Artist Research: CRAIG WARD

          Craig Ward

Craig Ward (born 1981) is a British-born, New York-based designer and art director primarily known for his pioneering typographic works and often scientific solutions to projects. A frequent speaker, occasional artist, published author and contributor to several industry journals, he has created award winning typography for a diverse array of clients across the advertising, publishing, fashion and music industries. His work has been shown and documented globally in countless magazines, books and exhibitions.

Craig is a very creative typographer that incorporates the essence in his most formidable pieces of work. He uses the properties of different substances, objects, elements etc. to give his work a very effective aspect that really shows his ability to be creative and also that he has the skills to do it.

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1.)  I don't believe many source materials have been used in the making of this piece. Something that the artists might have done by free hand would be the silhouettes of the fork and knife with a pencil and have them scanned in afterwards. He could have also hand drawn the shape of the plate as a template for him and filled it with words after he scanned it in, but I highly doubt it because these would have been easier created in Photoshop with the pen tool.

This picture has been seriously digitally manipulated. Some tools that have been obviously used in the making of this piece of work are resizing and selection tools, the pen tool for tracing the shapes, maybe the brush tool for each individual name in the middle, blending modes and opacity control to give everything the grunge, painted like aspect an definitely the move tool to arrange everything in this quiet complex piece of typography.

The compositional elements in this image are the fork on the left hand side, the knife on the right hand side and in the middle the plate made out of names of countries from the world. The main element in this piece of work is the gathering of words in the middle as it's the most complex and impressive element of the whole image.

I personally believe that the artists intention is to represent how we are ''eating'' the earth of it's resources, we take and give nothing in return. This image has a very powerful contextual impact on the viewer and the artist has managed to create an impressive and creative piece of work

2.)

2.) I would strongly say that the artist hasn't used any source material at all in this piece. The only element in this image that I think is a source material would have to be the glass breaking if he captured the picture himself even though it would be very difficult to obtain such a powerful camera that can shoot so clear with so many frames per second.

From what I can identify, the artist has definitely used resizing and selection tools to control and place the text in the image,  retouching tools to alter any odd aspects of the image that would seem out of place and maybe gradient filters to give the image a much more vibrant overall look.

The image is made out of two main elements. The text that ''was'' on the piece pf glass and the actual breaking glass. Even though the artist uses such simple elements and a very basic concept the image is very effective. The artist chose white for the text and the background is dark shade of blue to complete the image and keep it as simple as he can. Here's the first example where we see the artist use the nature of an element with typography to create an impressive piece of artwork. The fact that the words '' You Blow Me Away'' are being placed on a breaking piece of glass really shows how the artist manages to express his creativity and it gives the piece a much more vibrant and it gives a kinetic feel to it.

The artist's intentions in this specific piece are to show how he uses juxtaposition in his artwork and how this makes it much more creative and interesting to watch.

3.) I can definitely say that an obvious source materials have been used in the making of this. Water colors or inks have been used to achieve that wet on wet effect which works really effectively with the text because they relate. The text might have also been hand made but I would question it because you could achieve that much more easier with the text tool in Photoshop.

Some Photoshop tool that I would have to use to achieve the same effect would have to be resizing, selection and the move tool to place the text and the ink splashes where I would want them to be, layering and blending modes to give the background paper like texture and maybe try some filters to see which would give the image a better final aesthetic. It's true that the image looks like the text was printed out and the ink was applied afterwards, but I am to experiment with how different digital media enriches the possibility of experimentation and this seems a great starting point.

The image is made out of the text on the page and the wet ink splashes around them. Only black and white was used in the making of this piece which helps him keep things as simple as possible. This piece of art was made out of pure simplicity and even though it seems like such a vague concept it's very effective and the simplicity of it is what give it such a captivating look.

Here we can see, just like in the previous piece, that the artist has used the properties of an element and linked it to the text to make a connection between the typography and the traditional materials used. In this piece, Craig has experimented once again with juxtaposition in his artwork to give it an entertaining and much more interesting aspect. 

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