gemmasnelling.co.uk

Nothing is as it seems.

Playing around with my concept for static.

chinese whispers

A series of photographs I have taken for a brief entitled "Static". The notion of 'noise' and interference with digital imagery has been explored through macro imagery, taken from my computer screen. Apart from cropping some of the images, none of the photographs have been digitally edited; the idea is to capture naturally occurring interference; such as the static, dust and fingerprints on the computer screen.

The images have been created by re-photographing previous images again and again; the method has caused the original photographs to become unrecognisable. Through no action, other than simply repeating this process, have the images been "interfered" with, be it through digital enhancement or otherwise, as I wanted to show how digital screens (including that of a camera) can cause these manipulations themselves.

This idea has come about through my research for my dissertation; in which I am exploring how traditional print / magazine design might be losing out to the increase in popularity and demand for digital versions of the same thing (for example, ebooks and webzines). Part of this research was into how image resolution, screen quality, lighting and electronic interference can affect the quality or output of the digital piece.

I'm quite pleased with the results so far. I will explore my idea further by incorporating scans of text also, to bring in another element to the piece. By doing this not only do I want to juxtapose text with image; but show how the internet can lose its grip on what is real in terms of reliability. In this day and age it is very difficult to discover webtexts that are accurate and not based solely on opinion. The internet is an amazing and vast source of information; but how much of it can we actually trust as being reliable? Any one with an internet connection can post, edit, copy - and 'interfere' - with texts from all over the world. This process can be repeated over and over, causing what is being presented to lose all originality - much like a game of chinese whispers.

From Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia: "anyone with Web access can edit Wikipedia, and this openness encourages inclusion of a tremendous amount of content. About 75,000 editors—from expert scholars to casual readers—regularly edit Wikipedia" - A somewhat scary thought! I'm looking forward to exploring this further.


N.B: This project has made me realise that I totally need to clean my laptop screen more.

experiments.