My Website

My website is now up and running, please take a look:

www.pippaholman.com
www.pippaholman.co.uk

There are still improvements to be made and work to be added, but it is a start!

Recorders

Recorders was an exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery. Although a small exhibit, it is one of the best I have been to.

It was a solo exhibition by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, who created a set of electronic interactive artworks. The pieces had to receive human interaction in order for them to work. There was a set of microphones that when shouted into, would play back a previous recording of someone else. The imprint of personal items could be printed onto a conveyor belt. A large set of small devices asked question after question on a small digital screen, never repeating themselves: there was a keyboard where a question could be inputed, which was then displayed only once and then new questions were formed from the words; you never knew what questions were made by human or computer. The final room had a display of light bulbs hanging from the ceiling which pulsed light in different speeds, displaying the heart rates of guests.

I find interactive exhibitions like these, that get you involved and make you a part of it, really exciting. I found it very engaging: it was amazing how many memories could be recorded; and it made me really admire the skill of the artist and the amazing technology. It was fun and playful, like almost playing a game. It felt like it was as much about you as about the artist, rather than perhaps a contemporary fine art exhibition that features a bag of rubbish, that purely says: look at the crap I can get away with. Anyway... thats a rant for another occasion.

GREAT exhibition.

Leon and the Place Between

A gift from my brother: a gorgeous 'children's' book written by Angela McAllister, illustrated by Grahame Baker-Smith and designed by Mike Jolley.

I have put 'children's' in quotation marks as I really think this book can be enjoyed by everyone, children and adults alike. I think it is a beautiful, magical piece of art. It has a lovely story: Leon and his friends admiring a magic show, until Leon becomes part of the magic when he enters the magical box on stage and is taken to The Place Between. This place is where magic takes you: where the things that disappear in magic tricks end up, and it is a world full of mystery and enchantment and beauty.

The story is lovely, but the illustrations are stunning. Rich colours and lots of dazzling delights; wonderful friendly characters and a sense of endless space and action.

Along with these illustrations, the type that accompanies them is equally as fascinating. Almost retro, I think of old hand drawn signs for magic shows and circus's.

It is a book full of excitement, and it will be one I will treasure. It invigorates my imagination and takes me back to my childhood, and I just hope it is a true story... I will soon visit The Place Between...

I love magic and I will always like to have a little magic in my work.

Dulux Ecosense

A brief titled Fleurons, we were asked to explore the term in the broadest sense of the word. I looked at ways I could represent the flower and plant in a subtle way, merely hinting at the suggestion of an organic form. After numerous experiments using paint, drawing and photography, I decided the imagery I created using paint splodges was the most eye catching. The texture created, the veins running through, almost looked like a close-up of a leaf. Then to use the visuals for a purpose, I thought adverts and packaging for the Dulux Ecosense range would be appropriate, as the imagery features both paint and life.

On the Dulux website you have to search to find the eco-friendly range. Many people do all they can to not harm the environment, so I thought it would be relevant to bring more attention to this range. I also wanted to encourage everyone else to buy it by suggesting that this paint is better than the standard Dulux range. It would be sold as a higher quality paint. Through the packaging and adverts, I wanted to celebrate colour and life, while promoting how the paint can bring this colour and life to your home. I would hope that these adverts would make this ecosense range appeal to people more than any other.

The Dulux website would now feature a large section about the eco-friendly paint, and the page would show the colour chart I designed, where simply hovering over the colour in the flower shape would tell you which paint it was. The colour chart booklet would be printed small so as to not waste paper, and this plus the adverts would be printed on recycled paper.

3rd Year Uni Work So Far...

So been a while since I've updated this blog, but here's what I've been doing.

This is my completed work for the first term of 3rd year:

Engross film festival:






Posters and a leaflet to advertise my hypothetical film festival.

It is an all night event that would show 6 alternative horror films on an outdoor screen in the middle of a wood. My proposed location is Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire. I tried to reflect the horror aspect of the films in a subtle way by avoiding cliches, while at the same time suggesting the disturbing nature of the films that manage to create shocking scenes in a beautiful way. The type faces were chosen and created through the contrasting themes of elegance and bold chaos, and I created the imagery through the same thinking; the dead flower that almost looks like some kind of organ. As the contents is chaotic, I then gave a structure to the layout. The main theme of the posters is juxtaposition.

The design group Neasden Control Centre definitely inspired the visual elements. Their full busy pages of huge hand drawn type, surreal imagery and black and white scratchy drawings, shown in their book Lost Control, was the look I wanted for my posters. After experimenting however will filling the page I found it was just too much, the meaning I wanted to portray was hidden beneath the distracting mass of lines. Giving the elements room to breath meant that the opposing contradictory parts of the posters could be compared and contrasted. I hope that I have reflected the fantastically surreal, horrifying and highly considered nature of the films.

Static















The project was called Static and we had to explore this theme in anyway possible. I explored the theme of encasement, within the theme of static. Static is encasement because it is about something being trapped, restricted and unable to move. I encased numerous things in different substances and photographed them close-up to create slightly abstract images that would create an air of mystery and intrigue. The idea of a scientific experiment was exciting me, so I decided this is what I wanted this work to look like, and the work would be exhibited in a surreal exhibition.

For the exhibition, I created 2 posters to advertise the event, as well as some of the images that would be shown in the exhibition. The leaflet is the net of a cube printed on acetate: The 'customer' can then make the cube and encase something inside to be viewed through it. The invite is a test tube that would be given out to selected guests, and the whole exhibition would feature inside a glass cube.

I struggled with the label design but at the moment I am happy with them. I think I had a strong idea and I just hope this is portrayed well.

SEA

I saw this a couple of years ago, when Bryan Edmondson came into university to give a talk, but it has always stuck in my mind, and thats when you know a piece of design is good. I just love it.

SEA devised the name, identity, and visual campaign of signage, menus and packaging, for the London bar OQO. The campaign relates to the cocktails they sell, and the simple idea of shooting them from above created the strong visual identity of the circle. Everything fits together through this simple visual theme. The brand name is elegant, clean and stylish, and the cocktail images are quirky, eccentric, and appealing in such a unique way - drinks are not usually advertised this way, it makes them look so extraordinarily different that it implies this bar would be a whole new experience, not just a drink. These cocktail images are also incredible because they work big or small, fitting to the context. Sea have really done such an amazing job.