Ash gibson uxb2013

Ash Gibson / Creative director / @ash_gibson_

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- Introduction
• My name is Ash Gibson
• I am a freelance Creative Director,

Ash Gibson / Creative director
@ash_gibson_
artwordspictures.wordpress.com
ideasformsfunctions.wordpress.com

• I worked at Conde Nast - GQ magazine for a long time - where it was impressed
upon me the numerous ways in which an art
director is responsible for the content and
the reader.
• The picture on the previous page is of
my first camera and my current camera because today I want to talk about using
photography.


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“Today everything exists to end
in a photograph.”
Susan Sontag, 1977


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- commissioning & using them in the best
• I thought this quote very prescient ways possibly.
especially considering when it was written.
(Broadly speaking Sontag was arguing that - I am not sure I have found a more elegant
photographic images had begun to create a
phrase for it something I think it is a kind of
“chronic voyeuristic relation” within people).
invisible art.
• We live in a most extraordinary time for the • For a while it it seemed to me that having
photographic image:
“reverence for the image” was becoming in
- How many people have a camera of some
form on them?
- What was the last picture you took?
- Cameras have become ubiquitous.
- Making an image has become an almost
invisible process.
But also:

some way or other anachronistic.
• But with recent projects I have realised that
this does not have to be the case.
• What I want do today is take a few old ideas
about photography, & it’s usage and show
how we still use them - or could start using
them - to make better experiences for
users.

• In the making of digital products - they
are often treated with little reverence. Just
another asset - Another part of the jigsaw.
• My work has always involved “looking after”
pictures.

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• For an immense amount of products it’s
image that makes it what it is.
• When it comes to photography there are
some very different issue from graphics
or type - as it cannot be responsive in the
same way.
• Digital work needs order, protocols,
formats. but some types of images can’t
communicate at their best with so many
constraints.

• As an illustration of how or why we - “the
makers” - might have more reverence for
the image I wanted to use “the art of the
crop” as an example
- create a brief and tenuous history
- and discuss its disappearance as an art …
and possible return

• On a particular job I used to say that with
type you have conventions,
- then you set up some rules specific to the
project
- and together they make the parameters that
help you design it every day.
• With photography the rules can change
every day... or not, depends what material
your have.

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• This is the cover of a 1948 edition of Harpers
Bazaar.
• Alexey Brodovitch was the pioneering art
director of Harpers in the 40s.
• He saw in the era in which you could first
print colour photographs.
• He also understood how dramatic an image
could be if it was cropped “artfully”
• This kind of crop could be classified as just
that - cropping for dramatic purpose
or
- to help the picture tell a more intriguing
story.
• I think of cropping in this sense runs along a
sliding scale:


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“(The) disease of our age is boredom...
The way to combat this is by invention by surprise. When I say a good picture has
surprise value, I mean that it stimulates my
thinking and intrigues me.”
Alexey Brodovitch, 1898 - 1971


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• This quote is from Brodovitch himself.
• He is talking about what he did - which was
make and tell stories with pictures in order
to entertain. fantasies really - in fashion.
• But you can also picture how he saw images
new place in the world:
- the way they were consumed.
- the way they manufactured desire
- or sold things (in that context).
• it does make you think about how we
consume images now.
• Not just fashion but any destination that
we go to for the pictures - Instagram,
Facebook etc.


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• These a great examples of a more brutal
kind of cropping.
• Where actually what they are just trying
to achieve here is efficiency - as much of
the content of the picture in the largest
available space.
• As you can see this technique can serve
some very different purposes.


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“If your pictures aren’t good enough,
you aren’t close enough”
Robert Capa, 1913 - 1954


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• This kind of crop is definitely NOT what
Robert Capa was referring to when he said
this. But it does illustrate his point about this
type of news:
- THAT The demands of these stories and
pages require the most efficient of crop - not
something elegant clever - as before.
- No poetry here - no sliding scale.
Just pragmatism
- Pictures original frame is almost an
inconvenience.


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• So there are 2 examples ofpossible policies
you could have on cropping a images based in ideas from print:
- creating interest
- creating efficiency

• How can we account for images usage in
digital work?
• I was talking to a photographer friend of
mine about “the death of crop”.
• I had been working on a print product
that - for a variety of reasons - needed huge
extendable backgrounds on every piece
of photography so the layout was as flexible
as possible.

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• Here I have marked out some rough
potential crops that shows what formats he
may of been building this image for:

• Its issues are:

- magazine page size

- with a payoff of consistency and flexibility
across many platforms

- vertical and horizontal banner
- and maybe billboard sizes too

- High production values for the shoot and the
post

• Also: an ability to slide between different
kinds of crop:
- functional
- dramatic


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• So we have looked at 3 archetypes of crop:
- creating interest
- creating flexibility


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• Which leads me to :
• How could we crop in an automated
environment?
OR
• How do you account for its delivery to
multiple formats?
• This was the problem I kept coming across
when working in digital.
• Either
- The experience of the photograph was not
being preserved
or
- it wasn’t being accounted for as much as
possible across all the formats.
- Not enough accuracy for an efficient crop
- Not enough flexibility for being playful


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• Cyclist Magazine - was an opportunity to
find some solutions.
• When the edition moved to a CMS


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• This is the Cropper we build for Cyclist
Magazine CMS

• The end result is an artful addition to the
COPE strategy:

• Its something the programmer built for the
mag after numerous discussions on photo
usage and how important it was for the
experience of the mag.

- Commission Once, Publish Everywhere
• And that is almost the end of my brief,
subjective, history of The Crop

• It is a set of smart guides that meant you
could tell what crop you would get from one • I thought we could find one more technique
for cropping with this picture
file in multiple formats:
• Following is another heritage idea - but it is
• Top left is the original file format
something that was discussed at length for
after that:
the Cyclist CMS:
- iPad landscape
- iPad portrait
- iPad landscape
- iPhone and android phones - landscape and
portrait


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• Its very spacious - as an example I have
overlaid the shapes from the VW campaign


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Louis Daguerre, 1838


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• However:
• This is is a historical picture of great
importance:
- Its the first photograph of a human - or
humans - and nearly the first photo every
taken.

• Or as my programmer woud say:
“honour ratio”
• I really wanted to show it because i wanted
us to consider that
- just as there was at time when mass
reproducing colour images was new

- “Boulevard du Temple” taken 1838 or 1839
by Louis Daguerre

- there was also a photography was new

- Daguerreotype - the first practicable
photographic process

- My point here is really that everything in
digital is so new that conventions are up for
grabs - or being erased.

• My point here is:

so

• it may have many formats in it - none of
the importance of this picture would be
preserved if it was cropped.
• SO thats our last type of crop
- preservation.


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In conclusion

• So we have looked at 5 possible ways - of
many - to manage pictures:

• Each image and cropping style has a
different purpose:

- creating interest

- to communicate a story, to sell, entertain or
maybe just to charm.

- creating flexibility
- allowing for multiple formats in automation
and
- preservation


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“There is a magic when you read an
image that you know doesn’t move but you have a sense that something
is moving, if not on the page then
in your mind”
Chris Ware, The Guardian, October 2013


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• Thought i might wrap up with something
more contemporary:

• It just made me think that our job as makers
is to:

• Cartoonist Chris Ware was in the paper a
couple of weeks ago taking about his work.
He said this:

- find ways of preserving what is great about
a picture.

“There is a magic when you read an image
that you know doesn’t move - but you have
a sense that something is moving, if not on
the page then in your mind.”

- because when we are using great pictures
they are bringing something to the story that
nothing else can.

• What I love about this quote is that
- He said it a few weeks ago
- He reveres the image
AND
- That we have a reverence for the image
many that we, in many ways, don’t notice


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Afterward
• This is a final picture - It’s by the great
Robert Frank.
• It’s a historical artefact. Only Robert Frank
can crop a Robert Frank picture
• I just like the sense that something is
moving... an it moves me.
AND
• I just thought it was just a nice picture
for an ending

U.S. 285,
New Mexico
Robert Frank , 1956

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Ash gibson uxb2013

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