I was very excited about this project as it was more suited for the area I am going into after the foundation course. I enjoyed being able to pick the projects that we wanted to do out of a number of options as we had the choice of working with topics that were more suited to our style or doing a project that wasn't in our comfort zone but that would make our portfolios more versatile.
When researching both the New Scientist and Economist magazine covers I found that some were more graphic or more illustrative than others. I liked how in most cases the designer seemed to pick at least two words from the given title to work with by merging sometimes obvious images associated with the words and putting a whole other spin on the concept being discussed. For example the illustration in the image below features the trail of a "butterfly" forming the shape of a cloud, an image obviously associated with "climate".
Out of the 8 titles we had to chose from I thought that Artificial intelligence was the most interesting topic to work with. I started to experiment with imagery I personally associated with Artificial intelligence including mechanical cogs and code. I also liked the idea of using an image of an eye as this is one of the most common associations with a human's unique identity, an aspect of the human condition which is ultimately destroyed in the creation of AI. I feel that only time will tell wether AI is a good or bad thing for the human race, as it could provide us with so many advantages, for example it could be used to do many jobs that humans might find undesirable, however there is also the prospect that it could potentially be dangerous. I feel that the title "Artificial intelligence wins" could be indicative or either side of the argument, therefore I didn't wish to portray any bias surrounding the topic in my magazine cover but instead focus purely on the visual and what images came to mind when thinking of the subject.
I then went on to do colour and typography experiments for the outcome.
When researching both the New Scientist and Economist magazine covers I found that some were more graphic or more illustrative than others. I liked how in most cases the designer seemed to pick at least two words from the given title to work with by merging sometimes obvious images associated with the words and putting a whole other spin on the concept being discussed. For example the illustration in the image below features the trail of a "butterfly" forming the shape of a cloud, an image obviously associated with "climate".
Some covers, like the one above I liked more for their conceptual purpose and use of word play but for others it was the intriguing visual qualities that really inspired me (see bellow).
Out of the 8 titles we had to chose from I thought that Artificial intelligence was the most interesting topic to work with. I started to experiment with imagery I personally associated with Artificial intelligence including mechanical cogs and code. I also liked the idea of using an image of an eye as this is one of the most common associations with a human's unique identity, an aspect of the human condition which is ultimately destroyed in the creation of AI. I feel that only time will tell wether AI is a good or bad thing for the human race, as it could provide us with so many advantages, for example it could be used to do many jobs that humans might find undesirable, however there is also the prospect that it could potentially be dangerous. I feel that the title "Artificial intelligence wins" could be indicative or either side of the argument, therefore I didn't wish to portray any bias surrounding the topic in my magazine cover but instead focus purely on the visual and what images came to mind when thinking of the subject.
One technique that particularly caught my interest when researching previous magazine covers for these companies was the use of negative spaces. One artist I know who repetitively uses this concept is John Stezaker. Within his work the contrast of images within the original and the negative space work to take the viewer into a different dimension. However I wanted to use this technique to explore the contrast between the very normal image of human life as we know it and the injection of AI which seems somewhat "unnatural" to us. This might suggest how in the future this technology could be hidden amongst us without our recognition.
I experimented with filling the negative portrait space with the image of machine cogs and then decided to illustrate this image.
I then went on to do colour and typography experiments for the outcome.
This lead me on to create my first final outcome pictured bellow. Although I thought it was quite successful, I wanted to develop this project further and spent more time than I perhaps should have doing a second outcome.
Another image that came to mind when thinking about the subject was the image of neurons particularly in the human brain.
I then started to experiment with ways of creating this image for example using watercolours, inks and a straw to blow the colours in different directions away from a centre point.
I also crinkled up foil and scaned this into the computer. I additionally used this piece of foil to take rubbings of the texture which also created an interesting image.
It was then suggested to me by one of the tutors that I could layer my previous illustrated image of the mechanical cogs and the scan of the crinkled foil on top of each other using the layer blending tool on photoshop, which worked well creating many different image options.
The outcome which I liked the most was the middle one in the picture above and I decided to use this to create a second outcome for the magazine cover.
I would have to say that I prefer the second outcome as it wasn't intentional, and I think that the spontaneous nature of it makes it increasingly successful.
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