The manifesto is developing, I have made two collages one using song lyrics from Bob Dylan which reflects the kind of visuals and music I like and another about traveling which links directly to my manifesto point. I wanted to incorporate something from my COP module as this is all relevant to my practice. The most interesting area of research I did whilst undertaking the project was the theory and William Morris' values and how the industrial revolution impacted on the way Frank Pick designed the modernist London Underground. I started looking at William Morris and his beliefs and he talks about his appreciation for nature and the beauty of it, and how everything from nature has a certain beauty whereas man made produce can be beautiful or ugly. I wanted to add this into my manifesto as I like what William Morris represents. I started looking at Morris quotes highlighting these areas:
Morris quotes on nature and beauty:
“Everything made by man’s hands has a form, which must be either beautiful or ugly; beautiful if it is accord with Nature, and helps her; ugly if it is discordant with Nature, and thwarts her.”
“That art will make our streets as beautiful as the woods, as elevating as the mountain-sides: it will be a pleasure and a rest, and not a weight upon the spirits to come from the open country into a town, every man’s house will be fair and decent, soothing to his mind and helpful to his work: all the works of man that we live among will be in harmony with nature.”
Morris exhorted “those of you who are real artists” to “follow nature” (The Art of the People, 19 February 1879) and argued that, “love of nature in all its forms must be the ruling spirit of such works of art as we are considering” (The Lesser Arts of Life, 21 January 1882). He urged humanity to rediscover “the greatest of all gifts to the world, the very source of art, the natural beauty of the earth” (Speech to the Kyrle Society, 27 January 1881).
He wrote: “There is one duty obvious to us all; it is that we should set ourselves, each one of us, to doing our best to guard the natural beauty of the earth: we ought to look upon it as a crime, an injury to our fellows, only excusable because of ignorance, to mar the natural beauty, which is the property of all men; and scarce less than a crime to look on and do nothing while others are marring it, if we can no longer plead this ignorance.” (The Prospects of Architecture in Civilisation, 10 March 1881)
“Mankind, in striving to attain to a complete mastery over Nature, should destroy her simplest and widest-spread gifts, and thereby enslave simple people to them, and themselves to themselves, and so at last drag the world into a second barbarism… a thousandfold more hopeless, than the first.” (The Beauty of Life)
“We must learn to love the narrow spot that surrounds our daily life for what of beauty and sympathy there is in it. For surely there is no square mile of earth's inhabitable surface that is not beautiful in its own way, if we men will only abstain from wilfully destroying that beauty; and it is this reasonable share in the beauty of the earth that I claim as the right of every man who will earn it by due labour; a decent house with decent surroundings for every honest and industrious family; that is the claim which I make of you in the name of art.”
designing:
I thought because the quotes were concerned with beauty and nature a nice visual would be scanning in flowers and making a collage/pattern out of those, layering them with a Morris quote. I thought the flowers as visuals worked well and it really just depends on the typeface and the layout of the quote.
I first tried looking at script fonts that would work as I thought the contrast of hand written looking text with the layered flower background would work quite well. However, when looking through downloaded script fonts none of them really worked as well as I would of hoped. So I used my own handwriting to see the outcome and also because I thought it would keep a design consistency throughout the designs already created for the manifesto.
However I didn't think this worked as well as I'd hoped and after receiving feedback it was decided that the design would benefit from using a more traditional, classic typeface that reflects Morris.
After asking for some feedback it became apparent that the roses were not instantly obvious, I had thought that the image looked slightly busy. I then tried scanning in a ripped piece of paper which allowed it to look like underneath the ripped stock roses were emerging. I thought this looked slightly better than having the layered flowers take up the whole image.
Originally for this design for the manifesto I wanted to include a William Morris quote as this linked to my COP, however when developing the design I had a new idea for a William Morris quote and so decided to work this design into another quote. I am now going to use a poem by EE Cummings that I feel is appropriate for the imagery and that I can link in with the manifesto on making a point about 'new ideas and development.'
the wind is a lady with
-
the wind is a Lady with
bright slender eyes(who
moves)at sunset
and who—touches—the
hills without any reason
(i have spoken with this
indubitable and green person “Are
You the Wind?” “Yes” “why do you touch flowers
as if they were unalive,as
if They were ideas?” “because,sir
things which in my mind blossom will
stumble beneath a clumsiest disguise,appear
capable of fragility and indecision
—do not suppose these
without any reason and otherwise
roses and mountains
different from the i am who wanders
imminently across the renewed world”
to me said the)wind being A lady in a green
dress,who;touches:the fields
(at sunset)
Originally I thought this idea looked better, however, when receiving feedback I was told it was quite evocative of the first world war, or would be if the roses were poppy's, which I also agreed with. I feel there is something not quite right about the layout with this. I also did another version showing more flowers coming through the paper, however I don't think these are good enough to be the final design:
layout 2:
As I didn't think this design was appropriate for the subject matter I tried a new layout, the first being similar to the original design, however I don't think this looked visually attractive and wasn't very legible. The second was closer to the kind of design I wanted, I scanned in some textured stock and layered it over one side of the poster with the poem over it. This is closer to what I think I want but still not quite right:
layout 3:
This is getting closer to the type of layout I am most happy with. I think the rectangular scan of textured stock makes the design a lot cleaner as opposed to the ripped style above. I prefer the layout on the right hand side as opposed to it being centrally aligned.
layout 4:
I think for the final design it is either out of layout 3 or 4, I think these work best with the vibrant background. Even though I think the typeface works well I feel I should try a different one as Minion Pro is something i've been using quite a lot recently and I don't want the designs to look too similar to other projects.
typeface change:
I wanted to stick with a classic looking serif typeface as I thought this was not only appropriate for the tone of voice and content of the poem but also the imagery that accompanied it. 
final design:
This is the final design after looking at a few variations of layout, I think this one works the best and visually works well together with the poem.
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