Rynex Graphics

"Come Out, Neville!"

2009-06-01T07:34:00.002+01:00

Got the audiobook for I Am Legend, which I think I will sit and listen to over the next week, because I think I'll actually get through it without giving up after chapter 10. I'm not much of a book reader to be honest, I think that I need to be in that right frame of mind to read them sometimes, but I pretty much always have a headset on when I'm sat at a computer... so it's much, much easier to sit here and listen to them.

Anyway, today's another big day, probably one of the last ones that really determines anything at Uni. I think it's funny that the file I put up yesterday, was infact a really beta version of what I eventually produced. There was a massive scramble on the last day because I realized a huge mistake I had made. The construction of the magazine, the pages in particular, were not the right ammount. I realized after I was counting the pages, and I had to fix it by quickly producing a contents page and back cover. So now I realize that the amount of pages in a magazine depend on the 4x table. (4, 8 ,12 16)

Simple shit really, but again it's all part of the learning process. Also found an interesting problem with communication over the weekend when I tried to get my work printed out. I told the man at the counter that I needed to print 5 magazines, and he didn't know how it was constructed at all. Foolishness! Nevermind though, it happens, and usually at the worse time :D

Lots of stuff to do today, hopefully will go a lot more swimmingly than Friday. Still, I looked back and thought I was pretty lucky. If things didnt go the way as I had anticipated, then it wouldn't have worked out in my favour.

Done and Done

2009-05-28T23:07:00.005+01:00

Experiencer Magazine

Magazine Finished! There's no adverts in this. It feels like such a huge step from my previous magazine, i've learned a load doing this project. I'll talk about it in some kind of "evaluation" tomorrow. Just have to write it first.

I didn't really record much from my "Achill" article. I just simply did the same process I always do and produced something that brings out the serent and tranquil qualities that the story represents.

Like a bolt out the blue...

2009-05-27T21:46:00.000+01:00

I set myself 3 challenges for each my stories this time around. Last time, I simply did them all together at the same time, but this time around it's been more focused on trying to give each story their own sense of individuality. The magazine has reached a stage where I have made 2 stories fully and created a sutible front cover. Tomorrow, I'm experimenting with a really risky thing for the magazine, but it would provide a real lesson on how to build an editorial piece from the ground up. I'll chronical everything I can tomorrow, as I work on it.

The other two challenges were...

1) For the Japanese article, emulate the style of a japanese magazine

2) For the Rothko article, emulate the style of an art magazine.

The trickiest part of both of these was that I had to create a foundation style scheme to build around. To begin with, I used a 6x6 grid, but found that the large ammount of content was too large to work with, and then moved onto a 12x12 grid which offered much more flexability. It shows how well it worked in the design

So, why exactly am I taking a risk of doing a piece so late into the project? Simple, to show how flexable the design of the magazine is, and how easy it is to develope new content for it in such a short time. It's not something I originally intended to do either, but I believe that something like this is achieveable. Also, considering the magazine will probably take at least a week for each publication (based on a weekly release in a news paper), it means that content needs to be generated quickly and soundly. I would suggest then that content should be published over the course of two weeks, by a small team of people who could quickly work on a story themselves. (5 people = 5 stories). This would mean then that, within the space of a year, 260 stories would be published in this magazine. That's a lot of places for people to experience.

Tomorrow, I plan to put up the final magazine for people to see also. See you then everyone :)

Reasoning for the magazine

2009-05-23T03:33:00.003+01:00

I got asked two questions recently that took me a while to actually answer. It really annoyed me a lot that it happened too because It was really out of the blue. I just expected to show my tutor my work, and get some good feedback on my work, but I guess this is a great way to check if the work itself is as solid as the aim.

1) Who is the audience?

I originally decided that I wanted to make a magazine about travel, for students. Then I was asked what kind of travel magazine it would be exactly, and to that I couldn't give a reply at the time. I obviously hadn't thought this through enough, and the fact I was tripping up at the first hurdle was obviously a sign that I need to consider this closer. Thinking about it then, I decided I wanted a magazine about "influencing the target audience to see particular sights". Is it necessarily for students still? To be honest, I was thinking that the audience doesn't have to be for just students, but a particular kind of person.

http://www.sric-bi.com/VALS/Experiencers.shtml

These are the kind of people I believe my audience is. I see travel as more than just an experience though. It's about saturating yourself in the whole culture of the country, and nothing says that more than going to see a landmark, or a piece of art, or arcitecture.

The actual difference from my magazine, and other travel magazines, is that it talks to the audience at a personal, more emotional level. It's written by people who aren't actually going out and seeing these things for a living. I wanted to make it as believeable as possible and make it interesting for people to read.

On top of that, I wanted the magazine to really saturate the reader in the style of what is being talked about. For a Japanese related discussion, it'd have a very japanese style and taste. An piece of artwork would have some relation to the art style being talked about, and a magazine for a particular place would obviously focus strongly on the styles of the area.

So yeah, the audience is mainly Student Experiencers.

2) Who would publish this?

This question in particular had me stumped. The only thing I could come up with that kind of answers the question is an inflight magazine... That's a bit hard for students to obtain then. thinking about it, I think the only people who would consider publishing my magazine is a company that sees my point of view. The market for travel magazines needs new ideas for it to be encouraging and interesting. Due to the flexiblity of content also, it doesn't necessarily need to be marketed at the same level as a travel magazine. It means that it's placing itself on the shelf for students to buy and hopefully encourage them to actually get some idea on where they'd like to travel...and perhaps even have a relevant experience themselves. User Generated content is becoming a more profitable thing. Everyone wants their 5 minutes of fame, and I'm sure it'd have people actually wanting to submit their experiences.

Perhaps a newspaper like The Gaurdian would be the best place for it to appear? It's considered the most student orientated newspaper on the market, and I'm sure that a weekend release for it would be most appropriate. It would expand it's topics and perhaps even promote the newspaper with a new and fresh idea.

2009-05-17T03:08:00.004+01:00

Look, it's Rynex! It's the coolest space ship ever! It's a dinky little ship that kicks the crap out of everything with a bunch of cool weaponry. I'm a massive junky for gaming, if you haven't guessed already. I like it so much probably because it was the first ship that actually appealed to me. It had a really beautiful design, a very Gundam-esque design scheme and just felt like it fit the game it was in. If you ever have the time, please play Thunder Force 4. It's the pinnacle of "Shmup" gaming for the 16bit generation.

"I just, I dunno, I-I get a bit scared sometimes because um, ... I just get too many ideas and that's where my only problem comes in really." - Richard David James (AKA Aphex Twin)

I think I suffer from the same problem, and I'm having the same problem right now. I've launched into this project again, and though I'm not moving at full speed yet... when the train begins to seriously roll, work drops off me like some kind of machine. I hardly ever brag about the pace I move when I'm working, but sometimes I think back and just go... "Seriously, did I produce that just now?". I know a lot of shortcuts as a designer, perhaps it's my downfall though. I just believe that my better work only really comes out when I'm seriously strung for time because I take it more seriously. I think that pressure limits my ideas somewhat, which means I can process ideas and consider whether I should apply them.

Too many ideas just breaks everything, I guess if I'm an artist then, I'm most like Aphex Twin... or I like to believe that :D

The destruction of creativity begins with routine

2009-05-16T06:43:00.003+01:00

I'm very easily swayed by flashing lights, fountains of knowledge and further enhancing my brain with needless things. So obviously, I've been finding myself more and more distant with my work. Second Journal entry, the first one was written with the intention that it would make me feel like I could make a step forward with my professional career, but instead I've turned around and retreated back to base like some kind of recluse. I created a wonderful vision of what I want, but I'm finding myself giving up in even trying to obtain it. I honestly lost the desire to work recently because I was too busy settling for quick fixes. It's become like a routine, and because of that, I've lost all creativity with it. My brain has officially become creatively bankrupt and I'm trying to fix it.

Recently, I went to a seminar at the University of Lincoln and became suddenly re-energized to work. In particular, Ken Garland stood out amongst the rest of the speakers that day and really engaged everyone with his topic, Sustainability. People like Bruce Mau have been pushing this topic for a while now, and you see efforts by companies trying to be more sustainable more and more often, trying to conserve, improve and make things more reliable. I've realized to myself then that what I've been lacking is a direction for my work to take from here.

So, what am I making for my final major project at Uni now? A magazine. How is it sustainable? Well, at the moment, it's not because it's simple a concept. In Pluto's realm of idea's is my wicked awesome super call magazine that's constantly changing shape and size. The one thing that has probably stopped me from making it is the actual format. Do I want it big or small? I'm thinking that my magazine concept is something that is clearly able to be a working product, unlike the previous magazine before it.

This magazine was originally just going to be a travel magazine pitched at a student audience, which engaged the reader and aimed to inspire them to travel outside the country and learn more about the world that they would be entering soon at a professional level. I thought that the experiences I had, traveling to America, Japan and Ireland, were all incredibly valuable to me. Then I was presented with a problem. The target audience might not be too keen on just reading about why someone should simply go to a place, like a regular travel magazine. So I was directed with a methord on trying to resolve what kind of travel magazine I should actually make. A magazine aimed at backpackers? Surely not, we've got tons of those.

So I sat and thought about "the perfect target audience member". The client essentially became the person I was creating this magazine for, it wasn't an out of the blue concept anymore, but a product that this person would want to see. I had some time to think, and after a while, I went and read a post from Phil (Bury me in Celluloid) about Mark Rothko's seagraphs. Seeing someone so emotionally expressive about a piece of art really hit me with a whole set of new ideas for this project. I thought to myself "Clearly, when an object, whether it be a piece of art, a piece of architecture or even just a mountain, can bring out emotions like that from someone, then others would want to read and hear about it." The scope for such a thing is somewhat grand, but I decided to focus on items that would require the person to go out and see it, and therefore essentially make it a travel magazine.

As a gamer, I noticed a fundamental flaw in the whole philosophy of reviewing anything. I'm now finding a means to get around it, going beyond the ideal that you simply review the content and whether or not this product would be worth the purchase, and instead describing scenarios of whether people have enjoyed something so much that they wish to talk about it. It would be like me talking about particular favorite games of mine, for example Grandia or Thunder Force 4.

So now I'm finally putting work out again and actually moving forward with my idea of what "reviewing" something should be. Opinions will no long be written along side a public opinion or political correctness, but instead be more personal and intimate. When I first started this year at Uni, we was asked to create a group for our learning sets. Our group, which only has 2 members left, was called "Above the Fold" with the strapline "we want you to immerse you in our vision". Right now, with this idea, I actually think I might be able to complete this ideal with this project.

If you managed to survive this wall of text, I'd appreciate some feedback. Thanks :)

Hello World

2009-02-15T09:02:00.000Z

You're new here... I'm new here. I'm not fond of blogging about my work but not because of the criticism I might receive, but because I have a fear of "performance". Still, these are hurdles we must overcome in order to better ourselves.

There's a lot on my mind as a person, and as a designer. I'm focusing my work specifically on editorial, web design, branding and typography.

This was my most recent work, a concept for a games magazine that focused on more objective content rather than simply reviews about games.

Opens as a PDF

As I see my work now, I want to move up from this. I want to become a better designer in every respect, and I want to document everything I can about my learning, in this blog.