Top albums 2011:

Top tracks 2011:

I recently visited the London Transport Museum’s ‘Sense and the City’ exhibition in Covent Garden. This was a good opportunity to get an insight into themes both directly connected with transport, but also covered a broad range of matters to do with both work and leisure, focusing on our love/hate relationship with the objects we use every day, now and in the past as well as advancements in these things, including buildings and, of course, transport. Although, instead to the exhibition itself, I’m actually going to talk about the curation of the exhibition.

I’d visited the London Transport Museum on one occasion previously, but didn’t quite know what to expect. Partially to my surprise, the event took place in the same area I last visited for their ‘The Art of the Poster’ exhibition whilst studying for my BTEC National Diploma in 2008. This was quite nice as I was immediately familiar with the space and could navigate between the different floors and rooms and barely had to think about what I was doing and could simply focus on the work, whilst taking notes and photos.

The exhibition fell into 2 categories for me. The quite mundane (but of interest) objects, that whilst relevant to the theme, some of which we’re so used to seeing in every day life already (such as an iPhone) that I couldn’t help but question the placement of such things. The other, extremely interesting images and moving images of prototypes of buildings, objects and data visulisations that could have been, or could be in the near future. This was the part had me glad to visit upon leaving, and I have to say I would definitely consider returning soon (with my £10 1 year pass in hand) to study these in more detail. Some of it was pretty enlightening.

This for me is what a good exhibition is all about, getting to see something that you otherwise probably wouldn’t have been able to – or at least taking something quite ordinary (like data) and turning it into something useful and interesting.

On the basic level of the presentation of this exhibition, everything came together fairly well. This was made possible with consistent lighting in each room, typography and colour on the various walls, signs and displays. I’m intrigued as to why quite a cold turquoise colour was chosen as the primary feature of their presentation here. It felt like a lot of the items and achievements on show deserved a warmer, more celebratory and optimistic tone. Maybe some sort of multi-coloured display of various areas would have been welcome, which sounds picky but it felt a bit like the whole exhibition was drowning in the chosen colour-scheme.

As you may have expected from the London Transport Museum, all of the signage and display headings were set in New Johnston, which has of course been a familiar face (excuse the pun) in all London Transport related graphic design since before most of the network as we know it today was even conceived. This certainly helps to give the exhibition a feeling of authenticity, just in case any visitors were in doubt. Although perhaps this would automatically come with a ‘propaganda’ (using that term very lightly) like feeling for some – TfL is a government body, after all – and one that is often under a lot of criticism at the moment – running an exhibition which could have very well had a large input from the Mayor of London himself. It’s very possible that a lot of decisions on what to actually show would have been made somewhere higher up, and perhaps concepts and prototypes left out of the exhibition entirely for this reason. I just thing that’s a relevant point to bring up, whilst discussing out of all things: the curatorial aspect of such an event.

The exhibition is housed in 3 rooms. You’re first directed upstairs to a small area which can only be described as ‘the introduction’, where you find the title of the exhibition as a large illuminated sign. Explained also here is the sub-title – “Smart, connected and on the move” – as well as a short piece of text describing the inspiration for this exhibition, summing up all that is to be found in a few moment’s time. Beyond this are 3 rooms which make up the exhbition; 2 on the same level where it starts and a further room at the bottom of a spiral staircase.

The first room houses display cabinets which split into categories visually and textually demonstrating the different ways in which we have experienced communication, shopping, news, entertainment, socalising and computing in the past – to name just a few. The dates of which these objects originate varied greatly, from newspapers that were 300 years old (The Illustrated London News, from 1878) up to far more contemporary items such as a Game Boy from a mere 15 years ago. You really get a decent snapshot of how all of these different areas have evolved over the years, and how valuable and interesting it can be to collect such things together and present in this way.

Whilst curating objects to show, I think they were trying their best to appeal to everyone, even showing a Harvard t-shirt in one cabinet, with the principal of showing Facebook – as one phase of our technological evolution – at just 7 years old, right next to radios and telephones dating back 75 years and more. Taking pride of place in the center of this room were a RYNO scooter and next to it, a Sinclair C5 – “please do not sit on the exhibit”. Among the ordinary were some surprises, for example, I never knew that London has a pneumatic tube based document carrying system until I saw a small part of it here.

One thing that did catch my attention was the lack of relationship between each object and it’s relevant caption card which described it. If I didn’t have a pre-conceived idea of the appearance of a particular object, I found myself having to use a process of elimination to work out which item was which. Something that is harder than it sounds, with objects such as the pneumatic tube, where I had no idea in which form, or scale this would be shown.

In the second room was an interactive table that LTM describes as the “centre piece” of the exhibition. Oddly enough, this was the one part that didn’t particularly catch my eye and maybe even felt like a bit of an after-thought. It’s not so much that the content here wasn’t interesting, in fact it was the very placement of the table, or more so what was on it that caused me to pay very little attention to this particular feature. Perhaps it suffered amongst the more eye catching displays which surrounded it, or perhaps there is something about interactive touch screens that no longer catches my imagination and always feels quite gimmicky. There’s no doubt I’ll be heading back soon for a more detailed look at the whole exhibition, and this table in particular.

Also in this room were a wall of ideas and image/video prototypes courtesy of students from the Royal College of Art. I thought directly collaborating with an postgraduate course in this way was a great idea. Presumably students would have been set a brief by the museum itself. The ideas here ranged from the expected (buses with large scale moving adverts on the side, although still wonderfully executed) to the more creatively gripping, such as Alice Moloney’s “Discover your borough” an arty and more thought provoking, public involving wayfinding system for pedestrians. I thought this exhibition was effective in that it combined a lot of ‘to the point’ concepts alongside more radical ideas and prototypes – a lot of which really get any creative person thinking, I’m sure. That is certainly how I came away from this.

Staying in the second room, on the opposite wall could be found a wall of words and definitions, each one depicting a certain term that has emerged in this internet and mobile boom of recent years. I found this quite interesting from a curatorial perspective as this display would have a very split effect on different visitors. Many of which will at least be familiar with the majority of these terms. Some I guess would (at no fault of their own) have no idea whatsoever. How many would really know what the role of an API is? How many even care? Nonetheless, the wall certainly does a fine job in giving you a rundown of such terms.

Talking about the use of APIs, if you head downstairs you will find what I personally found to be the most interesting part of the entire event. A multitude of displays showing visualisations of various data collected across London, the UK and the rest of the world. One of these shows the activity of buses, over a 24 hour period on a typical day, overlaid onto a map of the UK. Another showed every Oyster smartcard interaction in (and on the edge of) that happened London in a day. These were shown as briefly flashing dots – red for each tap-in and green for each tap-out. I found this fascinating as it gives you a never before seen (although logical) idea of how people move into, across and out of London during the average work day. A lot of patterns emerge here, such as the amount of morning commutes that begin in outer London (and it’s surrounding counties) and finish in ‘zone 1′. I thought the way these displays were brought together was excellent and was one part that most definitely made me feel this was a great exhibition to visit.

To summarise, there were highs and lows to the curation of this exhibition for myself. I thought that the pieces on show were for the most part well considered and reflected the museum’s description of Smart, connected and on the move. I didn’t feel as if the organisation was all that it could have been, and would have preferred if there was more of an overall hierarchy as to how the various parts of the exhibition were ordered and displayed. It sounds picky, but being a museum officially related to London Transport, you have certain pre-conceptions of what to expect in terms of layout and order, and I didn’t quite think these expectations were met. Needless to say, this is just a matter of taste and personal opinion. But it is well known that anything related to London Transport has traditionally come with a certainly level and hierarchy – something that was not followed through in this exhibition. Preferences aside, I thought the all-over selection and curation of everything on display was very good and successfully kept up the LTM’s reputation of having something for everyone to enjoy.

If you’d like to visit, Sense and the City is open until the 18th March 2012 at London Transport Museum in Covent Garden.

On Thursday afternoon, after our VCT tutorials and before our group’s GDF meeting, I took part in a last minute typography workshop with Ben Richards.

Specifically, this workshop was involved cutting up existing typefaces into hybrids, or attempting to create abstract (or not so abstract) letterforms out of ordinary type samples.

It’s always interesting to see what 25 people will individually produce in this sort of task.

On Thursday we held our second Graphic Design Fundamentals meeting, with the aim of deciding on 3 clients (an international one, a national one and a local one) from which we could individually pick our own final client to progress onto the next stage of the project with.

After agreeing on a list of suitable potential clients, we finally managed to cut it down to just 3 — those are the ones above which have stars next to them.

The idea is now to choose one of these 3 myself and begin to research it in detail. This will be the client that I will then set myself a brief for.

On Wednesday (and thanks(!) to one of my course tutors Paul) I attended Glug – a ‘Notworking’ event put on by Ian Hambleton (Studio Output) and Nick Clement. This was a talk by 3 members of the 23 year old multi-disciplinary London based creative agency Intro.

After an hour or so of drinking (er, I mean ‘socialising’) and talking to some local creatives, the night was introduced by the duo that make up Glug.

There was a pre-talk performance by Public Service Broadcasting and a “Yarn Bombing” by Aimee Diamond, which I somehow managed to miss!

Julian House, Julian Gibbs and Adrian Talbot of Intro (not necessarily in that order, though!)

They talked about and showcased many years worth of Intro’s work, which included projects for bands including Oasis, Primal Scream, The Prodigy, Robbie Williams, Pet Shop Boys, and the Rolling Stones as well as campaigns (and some identities) for companies such as Nike, the BBC, Converse, YO! Sushi, Virgin Media, MTV, The Guardian, Coca-Cola, O2, the Southbank Centre and Arts Council England.

Intro works in a partnership format, where the different team members specialise and work in different sectors such as music, sport and broadcasting. Despite a slight lack of space to sit (and the noisy bar right outside) it was an enjoyable night! I’ll definitely be looking out for future Glug events.

Today was the introduction to our Graphic Design Fundamentals assignment, in which we were introduced to the “basics and realities of professional communication design practice” and “instead of quickly focusing on the production of an outcome such as a poster, page layout, logo or the usual expected designed format” we “explore the whole design process in a much deeper manner appropriate for Higher Education level study”. Sorry to lift straight from the brief, but it’s the easiest way for me to digest what’s happening!

We spent the day with in newly chosen project groups (6B, myself) with tutors Paul in the morning, and Darren in the afternoon, completing different tasks and being introduced to new thinking processes such as ‘Six Thinking Men’ and VALs (or ‘values and lifestyles’) — both of which I hope to talk about on here soon! (massive ‘note to self’ there!)

By a dice-roll, our client sector (‘Leisure & Entertainment’) and target audience (‘Actualisers’) for the entire project were selected. Now, as a group, we will meet up to research these areas and make decicions about the project. It’s quite a lengthy project (which I’m looking forward to!) and final work will be produced as individuals and I’ll be following all progress on this blog, if all goes to plan!

On a slightly related but not at all related note(?) I also (for the first time since being here!) ventured (seemed like that at the time anyway) to the top of LCC’s Tower Block with Grace and Faye. The view from up here are amazing! I guess being where LCC is, you can see the whole of central London and beyond. This photo doesn’t do it any justice – hardly any of the view fitted in. And don’t get me started on the smudgy window it was taken through.  But check out that blanket of clouds! Had to check I hadn’t done some iffy manipulations to this after uploading and it was actually like this it seems – didn’t notice at the time! What is going on there?

I recently went to the London screening of Gavin Strange‘s new documentary ‘BÖIKZMÖIND‘ (that’s Bristolanguage for “bikes, mind” so I’ve been told!), which happened in the Apple store in Regent Street. It’s all about the people and culture of fixed gear cycling in the city of Bristol and features various interviews from local riders, shop owners, etc.

I was quite excited to see this, as I’d been following along the process on Gavin’s Twitter (and blog) and had also become quite intrigued by the rapidly growing popularity of this type of bicycle, particularly in areas like Bristol and London.

It didn’t disappoint – it’s quite impressive that this idea started off so small and actually resulted in a full length documentary. I’d like to watch it again sometime on a smaller screen. Showing something like this in somewhere like an Apple store is a great idea but it’s not the best when you’re short sighted (…and haven’t bothered to get new glasses in a few months.)

There are lots more screenings coming up soon, in the UK as well as lots of other places – here’s the website! It’s a really great example of someone making a personal project out of something they’re really passionate about.