my name is ruth, hello.

Hey, I’m in this months Arts Thread magazine!

My Degree Project got published in Arts Thread Magazine. Yay!

For my bestie Julie moving down to London, I wanted to make her something to make her feel welcome and to know what is good to do in London.

Since my history is in maps I decided to make a map to show places of interest; popular tube stops, my work, restaurants, pubs etc. It also got me being creative again and do something different than just cards.

This blog post is massively delayed. I didn’t post it because I didn’t feel I was saying anything worth blogging, but there is some work I liked and want to put on my blog.

A couple of months ago I visited The Air Gallery in the West End of London to see The Art of Mapping. An exhibition about, you guessed it, maps.

Ever since I started researching maps over a year ago I developed an interest into them and would love to continue to design and create maps in the future and when I saw the article about the exhibition in Grafik, I knew I had to make the effort to go.

My first favourite was Gonkar Gyatso’s Chelsea map, a mixed media collage on paper. Just up my street, I love that kind of stuff. Typically, I can’t find the Chelsea illustration online, and I didn’t take a picture, but with a google search I found work of his that is similar.

I liked the relaxed and fun tone it portrayed but the messages it evoked were real. With the Chelsea image it brought up Occupy Wall Street as well as World Trade Center.

Another favourite I saw at the exhibition was Claire Brewster’s work.

She had cut out birds from maps and hung them on the wall. I really liked the colours of the map used which reflected feathers of the birds and the shadows on the wall the birds created. It is so simple and humble and shows how maps can be used not just to navigate but for art.

I have followed Stephen Walter’s work from last year when I watched ‘The Beauty of Maps’ on BBC and I am inspired by his simple, fun illustrative maps.

Cai Yuan created ‘One World, One Dream’ representing all the countries, different colours, different shapes as singular countries but with one dream.

All of the above work inspires me that I can use my “old fashioned” art skills in this digital world to create pieces of art that will still stand out. 

Found this on Notcot. Amazing.

The seven of us are working on our exhibition space right now for New Designers.

We are creating an app to go along with our exhibition and decided that, with the New Designers space looking quite like a maze, and not the best piece of information design to look at, it made sense for me to create a map for the exhibition.

We wanted a simple map that showed the user in a simple yet nicely designed way how to get to our space. (we were also kind and added in Product Design in as well)

The map will be displayed in the app on information about New Designers.

I’m quite pleased with the map. It’s nice to look at, (always a plus) and managed to churn it out in a couple days. Something visual to add to my portfolio that is more along the lines of what I want to do.

These are the maps I bought off the Herb Lester website today. (the link is a couple posts down)

They’re so nice! Excited to get them. I especially like the New York one, love the colour and style of the map. Nice to look at but can still be used as an information map!

Also proves that despite the fact my map project is finished I am still searching and buying maps. I would love to map awesomely lovely maps for a living!

… I have completely abandoned this blog. I said to myself, despite my last year of uni coming to an end in a couple of weeks, I would keep this blog up to date with stuff I like, and write to take my mind off uni. Well it turns out there is no time to take my mind off uni, and for the last 2 months, uni and my project have all I thought about.

But now, today, I suddenly realised I am out of the fog that was the stress, anxiety, panic, even more stress, and come out the other end with a project I am actually pleased with. Over the last few months I have written my first design proposal highlighting the areas of my project I am focusing on and what I intended to create, made sheets researching into different design aspects of my project, as well as different technologies I could have used. I spent one month simply researching my project in order to know for certain I was creating a project I knew through and through, and looked into multiple areas which allowed me to make sure I was designing something I was 100% happy with. I planned the making process so I could keep all the areas of the project I was making together, as to not let one area fall back (despite me not liking some parts!) I then I made. I made 2 maps, from scratch. Traced them, scanned them, vectorised them, then designed them. I then designed a brochure for the user to use and visualise their map. I created an animation of the online stage of my project, as well as a working prototype for users to interact with. I then began to film, edit and produce a video showing my project in action, along with 100 words de scripting my project and why I chose my project. I took 500 photos to pick just one photo for my one great image. I am now in the process of bringing it all together for Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design Degree Show 2011. Four years of practice has brought me to this stage. Words cannot describe how scared I am, but I feel proud of what I’ve managed to accomplish. 

So what is my project I have spent over a year researching and working on? My next post will reveal all! (bet everyone can’t wait…)

Finished! I have scanned it and got it into Photoshop. Now onto the hard part. Despite being a very technologic course. Technology doesn’t work for me when I want it too. 

Went to Ikea tonight, and came across this print. My degree project seems to be the ‘In Thing’ just now. This could be a good thing or a bad thing. I’m going to take it as a good thing. I would love to be able to sell my prints of my maps on. How amazing would that be!