I started looking at digital designs for influence how I could design my report. I found the brochure designs on this webpage fun, bright and creative. It's a good insight to see how creative I could get with the design. I thought that the first link showed a wide variety of different designs for different causes, so I thought looking at museum type brochures would influence me with more relevant designs for my report topic. Compared to the first set, these designs have a more clean and precise aesthetic to them which I feel are more appropriate for my historic and monumental topic.
Visit Petra website was a great resource as it covered all the different types of information about Petra itself and the current archaeology/tourist side to it as well. However it didn't cover great depth about it unlike the books I borrowed. The same can be said about the Visit Jordan website however I did feel that these were a great resource to collect images from for my report for educational purposes, as they were easily accessible on-line. The two books held a lot of historical information about how Petra came to be, what it provided and who for, and possibilities as to how it became forgotten. The Petra Rediscovered book was vastly helpful in understanding the Nabataen people that built, carved, lived and traded within Petra. Reading all this information, I started to think how am I going to fit this all in 1000 words. I thought that by finding information that was relevant to explaining why Petra should be a preserved monument would be a good way for looking for selective information to back up my point. The first thing I noticed in Norwich was the bicycles spotted everywhere, I think the reason why I so easily noticed them was because of how much I dislike them. I also know very little about bicycles which I find is a good sign because it provides me a reason to research different sources in order for me to find the right way to approach this. I organised all the images I collected into different categories as I think looking at bicycles in general is too broad. I believe by doing this, I'm creating a path I could follow for my project. Three of the categories I looked at below were ways bicycles were being used in the street, and I found it interesting how often shops around the City use bicycles for advertisement as it's something I've never seen before. I also found it interesting how some bike racks were completely rammed in some parts of the city, however the bike rack near Intu Chapelfield was nearly empty. Norwich City having a lot of pedestrian zone, I noticed how some people would walk alongside their bike and others would risk riding through. All of these represent people's choices of how they use their bike to their needs and I think this shows how personal bikes can be. Using Bicycles for Advertisements. Congregation of Bicycle Parking. Wielding Bicycles (Tandem).
For our Zine, we individually created 8 images each based around the themes of The Grapes of Wrath, such as the drought, the journey and hobo symbols to represent the crisis the book is set in. We also chose our charity to be Refugee Action based here in the UK. New photographs of a pair of cave lion cubs found frozen in Siberia give an unprecedented look at a species that has been extinct for about 10,000 years. Russian researchers revealed new details about the cubs in a press conference on Tuesday, including how they were found, and how they died. (See "Frozen Cave Lion Cubs from the Ice Age Found in Siberia.") Collectors unearthed the cave lions while looking for mammoth tusks in Yakutia, Siberia, and at first were not sure what they had found. They placed the cubs in a glacier to keep them frozen, and then sent them to scientists in Yakutsk for analysis. Nicknamed Uyan and Dina for the Uyandina River where they were found, the kittens will provide scientists with more details about the lions that roamed Eurasia and North America during the most recent Ice Age. They are the first prehistoric cats to be found in such an exceptional state. The cubs were only two to three weeks old when they perished, says Sakha Republic Academy of Science paleontologist Albert Protopopov. They were so young that their baby teeth had not yet started to poke out from their gums. Most likely, Protopopov says, the cubs died when the soil of their den collapsed. While tragic, the way Uyan and Dina died played an important role in their preservation, keeping them frozen for over 12,000 years until flooding this past summer exposed them. Scientists estimate that the cubs were only a few weeks old when they died, possibly more than 12,000 years ago. Here, researcher Gennady Boeskorov of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Sakha examines a cub. But the real research has only just begun. Until now, the cave lion—a subspecies of Panthera leo related to today’s lions—was known only from bones and tracks. Uyan and Dina will provide the first look at the soft tissues of these cats, from the characteristics of their thick coats to the anatomy of their internal organs. Protopopov also says that genetic analyses are in the offing. “We will be able to know the degree of kinship between cave lions and African lions,” he says. The scientists also hope to use radiocarbon analysis to determine how long ago the cats died, thought to be at least 12,000 years, and additional studies will likely provide new insights into what they ate and how they adapted to the frigid conditions of the chilly steppe habitats they one prowled. Switek, B. (2015) Meet Uyan and Dina, frozen cave lion cubs from the ice age. Available at: <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/151119-frozen-cave-lion-cub-siberia-uyan-dina-archaeology/> [Accessed: 23 November 2015]. I really didn't enjoy this zine session. I find collaging a major downfall for me, especially in short time periods, as I feel that I end up making a design horror. I couldn't deal with all the glueing and sticking of fiddly bits of paper. This session highlighted this for me greatly and I definitely do not want to create my editorial design handcrafted and traditionally, I'll be using InDesign as I find it more efficient for myself to create neat and clean designs.
We had a practice run of how to present our piece for the exhibition. We agreed that the suitcases were the best method to display our theme of migration. We blended the two different tableau ideas we did with the objects inside the suitcases themselves, placed appropriately for viewing as if being documented. We wanted our work to encourage public interaction, therefore we incorporated an amp playing our sounds within a suitcase to attract the public closer, and with the flaps closed to entice them to open and find out the contents themselves.
As we talked more about our thoughts of our theme of the migration the Joads took over to California set in the 1930s, we realised this was always a reoccurring theme throughout history that still happens today. We thought it was very relevant to the current refugee crisis across Europe with refugees arriving from Syria. We took this as an opportunity to make our work relevant to both the novel and the current crisis. We agreed that it'd be a good idea based on the Charlie Abbots zine making workshop to create and reproduce a zine beside a donation jar, with all donations going to a chosen charity that helps the refugees.
Having two musicians in the group was fortunate as we managed to achieve some lovely music to comply our theme of journey across the mother road. We also incorporated the sounds that the leather suitcases made. Overall the sounds we created felt authentic to our theme of the book and believed it'd be a shame to not include them in our final creation.
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