07.11.16 — Journal

Binding Books & Singing Karaoke

Just the other week me and Emily headed down to Leeds Print Workshop for a beginners bookbinding workshop led by a lecturer at the Leeds College of Art, a day which began sourly as I’d bought a steak bake from Greggs, which was then knocked onto the ground by someone not looking where they were going – and who had the cheek to expect an apology from me! Never. I shall not apologise for what was your malicious destruction of my beloved steak bake.

Some books we made at the workshop

Even reeling in the agony of the loss of my steak bake, I still managed to have a really good day and had a wonderful time getting hands-on binding some mini notebooks and even designing my own stitch pattern (which you can see on the orange books above and below).

Even more books we made

Outside of the fun we had making these mini books, in my typography module we headed out on a walk of the city to begin to spot typography and words out in the public space, which was a really fun exercise in thinking about typography and communication in a much more broader sense than ever before. I shan’t bore you with the images of the abstract ambient “words” that I found, but I shall share this picture of a pigeon that we befriended along the way…

Our friend the pigeon

In other uni events, I recently attended the Undergraduate Research & Leadership Scholarship Celebration Event, which was a lovely evening of talks, food, drinks and catching up with the fellow scholars. My group even ended up winning a prize for our video submission – an entirely unexpected but appreciated surprise!

Me and some fellow scholars

And last buy certainly not least we move on to talk about my first design brief in this my final university year, one which will soon be on my portfolio, which was to re-imagine the design and service offered by a local radio station in the year 2026, a year in which for the sake of the brief we predicted that driving cars would be outlawed in favour of autonomous vehicles.

After research which investigated the threats and opportunities presented by this scenario in the year 2026, and as well as investigation into peoples’ motivations for tuning into local radio, I landed myself with the zany concept of developing a service which delivers a karaoke service to people on-the-go, in which they can sing solo, harmonise with friends remotely/with other passengers in the car, or even join a “Traffic Jam” and sing with the other people stuck in the gridlocked junctions of our roads.

I shall leave the full justification and explanation for the time when the project, called Autokara, is in my portfolio, but one of the outcomes I created was a video to advertise the service – a video in which me and my mum can be found singing our heart out to The Circle of Life from the Lion King! It has been a really great project to work on, albeit somewhat stressful (as is always the case) just before deadlines, however I shall spare myself and my mother the embarrassment of posting the video here, so I leave you with a screenshot which I love and think summarises the project quite well…

Karaoke in the car!

PS: I felt like I should let you know that my mum bought me a steak bake whilst I was at home, so the balance of peace in my world has been restored.