MMU Degree Show

Manchester Metropolitan University Degree Show 

Whilst walking round the MMU degree show I felt inspired by all the different disciplines of work that were all displayed in one room. It was nice to be able to look at what the third years had spent their last year producing and what I will soon be doing in my final year. 

(Images taken from Joanna's blog - http://joannaortizwordandimage.blogspot.co.uk)

Joanna Ortiz

One of my favourite students work, which has inspired my brief for my final year, is Joanna Ortiz. Her work just stood out to me. I actually saw her work first, during a tutorial right at the beginning of my second year (her first year) and I instantly fell in love with her work. Her subject matter was herself, about her life, thoughts and images that she had taken herself. I loved her witty approach she had towards life and the fact that she did not take herself too seriously and that was what her work was based around. This is something that has inspired me to take that approach in my own work.

(Images taken from Becca's MMU degree page - http://degreeshow.mmu.ac.uk/2014/BeccaHall/)

Becca Hall

 I tried to view as many different sections of the degree show as possible and I have always been a big admirer of illustration so I was interested to see some of the degree show work. I stumbled across Becca Hall's work, it was placed very delicately on a shelf in the corner of the room. She had produced a illustrated book of a journey she had taken. I found her work very delicate and detailed. Her drawings were not over complicated, and included the details that need to be included. The colour palette was very simple and didn't take anything away from her line drawings of buildings. What I liked most about her work was that it was such a simple and beautiful subject matter, it wash't over complicated and it was just nice to spend the time flicking through her sketchbook.

(Images taken from Jessica's MMU degree show page - http://degreeshow.mmu.ac.uk/2014/JessicaIp/)

Jessica Ip

What I love about Jessica's work, is her style of drawing. These drawings that she has created of victims of air war are stunning. I loved the texture that she creates within her drawings and the colours that she uses are perfect. I think that I have connected with her style of drawing as it could be seen as being quite unusual and I think that my way of drawing is very unusual as well. I really like the fact that these drawings look almost unfinished, they don't look 100% perfect with every line completed and every section filled with colour, which is what I really like about them. It is a very unusual technique and something that I would like to take into my own work. 

Unit X - College Four - Evaluation

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Evaluation 

During this Unit X, it has felt very odd for me as I haven't really done anything that I usually do in my other units. I feel like I have a had a burden lifted from my shoulders and someone else has taken the artist role. When I first started I thought that I was going to be stuck with all the artistic things that come with creating a zine, as I was the only hands-on art student in my group with the rest studying Contemporary Art History. However, every single member joined in and took on a different role, however inexperienced each person was. I really enjoyed taking on a new role and spending time over research and writing instead of drawing and making. I am most pleased with the whole zine in itself, it’s a show of our group work and the time and effort it took to create it and see it selling at the zine fair was a proud moment. I was surprised by how easy it was to create a zine, I thought it was a lengthy and grueling process but it’s more about the passion for what you love rather than the skills you have. After my last experience of Unit X I really was not looking forward to this time round, however, I found the whole process easy and enjoyable. My group were really helpful and we communicated almost every day and let each other know what we were upto. I think it’s perhaps because there was only four of us this made it a lot easier to meet up and share ideas, rather than it being in a big group. I have found this Unit to be very rewarding, being there from the beginning process of thinking up an idea for the zine to being at the last process and selling it. This is something that I would like to take into third year and perhaps do something like this on my own. I really cannot describe how much I have loved every minute of it.

Overall, I have found this to be my favourite unit so far. It has been a massive change and it was great to see how a zine worked, was produced and distributed and it was a break from what I usually do.

Unit X - Zines - Final Zine

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Final Designs

These are the final print offs for our zine. I am so proud of what we have done as a group and I think that Matt's illustrations are beautiful and fit very well with our whole idea of the zine. The riso machine gives a really good finish to our zine and it's a relief to see how well it has come out. 

Unit X - College Four - Fair

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Zine Fair

We took part in two out of the two zine fairs. The one at Federation House in Manchester and the one at FACT in Liverpool. We spilt the time up and I took part in the Manchester one whilst others took part in the Liverpool one. I was quite nervous at first about the fair as it was something I had never done before so was a bit unsure about what to expect. However, it turned out to be really good. It was nice to see everyone elses hard work pay off and people enjoying themselves selling and chatting about their zine. We managed to sell quite a few of our zines as well which was a great feeling as it was a relief that people liked and wanted to by our zine.  Whilst there, I bought a few of the other groups zines, I really enjoyed Hannah and Grahams zine purely for the range of different things they had on offer, from posters, to smaller zines and then their main zine, which came in three editions.

Unit X - College Four - Marketing/

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Marketing 

Our idea for distributing our zine was to create our six editions, which can be bought separately and then all of our zines together in a bundle. We finished the zine off by wrapping a strip of tartan round each bundle and fastening it with a safety pin. This was a visual idea that instantly drew people to our zine and told them within a second that this zine was about punks, as tartan was the most icon thing to come from the punk era.  This was something that the group agreed on right for the very start so we have been very focused to get our idea into place and work towards our goal. We always wanted to distribute in a way that paid tribute to the original 1970s punk zine. The idea of selling online would perhaps take away the original method of those zines so this was never an option. We decided that the zine fair would be the best place to sell our zine as it was people who were coming especially to see our zines and it felt wrong to not take advantage of that.

Unit X - College Four - Production

Unit X - College Four - Zine - Production 

These images are from the production day of our zine. We printed all our zines on the riso machine was we thought it would be faster, easier and give off a better finish, as apposed to using the photo copier. I had never used a riso machine before so it was nice to see how it worked and learn how to use it. It was come in handy in the future and it is a good thing to know how to use. 

We chose a china white colour of paper to use, which was almost an ivory colour, as we thought that white might of been a bit too harsh, as our text and illustrations were all black. This stopped it looking just boring black and white. The paper gave the effect that these zines were old and not recently made. I think it gave them a nice touch. All in all we had to print quite a few off as we had two fairs, and six editions of the zine, plus extra to make bundles. 

Unit X - College Four - Illustrations

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Illustrations

These are some illustrations that I created. Although I wasn't doing the illustrations for my own zine, which I'm glad of as I felt that it would be too much pressure as I am not the best drawer. I decided to create some for myself as a way of getting into the zine mood. 

I actually quite enjoyed partaking in illustration as I found it quite interesting, trying to get the faces right and learn about colours. I don't think these illustrations are as good as the ones that Matt produced for our zine, but I feel proud of myself for having a go at something new. 

Unit X - College Four - Individual Research

Unit X - College Four - Zines - Individual Research

For my research I was very excited to get started. I was in charge of the zines about Virginia Woolf and Vivienne Westwood. I think that I made a really good choice as I adore Vivenne Westwood and know quite a lot about her, however, I don’t really know much about Virginia Woolf so this posed as quite a challenge for me as I wasn’t really even sure why she was featuring in our zine, hoever, something which I was keen to take on. I decided to focus a lot more on research based on quotes, interviews, essay papers and journals to conduct my research. As I already knew quite a lot about Westwood, I didn’t really need to go too into the reseach but with Virginia Woolf, I found her life to be quite interesting and know understand why she is the woman and literary icon that she is today. As you can see by the images above, the two women were complete opposites however, changed society and culture in exactly the same way.