Punk Subculture

The punk subculture has been around since the 1970s. It is centered around listening to recordings or loud live concerts of punk rock music. Not only is it centered around listening to music, its about expressing yourself and making yourself stand out from the crowd, be it through your dress sense, or your language or even the way you style your hair. Mainly though when you think of a punk You think of the mohawk with a unusual colour.
Although punk arose such along time ago, it is still around even today. With people listening to such bands as the sex pistols, which have been broken up for over 20 years. A good saying from the punk subculture is "Stuck together with safety pins", which is one of the items punks tend to wear as an accessory.
The punk rock bands you see usually consist of a vocalist, up to 2 guitarists, a bass player and a person on drums. usually for the backing vocals other people on the other interments would step in and sing a few lines, however these are usually shouted or chanted rather than being sung properly.

Subculture

A subculture is a number of people with a unique culture which is different from a normal main stream one.  Symbolism is a huge part of a subculture, such as clothes, music or even hairstyle. An example of these would be punk, which would listen to rock music, have unusual hair and ripped clothing with piecing and spikes. Another example would me emo, longish hair covering parts of the face with highlights in places, lip piecing's, sad music and black clothing. these are just 2 examples of things which are associated with their particular subculture.

Each person that is part of a certain subculture dedicate there life to that said subculture. This is because you are not going to wake up one day I decide from being a punk to becoming say a glamour freak. Also the people that they associate themselves with will also be part of that said subculture because you wouldn't see two different subcultures mixing and associating with each other.

If you look around today, nearly every different person belongs to their own subculture. There is to be honest no normal mainstream to follow. Everyone is independent, but in a group, e.g. subculture.

Personally I see myself in a type of video game subculture. I don't however have a personal appearance that goes with my type of culture, but I do however spend the majority of my free time playing video games, writing blogs and articles about them and creating videos. This mainly what it is to be part of something, were you devote your free time and money to something you enjoy and believe in.

Overall I feel subcultures are important. It helps us express our selves in many different ways, and helps us be apart of something with other people that share your same interests and values.

Ideology in the punk subculture

Ideology does play a part in the punk subculture. Punks tend to cover the entire political spectrum. There ideologies are usually based around a persons freedom and anti-establishment (A view or a belief that stand against the conventional social, economic, political principle of society).  However some of the punks in the subculuture hold right-wing veiws like neo-nazi (Known as nazi punk) or apolitical (Known as horror punk). Punk's can even get there views from songs, like from the song "God save the queen", by the sex pistols, they expressed the views of there being "No Future", which used as a slogan.

Creative Review

Creative Review is a monthly magazine which was first published in 1980. It is target at the commercial arts and design scene. It is published by Centaur Media plc. Down below I am going to be looking at double page spreads along with front covers of this magazine to try at get an idea on how I should layout my designs.

Front Covers

The first front cover I am going to look at is rather different from the one's I have seen. They have taken a picture of what seems to be a male face and then gone into illustrator or even photoshop and has either gone over it with different shades of circles, or used some kind of effects in the program. What I like about this front cover is how they have shown by using different shades, the can reconstruct an image in a different way. What I don't like about this front cover is how they put the CR box in pink, it clashes completely with the image ruining it in my opinion. 

This next front cover is rather interesting. I like the way they have focused on one letter and made it look different. To be honest I'm not sure whether it was created or whether it is just a photo, either way it has been nicely done. What I don't like about it is I don't see any meaning behind it. I don't understand what it is trying to represent. 

In this next front cover I like the way they have used that main image of the circle, and cut in up to make the pattern at the bottom. If I had to guess I would say that they used adobe illustrator to do this because that would have been the best program to used for shapes, and that it doesn't use pixels. I don't really have any faults with this cover, although it is simple I like that part about it. 

This front cover is clearly a picture of a bird eye, and if I were to guess, I would say its a picture of an owl's eye. I really like this cover, and the amount of detail the photographer has been able to capture in the photo. Like the colour of the eye and how you can see different shades of blue in it. I also like how you can see the detail on the feathers. This is a brilliant front cover and I would like to see the photographers work just by seeing this cover.

The last front cover Im going to look at is good because over how its been made. The creator has cut out a piece of paper and the created a type of sculpture of the letter thats been cut out, using what seems to be different materials to make it. I like the creative side of it, and how they have gone to the effort to create something and photograph it rather that just taking a photo of something already made.

What I've Noticed!

By looking at these front covers and others online I've noticed a similar pattern. They majority of them seem to have this white border around the edge of the cover. This may be because they don't want any of the image to be cut off, or they would like to keep some kind of consistency. I've decided to use this in my front cover, because I think it works well to have this type or border around the picture. 

I have also noticed that they seem to focus around one thing, and not have a lot of things going on in the front cover. I will also keep this in mind when creating my front cover. 

2 Page Spreads

The first 2 page layout from Creative Review i am going to look at has been done very well. I like the way they have used the whole page to dedicated to one photo. However with that photo they have let it come over slightly onto the other page, which personally I think just looks like they didn't crop it well. There isn't a lot of writing which is good, because the main focus on this double page spread seems to be the photos which have been taken. 

This next layout has much more writing than the other one I looked at. This tells me that the main focus here is the article itself. I like how they have placed the picture in the middle as one of the main focus points. Its interesting looking through a creative review book they are not afraid to let there photos over run onto the next page, which other magazines would try to avoid. Another thing i like about this layout is the way the two main topics start with a large first letter. Its an old technique which you would see in Manuscripts but it still works well today.

This next layout has been done so that the left hand side page contains most of the images. However I like how they have created gaps between the images which makes them look nicely laid out. I also like how they created a type of slogan, "Come in We're open" which goes well with the images that are being shown. 

Again like the previous article they have put the main image in the center of the layout I find it to be a dangerous move sometimes because it tends to ruin the image were you have a big line down the middle were the pages are joined. I do like however the little circles with the people faces in, I feel its a good way to show a persons image. 

Again they have used the same technique of putting the main image in the center of the layout. By seeing this so often I may try to include it in my layout when I look at designing my layouts. What I like about this particular layout though is how the images have been put together and the words have kinda been placed around them. 

From looking at these layouts I have noticed two things. That they tend to not be afraid of letting the image run over to the other page, or don't even mind it being divided between to pages. I have also noticed they are not afraid to space everything so there is a lot of white on the page. I will take these points into consideration when designing my ideas so that they will look like something that would go into the creative review magazine. 

Punk Outfit

When the punk scene hit many of the fashion designs were based on Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm Mclaren. They sold the mainstream punk style in their shop called SEX in the 1970's. Tops with offensive language and phrases were popular in the early punk scene, they would then be torn on purpose to make them look more punk like. Another item regally used by them early on were leather jackets which would usually be covered in studs and again, offensive language and slogans. Accessory wise they wear spiked belts, bracelets, collars and ever shoes. They tend to use paper clips a lot as an accessory for a piercing or even attach it to their bag or clothing.

Punk Presentation

Using Indesign - Bird

In the lesson we looked a bit at the program called Indesign. Indesign is used to help layout and create pages or front covers for magazines, which will be needed for this up coming project. 

To start with we were given the image of a bird to use as the main image of my test article design.

Then using a indesign document I created a 2 page spread with dummy text so I could get the layout of were I would want to place my bird. Then using the text warp tab on the image, I created a type of barrier around the bird so that it would fit in nicely with my text.

To the right is the final design I came up with, I decided to make the bird smaller so I could fit it all in rather than just a small part of it. I like the way this little test came out and it helped me learn a useful technique which I can see me either using in this project or in the future. 

Punk Music

Blink-182- Blink-182 is an American band which is currently formed by 3 members, Mark Hoppus, Tom Delonge and Travis Barker. However before Travis Barker joined as the drummer in 1997, Scott Raynor was one of the starting members of the band. They have sold over 26 million albums worldwide since they began.  It was created in 1992 in california . They have won such awards from MTV Europe music awards in 2000 for Best New Act and in 2001 for Best Rock Act.





Green day - Green day are an american punk rock band which formed in 1987 in East Bay, California. It started out with Billie Joe Armsytong, Mike Dirnt and John Kiffmeyer, however John was then replaced in 1990 with Tre Cool as the new drummer. They have sold over 65 million record worldwide. They have made a total of 8 studio albums, which a 9th being created as we speak.




Sublime - Sublime are another american punk band from California. The members were Bradley Nowell, Eric Wilson and Bud Gaugh. They were formed in 1988 but broke up in 1996 due to the death of Nowell. However they did release there final album 'Sublime' because it was finished 2 months before Nowell's death. Due to their huge success with 5 times multi-platinum albums, there impact is still around today. They are known as one of the most popular punk bands to date. Even after the death of a member, there albums are still selling even today.

Sex Pistols - The sex pistols were a English punk band which formed in 1975 in london. They were part of the reason for the punk scene hitting the UK which then went on to inspire many other punk rock musicians. however they only lasted 2 and a bit years, but managed to create 4 singles and one album. They have had up to 5 reunions since their break up, the latest being in 2008, and have released further singles in those reunions. The members are Steve Jones, Paul Cook, Glen Matlock, John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) and Sid Vicious.

Pictures to use as a template

 

Creating my final front cover!

My final design which I decided to create was my 3rd idea. I chose that one because to me it looked the most interesting to do and to see the final outcome.

First I took a side picture of my cousins face. Using a lot of hair gel and hair spray to spike up his hair, however the middle didn't stay up how I wanted. This however wasn't a major issue because I just planned to use the photo as a template for my final design, so I could just add in what I want. 

Using the pen tool I went around his hair, going off in certain places to make it look slightly better. I then decided to go with a very dark brown for the hair, but I would the add highlights to bring out the punk more. 

I then used the pen tool to go around his face. Doing this all in different sections a layers makes it easier to go back and edit it at the end to tweak it how I want it. I then took a section of his skin colour and filled in the whole around to make the face.

For the eyes I had to completely recreate them so I didn't use the picture as an outline. This is because the way the photo was taken, It was hard to have them so close to the edge of the face, it began to look weird. Also, in the photo my cousins eyes are open, which I didn't want so I had to use my imagination on how a closed eye would look.

Again using the pen tool I traced around the ear. I then decided to add the shading of the neck, trying to make the picture bot look realistic, but more like a face.

Finishing it off by adding details, I created extra bits in, such as a spiked collar, piecing and blue hair highlights. I also created a type of tattoo on his neck. I added these things because from my research I found punks tended to be pieced and tattooed to make themselves look more different and more punk like.

Finishing off my front cover, I decided to change to colour of the highlight and tattoo, this is because i feel I should have just stuff with the colours from black, white and grey so it wouldn't clash with the rest of the picture. Over all I like how it came out, but I feel the background could have been better. 

Other layout idea's

The first idea I tried to develop wasn't what I expected it to be. It looked very bland and like everything had just been thrown together and not had much though placed into it. What I do like about this idea however is the way the CD covers are placed. I like it when images are put slanted at different angles, I feel it makes them more pleasant to look at rather than just a straight boring image. 

This next layout uses the same items but laid out in a different way. Because looking through past creative review magazines i saw that they went afraid to let image go over the page, or even be in the middle of a 2 page spread. So for this idea I decided to place the main image I had dead in the centre of the layout. I do like this layout and if I were to go back and edit it, I would maybe add CD covers to the left hand side of the page but different one's so it has the sense of a mirror image. 

This next one similar to the first one, were the CD covers just look like they have been throw on, but by making them rotated makes them more interesting to look at. 

My last trail and error idea didn't get too far before I decided to call it quits. This is because i felt it looked to safe and boring, And i found it hard to find a different image to go on the left hand page to go with text which would have been placed in there. 

Final 2 page layout

The above image shows the final outcome for my double page layout. From all the ideas i created and developed I feel this one came out the best. Although I wish I was able to include more colour into it and maybe another picture with less text, I do like the spacing I have done and how I made use of what I have. The thing I like most about the layout is the design of the text "Is Punk Still Alive". I managed to find thing font on "Dafont.com" because looking at what typefaces I was given, none of them represented punk that well. Another thing I like about this layout is the way I made a text wrap around my main image, so that it blend in with the text and doesn't look clunky. If I were to go back and change something it would be to try and find more pictures to add so there would be less writing and to include some kind of colour in the layout. 

The bellow websites are were the text came from for the fake article. 

http://www.cinemablend.com/music/Great-Debate-Is-Punk-Rock-Dead-5810.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punk_subculture

Evaluation

Evaluation and Reflection:

1) Visual Communication:

In what ways does the visual communication/message of the piece meet the needs of the brief?

For both my designs I made sure i kept to the brief fully. I did a lot of research into the way front covers and layouts look in the creative review magazine so that my designs would look like something they would use. I also made sure for my front cover to use an image which i had created, that even though I traced over a photo for my final design, that the photo I traced over in illustrator was my own and not a found image on the internet. I did however take images from the internet for my double page spread, but I made sure I was allowed before I did so. I've made sure however that I have noted the website I got these images from in my creation progress so the owner of them can be credited. I do feel that I did get my message across just from the designs which i have made, That i have represented the punk subculture the best of my ability. 

In what ways does the visual communication/message of the piece fail to meet the needs of the brief?

I Haven't really failed to meet the brief, however I would say on my layout there may be a bit too much text for my liking. This is because I couldn't really find any other images which I liked to go along with the one i found. I then had to use the skills i learned in inDesign to use text to fill up the rest of the space. 

What are the strengths of the visual communication? Why?

My main strength I think would be my front cover. The way I completely re-edited my photo and pretty much designed a punk from scratch. I had to do this because I don't personally know any punks, and i had a low budget so I couldn't afford to go out and purchase clothes and accessories. The main strength of the front cover itself would be the hair. I think it represents what a punks mohawk would look like very well and just by seeing that image on the front, i feel you would instantly be able to tell what's its trying to represent. 

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What are the weaknesses of the visual communication? Why?

My weakness in the visual communication would be my layout. This is because again i feel there is too much text and not enough images to represent what I wanted to show. Although buy seeing the image of the punk guy on the left hand side can show what the article is representing, I feel it isn't enough and that because the whole point of being a punk is to separate yourself from the crowd and be independent, I looks too normal a bland. I would have wished to use more colour in my layout because when looking at punks, they seem to go with a range of bright colours in there hair or on there shirts to try and stand out. However when I tried to add colour it didn't go well with the black and white image i found from the internet. 

In what ways could the piece be mis-read or mis-understood by the audience? Be specific about who the audience is.

From the front cover they might not see it as a section in the magazine being about punk, but more on how it was created. This is because the front cover in my opinion looks very cartoony and you can tell from the start which it was created in illustrator. This is because the people that would be reading this magazine will be familiar with the program used to create it. 

In what practical ways could the piece be developed or improved?

I could go back and re-edit my front cover so it doesn't look like a bunch of shapes created in illustrator. I'd try to make it look more like an illustration of a punk and more realistic. 

2) Reflection of own working practices:

How was my time keeping?

My time keeping was slightly better than my last assignments which made me less stressed towards the end of the assignments. However I did leave the designs themselves a bit late which mean I didn't leave myself enough time for improvements. If I were to redo this assignment I would maybe try to spend less time on the research itself and more time on the designing process and maybe come back to more research towards then end of the assignment. This is because the design itself is worth slightly more marks than the research. However that wouldn't means I would slack off on my research in any way. 

How was my analysis of the brief?

I found the brief easy to read and understandable. I understood what I needed to do from the brief and from the lessons how I would go about the achieve my final outcome. 

How was my research?

I found the research very difficult to do. Although there was a lot of information out there on the internet, I had to be wary of what I could use because not all thats on there is the truth. Whilst looking through books also I found it hard to find the information I needed, and personally im never really good at finding what I need because there's just so much written information it kind of all just blends in together. 

How did I draw conclusions from my research?

From my creative Reveiw research mainly, by looking at the way they have laid out past front covers and double page layouts, it helped me try to design my work to their type of design so it would look like somthing that would be included in their magazine. Also front my punk research, It helped my decide what information to put into my double page spread and what to put on the front of my cover to show what best represents what a punk is and looks like. 

How did I use research to generate and develop ideas?

Like what i wrote above, i managed to use my research to help me plan my ideas and help me get a final conclusion. 

How did I use evaluations to help with my ideas generation and development?

After each design I came up with I would look at it and pick it apart to see what would be doable with the time and materials I had and what would look good from what I have seen online. Also, like from when I was creating my layout I would start creating a design then stop to evaluate it to see if I liked what was being created and whether or not it met the requirements in the brief. 

How did I use experimentation during the project? How can I make this more effective?

Whilst doing my layout I messed around with 3 different ideas before I came to my final. As you can see in my blog the process I went through to get the my final design. Its known as he trail and error process, were you will try something out even if it fails, because you might be able to take pieces from it to help created something even better.

In what ways did I show that I had achieved the Learning Outcomes? How can I improve this next time?

I have presented my research showing a reasonable amount of effort and have shown how that from that research I have created my final outcomes. Next time however I might completely pick the learning outcomes apart and make bullet points and sections on what needs to be done. This may also help me time planing wise next time, hopefully improving my work quality. 

What parts of the project did I enjoy most? Why was this the case?

I enjoyed creating the front cover the most. I like using illustrator to create something from scratch and making something look completely different. This is because I like be able to see things as they develop, being able to be creative and different from everyone else/ 

What parts of the project did I enjoy least? Why was this the case?

I didn't enjoy the double page spread too much because I had to use a unknown program to me called inDesign. Although I own this program at home, I havn't really used it before which I feel made my work look as good as it could be. This is because I spent a lot of my time trying to work out were things was and creating a lot of errors.

At what times did I work best? Why might this be the case? How can I ensure that I work well at al times?

I worked best at home to be honest because I have a slightly bigger imac at home and have access to all the programs. Also I like working in my own personal space were I can work in silence and on my own. I did however sometimes work well in lesson because I was able to get other peoples opinions and improve my work in that way. 

What areas inspired me? Why was this the case? How could I follow these up?

Although I didn't like using inDesign, it inspired me to use it at home in my free to to get better with the program and to learn to use it to the best of my abilities. This is because in the future i will most likely need to use it so I will need to know now rather than later on how to work my way around it without asking for help from someone else. 

What areas were challenging or difficult?  Why was this the case?

Again the inDesign part was mostly challenge because of it being unfamiliar software. 

How can I go about developing and improving  the parts I found difficult?

I can go back and re-edit my work for it to go into my portfolio to help me if I ever get called up for an interview or anything. 

Do I need to develop certain skills? Do I need these now? Or later?

I need to improve more on my researching skills. I need to try and work harder in my research and learn to bookmark websites so if I need them later on to reference from or to quote from, I won't need to look through my history or try to re-find them.