1. Design Interest

    A new year and a new Design Interest group meet up featuring local designers, photographers, comic enthusiasts and others to share their passion and interest in design.

    Celebrating Children’s Creativity by Rose Mockford from MyDesignMade.com

    Rose Mockford presented about their business MyDesignMade.com which produces items featuring artwork from children submitted by their parents. They are an industrial design graduate and a founder of MyDesignMade and inspired by children’s creativity and product stationary and art prints and work with schools and toddler groups which made it important to have a warm brand and in the products allow space around the artwork and give it a more professional look.

    “Creativity consists of coming up with many ideas not just that one great idea” - Charles Thompson

    For example with Christmas Trees how many techniques and media can be used to represent something and try out new ideas, don’t judge, appreciate difference, be open, appreciate difference, suspend disbelief and question. To live a create life we must lose our fear of being wrong and  just have a go, play and be more childlike, explore, take time to look and question!

    “no one ever discovered anything new by colouring inside the lines” - Thomas Vasquez

    Be creative and lose your fear but this doesn’t mean you don’t need constraints,you can forget the rules, have courage, bend the rules, combine, break the rules and question, be creative with new rules. Break down where you hold back and just draw stuff go and do something different and use different tools and materials.

    Basic Portrait Lighting Techniques by Liz Douthwaite

    Liz Douthwaite founded Elizabeth Douthwaite Photography which specialises in portraiture and spoke about the importance of light and lighting techniques.

    Using available light be that artificial light, daylight or mix natural and artificial light, using more things to get better look and get the right light to create definition and knowing what is a flattering angle and get light to pick up nicer features. Use flash to remove or create shadows to add definition in a face and as little shadow on the face. Direct sunlight means squinting and shadows so don’t look directly at the sun and be aware of where shadows fall and look where light is shining on a subject.

    Sunlight is to be celebrated, put sunglasses on someone or have them close their eyes if it is too bright as this can help. Sunlight as backlight it is best to avoid midday, sun behind object creates silhouette effect, meter light from your subject if possible. Sunlight as sidelight combine with flash to reduce the “dead eyes” effect this can create using fill in flash or allow flare can look great, play around an create different effects.

    Positioning light – front light, reflected light by investing in a reflector or even something white or covered in tinfoil or even a mirror. Mirror and reflective surfaces and provide cheap available light from candles/fire, spotlights, torches or even TV – look around for light sources, find them and what direction they are coming from and check the subject is in a suitable position and check for shadows, also think about post processing when taking a picture.

    Comics: Words + Pictures where Time = Space by Paul Thompson

    Paul Thompson writes his own comics Tales of the Hollow Earth in his spare time and also is passionate about other comics and the techniques that go into creating them, the principles behind them.

    Single Panels - these are a single point in time, but can be read from left to right, panels in comics represent a length of time. Two Panels – build a story around them and what happens in-between is usually implied and not shown, the reader fills in the gap themselves. However an arc requires three points with Story A + Story B with the arc being context, goals, conflict and resolution which is more normally a Four Panel strip in a newspaper with a three act story art structure.

    Comic book styling applies more than to just comics as they are well suited to being just picked up and read such as in-flight safety guidelines and instructional documentation as people will read it and more likely pay attention and are a great format for something that is left lying around.

    Time and space in comics is decided by the reader, they decide the pace a photograph is a single point in time whereas a panel is not, and techniques such as having panels extend to the edge of the page connect to bigger things, you can create a rhythm with consistent panels and colours and to be dramatic break that rhythm to have a much greater impact. The width of a panel indicates the length of time for that panel, also the perception of the world can be indicated by how the panels are arranged and what goes around them.