Well, I can hardly believe it but six weeks have flown by and I'm off :( It's been absolutely great and I think YCN are a superb outfit delivering truly innovative cutting edge works. Great team, great ethic, great puns.

Massive thanks to YCN for making me so welcome and thanks if you've ever clicked on my exciting blog :)

Stay tuned to www.alexostrowski.com to follow the fate of me, Alex Ostrowski. It's been emotional.

Over and out

Alex

xxx

Apologies for the no-show here yesterday, the blog had to be put on hold after a gripping evacuation of YCN HQ after a swarm of fire engines wailed down cannon street road to extinguish what we can only assume to be a fire. There was smoke, so this stands to reason.

After a twenty four hour lock-down we're now back up and running. Phew :)

Today's blog post is a shout out to James Gilpin who's doing a fantastic job of erecting a new ceiling in the Rivington Street studio. In fact, credit's due to the dynamic duo that is THE BROTHERS GILPIN.

Great work guys, HQ miss you :)

The heat is truly on at YCN's new Rivington Street studio, with major landmarks for the World of YCN arriving on a daily basis. I've got the lovely job of 'fly' on the studio walls, camera-around-neck and note-book-in-hand I'm documenting every cut, score and fold of the project for the back section of this year's YCN Book 0809!

Alex

I spent today at Rivington Street documenting the construction of The World of YCN! We've decided this might be a better angle for the notes section of this year's book - rather than a map.

I laid all the trees out today and they are a beautiful collection of objects!!! They will soon unite as a forest.

Alex

Today was the deadline for trees to join the YCN World Forest. As expected we were inundated at the last minute and spent a delightful 20 minutes or so this morning opening numerous packages address to the YCN World Forest Ranger (me!).

Thanks to everyone who took part, it's going to look absolutely wonderful. I'll keep you updated with progress :)

Alex

Thanks to everyone who's made a tree for the YCN World forest! They've been flooding back in to me, the YCN ranger, to wrangle together for Bryony and Krissy. The forest is growing...

Have a good weekend :)

Alex

Having produced the icons for the book, it's now time to use them as the basis for a map of the world. The plan is to use the 'notes' section of the book to bridge the gap between its 2D contents and the wild 3D nature of the world itself - traditionally known as a MAP.

Alex

I've finished creating the icons for the upcoming YCN book and they're working nicely. They represent the 21 briefs and the different disciplines appearing in the showcase section of the book in a cartographic manner. We're also starting to put together some mappish elements to help navigate YCN World!

Alex

I visited YCN's new studio space in Rivington Street yesterday where Bryony Birkbeck and Kristina Grundberg are laying the foundations for YCN World! Plenty of colourful cardboard flying about, as well as a collection of trees which have come back from all you contributors out there - thanks you :)


It's all looking v e r y exciting!

Alex

Voila! Here is the YCN LIVE Tree (thanks to Guy Archard for the photo) in its full technicolour glory! All the hard work paid off and the boys at Hackney Borough Council helped enormously, even delivering the tree in return for a fry-up on the morning!

More photos here...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mooski/sets/72157607022227961/detail/

In other news, I'm guest posting on www.itsnicethat.com this week so keep an eye out for my hot tips!

Alex

Whoohoo! Last night's YCN LIVE launch party was a premium event! Our tree went down really well and lots of people decorated leaves for it :) I'll put some more snaps up here once I've taken them off the camera!

Alex

Today a fresh shipment of YCN 07/08 Books arrived at HQ to be whooshed over to Village Underground post-haste in preparation for tomorrow's YCN LIVE launch event! The books contain all the briefs tackled by students for this year's YCN Awards. Commended work will be on display tomorrow night via hightech laser beam projections!

Excitement levels here are high, hope you're coming!

Alex

Work is well underway for the new YCN book, featuring the soon to be begun World of YCN! To compliment the 3D land we're playing with how to bring in some 2D map elements to continue the theme. Today I've been scratching out a set of symbols, YCN World's native visual language to explain the contents of the book.

More leaves to cut this weekend for the tree next week. Have a good one yourself!

Alex

Having bagged our dead tree we're wasting no time in crafting its wonderful new technicolour coat! I bet it can't wait for next wednesday! Hattie Newman is in the YCN office this week snipping away at mountains of card, the pile of leaves is growing...

Hope to meet you at the YCN LIVE launch next wednesday if you're coming along, should be grrrreat :)

Alex