eleventh post (print + publishing)

A commemorative stamp is a postage stamp issued to honor or commemorate a place, event or person. Below are some examples of commemorative stamps.

For the London Games of 2012 a group of artists commissioned work to be used as commemorative stamps. Each is done in a specific style and features subjects from the events of the Olympics. Here is their work.

The third image from above is by artist Natalie Guinamard who designed this stamp for the 2012 Olympics. The medium she used to create this image was collage.

Another example of a commemorative stamp is this work by artist Matt Groening, who collaborated with the US Postal Service to create a series of 'The Simpsons' commemorative stamps. The style of the stamps is cartoonist and they were produced using digital means 

tenth blog (print+ publishing)

Both of these images I made using photoshop. The second image is an inversion of the first. I used a brush to draw around the key features of the print and used the patch tool to invert certain separate parts.

ninth post (moving image)

Today I finished my Moving Image Induction Project - below is my film.

eighth post (print + publishing)

 

• This is an image i made using photoshop. I layered my relief print with my intaglio print and lassoed around the bird, and the butterflies and then turned this into a separate layer. I then removed the original background of my relief print so that only the colour and pattern was under certain parts of the image.

• This is an image I also made on photoshop. I made the bird part of the image into a brush, and cut text out of the intaglio. I then layered these onto my relief print as the background.
• This image is a mixture of brushes that i made from a relief print layered onto a photograph of a separate relief print.
•  This is an image i made also using photoshop, its layers of my intaglio and relief, which i then changed the hue and multiplied.
• This again I made on photoshop, making the bird into a brush and using all of my separate prints to give different textures below the intaglio image. 

seventh post.

Different Image File Formats:

PNG

JPEG

BMP

SVG

PNG: (Portable Network Graphics)

Pros

• 24bit color / 8bit color(256 colors)
• uses lossless compression
• suitable for flat areas of colors, logos, transparent or semitransparent images
• suitable for icons
• in most cases PNG has a smaller file size than GIF
• it has alpha channel transparency which is more advance than GIF’s transparency
• approved as standard in 1996
• proposed as replacement of GIF by World Wide Web Consortium

Cons

• it is wise to avoid using PNG with big photos and images with details because of the big generated file size
• in different situations it has bigger file sizes than JPG

JPEG: (Joint Photographic Experts Group)

Pros

• 24bit color
• suitable for images, high details & quality pictures
• uses lossy compression
• it is the most used graphic file format
• approved as standard in 1994
• used in design and photography industry – it is likely to see nature photos in JPG file format
• it is good when you are willing to drop quality from a picture for the sake of file size

Cons

• it is not suitable for logos and icons because it does not have transparency and it can generate a bigger file size for small resolution images.
• it does not support transparency

BMP: (Bitmap)

Pros

• bitmap files may be easily created from existing pixel data stored in an array in memory.
• retrieving pixel data stored in a bitmap file may often be accomplished by using a set of coordinates that allows the data to be conceptualized as a grid.
• pixel values may be modified individually or as large groups by altering a palette if present.
• bitmap files may translate well to dot-format output devices such as CRTs and printers. 

Cons

• they can be very large, particularly if the image contains a large number of colors. Data compression can shrink the size of pixel data, but the data must be expanded before it can be used, and this can slow down the reading and rendering process considerably. Also, the more complex a bitmap image (large number of colors and minute detail), the less efficient the compression process will be.
• they typically do not scale very well. Shrinking an image by decimation (throwing away pixels) can change the image in an unacceptable manner, as can expanding the image through pixel replication. Because of this, bitmap files must usually be printed at the resolution in which they were originally stored.

 SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)

sixth post.

social networking and digital communication:

  Social networking sites have been around for a number of years now, and over time their popularity has grown to unbelievable figures. With Facebook recently hitting half a billion users, it is easy to see that a lot of the world see Facebook (as well as others such as MySpace, Twitter and Bebo) as a normal, everyday, part of their lives. 
  There are many positive social benefits of social networking. People can communicate with their 'friends' at the touch of a mouse, can create and consume information, such as photos, videos, and music, and can connect with people from all over the world. 
  Alongside the benefits, there are many negatives factors which go alongside social networking. People can use these sites to interact with people, in an almost artificial way, instead of seeing these people in person, in a real place with activities going on around them, they are sitting in front of a screen belittling their relationships. 
  Social networking has and still will be changing people's relationships. To befriend somebody that you don't know, have only just met, or have known most of your life all mean the same thing via social networking sites. The majority of Facebook users (as an example) have hundreds, if not thousands of friends, which just simply isn't real outside of the cyberworld. For me personally, probably only 70%/80% of my Facebook 'friends' i have met and interacted with in the real world, or have mutual friends with.
  
http://thomas-fletcher.com/friendwheel/showwheel.php?site=facebook&name=Emily%20Curtis&userid=1250312023&pass=12eb5a6639&monthno=01&xmlwheel=1
This link (above) shows a wheel of my Facebook friends, which when you mouse over their separate names, connects mine and their mutual friends names together with lines. In my case, the people with the most connections (i.e. mutual friends) are the ones that i know the most, excluding my siblings, who have different groups of friends to me.

Social networking, as well as the rest of the internet, allows you to instantly access almost any information without much effort. This overload of information affects people's ability to process information. Most people when reading a text via the internet, will only scan through the information, not even coming close to reading the numerous facts and figures, and instead getting what they need within moments, possibly missing out on vital info.  

 Other than social networking, one other form of digital communication which has affected my life and made the biggest impact is texting. The ability to find something out, get hold of somebody, arrange something, or anything else, within minutes is something I really take for granted. I don't know quite what i could do to the same extent if texting did not exist. I know that letter writing is hardly as efficient to use in a long term way. I spent the last year communicating to one of my best friends who was sectioned and in a hospital that i couldn't travel to, just using letters, and waiting a week for a reply was hardly easy, as by the time each of us recieved the other's letter, a lot of things had changed, and the letters became very repetitive. This is why i love being able to text so much, because it's simple, quick and instant. 
  The future of networking is something a lot of people are worried about. In 2004 Facebook was a simple college site and in only 6 years it has become a ridiculous thing, with roughly a 12th of the population having an account. I am not too sure what the future might consist, but I'm sure sites like Facebook will have plenty more members, and I can assume that there will be more sites, with more new and interesting things to do on them. Despite a lot of people being sceptical about the future, I welcome it with open hands.

 

fifth blog (print + publishing)

 Relief prints.

 To make a relief print: 

• Find any suitable objects (for example, i used a lego block, a magic wand, small pegs and a hair brush).
• Using a roller apply a little water based ink over the specific object.
• Press the object, ink side down onto your paper and with an even amount of pressure, push it to relieve all the ink onto the paper.
• For a distressed effect, repeat this, without adding any extra ink so that the print is lighter and more patchy. 
• Continue this with the rest of your objects until you have your desired print.