In order to get a better understanding of contemporary illustrators of poetry I have subscribed to Popshot Magazine:
The Illustrated Magazine of New Writing; Popshot is an illustrated literary magazine that publishes short stories, flash fiction, and poetry from literary new blood.
http://www.popshotpopshot.com/
This has been really helpful in giving me an understanding of the current trends in this field, as well as an understanding of what makes a successful poetry illustration. I selected some of the poems and illustrations and analysed them to see what worked, what didn’t work, and why.
I have attached a PDF of my analysis.
BRANDING DANNY MICHAEL
In order to think about branding myself I have been looking at different practitioners to get a clear idea of what it is I want to be, what it is I want to brand myself as. I believe branding myself as a Graphic Designer and Illustrator gives enough definition of what I do. By adding the ‘Illustrator’ I set myself out as not a webby graphic designer, but a more illustration based graphic designer.
DANNY MICHAEL: GRAPHIC DESIGN & ILLUSTRATION
I have been doing a lot of research into freelance design and illustration, identifying the different areas, complexities and subtleties of this profession. I discovered a great website called http://www.freelanceuk.com that offers ‘Everything for the creative freelancer’. I went through all the questions and complexities, seeing how it all applied to me, which helped immensely in establishing exactly who I am branding.
DANNY MICHAEL: freelance GRAPHIC DESIGN & ILLUSTRATION (I won’t put the freelance bit on the branding – just helpful for me now!)
With a clear idea of who I am branding I can now look at other people who are doing the same thing, and see how they’re doing it. One practitioner I found whose work and promotion I really liked was Louise Begbie http://louisebegbie.com/. It helps to have a portfolio as extensive and impressive as hers, but I’d love to put myself across in a similar way. I looked through the online portfolios of loads of graphic designers and illustrators on http://www.freelanceuk.com and found the vast majority to be very poor. The strongest seemed to be those who had both graphic design and illustration skills. I find this promising!
dannymichael.com? (is taken – maybe dannymichael.co.uk?)
In looking at the different ways Graphic Designers and Illustrators promote themselves I came across a site that suggested postcards are the most effective money-to-effort ratio way of getting work http://jeffszuc.com/design/illustration-promotion-postcard/. This is something I will definitely look into doing for my self branding. What I would really like to do is create a little story book all about me to send to prospective employers as a form of advertising and promotion. I haven’t found any examples of people doing this (probably because it isn’t cost effective!). But even if I create a little book, that showcases my skills at illustration, design and typography, I could then scale it down to something more postcardy for a wider mail-out. I will start creating a little prototype and see how it might work. I also need to start thinking about my logo. Until that is done I can’t work effectively on any of the other elements of my self branding. Below is the logo I put together last year – I think something like this might still work.
Here is my mid-point presentation outlining my research for my Major Practical Project:
POETRY VISUALISED
I have been researching other examples of poetry that has been visualised in artistic and innovative ways. There are some beautiful examples.
http://www.creativeapplications.net/processing/visualizing-fontanes-brucke-am-tay-processing/
http://www.edinburghartfestival.com/commissions/robert_montgomery
Having been given the job of Branding and Venue for the exhibition I have set to work compiling list of possible venues. I have posted this list on Facebook to see if anyone has any more suggestions or comments.
Dreamland/Dreamland Cinema – http://www.dreamlandmargate.com/
Turner Contemporary – http://www.turnercontemporary.org/
Other Old Town Galleries – http://www.visitthanet.co.uk/discover-intro/margate-old-town
Limbo Arts – http://www.limboarts.co.uk/
Morelli’s – http://www.morellisgelato.com/
The Pavilion – http://www.pavilion-broadstairs.co.uk/
The Jetty/Old Lookout Gallery – http://beyondtheview.org.uk/the-old-lookout/
Margate Train Station – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margate_railway_station
Arlington Square – http://margatecaag.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/a-plan-for-arlington/
Pie Factory – http://piefactorymargate.co.uk/
Belgian Bar – http://www.belgiancafe.co.uk/index.asp
The Lido – http://rejoiceandbecleansed.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/walpole-bay-pool-and-the-lido-margate-kent-13/
Beach Huts – http://www.flickr.com/photos/deltrems/6978721163/
Marine Studios – http://www.marinestudios.co.uk/
I am particularly keen on the idea of having the exhibition at Margate Railway Station. I posted some of the many reasons for this on Facebook, to see if my group agreed.
Just compiling a list of possible venues and I’ve come up with a possible gem…Margate Train Station. (Pause for gasps of how brilliant it is). For those of you who didn’t gasp I shall explain why it could be brilliant. It is a huge space with plenty of indoor and outdoor space. It has power. It has hot/cold food facilities. It has a large footfall. It is convenient to reach by train (for all the big London designers coming to the exhibition). It is a really cool building. The branding could be really good (old seaside train posters, underground maps, Victorian red brick station architecture…Ooh, I’m getting excited!). No one has done it before (they might have but I’ve never heard of it). It’s the kind of thing Kate could get excited about. It’s being creative and thinking laterally about exhibition venues. Margate Town Council and people like that will love the attention it will bring to the whole town. I love train stations.
The major stumbling block will be if we’re allowed.
I found some links to other railway stations that had had exhibitions, and also found out Margate Railway Station had an exhibition last summer. With this in mind I emailed South Eastern Rail to see if the project was feasible.
http://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/News-Releases/Waterloo-station-to-become-art-gallery-as-photography-exhibition-arrives-1e3c.aspx
https://www.facebook.com/ArtStationHuddersfield
I also started thinking about the branding side of the project. Jenni had suggested we look at how we are on the edge on the country.
If the venue was somewhere coastal the concept could be something around being on the edge; like the edge of the land, the edge of the future, the edge of something big, being about to jump into the unknown. Maps Edge: Everything from here is unknown. (but not quite in a ‘there be monsters in them there waters’ way, but maybe a little bit piratey, Captain Morgans could sponsor the bar).
I think there could be a lot of mileage in this idea. I roughed out a possible logo idea with ‘ON THE EDGE’ being the name of the exhibition, and the edge of the coastline eating away at the words. I’ll show it to everyone on Tuesday for some feedback.
As my poem focuses a lot on the movement, or lack of it, of the main character I have been looking at the Benesh Notation – the written language of dance. This is the notation, very similar to musical notation, that explains exactly where the dancers should be and in what position etc. during a ballet. This allows a ballet, once choreographed, to be performed just as the original choreography designed.
The language is fairly impossible to read unless you are familiar with it. But even without understanding it creates a beautiful typographic impression. Each marking and blob have a real feeling of movement and grace. I really want to use this as a basis for creating the typography for my poem.
Here is a link to a site that explains the language in simple terms:
http://www.brb.org.uk/benesh.html
And a link to the official site of Benesh Movement Notation:
http://pilot-rad.org.uk/study/Benesh
Example of Benesh Movement Notation
I have begun doing some preliminary illustrations of dancers, trying to achieve a feeling of movement in one image, and a feeling of no movement in an image of the same dancer. I feel the key to communicating the tragedy of the dancer not realising that dancing is moving is to juxtapose moving figures with a solitary stationary one.
I have also begun doing some other sketches just to experiment with styles.
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- Moving & Stilll Dancer
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- Moving & Stilll Dancer
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- Aurelia
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- Willow
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- Persephone
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- Sadness
I found a good article about the costumes Jean-Paul Gaultier designed for the Snow White ballet. I have seen parts of this ballet, but I will watch it again for inspiration.
Ballet Costumes – Jean-Paul Gautier for Snow White
Fashion provocateur Jean Paul Gaultier is no stranger to dressing dancers — after all, he laced Madonna into her cone bra in the most athletic phase of her career. Burlesque queen Dita Von Teese va-va-voomed down Gaultier’s catwalk a couple years ago in a black couture gown, intricately assembled to be swiftly disassembled for the striptease that ensued.
But Gaultier and ballet? Not even the designer himself thought that was a good fit.
“It’s not exactly my cup of tea,” said the Frenchman in a recent phone interview. “I prefer the choreography of Michael Jackson, actually — it’s more in tune with the life on the street.”
So when one of France’s top ballet directors asked Gaultier to outfit his dancers for a production of “Snow White,” well, the cast members didn’t exactly end up in tiaras and tulle. That was just fine, because the choreographer — the contemporary-minded Angelin Preljocaj — had a decidedly dark take on the fairy tale. As audiences will see when Ballet Preljocaj performs “Snow White” (“Blanche Neige”) at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater starting Friday, it is not a tutu type of ballet.
Most of the cast performs barefoot, including the mistreated young beauty of the title. Her seven dwarfs are subterranean miners who scamper up the rear wall of the stage on wires.
The wicked stepmother has the biggest role; she’s an aging seductress who is desperate to retain her sex appeal. What catnip for Gaultier! He gave her spike-heeled, thigh-high boots and a high-cut black bustier that might have come from Madonna’s Blond Ambition Tour. (Accessorized, one supposes, with a Brazilian bikini wax.)
“Arrogant, sadistic, cruel” is how Gaultier describes the stepmother, speaking in enthusiastic and heavily accented English. “She has a train and a corset, with the effect of blood on the hemline. This is because in her memory, she has some blood. She is primitive, menacing.”
And Snow White? Gaultier is known for collections that draw on fetishes and decadence — bondage wear, aggressive leathers, anatomical prints that look like a body turned inside out. Is innocence in his repertoire?
To hear him speak about it, Snow White’s costume gave him the biggest challenge and the most satisfaction. Inspiration hit when he watched the dancer in rehearsal.
“There was something very tender and beautiful between her and the prince,” Gaultier says, recalling the moment with evident awe. “Sensual but beautiful and pure. I try to make an outfit that is white, innocent, in jersey, but that drapes. It’s attached with a kind of elastic you don’t see. It clings to the skin like a . . . a . . . ” he searches for the word. “Like a miracle! Like she’s wearing nothing.”
The look is part Grecian goddess, part diaper, with a train. It’s open on the sides, so Snow White bares quite a lot of skin, but the way the fabric wraps between her legs, suggesting a baby’s swaddling, is just as Gaultier described it: at once sexy and chaste.
For her, there is none of Gaultier’s customary irony. In the face of innocence, the designer set aside architecture, exquisite stitchery and any character detail whatsoever. “It’s really not a costume; it’s like it doesn’t exist,” he says. “It’s just some fabric.”
To be sure, Gaultier has designed costumes for dancers other than pop performers before, most notably for experimental French choreographer Regine Chopinot. He and Chopinot have been frequent collaborators since the 1980s —he admires how she shows “the frontier of beauty and ugliness” — and he will design for her newest work this summer at the Festival d’Avignon. (He makes an annual pilgrimage to the festival and gushes at length about its abundance of dancing, singing and “playing in the street.”)
From the point of view of construction, Gaultier says, creating for dancers is not much different than creating for mere mortals. Where his fashion collections and his dance costumes differ is in the inspiration. His dance designs must follow the choreographer’s vision, yet paradoxically, he says, this gives him a new kind of freedom.
“When I make fashion, first, it has to be wearable, has to be for the life of today, and it cannot be too expensive. . . . When I do a show like ‘Blanche Neige,’ I go into a story, which is not my story. I have to adapt myself to serve the story, and I love that. It’s very . . .enrichissant. It makes me go in a way that I didn’t think of; it opens for me some doors to go somewhere I wasn’t expecting to go.”
I found one of the original illustrations I produced for my poem, and thought I could still use it as a source of inspiration, even if the direction of the project ends up moving far away from here.
Original Illustration
I think I have settled on an idea of what I would like to do for my Major Practical Project for this year. Having looked at all my strengths and weaknesses, what I want to achieve, and what will benefit me most in the long-run i have realised I want to make a book. I want to create a book around a poem I wrote a while ago. I think there are great opportunities for typography, illustration, book art and conceptual interpretation. I believe this is what I want to do after university, so it makes sense to create a project that will showcase this.
The poem I want to illustrate and use to create the book:
To Dance…
The little girl was trapped in the room
With nothing to keep her alive in the gloom.
Just the book of the dancers, the dances, the dance
Stretching high, swooping low, contorted bodies and arms.
How she longed to escape this dark scary place
And dance on the stage, feel the lights on her face.
She said to herself, ‘One day that will be me,
I’ll be a dancer, and I will be free.’
But the walls just got closer, and the dark darker still,
Yet she’d look through her book and the room seemed to fill
With light from inside her, and passion, and rage,
‘I will break free from this prison and dance on the stage.’
She studied those dancers, recreating the moves,
Determined to break down the walls of the room.
She learnt every position, every role, every part
Till the dancers on the pages were firm in her heart.
The chance finally came, as chances will do,
The chance for her dream to finally come true.
‘Please dance on our stage,’ the bright poster sang
‘Anyone welcome, anyone can.’
As she put on the skirt she’d crafted in lace
The walls could not longer hold her in place.
She imagined herself as a swallow in flight
As she stepped on the stage, felt the crowd, felt the light.
As the light warmed her skin tears rolled down her face
Repeating the pattern of her ballet skirt lace.
‘Now I’m out of the room the dancer is me
I’m finally dancing, I’m finally free’.
She recreated the scenes of the dances she knew
And as the little girl danced her confidence grew.
But the crowd were just staring at the tableau she made
This was not dancing, this still masquerade.
She kept holding each pose for just the right time,
Then she’d turn the page in the book in her mind.
She stood frozen in flight for the audience to view
For she never knew that to dance was to move.
I begun working on this book a while ago, before it struck me to do this for my university project. I now want to really look deeper at the text and bring in several different influences and concepts to create something amazing.
I have begun looking at Degas as a source of inspiration, because of his beautiful ballet paintings and pastel drawings.
I have also begun to look at ballet costumes, both traditional and more modern.
I have started collecting ballet posters as inspiration.
I have looked at the work of Julie Chen as an inspiration for the book art element of the project.
Danny Michael 