Adventures to the
Print Center Among other Places Described by Abbie Hausman
Adventures to the
Print Center Among other Places Described by Abbie Hausman
Dot/Line
Say hello to my first project of the semester for my Introduction to Design class: Dot/Line. The guidelines were pretty simple, though the execution was completely the opposite. Basically the project was designed to encourage and force me to create lots of work and many versions of work. I was to use dots and lines (which were more like rectangles) to form abstract compositions portraying words from a list I was given. I was to choose four words from a list of twelve including stability, joy, oppression, terror, freedom, longing, rejection, energetic, abundance, chaotic, exhaustion, and scarcity. A goal was to use design components I had learned about in the class such as scale, proximity, and value to make the compositions as visually strong as possible while also demonstrating my chosen words. Another very important requirement was that I was only allowed use certain combinations of dots and lines. These combinations included 1 dot + 1 line, 1 dot + 2 lines, 2 dots + 1 line, 2 dots + 2 lines, all dots, or all lines. Though it would be a frustrating requirement it was also brilliant because it made the project that much more challenging and forced me to work more abstractly than I would have otherwise. When I first sat down to do some thumbnails I crossed off words such as terror and chaos immediately knowing that I did not want to tackle either of them. I worried about making the compositions too clichĂŠ or anthropomorphic so I wanted to precede with caution but ended up picking four words to work on and created five iterations of each. The words I chose were longing, rejection, exhaustion, and oppression. Later one of the assignments was to pick a single iteration from each of the four words and then create five more versions of that iteration specifically. After speaking with a few classmates it was clear to me which versions I wanted to craft into m final versions, though at first they all looked the same to me. It did not take me long to realize how difficult the project was, though it was fairly basic. After my struggle with the creative process in coming up with what my iterations would look like, I realized all at once that putting the pieces together in a well-crafted manner was harder than I expected as well. I do know how to cut and glue and I know how to do that well, but as a busy college student I definitely did not leave myself the time or energy I should have to do so. When I was finished I was content with my layouts, but not so much with the physical pieces I had pasted together. Though it was not an adventure to the print center, it was a hectic adventure to the studio as I tried to glue my carefully cut circles to not-so-perfectly cut foam core.
The top left image is of my initial thumbnails of the four words I chose to use as much subjects. Below that are the developed thumbnails of one version of each of the previous thumbnails. In the column to the top right of the page are a continuation of the second set of thumbnails designed.
One of the questions asked of me after completing the Dot/Line project was “What is your understanding of gestalt?” When I first read the question I laughed and wrote in my sketchbook, “in all honest that is a good question.” After thinking about it for a minute or so pieces started coming together and I realized I remembered more than I thought, I just had not applied to the project knowingly, rather intuitively. Gestalt was the principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and that we as humans look at the whole of a composition of any kind before we look at the components of the same composition. Underneath the overarching gestalt concept are basic elements of design including figure and ground, similarity, continuation, closure, proximity, and parallelism, which were some of the concepts I had integrated into my Dot/Line pieces without really thinking about them. As I previously mentioned, though one of the struggles for this project was my hastiness in putting the final compositions together, I do know how to make a well-crafted object, and the majority of the time it is not very difficult for me. I do have a hard time with patience on a pretty regular occasion but I can also be quite the perfectionist. When it comes to my artwork, I prefer to sit down and glare at things for a little while longer in order to get them done in the best way I think is possible. In terms of the abstraction of this project, it is probably one of the most challenging propositions I have had to face. I love viewing abstract art and enjoy making it as well, but turning circles and rectangles into a single meaningful words but beyond difficult, especially when being challenged to move beyond making a smiley face out of dots to portray joy. Not turning my dots and lines into actual objects was not difficult for me, but rather avoiding thinking of all my little squares as people. To an extent I still did that and probably will continue to look at my pieces that way, unfortunately. As challenging as it was, making concepts such as words or ideas and breaking them down into visual compositions was extremely beneficial. Having learned a bit about the history of modern design in a different class throughout this semester, I discovered that one of the most important and successful things designers do is strip their subjects down to the most simple form possible, often making them somewhat abstract. I think this exercise of turning little dots and lines into words was a good experience to have in order to be successful as a designer down the road.
Longing
Rejection
Exhaustion
Oppression
Expressive Text After my little adventure with dots, lines, and words I moved into a project more centered around words. The primary objective of the expressive text project was to experiment with hand lettering and understand how the way a letter form is shaped and formed affects what the actual letters are saying to the viewer. Again, a goal of this project was to work in a shallow but expansive playing field and make as many iterations as we felt were possible. I was to ultimately craft four different versions of a word I was to choose, again from a given list. This time the list was filled mostly with action verbs which could also be nouns, and this made the project a little more interesting in my mind. The list of words I could choose from included “dash, tear, drift, whole, center, melt, flow,” and “dive”. I sat down during one of the first Green Bay Packer games to brainstorm and experiment with what word I wanted to use. I started with a variety including “melt, drift, center, dive,” and “tear”. Pretty soon I had it narrowed down to tear, specifically in the verb tense of the word, rather than the object that falls from crying eyes. I was working with pen and paper and it did not take me long to realize that with the word I chose I would be on another gluing adventure before I knew it. This time around, however, I would be physically tearing things and not just cutting with a clean-edged scissors. I felt it necessary to incorporate physical tears in my iterations and I tried to do that in a way that stilled allowed for typographical creativity. I drew out many different possibilities (rather than spending the time to cut them all out) and after speaking with classmates I found a few that I thought were successful. I made three physical rough drafts of those to get a feel for how they would turn out with real rips and glued paper, and only ended up using the concept behind one of them. Three of my compositions were similar in that I used white paper that had some kind of tear in it for the letter forms (or their outlines), and mounted them on black paper. The fourth iteration was a little different. That one started out as purely experimental because I had found a nicely-sized piece of black foam core that was not black all the way through, but instead contained white foam. I decided I wanted to rip off the top black layer and reveal the white underneath in the form of the word “tear.” By the time I was done with the “T” I had realized how difficult this task would actually be and I was definitely not satisfied with how it looked so I figured I would just made another, final draft of it later. Not surprisingly though, by the time I was done with the “R” I knew that was never going to happen either. I perfected the letters until I was content with them and ended up mounting the foam core to a simple white piece of paper to achieve a more finished quality to the piece.
The top image is a spread of mind-mapping and experimenting with type as I did as one of the first steps to completing this project. The bottom left are some of the pen-drawn ideas I had after choosing the word “tear,� and to the right are the three cut, torn, and glued versions I made in my sketchbook.
Shown on this page and the next are my final four iterations of the word “tear.� The three below used black and white paper while the one to the right is the one I peeled away the top layer of the black foam core to reveal the white underneath and then mounted on white paper to emphasize the dimensions and texture of the piece.
For some reason I have always preferred hand lettering, despite how many wonderful digital typefaces exist out there, and I think one reason that is the case is simply because it allows for more organic letter forms. To me it is more old-fashioned which can be great at times and ineffective at others, but it has a different quality to it that technology has not yet overcome. To be honest, I am not quite sure if I even know exactly what that quality is, other than some connection to the actual human being. Technology is wonderful but it does not take much more than a primate to type out hello on a computer in Times New Roman. Writing that with a pen on paper in a way that suggests the speaker is addressing someone that he or she is most thrilled to write to is a different story. That is my lacking-attempt at explaining how hand lettering communicates differently than its digital counterpart. Through this project I specifically learned that most of my hand lettering is comprised of forms I can make quickly while still being fairly satisfied with the results. Doing my final iterations for the word “tear” was kind of difficult for me simply because I wanted to challenge myself to do something other than use a pen and draw on paper. Because of that it took me a lot longer than I was accustomed to to perfect my letter forms. I greatly enjoy trying to create different typefaces but when it becomes tedious and difficult to perfect the letter forms I think I start to lose patience and morale. A question I was asked after doing this project was “How big do you think you could hand letter well?” Taken aback by this seemingly random question I began to think of it as a challenge. Realistically I think I could hand letter well up to a twelve inches in height or so. Being honest with myself I would have to say if I tried to get much bigger than that without very long utensils would turn out rather distorted. Until then I believe I could hand letter with success.
Animal Iterations The third project to be completed was my first adventure to the print center. Though it was a little scary at first I cannot say it did not end without some success. The project was entitled “object iterations”. After working for a while I started to call it “animal iterations” instead because I was given the opportunity to choose an animal to produce various iterations of, rather than an object, which I eagerly embraced. I hoped it would be more fun and therefore serve as motivation to work on it. I was not disappointed. The goal of the project was to create a number of iterations of the chosen object or animal experimenting with media and expanding on the traditional view of the subject. I chose to use an English Mastiff for my project. I love the animals and used that fascination as inspiration to dig deeper and see what I could find. One other basic guideline of the project was the set types of iterations that needed to be completed. These included a continuous line iteration, renderings inspired by the styles of two master artists, a collage, a typographic collage, and a geometric iteration. I was encouraged to be creative in my depictions as well as strip the subject down to its basic components while still clearly illustrating the animal. While using simplicity was an important task keep in mind, the objective was not to make expected, typical iterations. A final small but crucial necessity was that the piece be printed in black and white. Given the specific list of iterations to complete, and a timeline in which to complete them, I eagerly sat down and began playing with continuous line. Surprisingly I was happy with one of the first few I made (shown in the bottom left side of the next page) and ended up using that in my final product. I chose to use Vincent Van Gogh and Georges Seurat as my master artists and happily made iterations based off of their styles as well. I struggled with was collage, primarily because I felt limited on materials (though I was not) and do not like the process of creating collages. I only made one and was hoping to go back and make more later but decided to instead focus more positive energy on creating more iterations under other categories. Then began the process of digitally editing my hand-made iterations. Though I had ample experience with Adobe Photoshop previously, it had been over a year that I used the program for anything more than basic photograph touch-ups and I had never used the program I was to create the grid of iterations on, InDesign. The process started of slow but soon picked up. I got rid of the color in my iterations, though not in the way I should have, using gray-scale rather than desaturation. I finished my first version, made a few minor changes having been given feedback, and printed a final. Most of the things I edited for my second copy were technical issues rather than creative ones. I expanded the contrast on a few iterations to make them stand out more, as in the geometric iteration to the middle right of the next page, and played around in Photoshop to get rid of the gray backgrounds in certain iterations. On the next page from the top left clockwise is my original text collage, collage, a pencil geometric iteration, my continuous line iteration done with a china marker, and my Van Gogh iteration as one of my master artists.
To the left I have two original examples of iterations I made, one of them being a Photoshop geometric creation, the other my original color version of master artist, Georges Seurat. On the next page I have my final product of my animal iteration project.
I grew up with and have always loved big dogs, so I when I picked an English Mastiff to be my subject for this project, I thought I visually understood them pretty well, but I discovered my understanding was not as deep as I had expected. First of all, I have no idea how it took me until creating a dozen iterations of English Mastiffs to realize that the dark fur around their eyes and muzzle are a distinguishing feature of theirs, but it did. A new struggle that came up in my process revolved around my clear understanding that these animals do not have a naturally sad look to their faces in reality. The problem was that as I studied the lines and shapes in their faces, many of my first iterations made the animal look like an emotionally sad creature. I soon discovered that it was the droopy eyes and cheeks that made this impression and that adjusting the mouth would change that impression. Working with different media was a fun way to make the project more challenging as well as interesting, even though I had a difficult time with the collage requirement. I was admittedly stubborn when it got down to getting the collage done and because I knew I did not entirely like the first and only collage I created, I did not want to spend the time making one I would like better, because, as I mentioned previously, I figured it would be more beneficial to me to focus my energy on other iterations. I greatly enjoyed working with the other media, even text college, I suppose only because it was more interesting to me than collage elements with no text involved. The frustrating part about the text collage iteration was that I wanted the words to also have meaning to my subject. I knew this was somewhat unrealistic simply because the text collage was only one small part of the project, but the thought remained in the back of my mind. I think the most enjoyable media for me has been and will continue to be a pen or china marker unless I decide to put in the time and patience to use paint. This being said I think the continuous line iterations were the most enjoyable, though I had a very pleasant time making my master artist renderings as well. This was my first shot at Photoshop in over a year and though it had been a while since using it, I used things that I had known previous to being in this class. What I did learn a lot about was InDesign. This project was filled with new adventures, one of which being a trip to the print center, another being opening the door to InDesign. Basically, the first of a few small bites of information I have taken out of InDesign was taken through the process of this project. Like taking bites of anything, it usually takes more than one to get much of a taste, so the majority of knowledge I am using to create things in InDesign now were gained from later bites. I have thought a few times about continuing work on this project, and if I had not lost the digital files of some of the work up to the point at which I stand now, I would consider it more seriously. If I did continue work on this I would excitedly work on iterations for more master artists and hopefully dive further into Photo-shopping all kinds of iterations as well. I enjoyed the challenge of turning letter forms into my animal and I definitely would take another stab at collaging my English Mastiff.
Tutorial Excited to begin my next adventure to the print center, I started the tutorial project. This was, in other words, a spread designed to explain how to do something I would choose. I looked at this project as an exciting way to combine hand-drawn illustrations and digital elements such as color, though I think the main goal behind the project was to become more familiar with InDesign so that I would be more comfortable doing the project to come after this. Aside from the print center I would also be taking a journey to the world of typesetting for this project. I had dealt with composition in the previous project, but illustrating and typesetting would be new to me, for the most part. This would be my first project in color and I was eager to incorporate the new dimension. I was encouraged to use a limited color palette, which I did. Prompted to write down three colors in the next thirty seconds during one of my classes I picked turquoise, orange, and gray, and I never looked back. I was required to pick a topic and write up a very specific set of instructions on how to complete the chosen task. I wanted to think of something fun and different, and it took me a little while to find just the right topic, but with the help of my boyfriend, I decided on how to make a splatter painting, which we had done together numerous times. After having done that, as usual, I drew up a number of thumbnails to figure out what kind of layout I wanted to use. This was a little difficult for me, as I explain on the next page, but I eventually settled on something fairly close to one I have drawn on the next page. After designing thumbnails I began sketching out what would evolve into my illustrations. I had picked out four of my thirteen steps as being some of the most important ones and decided to illustrate those specifically. After drawing versions I was satisfied with, I turned to the computer and quickly learned how much I loved digitally coloring my drawings. I was not very good at it at first, which was not surprising, but I learned fast and was content with my results. It became more complicated when it came to my InDesign layout. I had a difficult time organizing my illustrations and text in a way I found to be interesting, understandable, and fluid all at the same time. The the bottom left of this page I have an example of my first layout for the project, which I changed around after critique. By the time I had my final product I added a fifth illustration of a paint brush to put in the title column, and also illustrated my title, which I called “SPLAT.� I discovered I needed to go in and erase the white backgrounds of my illustrations, which I did not know how to do as easily as I can now, but did it nonetheless. Another final touch I added into the finished piece was a light background pattern of splattered paint.
To the left I have shown my initial thumbnails for layout options. I obviously was not very happy with a number of them and struggled with wanting to make the layout relate to my theme of randomly throwing paint everywhere, but still make the layout clean and understandable. My desire to use a grid structure overthrew any desire to relate the layout to flying paint and I ended up using a three column grid similar to the second one draw, but I put text in the middle and illustrations on either side. To the bottom I have a few of my brainstorming sketches of what I wanted to put alongside the information to my tutorial.
If I went back and continued to work on this project one of the things I would like to incorporate is my name. As much as I wanted to put my name on this piece somewhere as the writer and illustrator to the tutorial, I could not find a place to put it that satisfied me. At first I started with the digital typeface I used in the rest of the piece and eventually succumbed to drawing it out in the way I had illustrated my title. In both cases I was unable to place my name as another illustration where it did not detract from my layout. Though I am pleased with the version I have now, if I chose to go back and work on this more, I would definitely continue to think about working my name into the piece. I spoke earlier of learning to illustrate through this project in various ways. The biggest thing I learned was how to multiply layers in Photoshop to allow for my colors to show through underneath my hand-drawn lines. Learning this was a huge help and I continued to use this knowledge in coming projects. Another thing I learned doing this project related to illustrating was how much I enjoy drawing things by hand first. I talked previously about how hand lettering communicated differently than digital type, and I feel that drawing out illustrations to begin with yields different and possibly results than working solely from a computer, especially depending on the project. Part of this opinion, I’m sure, comes from the fact that I do not know how to illustrate well with only the use of technology. Either way, with this said there was no question in my mind that I wanted to draw out my illustrations first in order to portray the artsy tone necessary for my artsy theme of splatter painting. After doing so, I decided I liked it even more than I thought I would. Aside from the difficulty of presenting the layout in a fashion that was clear and interesting, since typesetting was new to me it posed a few minor difficulties as well. Though none of these issues were major I struggled alongside classmates to make each word of my text fit perfectly into my neat little boxes and avoid widows after choosing to use a grid system. It took me until the beginning of this project to realize how attached to the grid system I am, even though I enjoyed sticking to a dynamic grid system in my animal iterations project before this one. The weird little spacing differences in other printed text pieces will never cease to annoy me after having done this project, learning to perfect the shape of text in a way that I would have thought impossible before this.
1.
Gather your materials, which include paints, a paint thinner (such as a polymer medium), brushes, plastic spoons to mix, disposable cups to put the paint in, a canvas board, and recycled paper or plastic to make clean up easier.
2.
Optional step suggested for fun: Grab your best friend, a parent, a sibling, your significant other, a coworker, a cousin, or an imaginary friend to take part in your project.
3. Take paint (no thinner yet) and a
paint brush and paint your canvas board. Leave the canvas board to dry while you mix you paint and thinner in step 4.
4.
Pour a ratio of approximately three parts paint to one part thinner into a cup. Stir the mixture using a brush or spoon. If the mixture is not thin enough to drizzle off of your stirring utensil, add more thinner.
5.
Set up old plastic or newspaper that you can set your canvas board on so that you do not get paint on the floor or walls.
6.
Set your canvas upright against a wall or on the floor depending on whether you mind if some of the paint drips down the canvas. Set your paint mixtures and brushes nearby.
7.
Pick up the dish of the preferred color to use and, taking the brush, fling the paint outward toward the canvas. Use more or less paint by scoop more up with your brush or by wiping excess paint on the side of the cup before splattering.
8.
To focus on certain areas get closer to the canvas. To get longer, spontaneous marks, move further away. Fling paint until you are content with how your piece looks.
9. Wash your brushes with warm water as soon as you are done.
10.
Cover and store the paint mixtures if you desire to use them again in the future for a project. If not, discard.
11. Leave your artwork to dry for 24 hours or until you now the paint splatters do not feel squishy underneath all the layers.
12.
After your piece is dry, move your canvas board to the side and clean up all of the paper or plastic that you put underneath the canvas board before you started splatter painting.
13. Display your masterpiece to enjoy!
Children’s Book The first and foremost objective of the project I simply call “children’s book” was to gain experience working with someone other than my own classmates and professor, as if that person was a client. For this project we were partnered up with a member of an education class who had the task of writing a children’s book. My job was then to take the author’s work and turn it into visual art, via illustration. This means that I had to create a variety of interesting, cohesive images an spreads that also followed the tone, context, and content used by the author in the story. This project was similar to the tutorial project in the ways that I was challenged to make illustrations that assisted the text but did not over power it, but also to typeset the story in a way that supported the content. Another part of this project that was new to me was that I was to print the entire book after I was finished. This was by no means shocking but I had only printed an eleven by seventeen inch spread of a piece previous to this project, so there was another new print center adventure in this project, and this would be the most challenging and exciting one yet. I’ll be honest, when I finally did get the text from author, which was a struggle all its own, saying I was less than thrilled with it would be a massive understatement. The idea behind the story itself may have been alright but I was not at all fond of the way it was written and I was disappointed with the number of basic grammatical errors I found in what she called her “final draft”. The big lesson learned here: not every client is easy to work with and this one certainly would not be. Aside from the struggles communicating with my author, I happily plugged along making sketches, trying to figure out what would work best with my story. The text I received was about a little girl named Hazel who found a baby elephant, which she named Oliver, in her back yard one day and kept as a secret pet. Giving ample room for text and illustrations led me to produce a twenty page book. In order to make my work load reasonable I knew I would need to do some serious Photo-shopping on my characters, which led to me drawing “one Hazel”, various facial expressions, and different arm positions for her. I then went in and combined them all to get various postures for the little girl, and colored my illustrations digitally as well After scanning, editing, and coloring most of my illustrations I began to put together the document that would become the final book. During that process I discovered that I would still need more illustrations to make my page spread layouts look finished. Then, as artists typically do, I printed what I thought was a finished product, went to critique, knew it obviously was not actually done, and got back to the drawing board with more things to change. On the next page from the top left clockwise I have a page of my thumbnails for how I wanted to set up the book as well as a list of illustrations I wanted to make, the page that would make up the different versions of Hazel including her facial expressions and arm positions, and pre-editing versions of part of Hazel’s family and a zookeeper.
When I finished my children’s book for real, I had changed up the layout of my pages almost entirely. I was a bit distressed about this because having been to critique seemingly happy about my old layout, I realized it was not dynamic enough as it was before. The problem came in when I was trying to re-work the layout and was not sure if what I was doing worked well or not. I finished and am satisfied with how it turned out, knowing it is more dynamic than my previous layout, but I remain somewhat unsure if it could still be improved. To me, the most two challenging parts of the children’s book project was the fact it was collaborative (specifically with someone who is not an art student) as well as the challenge to make the book interesting and fun, yet closely intertwined with the text. Since I struggled to communicate with my author from the start, by the end of the project there was no collaborating occurring. Before I got too far into the illustrating process I spoke with my author about some of the grammatical and formatting errors I was frustrated by, and we got those cleared up for the most part. After that however, I intentionally left her out of my process because I felt that she would not have given me reasonable feedback of use to me with the time line I had for my end of the bargain. Unfortunately, the opportunity to illustrate a piece fro a non-art class student did not result in an exciting or even positive experience for me, as I had been hoping, but I definitely learned a lot from it. I was surprised at how unorganized the collaborative student’s class was, but was unsure if it was just my author who was somewhat disorganized, and I was also surprised at my author’s unreasonable demands in regards to time-lines and finishing work for her. This made me realize that as a “client” one may not realize all the work that is put into a project such as this one, and it also taught me that as much as I would love to make y partner as happy as possible, I cannot do everything someone might ask of me. Aside from trying to make the objectives and requirements of my part of the project even clearer to my author, if I were to do this project again I would focus on the layouts of the spreads more from the beginning. I felt that I focused too much on the fact that I was creating a physical book and that it had to print out perfectly, instead of trying to make each layout its own little dynamic piece of art. Overall I think illustrating a children’s book was a good experience to have and throughout the process I thought a lot about children’s books I loved when I was little and tried to keep in mind what I would like in a book as a child, but also create something that was visually appealing to someone with an artistic eye. I used sketchy illustrations in an attempt to achieve a realistic depiction of my characters but still allowing them to be cartoonlike and not photographical.
The spread to the left is an example of the first, less dynamic layout I initially used. The edited version of this same spread is shown on the top of the next page.
These are a few examples of page spreads from the final edition of my children’s book. One of the things I wanted to keep from my original layout was the blue accent I originally placed as boxes behind each set of text. Instead of using the blue to accent solely the text of the story, I reorganized it to emphasize space, dimension, and important content of the story.