The Type and Layout sessions with Graham Tansley on a thursday morning have now finished due to the reseach week next week which gives me time to reflect on what I have done in the workshops and where to go from here. Type or Image? I still have no idea what I would like to do, I would like to feel that I am a confident layout orgainsiser who has certain typefaces for favorites and likes to draw and compose images in his spare time.

The workshops with graham have taught me various things about type, working with appropriate point sizes, weight, case, serif/sans serif and using them effectively in situations to reflect their usage, readability, legibility etc. Then moving onto sentences and paragraphs when the use of these factors alters to suit the needs of its application, and today moving onto the use of a full page spread which is kind of fun to play with. But most of what we have learnt, I have realised, is subjective and the opinions of how you read and such differ from each individual. This was most apparent when working with single works where even each serif became significant to the design and was I think why when it came to designing the layout for some sample text plus images the results were so varied and a lot of it came down to personal tastes. Who was right/wrong?

I couldn't help overhearing.

Looking at the act of listening into someone else's conversation and why it is good.

Firstly, a common misconception. Overhearing and eavesdropping are not the same. Eavesdropping is the act of secretly listening into the private conversation of others without consent. However, if a message is publicly broadcast, witnessing it does not count as eavesdropping, this is overhearing.

So why is overhearing good?

for several reasons...

So from a social aspect, overhearing allows the circulation of behavior of others and through this, humanizes them by being able to compare and contrast information against others to help define social statuses, so an example would be someone talking about another person but not talking about another, the listener is impartial and from this can learn where to place this person with an informed decision.

Another aspect of social advantages of overhearing would be finding out secret information of other, which has its obvious advantages.

To help with the social side of this I also completed a short and simple qualitative questionnaire. Results from this were conclusive. People do overhear conversations and are likely to divulge information to other.

Overhearing also benefit through an increase in knowledge, and information can come as factional or fictional, it is a choice of course as to whether you believe the information that you hear. You may also find that information that you hear supports your arguments or information that you already have. Through overhearing you can also obtain information about what a majority of people think based on their opinions.

Overhearing is free, and also unlike gifts it is also free to give, but you can put a price on the information that you hold.

It doesn't require looking. Even if you're on your own you can still reminisce some of the juicy overhearings you made earlier.

It can be humorous. From dry the dark humour, most tastes are catered for and you can create even more by bringing overhearings in and out of context to double the laughs. This act also supports/encourages your creative thinking.

It is of course part of human nature, and it is good to be human. Studies show that the average human can hear typical chatter 20 metres away and blind people possess even stonger hearing abilities than sighted people, various studies have shown however someone born blind will have better hearing abilities than someone who became blind later in life.

Overhearing also fuels peoples need to gossip and gossiping can be dated as far back as the egyptian hieroglyphs. Gossiping however is also more prominant today than ever, which cannot be bad? Heat magazine alone on average sells over half a million copies each week.

So, start listening.

Photoshop Exercise II.

Manipulation of imagery through use of channel selection, monotone and duotone.

a. Original Image.

b. Monotone.

c. Duotone.

d. Duotone (same image as before alter with a different balance of tones).

e. Additional channel.

Looking again today at good, I made collosal lists using the internet and myself to try and identify my subject or work which is 'Good'. Some crazier than others but I have a couple of interest; smiling for no reason, eavesdropping, flirting and there were other more physical things such as lego, bubblegum, meatball Subways and computer games such as Tekken 3. I also came across a couple of new words such as Bokeh (below) which is the blur created when focusing on something within a large depth of field. I do quite like this effect but i have chosen to look at, 'Eavesdropping' as my 'Good'. I chose this in particular because I love to listen in to peoples conversations and love taking quotes from people and putting them in different contexts. Most people are interested in the subject of looking at what other people are doing or have done and I think I could really look at pushing the boundaries as to what could by classed as eavesdropping and when it becomes perverted.

I got useful feedback from the crit today (07/10) which has inspired me to look at other sources such as gossiping, reality television, chinese whisper and the way information is passed from one person to the next, Google Earth, CCTV in design such as Louis Vuitton, quoting people, spyware and searching information about someone.

The final postcards, although they were rushed and random they came out looking alright and incidentally the logo was picked as the best logo in our first pin-up of the year. I chose to do a fictional logo utilizing the drawings I made over the summer I think it would be a great comical/random logo for a clothing designer, and it took me least time to make. A good start to the year I think.

'What is Good?' first stage of development. This exercise was really useful in helping us understand the content of what we were being asked to produce, so i just have to choose a subject or something that i perceive as good and research to support an argument, for a 2 minute presentation. i currently don't have many ideas, we did however in the process, think of many things which could be perceived as good then picked what is bad about each and surprisingly most of the time you could pick more faults with things that were good. This could be really interesting as most of it is subjective.