The sketches and final drawing are from my first year at art/design school (2010). We were fortunate that our graphic design course (officially called ‘communication arts and design’) recognised the importance of drawing skills and provided a lot of opportunities to explore different mediums and styles. This was my first foray into pointillism. The composite image on the watercolour background is from the visual diary I put together for my final exhibition in 2012.
I worked on this logo while I was at design school and so I included it in my exhibition but, really, it was a freelance project that I did in my ‘spare’ time. Access Broadcast News is a media-monitoring company based in Wellington. They wanted their logo to be vibrant, dynamic and creative. I liked the idea of putting a new spin on the more traditional images of news communication such as radio waves and old television sets (which is why they appear in the sketches). My final solution is a cheeky nod to the RKO radio tower. I brought it into the 21st Century by adding multi-coloured dots to represent modern fibre-optic cables.
The diary pages are from a journal I designed for my Design & Arts College exhibition in 2012. Two years of research, ideas, word maps and sketches had to be reduced to a mere 72 pages. It was no easy task but I now have a beautiful, professionally bound diary that I’ll always treasure.
For this project we had to use found images and a limited colour palette to design the cover of a book about the beat poets. My cover is a paper collage of photographs, censored texts and deconstructed poetry. The background features excerpts from the works of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs that I have retyped, rearranged, printed, torn into pieces and transferred on to paper using an acetone printing technique (the same technique I used for my book without boundaries). The acetone transfer produced a wonderful, imperfect, aged sort of effect which you can see in more detail below.
The diary pages are from a journal I put together for my Design & Arts College exhibition in 2012. Two years of research, ideas, word maps and sketches had to be reduced to a mere 72 pages. It was no easy task but I now have a beautiful, professionally bound diary that I’ll always treasure.
The brief for this project was to design an anti-cigarette-litter billboard and public installation for the city council’s ‘Future Vision of a Clean City’ campaign. The focus had to be on anti-not-thinking rather than anti-smoking. For the installation, I turned my drawing of Christchurch’s Anglican Cathedral and Chalice sculpture into a pop-up board game that could be played in public spaces around the city. It was a lot of fun putting my illustration into the photo ― I wonder why I don’t do that more often?
The diary pages are from a journal I designed for my Design & Arts College exhibition in 2012. Two years of research, ideas, word maps and sketches had to be reduced to a mere 72 pages. It was no easy task but it’s something I’ll always treasure.
The design brief for this project was to create four playing cards based on the word ‘arcane’. And arcane is such a wonderful word:
The process went something like: figure out what to draw (using word maps and thumbnail sketches), find suitable reference material (photographs of pyramids, camels, medieval suns/moons, monks, castles…), and then sketch and arrange the elements to make a meaningful composition. You can see the final playing card designs here.
These pages are from the visual diary I designed for my Design & Arts College exhibition in 2012. Two years’ worth of research, ideas, word maps and sketches had to be edited to fit a single, professionally printed journal of only 72 pages. It was no easy task but it’s something I’ll always treasure.
A recent blog post by graphic designer Becca Shayne about the value of keeping a sketchbook reminded me of the visual diary I put together for my Design & Arts College exhibition in 2012. All of my course sketchbooks (crammed full of research, ideas, inspirational quotes, word maps, doodles and sketches) had to be edited into a single, professionally printed journal of only 72 pages. It was no easy task but it’s something I’ll always treasure.
These are the diary pages of our very first project: to design our own logo and business card. I really enjoyed the process but I didn’t like the logo enough to use it. I’m still very fond of Helvetica though.
Anna Cull ~ Art & Music 