Today we visited London. I managed to get lots of new art materials and some photographs of generalness that could be useful for the future. I always enjoy going to Camden as everyone is so individual it is inspiring to see such a difference in styles and cultures.

The talk by Paula Scher was really informative and inspiring. She has achieved so much it encouraged me to push myself harder as I've just been sailing along in my comfort zones.

Robert Samuel Hanson.

I found this when I was browsing the internet and it really caught my eye. It made me think about my Visual Equations project. I have changed my mind YET again. I want to focus on polor opposites in the world. For example: nature/man made. love/hate. new/old. etc. This image gave me the idea that I could create one of the opposites from the opposite. that doesn't make sense ha. I mean, I could create an image of nature i.e some kind of insect, out of man made structures or something along those lines? I was also looking at perhaps just making typefaces, so I would photograph some buildings, structures- anything man made really- and create the word 'nature' from these images.

Hannah did presentation skills with us today. It was good to see previous work to help get ideas with my sketchbook layouts etc. I need to make my sketch book more exciting and visually stimulating. I want it to kind of look like a scrap book...

Final intro to Quark. Gradually getting easier. I'm finding my layouts bland though, I wish I hadn't chosen a 2 column grid... too late to change it now though. I'm just going to have to do more research. Also need to research a designer that inspires me...

I've changed my mind since yesterday. I was brain storming juxtaposition and Shakespeare came into my head, as in oxymorons. Maybe this will be challenging to do? To illustrate his oxymorans either through photography- I don't know....

Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Parting is such sweet sorrow. O brawling love! O loving hate!

The lady from War on Want came in to talk to us about the work they do and mentioned the live brief that we're going to be working on in December. I'm so excited!!! I can't wait to get stuck in. The work they do seemed really interesting and also intriguing as some of it she wasn't allowed to talk about as it was top secret. Its making me want to get the text and image deadline even more out the way so that we can start the new project.

Annas task for the Dada poem needed to be handed in today. I thought my illustration was quite minimal in a good way but when she looked at it she said it looked like I hadn't really thought about the message and had done it really quickly. bit disheartening. Apparently we needed to write an 800 word analysis to go with it but nobody knew about this?? Maybe I'll re-do my visual interpretation of my poem. Finding it quite hard to focus on so many things at once though at the moment. Keeping up to date with my blog, contextual studies, sketchbook, looming deadlines/crits. My heads all over the place. I know it'll be fine soon though I always get like this with an approaching deadline but I always seem to pull it off. Fingers crossed its going to happen this time too.

Found this image in 'Street Logos' from the library. I think this is something to do with visual equations??? apparently we need to focus on juxtaposition. This juxtaposes reality with technology. In this day in age technology is such a huge part of peoples lives, people even stop living in reality and spending all their time on computers and social networking rather than actually having a life. I think maybe I could focus on this concept somehow. Maybe through photography? I seem to be using illustration as a medium too often and I would really like to get into my photography as it fascinates me.

Really quite disappointed in myself this weekend :-( I went back home for the first time since coming to uni and planned on doing LOTS of work but I have done none. Getting pretty worried now that I'm going to be rushing around for the deadline which is slowly creeping up. I'm really enjoying the course but I'm finding it so hard to motivate myself in terms of my sketch book. I've never really been brilliant at sketch books but living in a house with so many people and so many distractions is proving pretty difficult!!! Argh I need to sort my life out. A.S.A.P

Had my crit for Glyphs this afternoon. Everyones work was really good considering a lot of people had never used Illustrator before uni. A few people had done quite a bit more work than me but the majority had done about the same amount which made me feel better.

I think I could have attempted something more complex. the dolphin is really simple, but I do think my type 'court' was quite challenging.

Got briefed on our final (yay!) project for this module. 'Visual Equations'. I'm quite confused about this project. Usually I have a vague idea of what I want to do but this time I literally have no clue. I think because I'm not completely sure about the task that is why I'm finding it difficult. I need to ask around and see what ideas other people have...

Had my letterpress crit this morning. sally said my piece was really good. before I came to uni i was dreading having regular crits because I get really embarassed, but they seem to get easier every time. It's also reassuring and encouraging when you get positive feedback from people.

Then this afternoon, Kit introduced us to Quark. I've never used this programme before which feels really alien as all the other workshops I've had pretty good knowledge of. I'm slowly getting the hang of it... But its so regimental! I'm finding it hard to keep everything so perfectly measured etc. It'll be good to have for future projects though so that my layouts can be perfect.