10 Things I Learnt In My First Year At University

So I found this post while browsing through my drafts. I had almost finished it but clearly forgot all about it and it never got published. Though it's been about four months since I finished my first year at university, I thought it might be nice to put this post out anyway since there's a lot of people just beginning their time at university around about now. So, here's the post that got lost...

My BIG News: New York, New York

I have some pretty big news to finally spill in this post. It's been in the making for a while now but it hasn't felt like the right time to blog about it since I wanted it to be 100% official before announcing it here (I feel a bit self obsessed using the word "announcing" by the way). But now my flights are booked, I have accommodation and my visa has been approved, I have come to realise that this is actually happening. So, here goes... I'm going to live in New York City!

3 Tips On Learning A New Adobe Program From Scratch

For some it's the best thing since sliced bread and for others it's a necessary evil, either way there's no getting around the fact that the Adobe Suite isn't going anywhere in the creative industry. For those of us just starting out as students, it can seem an impossible task to get to grips with programs as complex as Photoshop and with the vast capabilities of After Effects.

To give you a bit of background about my own personal experience, before I started my degree last September, I only had experience with two Adobe programs, Photoshop and Lightroom. My mum is into photography so we have the photographic package at home. I had a decent knowledge of Photoshop but I'd never even laid eyes on programs such as Illustrator, InDesign and After Effects. So far, first year has been a crash course on all of the above and more. There's still programs in the Suite which I have never opened, but with each project that goes by, I learn a little more. Today I'm going to talk about a few things which have helped me when faced with the daunting task of learning a whole new program from scratch.

My First Experience With InDesign

One of my blogging goals for this year is to share more of my own work. Originally I created this blog as a space to document my creative journey, and while the content that I write has evolved and broadened, my confidence in publishing what I do as a design student has declined. I think it comes with the territory of being a creative that we only want to share something if we feel as though it is our best. In reality though, it's not always about 'the thing', sometimes it's about getting to the thing, or the mistakes we made on our journey to the thing.

The Good And Bad Of Moving To London

As you may know, last September I moved to London, so I've been living in the Big Smoke for about five months now - where on Earth has that time gone?! Moving away from everything and everyone I know has been the biggest change of my life and there's been a lot of settling in to do! I know there's a lot of people out there considering making the same move, be it for university, a job or just a change. Today I thought I'd discuss how I've found the move with a few pros and cons of upping sticks to England's big city.

University Room Tour

Two months ago I up sticks to London for my first year of university and my little room in the big city is starting to feel much more homely now. In fact, I often find myself getting told off by my mum for referring to London as "home" when I go back to visit (even though when I'm down here I always refer to Manchester as home)! Now that I'm settled in I thought it would be nice to share a few pictures of how I've made my room in student halls my own.

7 Things I Learnt In My First 7 Days In London

So, I moved to the Big Smoke. That actually happened. So far it's been a whirlwind, a culture shock and a blast all rolled into one and I've only been here for a few weeks! During my first week I learnt a lot of lessons, some useful and some perhaps not so much. Today I thought I'd record 7 of them here - hopefully in a few years time I'll be able to look back and see how far I've come with fitting in down south! So here they are, the musings of a northerner stuck down south, week 1...

So, You Want To Do An Art Foundation?

Here is an outline of my situation this time last year - Fresh out of a-levels, still as passionate about art and design as I had always been but with no idea of how, or even if, I was going to turn this love into a career. No direction in terms of what degree I wanted to pursue (a business degree was still a strong possibility) but a place on the Manchester School of Art Foundation Diploma in hand.

Manchester School of Art Degree Show: The Private View

The Manchester School of Art Degree Show is now officially open to the public (13th-24th June 2015), showcasing the talent and achievements of final year degree and foundation students. But before the exhibition opened its doors at the weekend, there was the annual private viewing on Friday 12th June. It was such a lovely evening and felt like a real celebration of all the hard work of everyone from across the art school. It was a wonderful opportunity to finally relax and see the fruits of all the blood, sweat and tears over the past year!

Art Foundation Final Exhibition (FMP #4)

So it's all over. One year (or 9 months if you want to get technical) of blood, sweat, tears, sweat, stress, hard work, sweat and late nights. Before I started my art foundation, I was something of a lost confused soul, watching all of my friends go off to uni but having little idea of which path in art and design I wanted to take myself. Twelve months on, I can now whole heartedly say that a foundation course was the best thing I could have possibly done for myself and my future. I have never worked so hard and created so much work in such a short space of time, or developed my creative capabilities in such a profound way. 

With the end of the year comes the final exhibition. This is the culmination of everything from the year, but in particular the ten week final major project. I've done a few posts on my FMP previously which I will link here, here and here. The foundation exhibition goes up alongside all of the degree shows at Manchester School of Art and is ultimately a big part of the final grade. 

On the surface, my FMP has stayed consistent to my original subject as experimenting with letterforms has been central throughout the ten weeks. However, discovering textiles was a defining turning point for me and what I initially intended to be a short research test turned into a change of direction. From that point onwards, the craft, process and materials became key. I taught myself how to knit and crochet and my focus changed from illustrating phrases with typography onto testing, exploring and developing the potential of traditional textiles crafts in the context of graphic design and typography.

After weeks of testing, developing, refining and many balls of wool later, I have created one piece to showcase what I have been working on in my FMP. I will insert a few photographs but as a general outline, my final show is a wall piece in which I have recreated the definition of 'TYPOGRAPHY' with crochet and knitted letters, replicating the links, fonts and punctuation of online dictionaries...

I am really genuinely happy with how my exhibition has turned out. As a huge perfectionist it was difficult to let go of the fact that this is a handmade piece of graphic design, and so imperfections are necessary to its character. The 'homemade' element is, I hope, a part of the charm. It's been a labour of love to bring this exhibition to life and I feel at a bit of a loss now that its all over!

On Monday I handed in all of my supporting work from the year, my portfolio, sketchbooks and artist research for marking over the next couple of weeks. After this time the Manchester School of Art degree show will open to the public (which I will do a little post on with more details), so essentially I am finished for the summer now. I have loved every single minute of being in a creative environment this year, I have met such amazingly talented friends and tutors and I truly wish I could do it all over again.

Now though, it's time for some chill time...

FMP #3

Before I start this post I want to apologise for my less than consistent attempts at blogging over the last few weeks. Hopefully this post will go some way to explaining that but the short version is that I've been crazily running around trying to get my final exhibition together for the foundation/degree show at Manchester School of Art. My final deadline is Monday 1st June so I'm really looking forward to having more time to dedicate to blogging soon. For now though, since my life is revolving around my final major project and completing my exhibition, I thought it'd be good to do a little update. If you haven't seen my previous two FMP posts I will link them here and here so you can take a look at 'the story so far'. 

The final countdown for my FMP is well and truly in full swing now. This week I've been getting my hands dirty preparing my exhibition space, getting it cleaned, sanded and repainted as well as measuring everything out to within an inch of my life. I'll tell you now, if measuring burnt significant calories, I'd be a very skinny girl by now! It's no secret to people that know me that I'm a huge perfectionist and so everything's taking a fair bit of time to get right, but I'm really happy with how it has gone so far *touches every item of wood in sight*. I have been allocated a wall space in a corner so I've had quite a few obstacles to overcome including a big red fire alarm which has played havoc with my need for clean white surfaces! Preparing the exhibition space has been a fun experience though and it's been lovely to make some last memories and spend time with some really great friends I've made on the course. 

To a certain extent I thought it would be nice to keep my actual exhibition as a bit of a surprise for when it's fully complete, so I won't be sharing too many photos of it today. I will say that I'm still continuing with the theme of experimental typography which has evolved into using techniques such as crochet and knitting to make letterforms. Over the last 2 weeks I've been locked away creating what must be hundreds of little wooly letters - but I don't want to give too much away! All will be revealed very soon and I'm working my fingers to the bone to get it finished by next week. 

I realise this has been a very quick insight into what I've been doing with myself these past few weeks but I hope you all understand! There isn't too much completed new work to share but I still want to document the process of this project and I think the exhibition preparation is a big part of that. I can't wait to share the finished results of the show as well as photographs from the private view later on in June. One last final push!

*Sneaky preview!*

Cornelia Parker Artist Lecture @ The Whitworth

For the next three years, sculptor and installation artist Cornelia Parker will be an Honorary Professor within the University of Manchester. To mark this occasion, she spoke, amongst other things, about her acclaimed exhibition at the Whitworth, forthcoming projects and how she collaborates with scientists, engineers, pyrotechnicians and others to make art. I was lucky enough to attend this lecture on Thursday 23rd April within the surroundings of the newly refurbished Whitworth gallery. 

As many of you may already know, The Whitworth Gallery reopened in February after a £15million redevelopment, launching with ten new exhibitions including a major solo show by Cornelia Parker. I visited about a week after the gallery's high profile relaunch and it was soon obvious to me why this exhibiton has received such high praise from across the art world. The show combines career-defining works such as 'Cold Dark Matter (An Exploded View)' and 'The Distance (A Kiss With String Attached)' along with new works including 'War Room', a vast and immersive installation made from punched out paper negatives taken from the Richmond poppy factory, which is unique to the Whitworth. 

The critically exclaimed exhibition is both impressive and thought provoking and so I was incredibly excited to hear Cornelia herself talk about the show from her own perspective. I'll be honest, I wasn't sure exactly what to expect. Often we think of artists as these highly strung, inaccessible folk who almost seem to speak a different language to the rest of us. But Cornelia was a joy to listen to, incredibly intelligent but also humorous in her manner. At times she had the audience in fits of laughter as she spoke of how she inadvertently blew up an (empty) pram which was needed by it's owners as they were expecting twins any day, and other times she held all eyes as she explained her compelling work marking the 100 year anniversary of World War One. By the way, the owners of said pram were at the gallery opening in February to see if they could spot the misplaced item from 1991 in the midst of 'Cold Dark Matter'! 

Subtitling the lecture 'Truth to Materials', Parker amazed us time and time again with her quests to get her hands on materials that most of us will never even touch in our lifetime, from sawn off shotguns and bullets to snake venom and cocaine. But there was a strong sense that she is far from content with simple police confiscated weapons and a jar of poison. Cornelia wants to take this even further, confessing that she is still working on getting NASA to help her out! 

I'm finding it difficult to condense all of Parker's wonderful anecdotes and explanations that she shared into just one blog post, and in honesty I could never retell them in a way that does her any justice. I will however say that for the next three years, The University of Manchester will be lucky to call Cornelia Parker one of their Honorary Professors, her exhibition and her talent is truly world class.  

Cornelia Parker's exhibition runs until 31st May 2015 @ The Whitworth Art Gallery

5 Tips For Visually Interesting Sketchbooks

What is it about sketchbooks that make them so intriguing to touch and feel? Is it the fact that they're the most raw insight into a persons creative process? It's no secret that I take great pride in my sketchbooks. Throughout my foundation course it's the thing that I have really consistently enjoyed creating and I actively look forward to updating mine on a daily basis. While a sketchbook is the least judgmental and most forgiving of any artwork, for some it can almost feel too free, and blank pages can be very intimidating! Recently I have shared some snapshots into my own sketchbooks (here and here if you're interested) and today I want to share some ideas and suggestions on how you could go about making your own sketchbook more visually intriguing.  

1. Keep Everything 
For me, displaying bits and pieces from my creative process is a big part of creating an interesting sketchbook. It can be hard to remember to do this to begin with but soon enough it'll become second nature. Everything from paper offcuts to material samples and receipts, anything that tells the story of your working process will make a great addition to a page. Your sketchbook will soon become something of a record of how your work was created which can be so fun to look back on.

2. Methods Of Attachment 
Something that I have found to be useful when I feel like a page is looking a bit dull is using a variety of methods for attaching page elements. For example, if you have a photograph, you might just glue it down with a regular glue stick, or you could use a ripped bit of making tape, a staple, a safety pin, sticky tape around the edge, use string, split pins etc etc. It's surprising how effective this can be at changing the whole look and feel of a page.

3. Variety Is Key
If you want to keep your sketchbook visually interesting throughout for either yourself or the viewer, having a variety of page styles is a great way to achieve this. One page might be full of drawing while the next is a written brainstorm, and the next might be photographs of your process or a mixture of techniques. Try to switch it up every now and again if you tend to stick to one style.

4. Bulk
"Bulk? What the heck is bulk?" I hear you ask. Well my friends, 'bulk' is what me and all of my friends at art school strive for in our sketchbooks. Have you ever seen a sketchbook that is so full to the brim that it will barely close? Yep - that's what we're all after! There's something so beautiful about a book that's so teeming with life, ideas and creativity. Of course, that's not to say that this suits everybody's style and taste, but for me, there's no greater feeling than literally seeing my sketchbook grow in size.

5. Learn To Let Go
This is probably the most important tip that I can give. Your sketchbook is yours and yours only. Ultimately you get to choose what goes in, how you want to work and who gets to see it. Learning to let go and be free with your creative self it vital. Don't hold back - your sketchbook is somewhere you should be able to make a mistake and not lose sleep over it! Don't get caught up with making everything look perfect, just let yourself create without worry and everything else will follow suit.

While these are just some of the things I do when making my own books, the best thing about a sketchbook is that it is completely personal to the creator. You may decide that non of these tips apply to your taste (although I would recommend considering #5!). The most important thing is to express yourself freely - there really are no rules!
What are some of the things you like to do when creating your sketchbooks? I'd love to know about your process! 

Why I'm Obsessed With Libraries (You Should Be Too!)

I think most of us probably visited the library as a child. I know I used to make regular visits to my local library, searching through what seemed to be endless tales of far away places, it seemed like a magical place where I could go anywhere I liked. But how many of us continue this childhood fascination with libraries as we grow older? Well, until a few years ago, I can't say I did. Now I've fallen back in love with them, and I thought I'd tell you why!

I currently have 3 library cards to my name, which give me access to a total of 43 different libraries in my surrounding area. Some of these libraries hold well over a million books inside including the second largest public lending library in Britain (Manchester Central Library). Firstly, I cannot even begin to imagine the staggering number of books I have at my fingertips. How could anybody find this anything other than completely mesmerising? There's more books available to all of us in our local libraries than anybody could possibly hope to read in a lifetime. The wealth of free information available to us is astonishing and this is why I have become so obsessed with the things!

Something you may not know is that most libraries these days have a website which allows you to login, track your loans, renew books, reserve books and search the library catalogue. This has become an invaluable tool for me, especially as a student. Say I see a book I want to read, or there's a specific subject I'm researching into, the very first thing I'll do is search the library catalogues from home to check if anywhere has what I'm looking for. If they do, I'll either reserve it or just go down and find it on the shelves myself. Because of the sheer number of books combined in the 43 libraries available to me, 95% of the time one of them has what I'm looking for. Usually, libraries within a given area will also ship books between themselves so you can pick it up wherever is most convenient. It's like Amazon - except it's free! As an art student, it simply isn't feasible for me to buy all of the books I want, but there really is no need to when I can get access to almost any book at no cost. There's also something quite wonderful about leafing through a book that has a borrowed stamp inside the cover dated from before I was even born.

Of course, there are some books that we'd just like to own for ourselves. That's fine - I still buy the odd book here and there. Maybe I like the design of it or I want to keep it on my shelf for reference, but how often do we buy a book that we read once and then never pick up again? It's refreshing to be able to borrow a book and hand it back once I'm finished so they don't just end up gathering dust on my shelves. I know I haven't been the first to read that book, and I know I won't be the last.

So maybe I sound a bit of an old fashioned, but I'm completely sold on libraries. What do you think? Do you use your local library? Why, or why not?