MANNERS DONT COST A THING

After long last my patches for 'MANNERS DONT COST A THING' has arrived, and I am really pleased with how they have turned out, very plain and simple but it gets the message across well...

LE JOURNAL

Some marvellous photos from a guy called Cedric Viollet. The guy in the shoot should be reading a copy of 'The Changing Face Of The Modern Gentleman' for sure...

MANNERS DONT COST A THING

As an extension of the Modern Gentleman work, I was trying to think of appropriate sayings, that are in relation to what my work is trying to put across. When in my car this morning driving around in the depths of east London I was getting rather irritated to say the least, this is down to the fact that nobody says thank-you...

THE CHANGING FACE OF THE MODERN GENTLEMAN

The newspaper for 'The Changing Face Of The Modern Gentleman' is here, and arrived a few days ago. 12 pages of black and white newspaper, with all the images from the supreme gentleman series, more images after the click...

BADGES - PATCHES - STAMPS

This week i'm moving on to the next step of the modern gentleman work, this is the patch/badge/stamp, whatever you want to call it. There is a lot of pride that comes with gaining something that shows you have had to work hard at something to earn this accolade, from your first badge at cubs to your first cap at international football level, every step is an achievement that is marked by a small patch of material that can be attached to clothing or kept as a constant reminder of what you have achieved. I have found a few places that specialise in the embroidered patch field and have hopefully found some people that can produce some for me, designs will be shown soon.

THE NEW GENTLEMANS JOURNAL - GRAIN & GRAM

At the start of this week when I was in the midst of designing the newspaper for the modern gentleman work my brother Ben emailed me a link to this new website called 'The New Gentleman's Journal'. The notion they are trying to get across to the viewers of the website is very similar to the points and issues I am looking at within the modern gentleman work.

The website basically takes men who they think epitomise the new gentleman, there are musicians on it, carpenters, letterpress makers. They interview each one of them and take photos and a short video to go with it. I find it interesting that within the interviews and photos it shows a wide variety of different males who not only visually look different represented by the clothes they wear but how they all do different things and have different beliefs, this is in essence the beauty of the modern gentleman, which is exactly the point I made within the first instalment of the modern gentleman work.

Truly interesting website and defiantly worth looking at.

THE NEW GENTLEMAN'S JOURNAL

THE CHANGING FACE OF THE MODERN GENTLEMAN

I have just sent the newspaper for my self initiated project off to print, it is titled...

'THE CHANGING FACE OF THE MODERN GENTLEMAN'

It is basically a short ride through the readers pre-conceptions of what a gentleman is and takes them through the stereotype of a gentleman and then starts to deconstruct this pre-conception, and questions the factor of appearance and behaviour and the inter-relation between the two of them.

By the end of it, it is basically saying there is no written rules anymore for the modern gentleman, and that the only person that is able to comment on weather someone is a gentleman or not is the person who is making the judgement, and not what these pre-determined rules are, from guides and rules books that exist at the moment.

Throughout the newspaper there is images of the SUPREME GENTLEMAN, which are basically made up of peoples views of who they think the modern gentleman is. However this is also picked apart and leaves the reader making their own decision to who the modern gentleman is.

The reader is then given the option of giving an embroidered patch to either themselves or someone who they think deserves to be given the accolade of the modern gentleman, in order to provoke them to think about what their characteristics of a gentleman are.

It was a long slog to get it done for the printing deadline but I had twenty five minuets to spare so guess it was all good. As soon as I receive these newspapers back from the printers I will post photos of them, I am really excited to see how they come out, in the meantime I'm off to design the patch that comes with the paper, and you may be seeing a few more in the coming weeks, so you can build your patch collection up like a boy scout...

NERD MERITS

The nerd merit badges are a range created for the nerd within people, for deeds they have done in general life, as I said Fernando told me about it, they are really great. the story that comes with each badge is also good too, guess it is a interesting way of acknowledging someone who has done something of merit...

MOVING FORWARD MGM

So after talking about the MGM project with the tutor group on Thursday I have been thinking of ways to push the projects forward, and possibly pushing it in a slightly different direction. Basically after talking about the true lad website and the badges it has given me some more ideas, which bring another aspect to the work.

What I want to do now is sort of formulate something that has this True Lad aspect to it, and then convert it into something to do with a true gent, or something along these lines, and with these deeds or things you do you can earn yourself some badges that you can either sew on to clothes or like a pin-badge which can be placed on various things.

The whole point of this is to half question the fact of the stereotype of a gentleman and then also half question the other spectrum that is this lad culture that surrounds many men around Britain at this current time. I think it is interesting because as the two subjects of lad/gent are at two spectrums of the cultural line, they still have a lot of similarities between them, things like gaining respect of peers and doing things that boost your stepping, which is quite interesting.

One person who wears a kappa shell-suit and drinks super-ten from a can on a street corner could gain as much respect from his peers as opposed to a person dressed in a Saville Row suit and gaining respect from their peers. All interesting stuff and something that is constant within our society.

Just been looking through the true lad website and some of the stuff that is written on there is utterly ridiculous, but also pure genius, check it out.

TRUE LAD

VP CRIT MGM

Today was the crit with the tutor group about our self initiated project, we spoke about half of the groups projects and one of those people was me.

I talked about the newspaper idea and possible ways of taking it forward. We were discussing how I should maybe start off with my perception and the motive for why I have created the work which I think is a good idea as it sets the tone. We then moved onto the website 'true lad' and how it is linked with my work, due to the fact that there is almost this unwritten rule of being a 'lad' that the people on this website write about. Fernando then brought up this website about nerd merits, and how they could earn badges for stuff they did in their daily lives. This I thought would actually be quite a nice way of linking all this stuff together, so will look into this further in the next coming weeks.

SOME SPREADS FOR THE NEWS

I have been doing bits on the newspaper for the MGM work that is for my first self initiated project, which I plan to have done and sent to the printers first thing tuesday morning. I have been looking at alot of papers that I have picked up in the past for inspiration, I think I am going to have the paper folding up twice...

THE NARRATIVE

To go with the series of images I have made for the MGM work I am going to write some short stories/things that a gentleman should. I basically want to highlight the fact that the things a gentleman was expected to do years ago and what in reality a gentleman is perceived to do now is completely different, these guides to...

MR GREEN

Just stumbled upon these videos, they are a funny take on being a gentleman. It is an adverting campaign for the casino Mr Green. The ethos behind it is play with Mr Green and be a gentleman, its funny because gambling isnt particularly seen as a gentlemanly thing, I guess the point to these videos are to make fun of this gentleman figure, whatever there trying to do though you should watch one of them because the guy who plays Mr Green is pretty funny. Click on the links below...

Mr Green's Guide to How to Treat a Lady

Mr Green's Guide to Being a Gentleman

Mr Green's Guide to Facial Hair

1/2/11 - DP CRIT

This afternoon was the crit for the MGM project with David, it was a really useful crit. Everyone seemed to like the photo collage/illustrations that I had been doing, and we discussed about the focus of the narrative that should go with it, and what sort of context it should be put in. For the narrative a few things were talked...

JOHN STEZAKER - WHITECHAPEL

Today at the crit Margo B told me about the exhibition at the Whitechapel gallery with the British artist John Stezaker showing there at the moment. So straight after the crit I walked down to Whitechapel to have a look at his work. His work incorporates classic movie stills, vintage postcards and book illustrations...

FIRST VIEW

Here is the first collage out of the series of five, I printed the chosen people out on a laser-jet printer at school, so that the images were as saturated as they could be, I also adjusted them all to black and white and changed the levels. I had to pick the photos of the specific men carefully as I needed to make them all...

FRANCIS BACON

I was showing Nicholas some of my current work for the MGM project and was discussing the reasons why I was doing the photo montage of the modern gentlemen in the eyes of the people I have asked. We were looking at the preliminary collages and he commented it reminded him of work that the painter Francis Bacon...

NEWSPAPER E-READERS

Here is a great article about the newspaper. It is a great piece of writing, and really supports the reasons for why I want to have a newspaper as the object to hold my information. Check it out.

MCSWEENYS NEWSPAPER

FORMAT

I have been thinking over the last couple of days how to make my ideas into a physical state, I was thinking pretty much over the last week that I was going to make a book, however after having a re-think about why i was actually going to do a book and there was specific reason why, however I have thought of something very similar but with solid reason for why it is going to be objectified within its state, this is a newspaper.

I have chosen a newspaper for a number of reasons these reasons are as follows,

To me a newspaper is something that can be read quickly and easily, containing one specific or a lots of different content.

When I was younger the newspaper would always be read by people wearing suits, or people who fitted the stereotype of the notion of a gentleman, which I think is interesting, because the content within the 'old' format would be perceptions that are very current however are related to this old notion of a gentleman.

A newspaper contains both image and text, which a lot of the time are peoples views, made up stories or plain facts and figures.

Lastly I think a newspaper would be a nice outcome in terms of the way its looks and feels.

DAMIEN BLOTTIERE

Damien Blottiere is a photographer, a artist a creative director among other things, his work is seriously good, one piece that was pointed out to me was the work he did for dazed and confused magazine last December. It was a shoot for Calvin & Klein, and it was named cut and paste, the photos for a start are really well...