Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

It is estimated Barcelona will run out of running water by October this year. This is due to severe droughts in the city and lead to the import of water. Despite this, every night the streets in the centre are washed down by Government employed workers.

Although, the water in Barcelona is not safe to drink, this has lead me to re-think my position on the issue of bottled water. I used to believe that it was a pointless and expensive luxury, of which we were paying the price with the consequences on the environment. I still believe this, but only for countries who's drinking water is safe to drink, such as the UK. Here in Spain, it is normal to purchase bottled water - it is extremely cheap at about 6pence a litre but still not environmentally sound.

Over the last two months, I have been collecting the bottles of water I have consumed:

This is most of the water I have consumed since my arrival in Barcelona.

Illustrating the problem in Barcelona.

And over two months I have consumed at least:

Litres of water!!!!

Maybe, with 3 months still to go, I should just collect the bottle tops?

Illustrations

Some more illustrative work in response to the album, Neon Bible by Arcade Fire.

Intervention

In my illustration classes in Barcelona, we have been experimenting and responding to music. At the moment we are listening to Arcade Fire - both the albums, Funeral and Neon Bible. These illustrations are my responses to my favourite song - Intervention. (Neon Bible)

Self Initiated - Food Miles

This is a self-initiated project to highlight the amount of miles our food has to travel to get to our plates. The stickers feature the country of origin and the number of miles it flew to get to the UK - to give consumers a choice of whether they want to purchase imported, or home grown produce.

Shortcut

A video communicating the idea of a short-cut

using the example of an email being the short-cut to

communication.

In collaboration with Tara Woolnough.

Create a meme

This project was to create a 'meme' , so our group wanted to create a saying that people could use for when any situation went wrong. The phrase would have to induce a sense of calm, so that the person in the situation could recollect their thoughts to tackle the problem. We thought of the figure, Ray Mears - an expert in nature who is famous for surviving in any natural situation and overcoming any problem with the resources around him.

The phrase we created was:

"What would Ray Mears do?".

We demonstrated our idea through a presentation and typographical posters - with the situation being that a guy had caught himself in his zipper. He asks, "what would Ray Mears do?" and Ray Mears appears with a solution.

Money

This brief was "money, money money", so it was open and left to our interpretation. We created a method of detecting how much money customers had as they entered a shop. This would eliminate humiliation or any awkwardness as the staff would know how to approach the customer, as they could more accurately assume whether or not the customer would purchase anything and if they would require assistance.

This could be done through electronic chips in debit and credit cards and could be detected through the security gates, so the information would be more secure and subtle.

This was resolved in a presentation in the style of a 'buyers market' for potential shop-owners looking to invest in the scheme.

Invention

The brief was to create a new invention, something completely original and wacky - but served a purpose to eliminate a problem.

The problem we identified was that people find it very difficult to wake up in the morning and usually press the snooze button.

To eliminate this problem, we designed a pair of pyjamas that had built in mechanisms to ensure you get out of bed in the morning - such as a speaker in the collar that got louder and louder, lightweight packs that got cooler the longer you wore the pyjamas once the alarm had gone off, and vibrating armpit pads to tickle you until you got up and took off the pyjamas.