10 different animals, made out of type. Not as much a typographical, but a print project. Each of the animals will be printed with a different technique. Like etching, screen printing, linocut… Just a lot of fun.

Alka-Linux is a complete relief from proprietary software tools.

This was one of the last projects I did. Collaboration with Alex from Morphix team, he needed a logo and backgrounds for a distribution of Linux that will be used by Economists at University of Pisa in Italy. The name they came up was Alka-Linux, as a link to Alka-Seltzer that removes pain and helps your “headache” in the morning. I think the funny and nice thing was that they wanted a Fizzy Logo, like the bubbles that come up out of tablets that you dissolve in a glass of water.

The Tux Pingvin was drawn by: Sandra Kleine Staarman, which I think goes great with the Logo + they have a mascot to use.

This week I attended the Affordable Art Fair at the Battersea Park in London. Contemporary Art under 3000 pounds, the Spring addition which was running from 13th – 16th March 2008. After a nice walk from the Sloane Square Underground station we got a free entrance to the event. Thanks Urška for the ticket.

The Fair started with the University of Arts London show: The Shape of Things to Come, which showed 22 artists from BA and MA courses of St. Martins, Chelsea, LCC and other London Arts colleges. Some where extraordinary cool, other boring and no idea behind it, but I guess thats with all things. A walk further on into the actual fair opened a view to narrow paths, loads of people and many galleries. There was so much work on sale that you had a hard time actually looking at everything while you also had to watch out for people bumping into you, because the crowd was quite big.

What interested me into going was that this is where you actually see the current trends in contemporary art and what people actually buy. Most of the things are still paintings, there is a lot of printmaking also, some etchings and screenprints. Photography is probably next and bronze and other sculptures. Most of the paintings and even other stuff is not something that you would shout: WOW. But you can still find neat little stuff, like porcelain Penguins and bronze Kendoka, and even some more modern characters painted on canvas. Other things are mostly your usual landscape and portrait paintings for living room.

Overall I liked to see what goes on in the Art market and also the prices that you can actually afford, even though sometimes still you though, what the hell how can that be priced at 400 pounds. But I suppose it will always be there. And yea I would be really happy if one time my work actually finds a place at a show like that.

Flickr Affordable Art Fair photos.

Me and schoolmate Ian went down to Cornwall, a little coast town called Falmouth for their Postgraduate Open Day. We stayed down for two days. The train journey takes about 4,5 hours and it starts to get boring after about a hour or two. Read almost the whole Terry Pratchett’s Wintersmith book. Finished it today in the end.

Falmouth is a nice little town, kinda reminded me of Slovenian Piran, do not really know why. From the center there is 5-10min walk to get to the beach and there also docks a bit away from town. Interesting was that we came down around 5 o’clock and walked to the town center which was totally dead. No one seemed to be out at all. Well it was kind of windy, as the worst storm of this year was just a day ago in more or less whole of England. Wind accompanied us through the whole journey, next to the castle it was so strong you actually walked like in a cartoon fighting against the wind because of the strength it had.

The University College of Falmouth is also a nice little Uni. Its Woodlane campus is located in the centre of town, while the other one is about 15min journey with the train away. The whole place looks like a botanical garden, there are Palms everywhere and tropical flowers, between them there are buildings, where each course has their own studios and you see people working on stuff through the windows. The leader of the course for MA Graphic Design also answered a lot of our questions and gave us all the information that we needed. The course is totally new, it will be first year of MA in the next year, but they have spent a lot of time doing everything to make it really best for students. It certainly made me think also of Falmouth as a MA option.

Other than that the trip was quite uneventful, with the exception of a fight in a pub between French sailors. Oh yeah, they have old English Pubs still down there. And a few pictures of the trip.

This time he’s a bit bigger. And he never forgets.

He was a bit lonely, so I made him a friend. I think this one is related to the Milka cow.

Torej, ker že nekaj časa nisem pisal kaj se kaj dogaja na faksu nam napišem malo več o aktualnih stvareh ter kaj smo kaj počeli v zadnjem mesecu. Dočakali smo konec 1. semestra in s tem tudi konec dejanske Socrates Erasmus izmenjave. Uspelo se je vpisati v 2. semester na lastno željo ter po parih tednih tudi dobiti papir s odoboreno prošnjo za podaljšanje študija v tujini s strani Univerze v Ljubljani. Seveda s plačilom semestra iz lastnih financ. Poleg standardnih treh predmetov, tokrat v večernih urah nadaljujem s Advanced Printmaking ter novim Introduction to Life Drawing na katera sem se še prijavil. Sicer pa ja semester se je tudi že začel, na začetku bolj počasi in zaspano, sedaj pa se že počasi nabira toliko stvari, da se ne vidiš ven naslednjih 12 tednov kolikor je še faksa.

Če še opišem torej predmete 2.semestra:
Design Portfolio (Part 2)
Enako kakor prejšnji semester, 3-4 tedne trajajoči projekti za gradnjo osebnega portfolia. Dobiš brief, razviješ idejo, se veliko pogovarjaš s profesorjem in tudi sošolci ter na koncu 3min predstavitev končnega izdelka. Prvi je že šel mimo. Drugi je v izdelavi.

Concept Development
To je predmet namesto diplome. Spisati je potrebno 3000 besed dolg esej o tem kako delaš izdelek. Izdelek pa je potrebno naresti kot odgovor na nek predmet, ki si ga našel v Reading Muzeju. Torej je potrebno razviti idejo in sproducirati izdelek ter vse to opisati v eseju skupaj s referencami. Vseeno manj kakor dejansko dizertacija.

Major Project
Glavni projekt tega letnika. 14 tednov časa za osebni projekt. Mora biti velik in dejansko potreben 14 tednov za izpeljavo. Predvsem osebno raziskovanje določene teme in produkcija večjega izdelka. Projekt, ki je kakor diploma, samo da je končni izdelek. Trenutno že v stadiju razvoja in raziskovanja, naslednji teden pa že potrebno dejansko prinesti koščke nečesa narejenega in otipljivega za kritiko.

Koliko časa je potrebno biti na faksu morda porečete? “Predavanja”, ki to niso ampak so tutoriali v skupini ali pa individualno imamo 2dni na teden, sredo in četrtek. Petek je poljuben prosti termin v mac učilnici ali pa printmaking studiu kjer lahko vprašaš kaj bolj tehničnega, printaš izdelke ali pa imaš tudi tutorial s profesorjem. Nasploh predavanj dejansko ni več, ampak je vse le osebno pogovarjanje s profesorjem in sošolci, da dobiš odzive na svoj izdelek. Vse ostalo pa je na nas samih kaj hočemo naresti in tudi kako si organiziramo cajt.

Running at the moment:
Black Turtle Media (Portfolio competition), first award 1000$, deadline: 7th March
Good 50×70 2008 (Poster competition), helping charities, deadline 20th April
Data Portability (Logo competition), iphone, cash, web tools, deadline: 11th March
Firefox 3 T-Shirt (T-shirt competition), a shirt+publicity, deadline: 16th March.

There are others also, updated regularly on Graphic Design: basics.

Cambridge. What to say about the town. Dates back to Roman times, it got its name after the crossing over River Cam, thus Cam-bridge. Got started as a Uni town by a few people that left Oxford and settled down here. A few known people had attended their education here, like Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Prince Charles and others.

My view as I can imagine to study here must be amazing, but other then that I found the town not actually that nice. The whole town is more or less just churches wherever you can see. I don’t know, but I fancy that Oxford is nicer than Cambridge. It is still a town to come and spend the day in the market or just going through the churches, but other then that nothing really special.