City In Flux Research

This is some of my research into the City in Flux brief.

Flux: continuous change or movement.

                                                            Martin Roemers

Martin Roemers is a Dutch documentary photographer. His previous projects included him traveling across Europe photographing relics of the cold war such as abandoned bunkers, cemeteries and memorials and monuments. Another project looked at ‘the eyes of war’ looking at the wounds that had occurred during conflicts to victims eyes. Roemers also took black and white portraits of members of ISAF forces in Afghanistan. His latest project uses long exposures to capture the movement of vehicles and people within cities around the world.

Focusing on cities with large populations and high population densities, cities such as Karachi, Dhaka, Mumbai, and New York City are all included. The effects of the long exposure, as well as the crowds of people wearing similarly coloured clothes leads to a ghost like-trail coming from the inhabitants of the city and the vehicles. The effect is emphasised when objects within the shot move quickly across the frame.

I think his work is trying to capture the essence of human life within a modern city, whilst capturing common features of city life that transcends international borders and cultures. His focus on densely populated cities such as Bombay offer an insight into what is in the future if the population of the world continues to rise at the current rate.

 Photo copyright Martin Roemers / Panos Pictures.

Dhaka, Bangladesh
The rickshaws in the foreground, the customers in the middle ground and the people on the top of the walkway all create the movement and therefore the ghost-like trails that long exposures create.  This picture captures how markets in cities can still be busy places even at dusk, modern cities are open 24 hours a day.  Another aspect of the photo is the light that is captured from the bulbs. The bulbs don’t move but the long exposure captures more of the light and creates more of a glow effect around the bulb, making them appear brighter.

Photo copyright Matin Roemers / Panos Pictures.

Calcutta, India
Whilst the taxi and rickshaw are motionless at the traffic signals, the bus creates the all the movement within the shot; there is also some movement from pedestrians. The bold block of colour from the bus creates an almost solid diagonal line across the frame making it more dynamic. I think this shows whilst something is moving there is always something standing still; whilst something’s change, something’s stay the same.

                                                                    Matt Stuart

Matt Stuart is a London based street photographer; Stuart often tries to inject humour into his work. Often catching objects that coincide to make one humorous snapshot.

Stuart shoots in both colour and black film. He uses a Legia 35mm camera because he doesn’t want to hide behind technology or the ability to use Photoshop to boost his work; he wants to capture a genuine moment and a moment that people know is genuine when they look at the photograph.

He does however use a digital camera (Canon EOS 5D) when he is shooting commercial and commission work and video projects.

A lot of Stuarts work fuses elements in the foreground and elements in the background that might not be straightforwardly obvious. With some of his work he makes links that at first appear ambiguous but once you take a second look and analysis the image you see the link and what he is trying to point out, but some of his work is a bit more straightforward.

Photo copyright Matt Stuart 2013

“Moorgate Underground” is one of Stuarts more obviously funny works, using the giant finger on the poster to pick or poke the nose of the man with the backpack waiting for a train.

Photo copyright Matt Stuart 2013

‘Bayswater Tube’ is one of Stuarts photos that require a bit more analysis. The first thing you notice is the man making a note in his notebook, but look over his right shoulder, and you will notice the face on the poster behind. The expression and the eyes look as if the face has seen the entry and reacted as if it was something abhorrent to look at.

                       'Internet Geographies' by the OII

Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

The Oxford Internet Institute (part of the University of Oxford) has looked in depth at certain aspects of the Internet and how Internet use can change depending on where in the world you are. They have looked in depth at most of the world’s population and their relationship to the Internet.

Most of the OII’s work is presented in a way that represents Geography – making it easier to understand the differences between different regions or countries.

This first map uses a traditional map, with different regions shaded to match the findings of how much of the region uses the Internet; the darker the region on the map, means that more of the population within that region uses the Internet.

Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

This kind of map is similar to a light map, but each dot on this map represents a photo that has been geo-tagged on Flickr. The more photos a location has the pinker the dots become. This tends to highlight tourist hotspots and locations that might have a particular influx of people for an event such as a music festival, a major sports final or occasion. Great Britain and Europe in particular are highlighted on this map, along with the population centers in Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane) and The United States is covered despite most of the central states within the US not having much in the way of tourism hotspots. A problem with this kind of map may be that it doesn’t take a count multiple tags by the same person, and photos can be geotagged even if they aren’t of a particular event or place – an empty field can be geotagged 6 times by the same person in order to be represented on this map.

Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

Another type of map that the OII uses is one that changes the shape of the country and the size then changes on the data that is being represented. In this case the size of the rounded rectangle is representative of the amount of Wikipedia articles that have been Geotagged (with longitude and latitude co-ordinates) within the borders of that country. The shading of each of the countries depends on the ratio of articles within that country compared to the population. The darker the colour the higher the ratio of articles to million of population.

                                             Jonathan Barnbrook

Jonathan Barnbrook is a British Graphic designer, font designer/typographer, and filmmaker. Barnbrook has been quoted as saying that he wishes to use design ‘as a weapon for social change’.

Some of his notable works include album covers for David Bowie, these include Bowie’s March 2013 album The Next Day. The artwork for this caused something of a stir upon release. This was because the base for the artwork was the artwork of Bowie’s 1977 album Heroes, but the most noticeable difference was the white square in the middle of the picture that covered most of the image, but the title of the album was crossed out leaving it to read “ ”Heroes” David Bowie ”. The white square was the main feature of the advertising campaign. Before the release date was confirmed posters started appearing with white squares over what would be the focal point of the poster, Barnbrook had started to subvert the posters by adding the white square on top.

“The Next Day” – Artwork by Jonathan
Barnbrook using Sukita’s photography.

“Heroes” – Cover photography
by Masayoshi Sukita.

The standard version of the ‘The Next Day’ artwork is in monochrome – like Heroes, but there are special editions and variations that are in vibrant colour and have a mismatch unregistered screen-printed feel about them.

Barnbrook has also worked with companies in Japan and he has become quite well known in the Far East, having worked on two high-profile projects in Japan.

I particularly like his work for the Mori Arts Center, because it is colorful, simple, yet innovative, using 5 lines to represent the 5 different branches of the arts center, with each line being given its on personality by changing the amount of waves in each line as well as the width and height of each peak or valley. Each line can then be taken out and used as the branding for each of the different sections of the centre.

Mori Arts Centre logo, including autonomous subsidiary logos, designed by Jonathan Barnbrook.

Each of the logos/lines are autonomous and work as logos on their own but when combined to make the logo for the arts center it is said to represent the whole spectrum of art and society, that is within the art center, by the use of the various colors from the spectrum of light.

Also the colored lines are reminiscent of Harry Beck’s tube map – the underground map has become a well-known icon of London and is something that has being imitated worldwide.

Kanji 6 trees, the base of the logo...

...plus typography to form the logo

Barnbrook’s over well-known work in Japan is the branding for the Roppongi Hills development in Tokyo – which at the time was the largest development of post war Japan. The branding is simple and the main visual element of the logo is the 6 circles, these 6 circles is the Kanji (a modern form of Japanese writing) for Roppongi and represents 6 trees.

The branding in place at the top of the Roppongi Hills development,
Tyoko, Japan, designed by Jonathan Barnbrook.

                                                            Nicholas Feltron

Nicholas Feltron is an author and graphic designer who produces and publishes infographics in an annual report using the data collected about himself from different aspects of his life such as travel habits from 2011, personal communication from 2013 or other subjects such as food and drink consumed, photographs taken and time spent with significant people from his life.

Feltron uses a mix of images, graphs, charts and text to illustrate and accompany his data. In the early editions of his annaul reports he used a two page spread for each category, one acted as a title page which was a whole page image with a three words of text, for example '2008 in travel' where the word travel would be the biggest word on the page. The layout and positioning of the text on these pages would remain the same throughout the report with the word being changed for each category as well as the background image.

The second page of these spreads would then  have the data for each category on a plain grey background, often split into 4 equal sections or 3 sections should the content dictate this where 2 of the sections would be square and the third would be a rectangle.

Feltron Annual Report '2005 in Miscellany'

As you can see this spread uses 3 sections to present the data because one of the data-sets is a list of 26 entries and to maintain readability the format had to be changed to the 3 section format. The colour scheme for this report was grey, black, white and red. The grey was used for the background, the white was used for the important pieces of information such as the data and the titles for each section. The black and red were alternated throughout to help lead the reader in the right direction was to what to read next. The change in colour is what I like most about this style because it is subtle but is key to direction.

Feltron Annual Report 'Food' (2006)

The format of Feltron's report changed between 2005 and 2006, going from a rigid 2 page spread per category to a more fluid set up, allowing categories to be put on 1 page if there wasn't enough data to fill 2 sheets. Feltron also changed from square pages to pages that maintained the A4 ratio.

The food section in 2006 is a two page spread with a full page map on the left of the spread to accompany the data on the right. The page on the right also contains more than 4 data sets, including the map on the left there's 7 sets of data on this spread. On the page on the right the data is split into sections by horizontal lines and negative space to split them vertically. 

What I like about this new layout is that it's a bit cleverer in that uses some minimalist design elements (the use of the line and negative space) to separate the content. This combined with the varation in point size means more information can be added with cluttering the page. There is also contrast between the yellow accented colour and the off-white/grey page colour and black text means that the title is still readable despite being under a pie chart.

Feltron Report 'Relationships and Activities' (2009)

The 2009 report feels a lot more friendlier and professional at the same time, this is because of the change in colour scheme, the change in font and the return to white paper as a background.

The palette of blues is a bit more relaxed than the yellow, black and grey of the previous edition, but retaining the black for the copy body retains a professional element. Feltron also retains the contrast in colour using a lighter shade of blue for accents, titles and highlighted sections, whilst using black for body, subheadings and the majority of the data. Another element that Feltron has kept is the contrast between the serif and sans serif font (namely Helvetica), which maintains the professional element with in his work and appears more friendly at the same time. And the use of a non-coloured background is less harsh on the eyes and makes the work look more professional also.

Regional maps of predicted property value fluctuations.

This map looks at the predicted change in property prices across the Northeastern United States. 

I like how Feltron has separated the content and data-sets for each of the towns and cities within the graphic. I like how he has drawn the data out of the state boundaries using a line from a dot to identify each of the cities geographical location. The name of the city is in a colour coded box in a serif font but is in a smaller point size than the predicted percantage change which is underneath and in a tall sans serif typeface accompanying this is a small arrow. This arrow points upwards or downwards and corresponds with the predicted rise/fall and matches the colour used in the box behind the city name, underneath this is the house price which returns to the original serif type but is set in italics. 

I like the contrast between the serif and sans serif typefaces which work together well, as well as the range of harmonious colours used in the boxes. These colours contrast with the white used for the place names and the colour palette used for the map underneath.