Lecture & Workshop: Union Jack Re-invention

As part of a series of lectures at College we had a talk from Jesse Boyce who works at Lethal Creative Studio, a graphic design company. I found his talk really interesting as he explained his personal journey from his education to his current job as partner of Lethal, and everything in between like his travels around the world and a lot of the projects that he'd worked on. I really liked his work as well as for each project he seemed to try to do something original and inventive, and sometimes quite witty and clever, but he still always communicated the purpose of the design. Plus his talk on CVs was great as I'd never thought about making my CV an example of my art, I thought before that they had to be plain and word processed so this really changed my view on them and applying for a job.

Lethal Creative Studio's logo

 Image from http://fmfirstmonday.com/2012/03/23/april-sms-and-reasons-to-be-cheerful/

After the talk we could attend a workshop led by Jesse and the aim was to re-invent the Union Jack as he often tried to re-invent concepts in his work. It was similar to the work that we did in Graphic Design week in that we used collage paper. To begin with though I didn't know what to do as I wanted to make something original, so I started experimenting with the materials and colours. First I just stuck graph paper to cartridge paper to act as an interesting collage background, but then I started tearing blue paper. As I did this it created different shapes and lighter shades where there was less paper - this reminded me of waves and this led onto the image of boats sat on the waves at sea, perfect for matching the anthem of 'Britannia rules the waves' and the emphasis we place on the sea, being an island. So I kept tearing pieces of the blue paper in long strips and attached them in layers overlapping on the background to create a nice sense of depth.

It took a while to do, but I love the texture that the paper creates, it makes it look really hand made.

Next I had to make the boats, which were to be primarily red to form the red band, but they also incorporate all of the colours of the Union Jack in a nod to the purpose of the design. To make them I drew a boat shape out and then used collage for the colours, luckily finding a large block of red in a magazine so it could be from a single piece. What I really like though is that as the original image was from a bus, the nuts and bolts were included and it looks like a real scrap boat. 

 This image came out really well and looks quite quirky to say it's just a few bits of collage paper.

To save time the boat was photocopied to 3 sizes which would be distributed on the waves in the basic shape to suggest the Union Jack and the sizes would create depth as it looked like the boats were stretching into the horizon. I had imagined initially that I would hand make all of the boats, but I was running out of time and I didn't even have time to finish the piece in the workshop using this method, never mind the more time consuming one. (I spent a further 3+ hours on it after the workshop completing it)

The different size of boats

A full sheet of the copied boats. I think if it was cleaned up it might form a nice pattern.

The two photos below show the boats being added in stages. This took a long time as while I wanted the Union Jack reference to be clear, I didn't want to add so many boats that it became too busy and I wanted the composition to look good, which required me to move a lot of the boats around. 

Unfortunately the photos came out quite blurry as I was working on it in the evening, but they still show the development of the image.

Finally I had to add seagulls to act as the white bands of the Union Jack. As the piece was already busy with boats, I wanted to keep the seagulls as simple as possible so that the image wasn't overwhelming so I went for the classic tick shaped birds just made out of white collage paper. Again I had the same problem of wanting to suggest the Union Jack bands and of having a good composition, but really not wanting to ruin the image by having too many seagulls. This required a lot of re-positioning.

Below is the final image, in straight photocopy form and edited form in Photoshop to try and bring out the colours that the photocopier sucked out.

Re-invention of the Union Jack

Photocopy

Photoshopped

 I'm still not happy with the added shadow at the top, this image never seems to photograph or copy right.

Despite the amount of time that it took I loved making this piece as it allowed me to develop any image that I wanted from the initial brief and in which ever style, so I was able to do more illustrative work. The Union Jack in the piece is perhaps quite subtle, but I like that you have to find it and while the biggest aspect of it that worried me was getting a good composition, I think it works.

After making the piece I thought about the look and textures of it and the waves and I decided to incorporate the top section into the header in my blog, by simply cropping it in Photoshop, as it looks interesting, but not too busy. I like how the waves symbolise a never ending energy to just keep moving, despite the ups and downs along the way (forgive the cliche of this please) and this seemed an accurate way to describe my working methods and the work on my blog.

At the end of the workshop everyone put their piece on a table to look at. Below are the other interpretations of the Union Jack by everyone at the workshop.

Overall a great talk was finished by a great workshop and both supplied me with new thoughts on how to interpret something standard, like a CV or flag, into something original.