yet another blog for the evening...

O.K. so i'm going slightly blog crazy tonight, I thought it was time to catch up with it so I thought i'd share this little piece of information... whilst playing around on my mac, yes i've had it 2 years and still don't know all the things it can do, I started exploring the widgets and found that more can be downloaded from apple... it scared me slightly when I found that there is a live cctv widget on which you can watch the people of new york passing through Greenwich village. being as nosey and curious as i was downloaded it (free of course!). I felt I needed to share this piece of information because it was the strangest thing i've seen in a long time!! i know i wouldn't like the thought of someone halfway round the world watching me on cctv. although it did give me mini butterflies in my belly thinking that i will be in NEWYORK in 2 weeks and 3 days!!

What Scares You The Most?

The Sound Of SILENCE...

Whilst in Rochdale looking at the Shop exhibition I also went to see the rest of the galleries in the heritage centre. It held Rochdale's permanent collection of art work, there were several pieces which caught my attention, in particular those below...

It's not often I find this type of work interesting, my interests generally lie within fashion photography and commericial graphic design; but these pieces definately caught my eye. The first piece was called "loop my loop" by Helen Chadwick. From afar it just looked like a piece of hair braided, it was only when I got up close and read the plaque did I realise it was even more unusual than i first thought. It is actually made from a braid hair entwined with a pigs intestine. The juxtoposition of these items works well, from afar it lures me closer at it appears to be an interesting photographic subject, then upon inspection it is repulsive and makes you want to move away from the image.

The house sculpture made from thorns is similar to the photograph. both items/ideas juxtopose one another and create an unusual and luring object.

I wasn't expecting to find this type of work within the gallery, considering my local gallery holds mainly victorian paintings, it was exciting to see something conceptual rather than just paintings in a local gallery.

The Shop

Visiting Touchstones, Rochdale's heritage centre, meant that i was able to see the current "Shop" exhibition they were holding. It showed what shop displays were like in Rochdale during the 1900's. I am greatly interested in visual merchandising, particularly window display's and so it was great seeing how different life was and what design tactics were used to sell items during this time.

It was clear to me that displays were not neccessarily thought out as thoroughly as they are today. It seemed that shop keepers would just put as much as they could out on display, this made sense for the time as it was during the first world war and money was tight and so shop keepers had to show their full range of products to try and entice as many customers as possible with their range of items.

Another aspect of the exhibition that i found really helpful was looking at the items that are displayed within the windows not just the way they are displayed. This tin of Vaseline particularly caught my eye as it is strange to see that despite nearly a hundred year gap the packaging has changed very little.

The simple 2 color, color scheme and basic placing of texts is simple and effective and it can be seen above how little it has change today. Alot of products constantly change their packaging to grab the attention of new customers to buy the product. To create a piece of design which is still being used after a hundred years is a graphic designers dream.

I really enjoyed seeing this exhibition and am hoping it will help with the writing of my essay about retail branding as visual merchandising is highly important when it comes to branding a store. It also helped open my eyes to the amazing techniques and visuals going on within visual merchandising today, and how visually beautiful aspects of our life are that we often take for granted.

"Get Excited & Make Things"