Don't Panic:Vogue

Don't Panic send out envelopes aimed at students filled with information packs and each issue includes a poster. Each time an pack is released a competition is held for designers to design a poster with only one word to work on. Our word was "vogue" and we were asked to design 3 main posters based on this word and 30 design treatments. I have to then pick out the most successful one and put it on the don't panic website for the general public to vote for.

Ian Curtis 100 opinions.

Here are a few selected
opinions of Ian Curtis.

1.He's a poet. It was a shame no one took his lyrics seriously.
2.Everyone has their own opinions. It depends on your own personal definition of genius. To me, he was a musical genius,
the inventor of post-punk. And yes, he is the #1 emo.
3.Why is he called a genius? Isn't he ABIT overrated? Random extravagant lead singer killed himself... gifted? Maybe.
But FAR FAR AWAY from being a genius.
4.Ian Curtis: true artist, way ahead of his time.
5.Probably the single most influential person to the Post-Punk genre.
6.Heroes don't kill themselves, except they are inspired from a japanese mythology... he's just like curt cobain...
a victim,nothing more.
7. The guy had a simply phenominal voice
8.hes a hard man to explain isnt he. hes a complicated soul, but brilliant. I think he had big dreams but little motivation.
He had a way with words, phrasing things delicately.
9.Hate.
10.He was about death,bleakness and darkness.
11.Indie bands nowdays either have a generic indie sound or are poor imitations of Ian.
No one can match that poetry.
12. He was a crap dad and a crap husband. Not exactly a role model. But an inspiration? Yes.

100 facts Ian Curtis.




Ian Curtis facts.
1.Born 15th July 1956
2.Died 18th May 1980
3.vocalist and lyricist of Joy Division.
3.Was a fan of David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Jim Morrison.
4.sang in a bass-baritone voice
5.Married Debrah Woodruff 23 August 1975, when he was 19 and she was 18
6.Had a daughter with Debrah named Natalie.
7.In 1976, Curtis met his futurer bandmates,Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook,at a Sex Pistols gig.
8.From his high school days, his ambitions and hopes were focused on the pursuit of art, literature and, most importantly, music.
9.Hung himself in the family kitchen with the washing line.
10.Had an affair with Annik Honore.
11.Ian was obssessed with artists who sung lyrics about death.
12.Was a follower of "Live fast die young"
13.Ian took an accidental overdose of chlorpromazine hydrochloride.
14.January 1979 Ian was diagnosed as epileptic
15.Was 23 years, 10 months and 3 days old when he hung himself.
16.His grave stone was stolen in July 2008 from Macclesfield cemetery.
17.Has the lyrics "Love will tear us apart" engraved
18.His headstone has the inscription "Ian Curtis 18 - 5 - 80" and the lyrics "Love Will Tear Us Apart"
19.Ian's widow, Deborah, penned a biography of her late husband in 1995 titled 'Touching from a Distance.'
20.Suffered from epilepsy and depression. Several times in his life he had to be carried offstage due to epileptic seizures
he suffered during concerts.
21.His second (and final) album with Joy Division - 'Closer' - is considered one of the darkest and most haunting albums in music history.
The lyrics largely document Curtis's emotional turmoil leading up to his suicide.
22.He was found hanged in 1980 with Iggy Pop's "the idiot" still spinning on his turntable.
23.Would now be 53 years, 6 months and 2 days old if still alive today.
24.worked as a civil servant for the government department.
25.Shortly before the end of Ian's life, his wife Deborah had started divorce proceedings and Ian was
no longer living at the family home.
26.In April 1980 Ian was admitted to hospital after taking an overdose of his epilepsy medication.
27.Watched Stroszek, a film by Werner Herzog before hanging himself.
28.Killed himself on the Eve of their american tour.
29.Lived at 77 Barton Street Macclesfield with his wife and daughter.
30.Curtis's last live performance was on 2 May 1980 at Birmingham University,
31.Digital was the last song of his last live performance wih the band.
32.Although predominantly a vocalist, Curtis also played guitar on a handful of tracks.
33.The name "Joy Division" stemmed from the sexual slavery wing of a Nazi concentration camp in the 1955
novel The House of Dolls, and was thought to have been pitched by Curtis.
34.Deborah Curtis wrote Touching from a Distance, published in 1995, a biographical
account of her marriage with Ian, detailing in part his infidelity with Annik Honoré.
35.A wall on Wallace Street in Wellington, New Zealand, had the words "Ian Curtis Lives" written on it shortly after the singer's death.
The message is repainted whenever it is painted over.
36.Experience of epilepsy in himself and others inspired him to write She's Lost Control.
37.At the age of 11 Ian won a scholarship to the King's School in Macclesfield.
38.Was born Ian Kevin Curtis.
39.Grew up listening to The Who and The Rolling Stones, and other heroes of his teenage years.
40.Was 6' 1" tall.
41.Ian first discovered that he suffered from epilepsy in December 1978, while his wife was pregnant with their daughter Natalie.
42 Had attempted suicide before and failed.
43.The day following his suicide attempt, he performed with Joy Division at Derby Hall
44.leading up to his suicide He wrote a letter to his wife Deborah, which spoke of the troubles in his life,
and the love he felt for her and Natalie.
He did write that he wished he was dead, but did not speak of any intentions to kill himself.
After this, he is believed to have taken photographs of his daughter and wife down to look at
45.Is portrayed by Sean Harris in 24 Hour Party People (2002).
45.(personal quote) "All my lyrics are open to interpretation by the individual and imply many different meanings, therefore
their relevance is purely subjective."

Collection 100

Research proposal.

The subject matter of this new brief is..

Ian Curtis

Possible categories and interrelationships I can look at will be...

Music,media,Parenthood,suicide,the music industry,

Research Processes will include..

Primary methods - Interviews with people on opinion about his music

Do they know who he is

Do they know about his life not just his music.

Possibly photography (He's dead so its going to be abit tricky)

Secondary methods - His music and lyrics and pre recorded interviews.

Who and where will I research?

Primary methods.

Leeds/manchester/birmingham public - People who would've been a teenager in the late 70's

and friends

Secondry methods

Lyrics,books,blogs,music forums

Research processes will include...

Photography of his house in 77 Barton Street, Macclesfield, Manchester to get a sense of his surroundings and what he

was faced with everyday he walked out the front door.

Interviews with people of leeds and birmingham and manchester,where Ian was from

to get some knowledge out of people.See how much they know about this almost forgotten legend.

See if his name still lives on though music influences and have people had the same life experince as Ian or Debrah (His wife)

Music recordings from live shows back in late 70's/early 80's

Documentary footage

book about his life.

Visual Language - Lights

Moving on from the last session where we photographed lightswitches.
I thought it would be interesting to literally move on and go on to photograph light/light sources.
This followed the rule from last session which was to photograph a single light source.
Thought this would be an interesting logic because things such as lights have single lightswitches.
eg.we turn on our whole kitchen using one lightswitch which powers one light.
So I went outside the college building (This was a rule) and went round hunting down light sources.
In this festive time of year it was surprisingly difficult finding a single lightsource because there's loads of christmas lights about the city.
These are the ones I think worked particularly well







I think these worked well because they were lightning something up in the background but they were lighting them subtlety.
So I loved these because it showed the function of lights.

Visual Language-Light switches

I worked with Gemma Byrne for this session and we was given a object to photograph.But we had to choose some rules
when photographing them.
Our rules were.

Only photograph switches with one switch and one switch alone.
The light switches had to be turned on.
and the switch had to be in the middle of the photo.
This made them more hard to hunt down and they always in sneaky corners.
It became an obsession
and we was not going to drift away from our rules.
As a result of this
we never got the full amount of photos we had to take.
But here are the ones we did manage to find.

They are not visually appealing and are really boring to look at but what I loved about this breif was the logic behind it
more than the visual. Although I do think they work as a sequence purely because of reputation

OUGD102- What If

"What if a group of graphic design students get together, and decide to solve a problem?
Based on your common interests, research and knowledge, you must establish a “problem” that affects some sector of the general public in Leeds.
You must develop logical, original and adventurous research lines of enquiry in order to justify the relevance of the “problem “ which should inform a range of solutions.
The solution(s) must be resolved, designed and presented in the public domain and recorded appropriately."

This is the first brief in the module.
We were put into groups and chose a problem we could solve.
it had to be for the leeds public
my group consists of Josh,Brady,Kim,Dutch and myself and our problem was originally drugs at leeds festival.
We put together a questionnaire to ask people who had been to leeds fest how comfortable they felt with people doing drugs in the festival and how it should be policed.It was then brought to our attention that people travel from all over the UK to attend the leeds festival, therefore it was not focusing on the residents of leeds.

So we went back and looked at the club scene in leeds and how easy it is to use drugs in the clubs.For primary research two of our teamates went to a nightclub to observe the drug scene for primary research. Whilst at the club they noticed a very high usage of a drug named "Mcat".They saw a few people taking the drug and began asking them questions as the users's "experience" grew.My job was to find out as much secondary research as I could about the newly popular drug.

"A stimulant drug with effects similar to MDMA producing euphoria, alertness, talkativeness and feelings of empathy. It can also cause anxiety and paranoid states and risk overstimulating the heart and nervous system to cause fits. Severe nosebleeds have been reported after snorting."Upon research I found out that the drug is only 2 years old and is being sold as plant food.It's what is known as a legal high. People take it as a drug because its legal and know that if they are caught doing it the law is powerless and it has the same effect as an illegal drug. They also think that just because it has a legal label slapped on it people are thinking it is safe.

Because it's such a new drug it was very difficult to find some hard evidence so we could only go on what we know.We found out that it hasn't even been researched which is why its not illegal.

So we decided that our new problem was;

We we all given jobs to come up with how we were going to do this and research jobs to do along with incase we found something new about the drug as we went along.
Because not even scientists know alot about this drug we cannot say "Don't take this drug because "x" and "x" will happen to you" and the people taking them are not going to stop taking them.
So we thought we could highlight the fact that now one knows anything about it.
We all went away and came up with how we would publicize this problem.
This is my design process

I chose the image of the guinea pig because people don't know what is in the drug so everytime they take it they are being "lab test guinea pigs"

"Are you a guinea pig?"
I think it's good to ask questions when trying to inform/persuade because it puts the reader at a awkward/uncomfortable position and depending on how striking that question is,it could be a question that bugs them and makes them want to find out more.


In this design i have chosen to cut up the circle around the guinea pig because the problem with Mcat is a broken matter.
It has the same effects as MDMA but is legal.
I have also chose to emphasize "Are You" by making it black and the rest of the question white.
As well as working with the black and white image of the guinea pig,the black type emphasizes the point and makes the question more personal.

I've included a second circle for the animals fur.
I love circles as its simplicity at its best.
simple shapes and easy.
I love the way the two colours have bled into eachother in the middle.
Is a piece of design that "writes itself"




Mcat is being sold as a plant feeder and it even says on the packaging that it's not for human consuption.Drugs in general effect the brain so I thought it'll be good to show that it's for plants not humans by making roots come out of a human brain.
Of course this won't really happen and it is slightly unrealistic but I think it gets the message across
Here is one of my mac visuals: