Random pictures from around Hillegersberg!

These pictures are taken from my cycle trips around Hillegersberg, where I have lived past months. Its about 5 kilometres away from the college. this area has a sort of village feel to it, and you could see animals, Dutch greenhouses and characteristic houses with plenty of random gnomes on a yard.

Van Nelle Fabriek

I visited in the Van Nelle Fabriek, which is is one of the most important historic industrial buildings in the Netherlands. It is a former factory which produced tobacco, tea and coffee. Currently the building is used as an office complex for design and media firms.

It was designed by architects Johannes Brinkman and Leendert van der Vlugt and built between 1925 and 1931. It is an example of Nieuwe Bouwen, modern architecture in the Netherlands.

I took a tour around the building and I had an amazing tour guide girl who explained with every detail the history of the building. It was very interesting. For instance, the Van Nelle Fabriek shows influence from Russian Constructivism with the large letters on the roof and round architectural forms.

I also learned that the factory had women and men working there. But to avoid any conflicts or outsets of romance, the different sexes were kept strictly on their own lines, for instance the staircases were build one for men and one for women. With this the architects and the director also wanted to maximise the work effectiveness.

Every single detail from the pillars to handrails were designed separately for the factory.

I tryly found this building inspiring and powerful. It sit between riverbank and railway close distance to the city centre. It must be a great environment to have a studio today.

Poster Assignment part 2

I was looking for an inspiration from Dada, Bauhaus and Soviet Constructivism posters.
The bottom one is the original poster I made on A2 paper. I picked couple of different typefaces i.a. Helvetica which are Sans Serifs and are similar to the ones often used in Modernist era.

I wanted to leave plenty of empty space to emphasize the typeface used in the poster. Some of the letters are photocopies from font books and some prints from Word. I cut letters one by one and tried different arrangements. It was hard to follow the Dudok buildings features and set the cut outs in certain order. In the end the message on the poster became more relevant than the layout.

I didn't want to leave it only as a manual collage, but to scan it on photoshop as well. It was enjoyable to rearrange the fonts many different ways, and this way it became easier to find the ideal layout. The two other posters are made out of the same cut outs and without adding anything extra. What I like about them is the rusty look; you can see the photocopy quality and slight alteration on colors. Plenty of empty space works! Poster seems a bit crowded. I could get rid off few letters inside the big letter D to make it more clear.

Poster Assignment part 1

This assignment was for Presentation Technique subject. We needed to choose favorite place in Rotterdam and create a poster from it.

I chose Dudok. It is a beautiful Cafe Restaurant in the center of the city. The Dudok name comes from the Architect of the building. Willem M Dudok was a Modernist architect and his early style grew out of the Amsterdame school and Prairie school. Both of the movements were part of the Expressionist architecture.

Not only that I admire the building with its horizontal lines, grouped windows on a front and the flat roof, but the interior is amazing, as is the apple pies they serve as well.

This Cafe was the first place I came into when I arrived in Rotterdam in August 2010. Since then I have been there several times.

So using the building as a inspiration, I made a poster, cut and paste collage. We were only aloud to use typography.

Presentation Technique

Presentation Technique is a subject where we learn about presenting works in a different media.

This small assignment asked us to make a mood board and packaging for chosen object. We were to think of target group, layout, typeface and style.

I chose cheese slicer, as I thought it is interesting and imperceptible product to try to sell. I wanted to design a packaging for the utensil that stands out from all the other cheese slicers on market.

My mood board consist of traditional Dutch women outfit, with all the cheese. I also thought of Devil, woman, as the horns and the pitchfork reminded me of cheese slicer with spiky edges.

Using those images as my vision I came up with two different packaging that represents devil and traditional Dutch costume. I hand painted the patterns and scanned them on photoshop. So the quality is hand crafted, on purpose. I also made a wooden mould, the shape of the blade and vacuum formed it with transparent thin acrylic sheet. This was the window.

The packaging works as the outfit and the slicer is the body. Also this particular slicer is one of those coloured ones, from the handle to the blade. It unify the product with the packaging.

It was fun thou short assignment. I would have been nice to make it all the way, more professionally. And I think the need of learning to use illustrator program would help dealing with the proportions of the worked image.

Modelling for a photo shoot

I was involved in a photo shoot. A School mate needed me to pose for a poster. The theme was old school aviator films. I had all the costumes needed; leather jacket, white shirt and aviator glasses.

The college's photo studios are amazing. All the possible equipment available and technician always near by to help.
We created a blue screen so the photographer could cut me off from the image and place me on to the poster. Equipment used were two spot lights from above on each side of me and one soft box beside. Two big white screens were standing on each side to create contrast.

The photo shoot went well, although I felt that it was hard to pose different kind of facial expressions. As a aviator, what sort of essence should I give? I learned how to work on photo studio and how to set up blue screen. The important rule is to be prepared, as you enter the booked studio, your time is running.

Leerdam Glass Excursion 17th of November

Our class second excursion took a place in Leerdam Glass Museum. We had a chance to see glass blowing in action! These pictures shows how using simple moulds one can produce interesting shapes on glass. In this particular exercise it took good four tries to the group to come up with wanted end result.

It seems that some sort of hierarchy exists in glass blowing facilities; Masters takes apprentices to teach them the practice. Working on intense groups glass articles are produced slowly within the Masters observance. Extreme planning, concentration and focus is needed from the group.

I was thinking that it would be great to give it a try to learn how to blow glass. The museum had a section for 'art' glass which were mainly one-offs and often very abstract without any function. I don't think that I am that interested on that type of practice, but rather industrial glass making or small design batch production. In Leerdam they do workshops, but for a price of 195 euros for a day. Maybe next time I go to Finland, I should check Iittala glass factory's workshops. For sure glass blowing is not the cheapest practice. Apprenticeship would be probably the best option.

http://www.nationaalglasmuseum.nl/