Book Process and Goodbyes

(Insert Pictures here....having technical difficulties, will resolve soon)

With my book, Kacey and I found that the best way to put things together was to have the objects we used be our main category and then have the parts of those objects that we used (as marks) as the subcategory.

Our book-making process was bar none, the worse experience I've ever had in this dept.  It caused me great despair making mistake after mistake, even though both of us tried our damnedest.  I could no longer get angry anymore, I just feel deeper and deeper into depression.  We had to improvise a lot, just because we had already redone it so many times and run low on money.  It reminds me of all the reasons why I"m leaving this dept.

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But I must be clear....I have to get this off my chest.

I may be leaving...But I never gave up and never just blew things off to get them done.  I tried my best...and if it wasn't good enough...its because I'm not good enough, not that I didn't care.

Its been a fear of mine since I announced my departure that my teachers and classmates would believe that now I didn't care.  I never stopped, I still do.  Even when I tried not to care, I screwed that up too.

Its a matter of pride.

I would never allow myself to just blow off this dept., even if I got nothing from it.   But I got plenty from it.  My work is cleaner and more precise (even casually) then it has ever been.  I have a sense of precision even in thought that makes organizing more natural and less evil then before.  I am better for the experience

The hardest part is that I've made an enormous group of friends, that I am part of a UNIT with.  And despite the difficulties I've had here...the teachers and faculty are some of the finest I've ever had.

We're a true team, and it hurts me to leave them, but I must.

I will continue to maintain this blog (under the banner of an illustrator). and it will be more about LULZ and wont be as heavily updated, but it'll be here, if you ever want to keep track of me.

Later guys, I'll visit, I promise

Final Storyboards

Final Flash

Semester Reflection

Goals?....that is an INTERESTING question.

Somethings should be pretty obvious when discussing them in this class: It's called VISUAL COMMUNICATION, we learn to COMMUNICATE VISUAL concepts in abstract forms in an aesthetically pleasing way. To do that we had to master various analog and digital techniques and provide a polished approach to craft.  All of it allows us to convey surprisingly complex ideas with simple shapes and forms.

For ME, it became all of that and an attempt to capture a sense of precision and perhaps cleanliness in my work and for the most part that has happened.  My abysmal craft due to incompetence with my tools has been greatly improved (admittedly I still need more practice).  "Nailing it"has become the key idea in my technique, less mistakes now,  more awesomeness later.  Its even applied to my causal sketchbook sketch: where once there was a whirling dervish of pencil marks and smudges that would be nigh impossible to fix, now theres page after page of cleanly lined and inked work.

Past Process Critique

This is one dead end iteration that comes to mind.  It was a composition WAAAAAAAAY back to the dot book when I was trying to fit the word "passionate" into the book. It was my ineptitude with the abstract form that made me veto this composition AND the word. However, now that I look at it, I could rework this and make at least a passable iteration.

With this piece the main problem was that I kept inadvertently making forms that resembled literal things.  This made a writing passion I wanted, but i kept seeing this little monster with hairy armpits dancing (lol). As much as I actually like that, it sure didn't help me.  If I had kept the movement without the details or the touching of forms, it would be possible to keep the word.

(sigh)

I still like my hairy armpit monster

Final Statement

To meet the objectives of the flash movie and the taxonomy book, i employed a method that I hadn't used since the beginning of the semester by making quantities of work and selecting from the bulk.  I made SO many marks and copies of marks and copies of copies of marks that it became a simple matter of selection for the taxonomy book.  It also allowed me to find the perfect mark through serendipitously trusting in the materials, hoping for a random bit of excellence.

The generation of marks was a great deal of fun compared to some of the more cut and dry aspects of design

Linear Transtition

 

The Tools used were the lens of our flashlight for both stamping and spray-painting.  For the man it was spray-painted matches.  I then separated the shapes and copied them

  

Martin Vanezky....

He's a successful graphic designer that was resistant to the idea of computer generated design, and instead used unconventional analog means to make an interesting and unique style.  He likes cut and paste techniques, creating very interesting Pollock like prints.  His work can be easy applied to our project that has doing anything BUT traditonal techniques

Final Project,: Typography

 

For my final project, we were tasked with making a poster for the Reach Out and Read program and if we were members of AIGA we were encouraged to further refine and submit to a contest within AIGA.  I am not a member, so its a dead certainty that I wont be involved in the contest.

I was allowed to do ANYTHING but combine it with what we learned in our classes and make it typographically dominant.  I was pleased that I was allowed more freedom to do things like illustration, but I found myself getting nitpicky with the poster.  I finally have one I'm pleased with...but I could still tinker with it for a long time.  

I improved the color scheme significantly from last time and added the setting of the the hallway.  It was agreed that the last iteration was WAY too depressing and pressured the audience (mainly stressed parents).  So I tried to convey a sense of whimsy in the final piece. I also added digital (and therefore more legible type)

Paul Rand and Stefan Bucher

Paul Rand is a legendary graphic designer, and I'm inclined to listen to just about anything he has to say.  In the video its interesting because he seems to hold something I already strive for in great esteem: Balance. The content of the work must be maintained to present something informative and relevant, however the graphic elements must also be present or the work is quite simply boring.  This happy medium is something that is needed in Graphic Design.

Stefan Bucher was an interesting person to put as a companion to Rand, almost a "foil" if you will.  Seemingly at first glance, Bucher is a very impulsive person, creating work seemingly at random and with little planing.  Further analysis however shows a man with a very distinct and complete vision of what his work must do, and he does an excellent job of executing a plan so quickly that it seems spur of the moment He takes the random, and the uncontrolled and makes something coherent and relevant out of it

Poster Ideas

 

This poster was clearly meant to be a bit depressing.  I thought of the blanket my sister carries around and the things she gets caught in it.  A book would slow her down a bit...as would illiteracy.  I decided to illustrate it and color it digitally with low opacity to create a water color effect.  Its very much a cool color grouped poster

 

I also chose to illustrate this one, but I modified it much more heavily using filters in Photoshop. The book is the training wheel...pretty self explanitory, which is what I was going for.  I tried to go a little clser to childrens illustration for this one, but gave it a very digital almost painterly touch

 

 The "true" digital poster, I decided to do a word search such as the ones I did in kindergarten.  I thought about circling the words, but my concern was that the looped ends would make the main phrase "TEACHMETOREAD" harder to read as a whole, disrupting the baseline, so I colored the text instead

Final Marks

Taxonomy Proposal

Type: Helvetica

Categories: Object - Chapter/Picture
-method (light to dark in layout)

Book: Accordion fold

Material:White Illustration Board, white photo-tape

Title: The MarkBook

Tool Choices:
candle
flashlight
match/matchbox

Web and Type Layouts

This project was different for me in the sense that it was a project with many huge but easy to do changes.  We had to make many different compositions to start with and work down, which sounds like something that takes a lot of time and effort, when done entirely on the computer, it becomes almost too easy to make things.  I easily could of made ten times as many compositions with the time I had,  but our concern was quick refinement.

Peer review became critical in the process, with the constant critiques and evaluations giving me knowledge of how to improve legibility and appeal.  Our critique group in latter sessions went as far as to create a collaborative template sheet with me based on one of my already existing ideas.  Its other people who will read this...their opinions really mattered. 

After that it became easy to change, critiques are the only major drain on my time that I had.  The digital side of this project was blindingly fast. 

Overall I tried to convey feelings I had about the element Rhodium, mainly the idea of it being a jewelers metal and the class and refinement I felt from it.  Open space and breathing compositions became my major goal, maintaining that while Rhodium (information on the elements on the layouts if you need to know)  is a metal, its also capable of displaying very light characteristics. A balance of solidity and lightness had to be conveyed. I believe I have done this

Watcha think?

Lovely locks of Gray
Perfect in form, wonderous
Spun grain from the earth

Do I get bonus points?

DO I?!?!

Leo Lionni - Visual Communication

As a noted childrens book writer and illustrator, Leo Lionni has a definite grasp of the playful and whimsical.  In the reading given, Leo reinforces the immersion of the artist/designer in the methods and art he or she is creating.  Its a game of pretend.  One  needs to become one with your work, creatin yourself within it.  It breeds style, and that stylistic approach is the one I need to seek for this project

Type Web-Spreads

 

Find and Share Type1

If there ever was a man obsessed with grid based design, it was Piet Mondrian...

The De Stijl movement (which he was one of the principle founders) was concerned with the basic essence of design, and spent most of their time working in strict grids

Personally, I like how Mondrian played with this idea by tilting the canvas on its corner.

I'm just letting you guys know....

I'VE CAUGHT THEM ALL!

That's right, I caught ALL 151 Pokemon from our childhoods.  I have the completed Base, Jungle and Fossil decks (1st Edition of course).  This is ten years of love culminating in this one day.  It seriously almost brings a tear to my eye.  

So yes this post has NOTHING to do with KCAI, art or design, but it was important to me.  Be thankful I didn't shout it to the heavens

 "Pole" Poster

When I did this poster initially, I had looked at a very abstract idea of interconnection within my neighborhood of Southmoreland using the telephone poles.  I knew what I was talking about, but noone else really did, which indicated to me that this was an idea that I was wrong or at least was only my personal impression of the neighborhood and not something I could express well to others.  

The rigid pole was interesting otherwise composition-ally, and I wanted to keep pushing that idea, but to convey something else. The texture of the pole and its worn quality was something I found to be true of the rest of the neighborhood as well in its buildings and textures.  Southmoreland had been gradually worn by its inhabitants into something textured and intimate, but still feeling solid and rigid.

My mistakes and mishaps had created a great deal of process in the creation of this worn feel.  I'm relatively new to photography, and most of my pictures were somewhat blurred and even more so blown up to poster size.  I learned how to correctly take pictures from lecture...but I wasn't able to.  I have terrible luck with cameras apparently.  I had misplaced, somehow broke and had my camera taked away at almost every critical state, making my picture taking process nightmarish.  I chose instead to crank up the contrast and grit of the photo of the pole to remove the blurriness and get the texture I wanted.  I feel I have succeeded

The central mass of the pole had stayed the focus throughout the entire process, but in the end I decided to zoom in and really bring in the weight of the pole and make it overwhelmingly dominant.  the line study was changed from a progressive line study to its direct descendant as a complex from the partner binder.  This allowed easier integration of the vertically oriented text and to contrast from the solidness of the pole.

"Slant" Poster

This was the poster with many different changes involved in its design.  When it started, I was playing off the pairings square form but extending the diagonal lines away from it and it produced a modern feel of sleekness fairly well.  But only "fairly" well.  There was something missing that I couldn't quite put my finger on at the time.  From listening to my classmates and my instructor's comments I figured it out: It needed mass.  

The extensions were going dynamically across the page, but the compostion floated in the center of the poster, looking amateur and boring to my eyes.  I eventually did away with the line extensions and used the images themselves to take up the space of the composition. This allowed the movement to show through like I wanted it too, but also created a sense of stability and visual weight withing the piece.  

The pictures themselves changes little, (vectorization of the projection was it), but the positioning of the pictures themselves changed greatly as stated above.  I also altered the scales of the pictures to be different from one another.  The asymmetry was made much more of a key factor as well, when before it was simply there and even seem to detract from what might of been better if it was symmetrical.

Overall, this was very successful in producing the sleek modernness of Southmoreland's more artsy buildings

Paula Scher

Its appropriate that Paula Scher paints maps, because the major theme involved in her process is the geography in which she lives.  In the video provided she talks about how the chaos and noisiness of New York City and how it influences her work.  She talks of culture in "layers' and crams type together or uses gestural hand drawn type.  She portrays culture as a whole batch of flotsam and jetsam and designs accordingly. 

Her viewpoint and approach are very interesting and relate-able to the work we are doing in the design dept.  We're be tasked with portraying the essence of Kansas City, and her approach of drinking the experience of the city and translating it upon the composition  is appropriate to the task.  I had been doing a very similar thing within my neighborhood, and had gotten to know it better as result.  Now comes the hard part of competently showing it on a poster

Choose Your Weapon!

There are very distinct advantages and disadvantages concerning the use of vector or photographs in design ideas.

Vector

Advantages

1. Vector tends to look very clean and can be more easily "tweaked" for the needs of the design by individual parts.  The "rough bits" of a design can be very easily edited out.

2.  Vector does not lose quality when the size is changed (thank you Kelly)

Disadvantages

1. Conversion to vector isn't perfect and is complicated to correct. 

2. You cannot get the rough or texture feel near as easily as analog methods, It'll almost always look technical.

3. Typically you're able to preview and correct before printing.  Printing costs will go down by quite a bit

4.  Expensive tools are required.  Buying this laptop and software obliterated my bank account.

Analog

1.  Sometimes easier and faster to produce in quantity then digital.  Photocopying alone makes digital work look like its standing still

2.  Less control....more mistakes

3.  Messier then digital.  Unless you break your monitor, you won't make a mess on the computer

4.  More expensive to produce due to mistakes or reiteration. 

Partner critique - part 2

Bushposter1

The pairing is weak because of the fuzziness.  The inside spaces of the text needs to be white, and the pattern sharpened.

Bushposter2

Same tiling problems as before...maybe i should have a compound shape made out of the tiles?  Its.   too busy.  The text is good though.

Bushposter3

 

The most successful of the series, the text needs to be bigger and the fun lines need to continue upward.

If not mentioned, the elements not mentioned were generally "fine" or "good", I didn't want 9 paragraphs of "the pairing was good" etc.

Partner critique - part 1

With my compositions, I had my problems, but when I had them, they tended to go across that category.  My partner was Erica

Slantposter1

I should edit the lines beneath the line comps.  The type should also be more condensed and maybe a bit smaller to avoid cutoffs. Also, the grey may be unnecessary in the background.


Slantposter2

There's a good chance the composition will be improved with all white lines extended.  The random line is good, but there needs to be more, or none.

Slantposter3

 This has its merits.  It mainly needs to have the type more centered in the gap.

Poleposter1

Way too literal, and the text is too hard to read.  Its a strong pairing though

Poleposter2

Same problems as 1, but slanted.  The text is better though.

Poleposter3

The pole is now last, the type is better, but still not great. Its unclear what it communicates



The servers starting to reject files, the rest will be on a seperate post

Neighborhood descriptors

Textured
Organic
Detailed
Subtle
Slim
Individual
Industrial
Private
Lush
Weathered
Aged
Elegant
Classy
Charming

Find and Share

For my Find and Share, I turned to the man himself SYD MEAD for inspiration.  He's had a passionate love affair with line for decades.  For those of you who don't know who Syd Mead is...(shame on you)...he's the creative genius behind films such as Blade Runner and Tron.  He's also (to my delight) done some anime shows, as I have pics here from Turn A Gundam and Space Battleship Yamato.

Take in the greatness...

"Typeface" Response....I hope you have a bit of time....

I have a great deal to say about this so I'll do my two paragraphs....then the real meat of  this post will begin.

      In regards to the use of older technology for modern applications, I agree whole-heartily with the idea of things never being obsolete.  There is always a use for techniques and ideas, and time will never change that.  However a lack of demand can place knowledge of skill in jeopardy; if there's noone around to reward/pay for these older artforms....what incentive is there to continue to learn them?  I'm glad that different people have answered that question by using these old forms in new and radicallly different forms.  The breaking of traditional guidelines has. ironically enough, helped preserve traditions.  This comes across as a sort of compromise, or a demonstration of flexibility in changing times. 

     Trying to preserve an experience has become a large part of the rationale behind preserving wooden type at the Hamilton plant depicted in the film.  The designers that visit the plant and work there become enamored with the tactile quality of the work.  The feel of the wood blocks in your hands, the smell of the ink, the manual act of printing....all of these things create something remarkable that can't be replicated on the cold glow of the computer monitor.  Its easier to produce computer imagery ("You just use your index finger" points out an instructor in the film) but it feel like much effort is put into it.  Manual type is "affected" as the film puts it. Every error, nick, scratch, and strange part of the wood grain creates a unique feel to the final piece.   It is an art-form that is very physical, even when paired with other mediums.

.....................................................................................................................................................................

        Okay, that was me with my scholarly glasses on, conveying a very precise point.  I'm taking those off now.... and sitting down in a comfy chair to have a pleasant (if rather one sided, there are comments though...) chat with you now.

       This film was quite beautiful in what it conveyed regarding design, art, and experience.  It did something that I rarely see anymore: It beautified the old...for BEING old, and worn.  It didn't just make the point I stated above, about how it may be old, but is still useful. It showed the beauty of the outdated experience without really making a obnoxious point about being "nostalgic".  This art isn't something that's "quaint".  This is a beautiful art with a beautiful experience.

       Experience...that's really the crux of the argument that they were trying to make

      "Typeface" was of course a movie that appealed mainly to designers, but its points pretty relate able to different aspects of life.  There's a great deal of emotional value to experience as a whole, and that is something that doesn't get "old" per say.  Its means get difficult to reproduce, and SPECIFIC experiences after they occur get relegated to memory where like a vinyl record they can be replayed, but lose quality and sharpness over time. 

       The tactile sensation....that's a pretty big thing to me, and to memory.  The idea of holding the wood type in your hands, carving, shaping, setting, and printing ....all of these very physical sensations...  These types of things are what make a great deal of artistic experience. 

       At one time I was at a very low point emotionally with my art.  I was in my 2-D Design course at Mineral Area College, and I was handed another assignment, which with my bad view of things at the time, I equated it with another bit of drudgery that I would sit down, obsess over, feel bad doing it, and present it, only to have it torn apart at critique and feel worse about it.  It was becoming an ordeal.   I started on it and set my paper down (it was a collage)...and had a moment of joy.  I started to just place and glue and do blatantly silly things with the materials.  I became slap happy and just sat down and did things just to see the result...and I had a sort of familiar feeling with my process.  I stopped for a moment, and characteristically at the time, began to try to over think my "silly" process.  I finally realized where I had felt this way before: finger-painting.  I was finger painting with paper...and I loved it because I wasn't taking it so seriously anymore. I was FEELING my materials and drinking the experience, just as I was feeling the gooey paint on my fingers in preschool.  I did my project with that thought process in mind and kept working after class...and eventually it had grown dark, and I hadn't even realized it.

     Bear in mind, I didn't simply stop caring about the project, I had certain objectives to meet...I just didn't really care how I got there anymore.  If I got to a full composition and it didn't work, I simply shrugged and pushed all the paper off the board I was using and did it again. I couldn't tell you how many times I did this. I did get done, and I loved the result.  It worked and conveyed my soul inside of it.  My teacher, Mr. Wilson, liked it because he did see both a success within parameters and that there was a "love" in it that was missing before in my work.  I didn't overthink it...I did it until it was right.

    The old printers in the Hamilton plant felt pride for their work of course, but they didn't really sit down and say "look at what I did".  They talked about how they loved their time and process.  They talked about how they'd use the same table to play cards as they did to work on type.  Work was fun and work was play. 

     Memory though, is was a lot of what they did resides now and that brings me to my other point.  My classmates would often comment that the movie ends on a rather sad note.  The craftsmen they had interviewed were growing quite old and fewer in number, and with the closing of the actual Hamilton type plant, their experiences were staying mainly in the past, with little of it being passed on or shown.  When they die, the little bit of skills they have taught to the young with be passed on of course, but the rest of their experience will simply cease to be.  That in my experience is the true tragedy of mortality. 

     Those around find I mention my grandmother a great deal.  While I cannot say that she was the equivalent of a parent...my parents are the equivalent to my parents.  I did live with her though and she was the one who raised me.  This gives me the impression that I had a greater relationship with my grandmother then a lot of people do with theirs...but this is a unique thing...I cannot possibly know this.  My point is she was/is very important to me, and imparted a great deal of experience to me.

     When she passed away, it wasn't that she herself was gone that upset me.  I did not pity her... as sick as it may sound in words, when she went it was the most peaceful thing I had ever seen.  I was happy for her that she was going to a better place and that, with a sigh, all of her problems dissolved away.  No I did not mourn her passing in a pity sort of way.  It was her experiences and her presence I mourned.

     She had taught me a great deal about her time on Earth.  She made a point of telling me stories of our family and teaching me skills she had learned since she was a little girl.  Se taught me as many "country" skills as she could, and by the time I was 13 or 14 I could make apple sauce, jellies, jams, and can them perfectly.  She taught me the basics of good home cooking, not that I can whip you together a turkey pot pie from memory, but if given a recipe I could make it better (that may not sound impressive, but taste a dish made perfectly from a recipe and then have the same dish by someone with tradition and sense of cooking behind it and you'll see how important this is).  She tried to impart a "sense" of things that only she herself could see.  While this can only be so successful, I feel as though she succeeded.   I learned to appreciate the old and the worn view of things.

    When she died, I would sit down and recount things to myself and others, even if I thought others already knew this and I was wasting their time.  I still sort of do this, but it was really intense the months immediately after she passed.  So I'd tell stories to my sister or whoever would listen.  I had a jarring experience while doing this: I was telling a story that my grandmother had told me to my little sister (she had lived seperately from my grandmother and I, and a lot of what was "common knowledge" to me she had nary a clue), and my mother was in the room.   She said she had never heard this story before.  I knew something about her mother she didn't even know. 

    That truly frightened me: It made me realized that experience can be mortal.  How much did NONE of us know?

    Ever since then, I've made a point of making sure I have these stories firmly in place in my mind and that I can recall them.  I ask my older relative questions regularly of new stories  Someday, when I believe I might start forgetting things before long, I plan to write them down.  I can't allow the experiences of my family to just "poof" disappear and have no meaning afterwords... 

   If you believe I may have rambled a bit too far off the beaten path when it comes to design, I do apologize a little...I did a little.  But it still seems relevant to me.  The old methods should most definitely be preserved, revered and used.  They may be hard and/or messy, but that is what is good about them.  Their character, and the way they make you and others feel when you use them.  Experience in the process of making design or art is reflected in the final piece itself. 

    Sit down, enjoy the experience, and make something beautiful: It'll be good for you
    

 



   

Type Layout

Progress Report #5 Reading and Type

Viscom - When reading selections for class, I typically try to determine why exactly I would be required to read that particular text at that particular time.  In this case I saw it as a further clarification of parameters.  The definitions of line and shape and the discussions of the grid are somewhat flexible, but it served to remind me of what parameters to stay within... If I bend too many rules, it may technically be a line, but will be more akin to a planar shape.  The grid is also made out to be ironically freeing as a design tool.

With our project, Ericka and I generate large amounts of work each step and pull from them the best pieces for in-betweem deadlines.  It produces a very large amount of source materials to work from, which will save time when we don't have to produce entirely new material towards the deadline

Type - My compositions have turned out well (I believe).  I used a different method then described in the Type blog to produce the same results.  I don't think I've created any problems with this method, and it worked faster, but I'm quite sure it would be difficult to use with objects different from mine, as I saw with a few classmates that tried my magic wand method.  I'll probably have to explain myself in class.

 Color - I feel delightfully ahead with  my project: I have my photos cropped and they need virtually no editing...a tremendous stroke of luck.  All that's left is compiling a table of contents and adding that and the photos to my book. I'm very confident about having the time to work on it

Pics! of Color!