Sumer Brief

There was me... my summer consisting of working at the pub and going away... little did i know, when i got back... there would be a suspiciously scary-looking letter with 'LEEDS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN' headed on the envelope. I opened it fearing the worst...

And yes...

Inside it was the summer brief.

We were required to produce an alphabet which represented us as a person.
I, personally got rather excited at this. It could be taken in so many different directions, produced in so many different ways.
I decided to use photography (as this is one of my main passions) to produce the letterforms. Taking pictures of things beggining with each letter which summed me up.

There was a lot of thought involved... definitely a few letters which i couldn't associate with anything (namely 'x') but I got there eventually.
After asking a few people close to me what they thought would best represent me, i decided to use people close to me (family/friends), bands that inspire me (friends bands/lyrics/ artwork) and places I had been/lived/studied/holidayed to... as I seem to be my surroundings and the people surrounding me. These things combined decide my mood, my actions... pretty much everything.

After a few mistakes and ideas, i decided to use high-contrast, black and white photography to do this project as this is my favourite style (a bit like Ami Barwell's work...) and for the bands... use live photos I had taken in the past.
Now I am not going to pretend i went out this summer, visited everywhere I'd found inspirational, and found everyone that was close to me... as that would be a lot of travelling. But i tried to use as many of my own photographs i had taken in the past.
I edited each one on photoshop so they looked like a series, and cut a letter out of each one.
I then gave them each a white outline... and put them on a black backdrop.

Due to my photoshop skills, at the moment, only being able to edit photographs, i decided to produce each letterform by hand.
They do not look perfect. Definitely not up to my perfectionist standards... so once i learn a few more skills (soon hopefully) I am going to re-address this project and tighten it up.



Along with our own alphabet, we had to collect at least 30 examples of each letterform which inspired us.
I had great fun looking around the internet, magazines and flyers etc... to find them. Less fun cutting them out and cataloguing them... looked good when it was done however.