Exhibition: New Blood 2013

On Tuesday evening myself and Jessica ventured up to Spittlefields Market to check out this years New Blood show! For those of you who haven't visited New Blood it's a brilliant show put on by D and AD which showcases the work of Graphics and Illustration graduates from universities across the country. It was lovely and inspiring to see the work of upcoming designers so we've picked out a few of our favourites to share with you. We'd definitely recommend visiting and/or getting your students to visit! It's a great chance for students to find out more information and see the work from universities to help them make those final decisions! 

Grace Bond, Helen Player,  Mimi Van Helfteren

Norwich University's whole stand, Yvette Earl

We also grabbed a few business cards from other people we didn't get a chance to snap! 

Amy Mattingley, Louise Byrnes, Charlie Marshall

Luke Thompson, Catherine Prior

Make sure you catch it if you can! It closes today!

- Claire ❤

3W: Jung Lee

who: Jung Lee

what: installation/photography/typography

why: I think it's well known that we've got a soft spot for typography, but I think our new obsession might be neon light typography. We were blown away when we came across the photographs of Jung Lee, seeing such sentimental phrases in desolate locations has such an impact. What's brilliant about her work is the different stages, it's not just the typography itself, each piece is then installed in an outside locations and photographed - stunning! 

huffington post // One and J.Gallery

3W: Music Philosophy

who: Mico Toledo

what: The Music Philsophy Project

why: We love our music and we love typography so what could be better than a project that combines them both? Music Philosophy is a weekly design project which interprets philosophical song quotes into stunning typographical posters. You can buy all the posters via the website or download them for free as iPhone wallpapers. What's your favourite? We couldn't pick a single one that's why we've got 5 at the top of this post, and that's merely a handful of the ones we loved! 

Music Philosophy // Flickr // Creative Review 

Tutorial: Spray Painting

Last week I had a brilliant time with my AS Graphics students on their typography project having a go spray painting using a two layer technique! It's really simple but the outcome is really effective - this tutorial uses text for the stencil but this could easily work for all sorts of different shapes/objects/drawings! 

Materials needed:

- 2x pieces of card that are the exact same size

- 2 different coloured spray paints

- Cutting Knife

- Cutting Mat 

- Pencil

- 1x piece of card/paper or other surface for spray painting 

Instructions:

1. On your first piece of card sketch out your letters then cut them out using your cutting knife. We used the font blackout for our examples - it's great for stencilling! 

2. Line up your first piece of card with the second piece and trace your letters onto it. Sketch different shapes into the letters then cut out the shapes.

3. With your spray paint, spray through your letter stencil onto your chosen surface

4. Remove your letter stench and line up your shape stencil with your first spray. Select your second colour and spray through your shape stencil - ta da! you've got a two layer spray paint piece!  

As always if you have a go we'd love to see the results, check out the brilliant ones my students did last week... 

- Claire ❤

review: typic

This weekend I discovered Typic and I think I'm in love! I'm always wanting to add text to my images, for blog posts, resource sheets, etc. It's one of those fussy things that I just like to do, but it does take a bit of time. Then I discovered Typic! The app allows you to quickly add text to photographs and as an added bonus there are some instagram-esque filters on offer, a beautiful selection of stylish fonts (like homestead, what a nice font!) and an instant upload to various social media platforms at the end, if needed. I think it's one of those apps that people will either love or hate, to many the need to add text to an image will seem unneccesary and perhaps a little too 'hipster' but for me it's hits the best criteria - it saves me time! It's just an added bonus that it's very aesthetically pleasing. You should definitely check it out, it feels like an app with potential - I'm already thinking starter activities based on word/image connections...

- Claire  ❤

tutorial: M&M Paris Clipping Masks

from left to right: C is for claire (my example), M&M Paris A is for anne catherine, M&M Paris R is for Rafael

M&M Paris are wonderful! A collection of their work I particularly like is the alphabet series. Their first alphabet collection was produced for V magazine in collaboration with Inez van Lamsweerde and Vidooh Matadin and was created using photographs of 26 female models. Each woman's image was reworked into the initial of their first name and since then they've also created the alphamen and the pradalphabet. When I came across it I just knew I needed to show it to my AS Graphics students as part of their typography project. I love that there's a female and a male version as it means there's relevant examples for all and it leads well into introducing a few simple techniques in Photoshop - desaturating and adjusting the brightness/contrast of an image, using clipping masks and introducing the brush tools. Perfect for a few lessons in and the final outcome looks really slick. Check out the tutorial below to create your own M&M Paris inspired type and as always if you try this out with your students we'd love to see the results!

  

- Claire ❤

Tutorial: How to Make Ghost Type in Adobe Photoshop

 Jessica Townsend - Ghost Type

Unknown artist inspiration for tutorial                   

This is a little tutorial I developed to show how some very simple techniques in Adobe Photoshop can help you create cool typography! It was inspired by an image I came across on Pintrest above by an unknown artist. If you haven't had a chance to look at the i heart teaching art Pintrest boards make that your top priority for the day as there are so many inspiring artists and designers on there and it is updated regularly so lots to feast your eyes on to inspire both you and your students. Hope you enjoy my tutorial and if you do, don't forget to share it!

- Jess ❤

tutorial: Si Scott inspired typography

Si Scott is a brilliant Graphic Designer whose clean cut style and beautiful, swirly, typography makes him a must look at designer when we deliver a typography project. This term will be no exception - we're mixing our typography project a bit this year and going for a t-shirt outcome, something which Si Scott has also dabbled in. The tutorial below will take you through how to use the warp and twirl tool in illustrator to create your own Si Scott inspired typography! This lesson is always a hit with our students - we mix it up so they spend half the session on the digital type and half a session getting messy and having a go creating type by hand with inks and fine liners! 

- Claire ❤

Tutorial: Letterpress effects in Photoshop

At I Heart Teaching Art we believe that art needs to be interactive no matter what course subject be it fine art, graphics or photography. We love getting students to create work that you just want to touch and this tutorial is going to teach you how to create beautiful typographic letterpress effects. You may of seen Claire's embossing tutorial a few weeks ago (if not go check it out!) - this is a great addition that compliments her lesson activities really well.

So, you may be thinking what could I use this technique for? Well, it could be a great part of a typographic lesson. As a starter activity students could test different approaches of 'hand' letter pressing before moving on to create the same effect digitally. We're fortunate enough to have some some lovely metal letterpress stamps in our department and they look great stamped into thick, watercolour paper. If you don't have then don't worry just make some letterforms out of thin aluminium wire, wet some paper and hammer the letters in one by one. You'll get some great effects! Students can then follow 

our digital letterpress tutorial above and compare the differences in a group critique at the end of the lesson. This effect could also be a good alternative to our textile inspired album cover tutorial or even swing tag packaging. Have fun and if you use this effect in class then please share the results - we'd love to see them!

♥ resources:

vintage envelope: Fuzzimo

brushes: We Function

font: Marmellata Jam

Tutorial: Watercolour Text

I love watercolour but it's one of those things that I'm not that brilliant at, in fact painting in general is definitely not my forte, so when I discovered you can do watercolour like effects in Photoshop I jumped on it! I'm on a typography kick at the moment so I've created a tutorial that shows you how to make watercolour text in Photoshop. I know there's tons more techniques out there for this sort of thing but I think this is a great starting point, also if you've got my favourite typography book Handmade Type you could do a digital vs handmade lesson with your students and have a go at creating watercolour text by hand in the style of Natsuki Otani. 

Enjoy! - Claire ❤

Tutorial: Bleaching T-shirts

There's something really fun about using bleach on fabric. It's a quick, cheap and simple way to experiment with fabric dying without having to get too messy or too complicated mixing up the dyes and bits. There's also the added magic moment as you watch the bleach develop and discover which colours you're gonna get as it ranges from white,red,orange or pink depending on the cotton content of your t-shirt. So how do you do it?

equipment a black t-shirt, synthetic paint brush*, a glass jar, bleach (just the regular stuff you'd use indoors!) cardboard, masking tape and a stencil (and card, a cutting knife and a cutting mat if you're making the stencil from scratch too!) 

instructions one:  Create a stencil, I made mine using my absolute favourite font right now, blackout (you can download it here, I love it!) and some wonderful lyrics by the amazing alkaline trio. I've gone for a typography style because I'm gonna add it to an inspiration board for my students but you can make a stencil of whatever floats your boat or if you're really awesome you could just freehand a design straight on! two: place the piece of cardboard inside your t-shirt - it needs to be big enough to fit under your whole design because it's gonna stop the bleach going straight through to the back of your t-shirt. three: tape your stencil onto your t-shirt! four: put some bleach in your jar and get your paintbrush ready! five: paint over your design using the bleach six: watch your design begin to develop - you can go over areas if you want them to have a bit more colour 

Here's a little video of me painting mine, you can see how quickly it develops... 

*look out for the moment about half way through when I realise I haven't used a synthetic paint brush and my brush has disintegrated in the bleach (oops!) so I make a quick switch! 

seven: Leave your t-shirt out in the sunshine for a few hours so the bleach fully develops and lightens. eight: hand wash your t-shirt and let it dry nine: put it on and strut your stuff in your awesome new t-shirt handmade and designed by you! Hurray! optional extra: Pin it up in your classroom for inspiration and to subtly impart a bit of your own taste in music on your students! 

- Claire ❤

Review: Handmade Type Workshop

Handmade Type Workshop: Techniques for creating original characters and digital fonts by Charlotte Rivers is an absolute must have book for anyone teaching a typography project! It's full to the brim with inspirational work by contemporary designers. The book is divided into two parts. Part One 'Character Creation' is divided into 5 chapters illustrated/hand drawn, printed stitch & cut, digitally drawn, 3D/installation and found/photographed and what makes it so brilliant is that it has designer profiles followed by brilliant simple to follow step by step tutorials (see below). Part two 'Font Creation' is made up of 2 chapters, preparing characters and creating a font family, and it takes your through the more technical digital processes and associated software involved with creating your own font. It's also got amazing 'gallery' sections at the end of each chapter which showcases amazing typography being used in a range of different graphic formats, posters, packaging, art, record covers, clothing and more! (see below)

I think we all love typography here (especially if our pinterest board is anything to go by) but this book has played a huge part in me falling head over heels for typography!  It introduced me to some incredible designers; Mathilde Nivet, Vladimir Koncar, Hansje van Halem and Natasha Mileshina to name just a few and I found this was my go to book when teaching a typography project this year and I'm even more excited to be delivering the same project, but new and improved thanks to this book, next year too! 

What are you waiting for? Grab a copy of it now! 

- Claire ❤

Tutorials: Having a go myself!

One of my favourite things about teaching is the chance to continue practising and updating my own art skills, I love nothing more than spending a bit of time actually having a go myself. For our AS-A2 project with our Photography and Graphics students me and my wonderful colleagues have been busy making and finding new video tutorials and this week I got the chance to have a go! Our new Graphics project is called 'Song of the Summer' so I thought I'd get involved too, I've used some pictures of one of my favourite bands No Doubt for my own experiments... 

There's tons of tutorials out there for stencilling so rather than make our own we followed this amazing one! What we loved about it was that it shows you how to make a stencil effect image in Photoshop and then takes you through printing, cutting and spray painting it as well so you've got handmade and digital all rolled into one! 

We took inspiration from this album cover by Pulp for this tutorial - it shows a few different techniques using the pen tool, clipping masks and creating a brush! The sequins take a while but it's quicker than sewing them by hand! 

We loved the 2009 Grammy's Typographic Posters so we created these two tutorials (here and here). I think this was one of my favourite tutorials to try myself! 

So there you have it! I had real fun making these this week! I hope you enjoy our tutorials too!

- Claire ❤

3W: Me Studio

who: me studio

what: mixed media graphics

why: It was hard to select just one piece of work because there is such a diverse range in their portfolio, but we love this pin work! We love that they take it a step further in the stop-motion animation below... 

me studio // behance // cargo collective

3W: Anna Garforth

who: Anna Garforth

what: typography (and other experimental design work) 

why: we love how experimental her work is and we particularly love the piece above 'grow' which Anna describes wonderfully "Moss typography adorns the wall of a secret spot I found in London behind locked gates, a disused plot awaiting the arrival of new flats. I thought I'd sneak in before the small wilderness got bull dozed." We love a bit of guerilla art! 

Anna Garforth // Anna's Tumblr

3W: Maricor/Maricar

who: Maricor/Maricar
what: 'Sweater Letters' embroidered typography
why: because it's typography that looks like tiny fairisle jumpers! In fact all of their embroidered work is fantastic, like the animation below for Architecture in Helsinki

Maricor/Maricar // Sweater Letters // Motion work

3W: Garret Steider

who: Garret Steider
what: typefruitography
why: We adore this - we think it would make a brilliant typography project idea for graphics students!

Garret Steider // Typofruitography

3W: handmade font

who: handmade font

what: typography 

why: amazing handmade font! So many we found it difficult to pick our one example (theres loads on our typography pinterest board!) we love their work have had great fun using them as inspiration for experimental typography lessons with lots of different groups (see pictures here, here and here) 

handmade font // behance 

3W: Vladimir Koncar

who: Vladimir Koncar

what: typography

why: we love experimental typography and Vladmirs work is just that! The above is from an incredible collection called 'diary type'. A full A-Z is created and accompanied with an often witty phrase and the type itself is made using a whole host of unusual objects including; raw meat, condoms, cigarettes, rotten apples, beer caps, paperclips and more. It's something we've done with our students (photos) and Vladimir has made excellent step by step instructions which can be used during the lesson, here. 

Vladimir Koncar // Diary Type // Tutorial