Joel Cocks Design & Illustration

Degree Show Project

“Elections are run by the same guys that sell toothpaste” (Chomsky, 2005). This project is a critical examination of the contemporary election campaign. It explores the role that the public relations industry, political consultancy firms and the media play in shaping the public perceptions of political candidates.

Typeface Promotion

This student typography project required a promotional package to be designed for a typeface of my choice. The promotional item was for a typeface distribution agency that wanted to regenerate interest in its old fonts. The typeface that I chose was Adobe Jenson Pro, and the concept behind the design was to question the relevance of a 14th century typeface in a 21st century society. I sourced text from an extremely heated and abusive debate about the serifs contemporary relevance found on the typography website typophile. I tried to give each character in the argument their own unique voice through the different treatments of type.

Threadless

Threadless is an online company that invites the public to submit ideas for T-shirt designs. Once designs are submitted are then rated by the public, the highest rated designs then being printed and sold as limited edition T-shirts. Because of the large volume of designs threadless receives each week (probably thousands) having the wow factor is a necessity, should a design hope to win. This print ‘Existential Clutter’ experiments with creating unexpected relationships between everyday objects.

Paradox & Metaphor

As technology such as Google and Wikipedia become more integrated with our daily lives, the need to think diminishes. This student typography assignment uses diarrhea as a metaphor to describe an excess of undigested information. Dry medical texts describing the causes, symptoms, and treatment of diarrhea are interrupted by lists of Google search suggestions springing off various words in the text.