This is My Notebook.
When, tasked with writing an essay about my practice for my Graphic Communication Design course, I chose to emulate one of my own notebooks as the medium. The book is hand-bound, and each page was chosen to reflect the words within it. It focuses on my personal history and how that has influenced my work, and therefore is also handwritten.
In addition to the photos of the Notebook on the right, the entire essay can also be found below for those who struggle to read my writing:
This is my notebook, there are many like it but this one is mine.
I’m not going to lie; I don’t know where to start when defining my practice. My process and outcomes almost contradict themselves. I’m messy and meticulous, a clumsy perfectionist. I have few contemporary inspirations; I know little about art history and rarely does my work have any notable references that weren’t an afterthought.
Like many on this course, I often feel like a farce, a fake, a liar. However, I wouldn’t consider this feeling imposter syndrome. How can I be an imposter if everyone feels the same? What I would say is that nobody works the same way, and that can leave us all feeling a little like aliens. While my outcomes are often clean and structured, my process (and therefore the bulk of my practice) is built on decrepit paper scraps and cluttered folders, so this critical report will be no different.
This is my notebook. Well, not just a notebook, it’s a carefully planned and prepared reflection of the unseen part of my mind and work, but this is my notebook. It has been bound and built just how my own journals are, and hopefully it will give some insight into why my work looks like it does, and why I work like I do, in an organised disarray.
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I Can’t draw.
This was like my motto throughout GCSE art. My insistence that I couldn’t draw initiated my obsession with graphic design. I had always previously struggled with painting, and using a computer allowed me to control every aspect of my work. My dad is a Graphic Designer, I never saw him hold a paintbrush, and I always considered him an artist in his own right. Because of this, the very first projects I produced (like his) were categorised by a constant desire to replicate real-world work as well as possible. In essence,
I stole from a lot of designers I loved, as most people do when learning. My dad always gave me hints as to how to replicate some styles, and due to some prior experience using ‘paint.net’ (which I’m embarrassed to say I obtained designing Minecraft “texture packs” when I was 13), I picked up photoshop quickly.
If you asked me who my favourite designers were two years ago, I would have found it far easier to answer than I do now. My inspirations were far more concrete during my A-Levels; I liked very specific designers, and I used to spend my time learning how to replicate their oddly specific styles. I think I cared more about art history and imitating it because I was learning the skills that I now have.
I was particularly fascinated by the work of Shepard Fairey. I was pretty political at the time and found his work powerful and inspiring, there was also just something about his palette and flowing shapes that I wanted to replicate all the time. One of my A-level outcomes was even inspired by his 1984 book cover design (Fairey, 2008). It was through my exploration of his work that I came across my favourite graphic art style, Constructivism. Alexander Rodchenko’s harsh optical collages inspired so much of my A-Level work and even influenced my approach towards my I&S project “The Free Nation of Birdhaüs” (Rodchenko, 1924)
Recreating their styles led to me gaining proficiency with the pen tool in photoshop and I began developing my own style of digital painting.
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The Blues
Musicians have had as much influence on my practice as designers. More so in fact. While my father is a graphic designer, he also happens to be a blues Harmonica Player in a little-known province in the North of Spain called Asturias – my Mum’s place of birth. Moving from London into the Spanish countryside, I was lucky enough to spend my teens there. The culture, community and attitudes that I became ingrained in ultimately led me to being the designer I am today.
Blues musicians in Asturias are interesting types, being that they don’t really play Blues, and are Hippies – the ones I like the most are at least. Hanging out with 20 to 30 something-year-old stoners from the age of 12 will do something to you. These people are artistic, cultured, concerned and caring for the place that bred them. They showed me a vastly different world
from anything I’d seen in London, and they made me feel like an adult in every conversation I was involved in. They are also touring Musicians, so little Lucas would take his camera to all the “Mota Blues” gigs just to capture the people who I thought were cool as fuck. Eventually, I wanted to start making books to journal these photos, and my Dad helped me pick up InDesign and Photoshop, “because if we do something, we do it properly.” Initially, my practice focused exclusively on music, and if I wasn’t photographing gigs, you’d find me making projects on the ‘27 Club’ in GCSE art.
It was at this time that I found the work of Photographer Jim Marshall. He seemed to have somehow photographed all my favourite artists, from Hendrix to Dylan. Although I wouldn’t say he made me pick up the camera, he certainly showed me the importance of capturing music culture, both on stage and behind the scenes. So I stopped photographing exclusively gigs, and made sure to always have a camera on me – capturing my friends in high contrast, grainy, black and white shots, just like Jim. I would then upload them to my old @lucasparfotography account. In retrospect, I was far prouder of those photos then than I am now, and I was far more eager to publish work on social media regardless of its quality, as I used to care less about what my peers thought. Maybe I could learn something from a younger Lucas.
The Hippies I grew close to and photographed did everything themselves, be it recording albums, making videos, designing merchandise... Being surrounded by so many creatives that did so many different things (but wouldn’t call themselves “multidisciplinary artists’’) encouraged me to try as many mediums as possible, albeit in a very DIY way. All they do is be creative, it’s not a job when it comes from love, and they’d be creative whether they lived in a squat or a skyscraper. I love this philosophy, as I love working, and as I now find myself enjoying writing this report. I love having the freedom to explore as many styles and approaches as I feel, and still having the outcome fulfil a set brief.
The style of my work may have changed a lot since I moved back to London, and I focus far less on representing the music counterculture than I used to, but my attitude and ideas remain mostly the same. I still love experimenting with new techniques, doing things my own way, and I still have a great appreciation for the importance of making. Yet the voice that defines my practice is still my own, and that of my friends back in “La Birra”. The north of Spain is a simpler place than London, people are a little louder, boundaries are a little less considered, and life, generally, is taken a little less seriously. As life is taken less seriously, so is Art.
I love Mota Blues, and I’m proud to say I’m friends with a band as regionally well-known as they are, but some of their songs are ridiculous: from “Prau Palu” (Mota Blues, 2015), a song in which the words “Field Stick” are repeated throughout the chorus; to “Ácido Litúrgico” (Mota Blues, 2018) where they sing about *allegedly* putting acid in the sacramental wine – all in good taste of course. I’ve always found artists who don’t take their own work too seriously the most endearing and interesting. So I do the same with my own work, sprinkling a touch of my sense of humour throughout.
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My Humour
My work may often look serious, and I try hard for it to look clean and realised, but I can’t help but let some jokes slip through – especially when I’m writing copy for my projects. Some of my work can be wacky and tongue and cheek. The Poopkea project I made last year was embarrassingly so. For this I created a catalogue of futuristic toilet-themed vaporwave-inspired products ranging from a “Laser Bidet” to the “Electric Shitcycle”. I think I was testing the water (pun intended) to see how weird I could get with my University projects. You can get pretty weird.
I haven’t produced anything as outrageous as that since, yet I still like keeping my projects light-hearted. It keeps me interested in what I’m making. My Free Nation of Birdhaüs, although serious in its outcomes, was still ultimately based on the idea of a Communist Birdhouse and was filled with poultry puns. If I’m laughing at my own jokes while working, then at least it’s making me happy. What’s the point in doing anything otherwise?
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G Lemon and his Consequences
Nico Rubio, also known by his stage name G Lemon, is a mate from high school who wanted a music video for his rap track “Otra Dimension” almost two years ago. Being the only person he knew with a camera, he asked me to shoot and direct it. We ended up making two together before we each went off to different universities in different countries. However, the experience left me with some basic knowledge of video editing (which I also applied to my media studies A-Level work).
I’ve been a huge cinephile since my dad taught me how to surf the Pirate Bay when I was 8 or 9. Although I wasn’t always paying attention, subconsciously I was accumulating all this footage. I guess I just never used that knowledge until recently. Over a year since I last edited any video, I found myself in possession of a few early 2000s digital cameras that recorded in terrible quality for my Circuit BreakA project. The output looked like the shitty grainy aesthetic I spent hours trying to replicate when I first started editing. So I fell in love with the medium again.
I love 480p video. All that noise, the indistinguishable blurring of shapes… Yum. Sometimes less really is more, and reducing the quality allows the audience to recognise only the most important parts of the video. So now I’m carrying another camera with me everywhere, a little 2002 Olympus that stores 1m30s of video, and I’m making little edits with music, slowly finding myself producing as much video work as graphics work. My friends are asking me to make videos highlighting their work for their courses and I’m looking closer at those films I love than ever before, because I want to record everything I see.
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Ligatures, Leading, Kerning, All that jazz.
We all have a condition, an addiction, a dirty little kink that nobody likes to talk about. Good typography… BOY.
My Dad and I would play this game where we’d walk around and he’d basically spend the whole time criticising all the terrible typography we saw. Over the years, I got pretty good at the game too. Despite my questionable handwriting, I’ve always been a sucker for good typography and, if anything, it is probably one of the things I dedicate the most time to in my practice. Making sure the hierarchy is right, adjusting the line spacing so it’s just perfect, squeezing a few nice little ligatures in there to tie it all together. Lovely. Once I started reading books like “Just my Type” (Garfield, 2010), which analyses typography in depth and shows a side of art history which I actually found interesting, my love for type only grew.
No matter how much the medium I work with changes, these elements always remain the same. My perfectionism when it comes to type, along with a familiar colour palette across all my work and an emphasis on the texture of my outcome, leaves me with what I hope is a somewhat recogniseable style.
A typographical reference that I find myself citing so often that I no longer include it in my presentations is the Birka Jazz Archive. Its online catalogue displays hundreds of beautiful Blue Note covers “intended as a tribute to the labels and to the artists, designers and photographers” (Birka Jazz, 2019). Maybe it’s just my aforementioned musical conditioning showing through, but there is something about Blue Note Jazz and Blues album covers that really gets to me. The letterforms from beautiful typefaces always in quirky organisation, the vibrant colour palettes, the positioning of duotone posterized images so similarly yet so distinctively each time. The design reflects the music I guess, just off-beat in just the right way.
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The Alien
I’m sorry, but I don’t have a battle in me. People here are often so passionate about fixing the world, and don’t get me wrong, I admire that, but there is always going to be something new that needs fixing. As long as there are people, it is inevitable that there will also be war, corruption and – most importantly – hate. Even those who fight their battles out of love will end up hating their enemy. This sounds cynical, but I’m trying to say that I sometimes get tired of the overtly political nature of Art, and of the expectation that we all have, or need a
movement or cause to fight for. The world is a bleak place and in infinitely trying to make it lighter for others we can make it darker for ourselves. When I was concerned with politics and was adamantly passionate about making change (back when I was really into OBEY), I found myself so filled with rage at the right wing that I often couldn’t see the person behind the politics, so now I try to stay away from all of it.
I’m an Alien. I come from the North of Spain, bearing just my skills and my name, with no battle in me.
Change making is good. But I often feel like ideology is not good for me. Don’t get me wrong, should any community in need need my help I will be there, but I don’t see my practice influencing any specific one. Nor do I believe that any specific one desperately needs my practice. I like to produce work that’s easily understandable by all, and I will always remain respectful of those I present within it. The community which I impact is anyone that is impacted by my design, as ultimately, I do this for me. I really like working, and I like making art which I think looks good, and has a function, that’s all.
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Conclusion:
When I started writing this report I thought 2500 words was too much to define my own practice. In retrospect, I didn’t even think I had a practice. Yet now I find myself too near the word limit with still too much to say. It’s hard to categorise your own work, to dissect it and find what makes it unique. My practice is built on my inkjet printer, and the colour green. It’s built on my dad’s old scalpel, double sided sticky tape, nick nacks from markets and an obsession with collecting. It’s so hard to define because I’m incapable of truly showing you the core of my work without laying my brain across these pages. My practice is me, it’s influenced by everything I consume and enjoy and includes subtle nods to all of it. I couldn’t see myself doing anything else, it feels as natural as blood in these veins or ink on this paper.
Bibliography:
Birka Jazz. (2019) ‘Birka Jazz Archive’. Birka Jazz. Available at: https://birkajazz.se/ (Accessed 15 January 2023)
Fairey, S. (2008) ‘1984’. 1984. Available at: https://obeygiant.com/prints/1984/ (Accessed 19 January 2023)
Garfield, S. (2010) ‘Just my Type’. A Book About Fonts. Available at: https://amzn.eu/d/hQboBjA (Accessed 21 february 2022)
Marshall, J. (1967) ‘Jimi Hendrix, Monterey, Monterey Pop Festival 1967’. Available at: https://www.jimmarshallphotographyllc.com/ (Accessed 30 December 2022)
Mota Blues. (2015) ‘Prau Palu’. M. Available at: https://open.spotify.com/track/2J1RfG64sVutPd9IlkfYBQ?si=86a0d8b6fed24753 (Accessed 10 January 2023)
Mota Blues. (2018) ‘Ácido Litúrgico’. Buen Viaje. Available at:
https://open.spotify.com/track/6Mzhv3U12uydfxzyLNBQhV?si=bf6f9bb49b554bab (Accessed 7 January 2023)
Rodchenko, A. (1924) ‘Books (Please)! In All Branches of Knowledge’. Agitation and Propaganda. Available at: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/rodchenko-alexander/ (Accessed 03 January 2023)
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