All Lovely Stuff

 Another one of the final projects we had at uni was a live project for a company called All Lovely Stuff who create wooden products with a twist for the home and garden. Firstly they wanted posters showing what makes the products so 'lovely', and they also wanted imagery they could use as wallpapers for their website/ blog.

The image to the left is a poster for one of their products called 'Animals of Whittling Wood'. Basing my ideas from the name of the product I create a wood made of whittling tools. The reason for a bear doing the whittling is that the company has a mirror called 'Bear Face Mirror' - a mirror in the shape of a bear's face. I used that shape for the head of the bear I drew.

Ways Of Seeing

These are a set of book covers I created for one of my final projects at uni. They are for John Berger's Ways of Seeing. Ways of Seeing is a book which challenges the reader to think more carefully about why images make them think in a specific way. It looks at how the way we see and read images has changed due to the camera and mass reproduction, plus the effect that advertising has had on western society.

One of the key points Berger makes in the book is that advertising masks a lack of real democratic choice. Brands often create a number of products, such as a perfume, which are marketed in different ways so that consumers feel as if they have a choice between which perfume they wish to buy; in reality the perfume is essentially the same and is made by the same brand, so the choice is false. People define themselves, not by making political choices, but by what they buy. Creating a number of different covers for the book would reflect this idea, as it would give the customer a choice of which cover they like the best, but really what is inside is exactly the same.

Each cover portrays a different theory that Berger proposes in the book. The covers link together through warped perspectives (representing the way that the camera changed people's perspective of images) to form one long image. This long image is what would actually be wrapped around the book as a dust jacket. By folding it in a certain way, you can choose which cover actually shows on the front of the book. 

Drive

This is my entry for the student D&AD awards. The brief was to illustrate the cover for the film magazine 'Little White Lies'. There was a choice of five films to choose from and we had to make the main character the centerpiece of the image. As you can see I chose Drive.

Busy Times

I think its about time I updated this blog. For the last three months have been mad. The only times I have left my desk is to go into uni or to hit up Sainsbury's. Uni is over with only the show to go, so the next load of posts will be of the work I've been doing.

 This first bunch of images are double page spreads of a little booklet I made for a '1 Day Project'. We were asked to record everything that we did, saw, heard, felt etc over the course of a 24 hour period and then somehow present these recordings a week later.

These show how the pages were printed before they were stitched together for the book. The pages are made up of drawings and notes I made on location and then coloured and put together in photoshop.

 I started off with a walk around Whitechapel- which was pretty uninspiring. I read an article about Tottenham on the overground, did some work, went to bed, woke up, watered my bay tree, had a coffee, looked at a sculpture and went to the Tate Britain. I guess I should have shown how the pages look in the book, but its currently in the hands of my tutors with all the rest of my work so you'll have to make do with this.

Sketchbook drawings

Here is a few drawings from my sketchbooks:

Process Post

I've finally now got a wacom tablet and I've been trying a new way of producing my work, so I thought I'd share the process of a personal piece I did inspired by the book 'The Lacuna', by Barbara Kingsolver.

After going through thumbnails I decided on a composition and drew it with a nib and black ink.

I scanned this into photoshop and then began adding the flat colours.

 Once this was done I then played around with adding textures and gradients until I was happy with how it looked.

Website update!

www.cargocollective.com/adamdcosta