Sunday 20 May 2012

Urban Exploring in Design



Grafika is a Spanish based artistic project for an exhibition. It included logo design, typeface work, exhibition design and advertising campaigning. I chose to showcase these images as part of urban exploration in graphic design since it includes many elements that are also relevant to infiltration. The exhibition features artists that actively use the city and the urban environment around them to create their art. Despite this being a little closer to graffiti and street art than to urban exploring, I still think the message and the way in which it's been advertised can be so easily applied to the nature of urban exploring and the movie that I will be campaigning for.



The Street of Life is a project that caught my eye. Not too similar to urban exploring, but I liked the elements of using discarded objects as canvases for their messages. This is something that is fairly looked down upon in the urban exploring community, but I think still holds an important place in the hearts of many designers.

When you're faced with an abandoned building, something that is so highly regarded by the urban explorer community, yet so looked down upon by society, it's hard not to want to be part of the 'elite' with your artwork being a part of that. I think this is an interesting aspect when thinking of guerilla marketing theories for my campaign - such as installations in abandoned buildings for only the 'elite' to see.





This project was created in Montreal, Canada, where two artists decided to add their own stamp to an urban, industrial and abandoned environment. Artwork like this, despite it being against one of the main rules of urban exploring, is something that I think has to be seen as beautiful and an incredible extension of the environment. Using a building that is considered worthless and then adding a piece of work that changes the nature of the building - from a factory into a gallery - is something that I think should be highly revered.


Beauty of Decay is a urban exploration photography exhibition, and the above images are the postcards created for the event. It collaborates the two artistic elements of design and photography really well and think this works nicely as a piece for campaigning. I don't think it's something I could really use to inspire me for my project, but I thought it was worth including.



Private Magazine is a print based project that revolves around the activity of urban exploration. The magazine features photography, interviews and articles. What caught my eye of this publication was the design of the logo. I thought it was very straight to the point but also worked well with many aspects of the activity itself - for example, many buildings explored in infiltration tend to be of industrial nature, which seems to be a theme a little in the typography of this design.

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