Tuesday 23 March 2010

Self Defined Project

I have been given a period of 9 weeks at the end of my second year to complete self set or found briefs. I have decided to start I will enter the Penguin Design Award, for which I will design a book sleeve for Patrick Süskinds Perfume.

Here are some of the first pages of my sketchbook.


5 comments:

  1. Drop me some info Harry, if this is the same perfume that I overheard the Sarah's talking about, I thought the book was concentrating on smells and murdering virgins?

    Fill me in on the visual thought process you got going pleaseee?

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  2. Hey thanks for checking my blog :)

    on the visual side its all a bit confused at the moment as i have only just started to get my ideas onto paper but I'll try my best to make some sense of where i have been going with it.

    The Russian dolls cam about through the idea of how the final perfume is made from putting the essence of the murdered virgins together, i think they work as they are containers apart from the center doll which is in some ways similar to how the protagonist see's his creation. It also starts to explore the themes of anonymity and identity which are strong motivational factors in why the crimes are committed, the character seems to have very little personal traits for much of the book yet we still come to know lots about his motives and personality, i find it a bit of a paradox, and the idea of the dolls being one group (as you would never really see them on their own) and are strikingly similar even though each is different offers an interesting insight into both victim and killer.

    Using types of explosion diagrams (e.g. the line drawings of how the dolls go together) are trying to show the clinical nature of the protagonists plan and thought processes, he see's the people as component parts of his creation, hence the text kill to create. I have tried to juxtapose this with the more uncontrolled ink and found paper to give the images a sense of immediacy and chaos.

    I'm not sure which visual elements I will carry on with, if any, as it is early into my visual development...any ways i hope this made a little bit of sense to you even if i have just rambled on, i didn't realise i had so much to say about it.

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  3. S'all cool baybay, makes much more sense now. Images seem nice, if early in the process. I dunno if it is your intention for the yellow to be quite so sickening, if the book is called perfume? Then again considering the subject matter, a sickening colour may fit with your ideas?

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  4. I hadn't thought of that, although it may only seem that sickening due to my poor photography skills!

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  5. Well I exaggerate, its not like Im throwing up in my mouth or anything. Its just that the yellow on white kind of.. magnifies the acidity in the yellow.
    I was thinking about this on the way home today actually... that if you had a warm colour on the front which drew attention to your ikea-esque Russian dolls, but then had somethnig grim at the core of the dolls.. maybe a heart or blood splat... I dunno. I was just thinknig of it on the way home. Worst you can do is try it and it fails... Or maybe blood dripping from the inside of the smallest doll... Tell me to shut up when you like

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