We received some amazing submissions for the Multiply competition. With over 20 entries and a very high standard of work, we were faced with a real challenge to choose a winner. Here are some of our favourite submissions.
ALANA MAEBETH
My contribution to the “Save Old Red” campaign includes the design of a slip mat. I explored the theme of ‘Multiply’ both literally and conceptually whilst visually exploring my experience throughout the pandemic.
My experiences with the pandemic (like many) have been tough, and one of the things I miss most about ‘normal’ life is dancing! Dancing out in clubs especially. I portrayed this with the illustration of trainers which I made into a 3D effect. I wanted this to be perceived almost as if it were a warped reality, as dancing in clubs is just out of our reach at the moment.
To put the theme ‘Multiply’ into play, I used a DNA molecule to represent Covid which I then repeated several times as my background layer. To add texture I placed in a grid effect. My signature artist colours tend to be pinks and purples, hence the main background colour.
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ALICE ATKINSON
The turntable slip mat design features DJ Coco Bryce at the Licence to Jungle event, the image has been digitally illustrated and overlaid with a red chrome effect. Repeated typography has been utilised to surround the design with the aim of subtly responding to the 'Multiply' theme. The design created focuses on my personal favourite aspect of the venue; the live music, in order to draw attention to the thing I would miss the most about The Old Red Bus Station and engage the viewers that similarly enjoy this attraction of the venue. In addition to this, live music has been a big component in my life that is currently absent due to the Coronavirus, therefore I felt it was essential to portray this in my design.
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ANNE SOPHIE GROBE
For me, 'multiply' has a lot of different meanings. One of the meanings I see is the idea of touching something and it will automatically reproduce an exact copy of that. Plants and strange leaves is the design that came up to my mind for this.
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BELINDA YILMAZ
For me, this design represents growth as a bi-product of the pandemic and how much it has changed daily life and everything you know about it. Through the pandemic I’ve had to constantly reinforce myself to grow in ways I honestly never thought I’d be challenged about. Kind of like mitosis and the spreading of cells - hence the biological vibe.
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CAM ROBERTS
My idea behind this piece, was to create a form of organic type cells, dividing and multipling. While also depicting the confused state of mind, due to lockdown.
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HUGH ROBERTS
HUGH ROBERTS
I create fragmented stories from disparate sources with a humorous twist. My work focuses around collage illustration, reworking and appropriating old found imagery, usually in a subversive way. I tend to play with and respond to current affairs varying from the political to more personal ideas. For this project the theme of multiply leads me to think of 'looking deeper', Looking more and learning as things around us change in ways we've never known before. At the moment with such a bombardment of news and information it's hard to make sense of things and to even trust it. I think a lot of 'free time' (a term used loosely) can be quite an important hiatus to form new ideas and learn more about where we go next.
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MILLY PARKER
My main goal for this brief was to combine the science behind multiplying with my personal experience and the general experience of lockdown.
Keeping in mind this brief is inherently connected to music, I focused on that in terms of my own personal experience during lockdown. I have my headphones on a lot... If I went to the kitchen for a tea it was pretty much an excuse to wear them on the 10 second walk there. It was also a way to keep in touch with friends, and we would tune into radio stations together to feel that community vibe.
When spinning the disc, the animation can be seen it's the same lil guy but it feels like they're all marching forwards together! It's easy to feel alone at the moment, so feeling part of a collective can be really lovely (Thus him being multiplied around the disc). The way he walks was inspired by a conversation with my sister. She works at a science charity and studied chemistry at university, so when I was a bit stuck she was great to chat with. She showed me this video of a Kinesin, which basically walks up and down your cells delivering the goods. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-uuk4Pr2i8). It's not specifically focused on RNA, but it's plodding walk kind of reminded me how we're all just plodding along hopefully at the moment! Also it's kind of comforting that they're loads of these lil guys in our bodies just trying to make us happy and healthy, and I thought that was just a really nice thought.
I found the spiral structure of RNA really really interesting to look at too, which I eventually used throughout the templates to emanate sound waves- When the slip mat is spinning, the 'genetic information' goes up at down much like sound waves on production software. The flower/virus motif also animates, and its petals morph from one into the other as it spins. The reasoning behind this was that at the start of lockdown last year I found this tiny little purple flower growing out my patio, and at the end of lockdown it was absolutely massive and had 4 other flowers on it. I'm not sure how it got that big from growing out of tarmac, but it gave me a lot of joy to check up on it and see how it was thriving in a time when it felt everything was crumbling. The perseverance of this flower really inspired me at the time, so it's one of the first things (apart from music) I thought of when thinking about my own lockdown experience.
The other side of this of course, is the obvious presence of the virus, but I wanted to include this as a motif in order to contrast with the flower: there have been many frustrating and upsetting moments, but there are also moments of joy and hope for the future within that (such as for me, connecting with friends over music).
The textures I used also have a lot of significance to me, as they're from some of my close up graffiti shots taken pre-lockdown of Hyde Park. Just reminds me of my home away from home, of which I missed a lot last year.
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MOLLY SHEIL
MOLLY SHIELD
I have created two designs for a turntable slip mat based on the theme 'multiply'. I have focused mainly on the idea of repetition through the use of cell-like organic shapes. I have also taken inspiration from my own art work using repetitive motifs, vibrant colours, people and our environment. I chose to use these shapes and colours as when the turntable spins they'll look as if they are morphing and multiplying.
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LAUREN KELLY
LAUREN KELLY
Design 1 : A digital drawing on the technics template titled ‘safe/unsafe place’.
Design 2 : A digital drawing on the cassette inlay template titled ‘my favourite mask is pink’.
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PAUL BLENKHORN
These are based on an artwork I made during last year's lockdown called "19". It is based on Dali's Persistence of Memory but uses digital transformations of various viruses (which multiply!) to produce all of the composition apart from the edges of the pocket watches.
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PAUL HANNAH
PAUL HANNAH
Originally inspired by M.C. Escher I create tessellation designs. Sometimes making them into portraits.
For the "Multiply" project I have created a Diminishing tessellations design of multiple Bats.
The current pandemic supposedly came from bats in China. In my design Large bats on the outer edges of the circle multiply, but diminish to smaller bats in the centre..
The circular nature of this design lends itself perfect to a CD label, Turntable Slipmat, or Kick Drum skin.
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ROB WADE
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SEREN OAKZ
Been playing a lot of chess cause of lockdown, having tangenting thoughts, and getting blurry eyes from screen time. hand drawn rough edited bits for the slipmat design subz. Missing ORBS, need a jungle night
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SHREYA
SHREYA
For the visuals I interpreted the theme of multiply in a more mathematical way as there are constraints and patterns by which the virus multiplied and I felt fractals would be a good way to connect to the mathematical nature of the virus due to their shared nature of following specific patterns. I feel the repetitive nature of a fractal also conveys the uncertainty I and a lot of other people have felt during these times e.g. how deep can you go into a fractal and when will the pandemic be over feel like questions with the same answer; no one really knows!
I wanted to speak out and have my stance on the government's handling of this pandemic be a focus on one of the items so I wrote a short piece that uses words that rhyme with multiply to connect it to the theme both structurally and thematically, and placed it on the cassette card. All fonts used are free for commercial use. I really love the old red bus station, my first experience of Leeds was coming here from Liverpool for the mad jungle and drum & bass gigs.
