Mixed Media

So whenever I get down and work, it's not just graphic designers and artists that I look to for inspiration. There's a whole bunch of other media's I use, music, movies and even something as obscure as a video games all bring something new to the table. And to some degree they can ALL be classified as "art", if it can make you feel something, if it can challenge you in some way; to a certain extent that's what art is supposed to do.

Music is a big one for me, when your pulling all nighters trying to finish something for a crit the next day, music is exactly you need to keep your adrenaline going; that a whole load of caffeine. It also helps get you into a certain type of head space, depending on what the brief asks for, listening to a certain type of music really helps. Take my experience last year with foundation, my first brief was to question the notion of the book, so I took that very literally and thought about what the books true purpose was? To distribute information, so technically television and music can serve the same purpose, just through a totally different medium, so that's what I did; i wanted to distribute information through visually and sonically. Choosing one of Madonna's most theatrical tunes "Gang Bang", a song which tells the story of a women's revenge to kill her cheating boyfriend. I used to the music to inspire the video's visuals, I took to Photoshop and Illustrator and literally designed a new slide for every word of the song; it resulted in being one of the most strenuous pieces of work I'd ever done, designing and illustrating around nearly 500 slides for the video; all of them unique; all of them inspired by the track. I needed to pick a song which I could milk a lot of imagination from, and I think I did just that. In terms of concept I developed my own interpretation, taking inspiration from her MDNA tour with an art film for Nobody Knows Me" I wanted to study the idea of subliminal messaging and "reading between the lines" in a political and cultural sense. The idea was to develop something chaotic but tasteful. A mess of imagery but substance.

Madonna's Gang Bang

Some of my favourites...

Lady Gaga - The Fame Monster

Betty Who - The Movement

Natalia Kills - Saturday Night

Robyn - Body Talk

Hurts - Exile

Madonna - American Life

Anything by Hans Zimmer.

Same case with movies, and much more obviously; when you come across a movie like Cell, Drive or Mulholland Drive, something really wonderful happens. It's rare when you see a film that really takes you back visually, but the ones which do are always great for sparking up imagination and delating artists block. Their out there there, you just need to look for them.

A couple of examples...
Mulholland Drive
Drive
Traffic
Cell
Memento
Kill Bill
Perfect Blue
Metropolis (2001 Anime)

Another go-to for me is video games. Not only can they mix and combine audio and visuals (already serving the same purpose as a movie) the interaction you have with it is what makes it such a special and UNIQUE experience. Not many people bother to acknowledge that video games are often just as culturally relevant, innovative and important as any great movie or piece of art. Granted the actual audience of a game like Call of Duty (sort of the video game equivalent to a movie franchise like Twilight, draws huge numbers but next to everyone hates it) revolves around foul mouthed pre pubescent teenage boys. But there's so much to be seen with games like Mirrors Edge, Bioshock Infinite , The Last of Us, Portal 2 or the Mass Effect series. Think about what games let you do, they let you play out all of your fantasies from the comfort of your own living room, just think about where that concept can take us in a few years.

Some of my favourites...

Mass Effect
Bioshock: Infinite
Mirrors Edge
Portal 2
The Last of Us
Silent Hill
Final Fantasy
Deus Ex: Human Revolution

I hope to develop on this post in the future. Maybe even use some the ideas mentioned here as the foundations for future projects.