Hattie Newman Lecture

Hattie Newman is a set designer who solely uses paper to produce intricate structures for a variety of creative formats and clients.
As a guest speaker, she spoke about her personal favourite projects as well as things she disliked or finds daunting as well as the change in the industry that she worked in. Being a very physical artist with all her pieces, it came as a question to her of how she keeps her original style, and how she could be competing with digital techniques that could capture the style in half the time.

Newman spoke about how maps have become a very popular form of media and things that are often asked for, and she spoke of the sheer scale of her pieces, that have to be photographed professionally by an array of photographers.
Although her technique is a more expensive one for the client, with the physical material costs as well as the weeks or days it takes to construct the sets, she said how she doesn't personally feel like she has to compete with the more digital aspects as she knows that most clients like the raw aspect of her designs and therefore wouldn't want that.
 Additionally to this she spoke of how the aspect of CGI is a smooth and too polished version of what she does, and the imperfections and the physical work is shown within the pieces and becomes the quality of the piece.

Personally I think the pieces she produces are absolutely stunning, and would make beautiful animations, although she studied Illustration as a degree, she spoke of how you can branch out into alternate creative forms, and how she's worked and collaborated with different roles in the industry, such as animators and photographers around the country, further showing the importance of collaborations, especially in her role with photographers to ensure that they capture her pieces in the best possible way to present.

Series of Paper Dresses. Pencil Sharpener Dress.

The neat, clean-cut set up of the design is also thought through as she spoke of how she has to study photographs of the buildings to ensure the right structure is applied. She also spoke of the difference between Advertising Clients and general creative clients, and how she prefers the creative clients and personal projects, as for these she has more freedom, whereas the advertising is a strict approach to design, and doesn't allow much freedom to make decisions for the client, or work exclusively with the client to produce a certain piece.

She gets challenges with every piece she has to do, such as her speaking about having to produce a series of paper dresses which she was pretty confident about until she actually attempted to make the pieces, but with many trial and errors finally was able to work with the client and photographers to produce the series.
 In addition to an example of how her physical elements can be exaggerated with the paper is an installation that she produced for Canon, she produced a 'world city' where there were landmarks for cities across the world in one city, such as the Eiffel Tower etc.

Canon Installation