During the past few years, I have done my duty as a good democrat and dissed Thatcher before it became hip, thus becoming the world’s first and greatest Thipster. As Baroness Maggie fries in hell by the very hand of her former ally, Satan, I hopes she’s got a little laptop next to that boiling pot to read My Very Own Top 3 Margaret Thatcher disses from 2012:

Let The Con Chrisoulis Thipster List Commence:

1) The top video is from a Uni Graphic Design project I did last year which was a sequence on a theme I was personally quite fond about; i.e. politicians and their bullshit smiles. Maggie’s teeth obviously had to play a pivotal role. After playing it, you can read more HERE

2) The below strip is from my daily comic, Tales of The Smiths, in which I retell the early unknown days of the seminal indie band, The Smiths. This is Tales of The Smiths #113 in which I retold Thatcher’s rise to power in 1975. Click the below image to read the whole comic strip.3) The below video is from a performance I made with my band, GH▽STS OF FUTURE PAST, in Brighton. The track ‘Ray Gun and Hatchet’ is a futuristic allegory on Reaganomics, Thatcherism, Perestroika, and much more, written by me, and will feature on the album we’re recording, 4X84.
After playing it, you can read/listen more of Ghosts of Future Past and like us on facebook by clicking HERE

Don’t forget to turn the captions/subtitles ON so you can read the lyrics!

Brighton University

BA (Hons)Graphic Design/Illustration Level 5

Project 9 Tidemarks and Lunar Detachments - Brighton Undercliff Walk

We walked for a couple of hours on a cloudy day from Brighton to Rottingdean by the undercliff footpath.

The task was to explore the role of typography within that environment.

From the three choices that were provided I went for the last one: Design A Signage System for the Undercliff Walk.

I redesigned and reinterpreted modern signage itself and what signs can be in the 21st Century.

I opted for repeating animated gifs within 2001: A Space Odyssey-inspired crystal clear monoliths, which would also serve as wifi mini-centers, cell phone power providers, call phones, traffic/weather/bus route info providers and as lights which would illuminate the footpaths at night.

My proposal was presented in the form of the animated gifs provided within this post.

*Some elements (ex. the bus routes) were taken off the net, but the crystal monolith and its GUI is of my own design.

Brighton University
BA (Hons) Graphic Design/Illustration Level 5
Project 9 Professional Practice Lecture Poster 1 of 3
Presentation Thursday 7 March 2013

We were given the last minute task to create posters for the Professional Practice Lecture that we are given every Thursday by people that mostly had a career 30 years ago. One of them was today’s Roger Dean, who although played a pivotal role in my childhood gaming packaging drools (he designed the Psygnosis and Tetris logos amongst others), he was also the creator of all those LP covers for all those horrific prog rock bands (Yes, Asia etc) that haunted me forever in the 80s and disgusted me even more in the 90s.

When given the brief, my first thought was Johnny Rotten’s 1975 “I Hate Pink Floyd“ t-shirt that led directly to Malcolm McLaren placing him as the singer of the newborn Sex Pistols.

It was due to prog rock’s horrific music that punk (and therefore post-punk and new wave) was born; it was the horrific macho clothes, posture and bravado that the post-hippy prog bands supported that gave birth to the emancipated punk clothing, hairstyles and attitudes; it was those pompous and conceited covers that led Jamie Reid to create the Never Mind The Bollocks collage that graced the Sex Pistols’ debut album and ushered in a new era in …well everything (Factory Records’ Peter Saville would never have been able to pull off those layouts or use strictly typography, had it not been for Reid’s reinvention of the LP cover).

So yeah, nuff said. I think my cover’s blurb is self-explanatory.

When Dean went through the posters he chuckled a bit once he saw this, but didn’t expand on it; thank goodness, cause I was wearing Johnny Rotten’s t-shirt.

The context, layout and technique in these two Jamie Reed posters altered society as we know it.

Examples of Roger Dean’s artwork:

Psygnosis

Yes Yesterdays

Yes logo

Asia Astra

Tetris

University of Brighton /// Faculty of Arts
BA (Hons) Graphic Design /// Level 5 /// Semester 1 ///
Assessment portfolio

This is all the work I did at Uni in my first Semester of Level 5 from Sept 2012-Jan 2013.

I was hard on cash in order to splash out and make a totally non-ecofriendly hardcopy presentation and opted to design a dedicated website for my assessment that includes the brief, preliminary work, crits and final work.

Hope you dig.
conchrisoulis.com/assessment

Pantone 17-5641 (an Emerald hue) Official Pantone Colour of the Year 2013.

Evidently, the Pantone 17-5641 (an Emerald hue) will be the Official Pantone Colour of the Year 2013.
Pantone usually sets the next year’s trend in design and fashion hues, by carefully selecting their colour of the year.
Our lives are affected by this choice (in the clothes we wear, graphic design we observe etc) more than you would think.
*if you scroll down you can see the previous years’ colours too :)

CLICK HERE TO VISIT PANTONE’S WEBSITE AND ANNOUNCEMENT

University of Brighton / Faculty of Arts
Graphic Design / Illustration Level 4
Cultural and Critical Studies
Group Essay on Deep Throat and An Analysis of Pornography
Group consisting of Con Chrisoulis (me), Patrick Colgan, Steffan Dafydd, Joseph Lau, Callum Round
Hand in date: 16 April 2012

_________________________________

According to the brief, we were to form a group and provide/submit the following three:

1. “Each student must submit their research written up in 1200 words. It must be supported by a bibliography and use the MLA Style of referencing. The essays of the group must be collated into a Log Book in which each students essay contribution can be considered and read as part of a whole study.”
2. We were also to provide “A visual display, one PowerPoint slide per group that illustrates your findings. This will, of course, include your selected image. But you may also want to include diagrams, text or other supporting images. Your display will be projected onto the screen from a laptop in G7, Pavilion Parade, so consider the size of the screen and don’t cram too much into the slide.”
3. We also had to make, as a group, “a verbal presentation (max 10 minutes per group) that explains your focussed study in relation to the key terms/concepts and the visual example, your research and answers any questions from tutors and other students. All students in the group must contribute to the presentation.”

After our group was formed we kind of quickly decided that the legendary porn movie, Deep Throat, (at my insistence? gulp, dunno), become the focus of the group, as it would clash with all the faux feminist talk that was preached in the cultural and critical lectures (and possibly cause a laugh within all that serious atmosphere).

Half the group was missing at most meetings, so we hastily split responsibilities and essay chapters and I took up the role of putting the log book and the presentation image together, as well as researching and writing the book’s ending chapter concerning Porn Sales and Marketing Statistics.

When presentation time came, all the previous groups overseeded their 10 minute mark and we were left with very little time to talk, not to mention the fact that we were the only group to utilise a single frame/image for the presentation, as demanded in the brief (most used a series of images, thus providing their presentations with tons of eye candy that would cover any oral gaps).

Anyhow, as predicted our theme of Deep Throat and the manipulation of the female within the porn industry raised some eyebrows and it indeed was worth the time and effort! Pop Porn trivia and fun for all (and some educational info as topping)!

The image at the top of this post is the presentation image shown in front of class and tutors and below is the log book which I put together and submitted to the tutors. You can flip through it and read the individual essays of each group member! Wahoo! Treats for all! :-I

Here’s links to the rest of the group’s tumblr accounts:
Con Chrisoulis (me)
Patrick Colgan
Steffan Dafydd
Joseph Lau
Callum Round

The Case for Commonwealth Republicanism by Con Chrisoulis

Read my pamphlet now.
And/Or weep later.

(more info on this project HERE)

Kerning Project

University of Brighton
Faculty of Arts
Graphic Design Level 4
Kerning Project
14 June 2012

According to our brief:

“Kerning is the technique whereby those composing type may increase or decrease the amount of space between pairs of letters. Kerning is most usually done to letterforms of ‘Display’ size which generally will be heading and captions and small amounts of text above 14pts.

You are asked to set up on a landscape format A4 sheet 4 words in 4 different styles, given below, in InDesign. Once in a serif typeface (eg Baskerville, Times), once in a Sans Serif typeface (eg Gill Sans, Helvetica), all in Lower Case type and both again in Capital. Set each word in 90pt with 130pt leading (inter-line spacing). You shoulf have 4 sheets of A4 paper when your results are printed. The words are railway, predictability, woodland and masquerade.

The learning outcome (is that) you will have gained an appreciation of how adjusting the spacing between pairs of letters may produce a more aesthetically pleasing and rhythmic coherence of display size type. You will have further developed your ability to use InDesign as an essential working tool for the practicing graphic designer.”

I showed Gavin Ambrose my kerning exercise outcome midway through the project at a personal tutorial and he luckily gave me some tips on how to improve my kerning ability.

Even though I took great care, and paid a handsome amount, as always, at mounting these sheets on backing and presentation boards, it wasn’t even opened at my assessment. Oh well, I suppose it was a personal exercise of sorts presented as a project. Again.

Kerning

Project 11 Personal Made Public

University of Brighton
Faculty of Arts
Graphic Design/Illustration Level 4
Project 11 Personal Made Public
14 June 2012

If you exclude some smaller, peripheral projects this was level 4’s final project!

Even though the premise for this project was great, I’m not too proud the outcome… We were given the opportunity to come up with our very own brief/project and then we had to create it and present it at our crit. Sounded great, and there was indeed a chance given to do something more personal.

Unfortunately, three issues came up. a) Assessment was creeping up and we only had a month to finish this (including every other project that we had to redo/tweek), b) we only had a five minute talk, in the Uni’s cafe, about this project with Mr. Paul Farington, who okayed my prelims, because c) we didn’t have a studio for a month as we had to work quite hard -unpaid labour despite uni budget and tuitions paid- under threat for retaliation if we didn’t, putting up walls and all sorts of carpentry for the 3rd years’ exhibition space for a whole week before our assessment (a video I made of this can be seen here):

Anyhow, I wanted to create a project about my passion for comics and I ended up with a fun brief, which was redesigning the camp covers that mainstream superhero schlock comics have had for the past gazillion years and providing them with a new type of branding/identity that incorporates a more contemporary feel and appeal.

Most of the prelims are below, including the brief I made, and the final designs are at the bottom. It went kinda okay at the assessment -where it was shown to the tutors for the first time, as Mr. Emery was sick for a month after a yoga accident (!) and we’d been working setting up fake walls in our studio. The assistant tutor only complained about my dropping the tittle (quote: “ze dot, why you drop?”) from the i in the titles. I said I did it cause I felt like it and it looked better, and sometimes, I hope, that’s not a bad thing. Right?

Project 11 - Personal Made Public

Project 10 Issues - Part 2

This project update has been split into two parts. You are reading the second part. You can read the original progress and product (a punk inspired souvenir shop including Kate Middleton’s anorexic Barbie doll) HERE.

University of Brighton
Faculty of Arts
Graphic Design/Illustration Level 4
Project 10 Issues
4 May 2012

After the crit didn’t go down well for the initial project (read more on that HERE) I decided to go down a different route than the packaging/all design one that I took before.

I therefore opted, at first, for a pro-republic video, which quickly became a card deck project and ended up as an illustrated pamphlet on The Case for Republicanism in the Commonwealth.

I printed it on quality 350gr paper and bound it myself, the end result being really flashy. Showcased at the assessment, it didn’t go down well either, the tutors insisting that I used too much of my illustration skills when it should have been a graphic design project (bzzt not mentioned, but anyhow)!

I’m too proud of this beauty, so no crit can ruin it! ha!

*The chopped head on the cover doesn’t belong to the british royal family, it is of the last french king before the Revolution, the point being that ever since their palaces in France were nationalised by the people, tourism soared (especially in former royal property like the Louvre and Versailles); today France enjoys 3 times more international arrivals than the UK— therefore sending the “royal tourism” excuse goes down the drain.

Here’s the booklet itself, which you can flick through, and below that there’s a load of preliminary work!

Issues - Part 2

Read more about my Issues - Royalty project HERE

Project 10 Issues - Part 1

This project update has been split into two parts. The first one, which you are reading now, was the initial project, which was presented at the crit, and the second part, which was presented at the year’s final assessment is HERE.

University of Brighton
Faculty of Arts
Graphic Design/Illustration Level 4
Project 10 Issues
4 May 2012

According to the brief we had to: “Spend some time considering what current issue you wish to respond to / raise awareness of. Once this has been determined we would like you to produce a creative response which informs and educates your fellow students and the wider populous about your chosen topic.”

Having been a …British subject since birth, I always felt disgusted by the evident lack of equality in the Commonwealth, considering that no matter how many gender, race or sexual rights a government might hand out to the public, it will always remain that lords, barons, princes, sirs, ladies and kings and queens will always preside over what they consider subjects, without ever being voted into position according to skill. Democracy and equality goes down the drain if you consider the above.

Therefore I chose royalty as my issue (over too obvious and banal or exotic subjects such as ecosystem awareness), because I felt that the 60 year Jubilee of Elizabeth that was to be celebrated in June 2012 had to be responded to from as many democratic citizens of the commonwealth as possible PLUS it was a matter that directly involved everyone as citizens (hello, humongous taxes for her golden crapper and stoopid wedding, while we pay tens of thousands, per citizen, for education!).

I chose to celebrate it as her Last Jubilee (fingers crossed, the ol’ bat will be dead before you can say Oliver Cromwell), just as the Buzzcocks and the Pistols celebrated this year. So, I opted to use a Jamie Reid aesthetic to simultaneously celebrate the Sex Pistols 35th anniversary of the year that punk broke. In my opinion, the Sex Pistols have done such wonders for our world culturally that the queen and her tax sucking bloodline would never dream of; 70s punks are the real Commonwealth heroes of our age.

At the crit, we had some emergency tutors filling in for Simon Emery who had a yoga accident(?!) and was out for a few weeks(?!), and after they gave us a proselytising speech about how the former scum of the Earth (aka the Labour Party) has started winning regional elections again (as if Labour doesn’t have any human blood on their hands so as to differ from the Conservatives pfff), they thought that my project was too humorous (the other found it not funny at all) and wasn’t informative enough of the issue that I sought to present. Hahaha! Win!

As requested though, I redid the project anew (click HERE to check that out), but I felt that the doll packaging and the crap, punk aesthetic jubilee souvenirs were right on the spot, regarding critique against their Highnesses and the horrible role models that they present. You can only deal with these types of situations with humour, cause they are totally tragic, from whatever perspective you choose to analyse them from.

**If you wanna zoom in on the details, you can find close-ups of the packaging HERE and HERE!

***Read PART 2 HERE!

Project 10 - Issues - Part 1

**If you wanna zoom in on the details, you can find close-ups of the packaging HERE and HERE!

Project 9 Semiotics / Visual Signifiers

University of Brighton
Faculty of Arts
Graphic Design/Illustration Level 4
Project 9 Semiotics / Visual Signifiers
16 April 2012

A book on Semiotics and Visual Siginifiers that I teamed up, designed and printed with Callum Round one of the best designers in the class.

The preparation and crit went exceptionally well for a change and this was one of the most satisfying projects that I took up.

You can flip through the whole book below (the only thing missing is the flip-out covers, which described all the numbered images). Also, underneath the book there are several notes and images regarding our preparation on the project and photos of the final book.

Semiotics - Visual Siginifiers

Project 8 Art of the Accident part 2 - David Bowie book cover redesign

University of Brighton
Faculty of Arts
Graphic Design/Illustration Level 4
Project 8 Art of the Accident Book Cover
24 Feb 2012

In order to prepare us for the Art of the Accident project, in which we would undertake the task of redesigning an existing book cover using techniques we developed by accident (or deliberate accidents), the class attended a series of workshops which would enhance our desire for experimentation and accidental outcome. You can see all those efforts HERE

Regarding the book cover itself, I chose to redesign Angela Bowie’s autobiography of her life with David Bowie in the ’70s, ‘Backstage Passes’.

First, because at the time of the project I found the book in a second hand bookstore by pure luck, after searching for it for what seemed like a decade! So, that was destiny!

Secondly, the original cover’s design was appalling and needed redesigning whether I did it or not!

The task of the project was to experiment and come up with results from these experiments. My first proposal was a cover that featured an actual backstage pass that I designed, as a gimmick that would slip into the cover and that could be used as a bookmark.

The tutors thought I used too much computer work and didn’t experiment enough and thus I had to redesign it after experimenting with the concept and showcase the final product at my year’s assessment in June. After I had a long talk with Gavin Ambrose regarding the content, and soul, of the book, which was essentially Bowie’s changes (pun intended) through the ’70s from happy-go lucky mod/hippy to diamond studded alien rock god to thin white duke and berlin iceman, Simon Emery suggested that I go for an all typographical cover that would showcase this change.

All the above are showcased below. Due to the fact that our class had to literally build from scratch, as a construction unit, the 3rd years’ graduation exhibition space and our main tutor was sick, I never got to show any tutors my progress and I felt stuck in the typographic vortex I was sent into. I thought of doing a cover that showcased all of Bowie’s logos from his ‘69 debut LP to 1980’s Let’s Dance, when he divorced Angie. It sounded good, looked good in markers, but when it got going on the computer it just didn’t click.

I wasn’t too happy with the final result, as I thought that my original proposal with the bookmark was a commercially viable solution (and I prefer shelf-power over conceptual guacamole), so I think that it shows. I got ripped in the assessment and that as they say, is that.

Art of the Accident 3

Art of the Accident 4