Typographic Posters

My sister (Rachael) is about to begin a residency in Holland as part of an art collective and she wanted some suggestions for a poster. These were what I made. Links to the place and final poster to come.

Just popping in...

Nothing worse than an untended blog I know, but things have been quite busy and I haven't had much time for personal projects and haven't had the internet at home. A good double excuse for you there. Anyway, a couple of pictures of my bike hanging with his friends at work to keep things going.

Update.

Time for an update. I know I haven't been producing a lot on here recently. I thought I should say a bit about whats been going on. I'm doing a placement at a company called onedotzero at the moment, see them here.

It's a great spot, you can see some of the stuff I'm involved in on their twitter feed twitter/onedotzero. I bike in each day and am slowly getting hooked on the whole biking thing. Nothing shows this more than the fact I spent the entire weekend taking apart, respraying and rebuilding my bike (it used to be blue and yellow). The pictures are below and its quickly starting to become my pride and joy.

New Banner

The new banner for the onedotzero home page. Something I have been working on in the last few days when I have a spare moment. Check out there site at onedotzero.com

Design meets Science.

Tonight was spent photographing this event at Imperial College. A blind date style match up between the two.

Bank Holiday Jam

So when you have fruit, sugar and are waiting for a T.V repair man on a bank holiday what do you do? Make and brand your own Jam. Simple.

Final Day Mosaic

y last day at St Lukes and we were working on the painting of the week by Lowry. The idea was to create a giant collaborative mosaic of the picture, with each child taking an a5 peice. It worked well, but we didn't have time to finish.

Packaging with the Children

The last three weeks have been on Packaging with the children. We started by using a pre made net and getting the children to understand how you fold and create a box. Then we moved on to them designing their own using a matrix. As ever some really impressed with their ability to think differently and understand a concept. One hild had the front door of a house as his opening for putting his D.S games in. Just a shame he rushed the making. He planned it all himself though and was very independent.

Deptford Guide: Paice award

A booklet made yesterday for the paice award application we made.

Portfolio

So the long silence has been due to heavy work load putting together a portfolio. Its finished and went on its first outing for an interview with live|work. Getting all the images together, well organised and well printed has obviously taken time. The final look is simple but I think fits really well with my style. I will look into building a cover for it in the next few days. The size is just a little larger than A3.

Diginate.

This was meant to be part of something else, a challenge to write a new illustrated short story everyday this week. It was less successful than hoped. It might resurface as that, but for now its a digital typeface.

Peter Serafinowicz

So I thought this week I would 'make graphic' a quote from his twitter feed each day. If you don't know who he is give him a google, he's a funny guy.

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Friday

Teaching

Friday afternoons are for art class. So far I have been teaching repeating patterns and some of the children have done really well. I mounted them for display this week and they were looking nice. Now just to get used to being referred to Mr Barker. Actually that reminds me, I got asked how come there were no 'man teachers' today, which went some distance towards explaining why I get called Miss as often as Mr. I guess not all 7 year olds have fully grasped the concept of gender.

Black and White

Messing around with Premiere and some old video clips found on an online archive. Nothing particularly substantial but got to do something with it.

Shred Money

Here is a quick video of Bob Dylan talking about money made in Flash.

Videos Presenting the SoLo Concept.

Here our concept videos, explaining how we saw the blocks as being a metaphor for both information and location. Also the kinds of moments that this technology can create.

Animation for Exhibition

Here is an animation that we put together to show how our proposed Nokia presentation stand could look. It was aimed at conveying the mood as well as how the event would work.

Making real life fake.

Tilt shift photography can make even the most real and memorable journey seem like you were just playing with toys in your bedroom, as this image of the fair ground shows you.

Man sized blocks.

In fact blocks that are only really suited for building Brick City, or is that Block City, or indeed even Blog City. Either way, this project entitled Define Your Own City, or is that Blogging: City Building; well you get the point, we haven't settled on a name yet. I spent my day prototyping one possible idea, a multi-coloured blackboard and just applied some paint this evening. Actual chalk images to follow when the shops are open. (Just realised, anyone actually questioning the size from the title, the grids below the image are 5x5cm)

America images.

Just been sorting through photos from America for that section of the website. Take a look at bgbarker.com/america for all of them. I notice that the site is looking fine in Firefox and safari, but not working at all well in IE and Opera, so apologies if you are using either of those browsers.

The Nyctophobic Bible

I was re-photographing this project for my website earlier, with help from the ineffable Simon Cordery (for those who know him). The concept was of a book created for sufferers of Nyctophobia (fear of the dark) using modern parable as a tool to discuss and explore ideas around darkness and death. Using similar concepts to the bible (a slightly grandiose reference I know!).

Check the progress in the design section of the website: bgbarker.com

Nokia and splashes

We presented our ideas to Kin design today for a possible brief with Nokia. It was a midway presentation with a view to generating an idea good enough to present to Nokia in March. One concept was around the idea of using blocks and micro-blogs to represent the communities created by Friend View (the Nokia software we are promoting). Another was around using ripples created by a splash to show the impact a user can have. In this case on vibration sensitive LEDs. Below is some of the content I generated.

New site coming.

Just a quick note on the new site coming, bgbarker.com. Its also a new email address too ben@bgbarker.com. Its just a place holder page at the moment, but it will hopefully incorporate some photography and design. There's also another place to check out, that should be coming soon, www.studioinsideout.co.uk that i'll host.