Christmas 2018

After much head scratching, this was the Christmas card for 2018. It's our new cat flying out with the presents. Picture was drawn with Derwent Intense Pencils, plus a little help from Photoshop. Photoshop added a couple of shadows and added the white lines which had disappeared when I got the paper too wet.

Inktense

Probably my favourite watercolour pencils. Not joking. I've tried a number of different sets of watercolour pencils - and I always come back to these. Three reasons: controllability, the strength of colour when wetted and the permanence when dry. I first discovered these a few years ago, but until now I've never had a set as large as this. The wooden case is a nice way to store them and a real plus.
When I'm using these I like to do an outline first. Normally I use the Indigo pencil, sketching lightly as I don't want to drive the colour into the paper at this point. Incidentally, I use Derwent's watercolour paper,  as it has a particularly smooth surface. Then, using a bush I hydrate the lines I want and bring them out to a wash if required. Finally I rub out with a regular eraser all the lines I don't want. As long as the paper is very dry, I leave it overnight usually, this works pretty well.
Then because the wetted pencil is dry and therefore permanent I add the other colours as required. One thing I do is check the colours, both by themselves and as over colour; Inktense pencil colours are a lot brighter and often slightly different to what you might expect so it pays to test somewhere. If you look at the sample picture you can see where I've done this along the lefthand edge.

After that, I use them like waterproof inks. Shade the areas I want to colour, use a water brush to stroke out the colour, let it dry and apply more as required. The image attached to this review is a section of one I did for a Christmas card this year and other than a few black lines done with a Derwent fine liner is all inktense pencils. I should note that this had further work done after this scan; but I think it shows the versatility and colour you can expect.
If I have one niggle, it's that the pencil is quite soft and doesn't hold a point for very long. I can work with that, but it would be nice to see these available in a mechanical pencil one day.  Until then, I'm very happy with my 48!

Print conundrum and smooth running...

Been trying to help with a print job. Author has had all sorts of issues. One thing that rand an alarm bell was finding out that the author needed to edit a PDF. 
Noooooo....

This isn't good. I know you can (After all I did the Adobe exam in PDF many years ago) but really PDF is a delivery medium. Not a work in progress file. They are designed to be bolted down. Attempts to do big edits is nearly always bad voodoo.

Suggested workflow

This is the kind of workflow you need. Basically, it's your text > InDesign >PDF. Consider each of the ">" as a one-way street.

In more detail:

1. Your manuscript. Completely finished and proofread, any graphics either scanned properly or to be created. Once you’ve passed it over, I wouldn’t expect anything other than very minor tweaks to the copy. You need/should not do any formatting other than very basic forms such as Chapter heads, subheads, lists, footnotes. If you are doing an index that will be done after formatting. Page numbers/folios will be added automatically, Contents, footnotes will be positioned and generated automatically.
2. I would take your text file and images (if any) and would do a quick and dirty format to judge length etc. I would properly format a chapter and send that back to you as a pdf for checking approval of layout style, fonts, sizes, etc.
3. Then make tweaks as required. 
4. Once approved the remaining sections of the book would be formatted - each chapter, if it suited the book, would be sent for proofing individually.
5. Once whole book approved, print-ready PDF would be generated. 

Printing the book.

Then I looked around for some low-run print prices. As usual huge variation, from around £3.50 a copy to over £8. Same product, same quantity, same spec. 

I only half understand why this is. I assume that expensive printer may be subcontracting to cheap. Or quality may be different, or expensive printer deals with people who need a lot of hand-holding while cheap printer just talks print speak. But it's still a huge difference.

Aims for lessons 2018

Some of the graphics I generate for lesson aims and objectives...

Deciding fonts

Fretting about #fonts. Drawing a #map for #bathfringefestival Need to decide font. Narrowed it down to eight, from around 30. Rejected some on legibility issues, all were not expensive to licence.

Want it to look like a paper cut. Was going to use Lasercutter, but I think I've run out of time on that and will have to fake it. Got to be legible, fit the style, simple outlines. Here's the two I have narrowed it down to. Which would you choose?

Short thought on brands

Branding has become a modern mantra. To listen to some authorities, the brand is the most important part of the marketing operation. Brands have their Bible, making sure that fonts, logos, straplines and all the rest of it is kept pure and holy by the ruffians who may not know or care.
Some people are attracted to brands. They sport the labels to prove they are buying, consuming, the right products. Some people keep the tags on to make sure you know it's genuine (and therefore probably expensive) and not the mirror image knock off.
Sometimes, of course the genuine article will save your life, and the brand may be an assurance of that. But no-one ever got killed by a pair of jeans.
But it's not for me.
The product is the most important thing. I do not care for logos on their own. If the product isn't any good the brand also is probably rubbish. You can stick your logo on any amount of goods. Things do not become magically worth far more because they have a prestigious label attached; although they may sell for far more. I recall when people walked around with the word 'Bench' in very large letters across their bum. Or when 'Joe Bloggs' was seen everywhere (Gone bust now I believe).
Make a product that is honest, does what it says and then hang your branding on that if you want to. Style it modestly if need be. But don't just stick a logo on it.

References:

Naoni Klein, No logo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Logo
Adbusters: http://adbusters.org
Branding: http://www.wefirstbranding.com/advertising/what-to-do-when-good-brands-make-bad-things-or-bad-brands-do-good/
https://www.brandingmag.com/2013/08/15/is-luxury-branding-bad-for-society/
Personal branding: http://www.brandquarterly.com/why-personal-branding-sucks-and-is-bad

Cybernetic Serendipity

Sometimes there are things that we read, go to, explore or otherwise encounter that change our course  in life. Pivotable points that can be looked back on. Cybernetic Serendipity was one of those for me and I thought at its 50th anniversary (Really, that long?!?), I would have a pause and reflect.

Cybernetic Serendipity was the first international exhibition devoted to the relationship between the arts and computers. It showed what artists could do with computers, and what scientists were trying to do. The exhibition ran from 2 August - 20 October 1968; I was 13 at the time, and I attended on a number of occasions.
At the time, I didn't know if I wanted to be a scientist or an artist. Probably somewhere in between. At 13, I hadn't realised how much maths was involved in science - and maths was easily my worst subject. In fact I had to wait until I was 59 to get my maths GCSE..! I was an avid reader of Practical Electronics through and it was through that magazine I became acquainted with Cybernetic Serendipity. 
I recall the first time I went in. A long gallery, on the left were some tortured televisions by 
Nam June Paik, and Bruce Lacey's robot actors. On the left were exhibits of computer graphics from IBM and Honeywell. In the middle, what was to become one of my favourite objects, SAM (Sound Activated Module) a device that listened to you and turned to face you. Surprisingly, the same object, much battered turned up at the Science Museum's Robot show in 2017.

Further down on the left were spherical pods that you could sit in and listen to electronic music, something I was, and still am, a fan of. At the end was a mini cinema showing computer generated films. Swirling dots forming intricate patterns.
Somewhere while at this show, I decided that this was the way for me to go. Computers could help artists generate things that were not possible in other ways. Robots could be entertaining and film need not be passive. Art wasn't just in stuffy galleries visited and run by people who used long words.
Somehow I wanted to be part of this new revolution, but it would be some years.
Of course now the computer is almost invisible; we interact with software. As long as it doesn't get in the way the hardware is not much thought about, and we use the software most times as consumers and are bound by it. I guess most times that's always going to be true however hard it is delved into, but I hate it when people tell me about 'digital natives' when in fact these natives are just consumers of information. The only difference between them and perhaps their great grandparents is that the digital native carries the telly in their pocket. Not a huge box rented from Granada or Radio Rentals.
Cybernetic Serendipity wasn't the only time a computer changed my life, that happened a couple of times later as well; but it was the first and the most forceful.

References:

An unofficial archive: http://cyberneticserendipity.net
Bruce Lacey's robot (also tons of other Robots): http://cyberneticzoo.com/robots/1965-rosa-bosom-bruce-lacey-british/
Computer art: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/exhibitions/serendipity/images/1/
SAM: http://www.senster.com/ihnatowicz/SAM/sam.htm
http://ccg.doc.gold.ac.uk/serendipityaisb18/papers/paper_9.pdf
http://www.senster.com/ihnatowicz/SAM/sam2.htm
Studio International: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/cybernetic-serendipity-history-and-lasting-legacy
SAM at the Science Museum Robot show: https://twitter.com/tillyblyth/status/833845557659594753
Catalogue online (or I have a copy): https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinrocket/sets/72157625225644742/with/5107991945/ It's bit expensive if you want to buy one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cybernetic-Serendipity-Computer-editor-Reichardt/dp/B0007JAI5Q/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
There's even a convention this year: http://ccg.doc.gold.ac.uk/serendipityaisb18/#about
Looking back with Jasia Reichardt : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSwovB28B34