Breathe Memoirs of an Evolving Designer
By Caimyn Lutze
Breathe
Memoirs of an Evolving Designer
Dot/Line
A Rudimentary Abstraction
The goal of the Dot/Line project was to create abstract pieces with the use of dots and lines, the most fundamental geometric figures. This project tested my ability to create abstract works of art. It was difficult to produce an abstract piece without illustrating a concrete object, that is, placing the dots and lines in a way that looks like an object or represents an object. I had to bury my natural inclination to represent people through the usage of lines and dots. Instead of illustrating, I used the Theory of Gestalt, portraying an understanding of value, scale, line, and visual hierarchy. Gestalt is the whole of the piece as it is visually perceived by the viewer. Some of the principles of this theory include figure and ground, proximity, similarity and anomaly, closure, continuation, and parallelism. All of these terms bring a sense of strength and organization to the piece, generating both meaning and pleasing aesthetics.
The first stage of the process was to create an abundance of thumbnail sketches that portrayed the words I would choose. Because I could not decide on only four words, the required amount, I began by including thumbnails of additional words. I found this to be quite unpleasant, because I feel more accomplished in striving for quality and paying attention to detail than in accelerating through the process to achieve quantity. I then narrowed the words down to four, based on my perceived successes and failures of the compositions in correlation to the meaning of the words. At this point, I created more thumbnail sketches. This was discouraging, as it was difficult to develop fresh ideas for each composition. In any case, I produced a few options to supplement each word.
Stability
Rejection
Longing
Energetic
Finally, I marked the thumbnails that I thought to be the most aesthetically pleasing as well as the most relatable to the various meanings and interpretations of each of the words. The physical shape-cutting, paper-gluing process was a pain -- but it needed to be done. I was appreciative, however, of the efficiency of cutting with a blade rather than with a scissors. With glue on my hands, tiny paper shreds sticking to places they don’t belong, and little cooperation between what I desired to happen and what actually happened, I forced myself to step away from the project and take a break. When I came back to the project, ruler in hand, I finished the alignment and fixation of each piece and matted the white paper onto the foam core. It is agonizing for a perfectionist to call her artwork “good enough,� but that is what this project had come to. Here ends the first time in the semester that a deep breath and a moment of relaxation proved themselves to be great necessities in the life of an artist.
Expressive Text Normality to Novelty
Among the many purposes of the Expressive Text project was to explore differing forms of type in order to successfully portray the meaning of the word. (Of the array of words to choose from, my mind maps drove me to select the word “dash.”) This project shared many objectives with its predecessor, one of which included adequate craftsmanship. Another was to utilize a plethora of sketches and iterations to achieve a strong final product. To begin, I filled numerous pages of my sketchbook with arbitrary words, which led me to the realization that all of my hand lettering looks the same. Every typeface I drew had the same proportions, angles, and strokes. To troubleshoot, I took a different perspective. Instead of thinking of the hand lettering as writing, I decided to think of it as drawing. By drawing the words, I was pushed to use varying styles and approaches. For example, the finished product to the left is a style that had not previously been in my repertoire. But by deviating from my original ways, I produced a final iteration that I was particularly satisfied with. To arrive at the finished product, I created and recreated different forms of the word “dash.” I modified the iterations which were pleasing to me, and I discarded the rest. For the remaining three final iterations, I followed a similar thought process as the first, tweaking a fairly normal typeface -- if there is any sense of normality in the imaginative world of design -- to create a novelty.
Object Iterations
A Transitional Procedure
There were several aims applicable to the process of this Object Iterations project, which included utilizing and adopting an array of media and techniques as well as displaying a wide spectrum of exploration in the creation and portrayal of the chosen object. This project was the first of the semester to be done in part on the computer. It was both a learning process and a retrieval of information (as I did have some previous experience with both programs) with regard to the skills and procedures to be done with Photoshop and InDesign.
The guidelines for this project were to select an animal or another object that could move, to create at least six iterations of the chosen object, to digitally edit those iterations, and to place them into an organized black and white grid. I chose a teacup pig for no specific reason, aside from the fact that I think teacup pigs are adorable. Shown on the previous page are the original handmade copies with very little editing done. (I did put them into grayscale and enhance the values.) My favorite mediums to use were paint -- especially with the iteration on the top right of the previous page, which imitated the artist Leonid Afremov -and collage, which was very simplistic. I struggled with the pencil-drawn geometric iteration, because the values were not as strongly contrasted as I had intended. Once I finished the handmade iterations, I scanned them to the computer, turned them all to grayscale, enhanced the values using “curves,� and smoothed the lines using the clone tool. From there, I inverted the colors of selected pieces and multiplied, cropped, and rotated them as needed to best fit the composition as a whole. If I had an extension on this project, I would use a wider variety of reference images to increase the dynamic of the work. This idea can apply to any project. Another valuable lesson I learned from this project is to always hand-create larger than the size the object is going to be digitally. This will ensure that no image will be blurry on the final copy. These were lessons that I had to learn the hard way, which, naturally, caused a great deal of stress that at the time was difficult to handle.
Tutorial Editorial
Concurrent Teaching and Learning The main objective of the Tutorial Editorial was to prepare us for the following project, the Children’s Book. This project prepared us by introducing the incorporation of text and image to the composition. I began by making the background -- the soccer field. This did not come easy, as I was struggling to find the balance between the opacity and the flow of the digital paintbrush. I learned how to use layering in Photoshop, which is how I created all of the strokes of the grass and the white painted line. To the left, from top to bottom, is the progression of the background as I had improved it and minimized it throughout the process. The page to the right fully portrays the battles I faced during this project. The image on the top shows my “final copy� as I initially intended it to be. I thought it was good. After an in-class critique, however, I began to think otherwise. I learned that I should avoid strokes when possible and to stay true to the orientation of a typeface. At this point in the semester, I experienced the frustration of losing everything on my flash drive, forcing me to go through the entire process all over again. I reminded myself to take a deep breath.
Children’s Book Collaboration and Animation
The Children’s Book was a collaboration between design students and education students. Through this process, I experienced the ups and downs of working with a client. My collaborative partner wrote the book, and I illustrated it. Titled Dogs Can Be, this book was my first opportunity to animate a drawing. This was the most enjoyable project of my semester, because it gave me a taste of what my possible future career would entail.
I was blessed to be paired with a very cooperative partner. That will not always happen in the future. My partner allowed me to use all of my ideas and was flexible in her expectations. Because my options were endless, I decided to keep the book simple, rather than risking an elaborate work that loses the essence of a children’s book. The images to the left demonstrate the motion I created in Photoshop. The dog in the middle was the original dog; with the lasso tool, I selected the head and rotated it. The images below demonstrate the process of coloring in the picture. The dog on the bottom left was the original, enhanced image. The character on the right was created by filling the original dog with color using the paint bucket tool.
The most challenging part of this process was working with the text I was given. Because I had such simple text, I felt as though I had to make the images more complex to make up for what the book was lacking. In the end, and with feedback from fellow students, I came to the conclusion that this book may be used as a learning tool for young beginning readers, and that simplicity is what the book needs to bring the composition together as a whole.
The image on the left is a simple foreshadowing of the page that is to follow. On this page, I rotated the dog’s head so that he is looking up at the tall dog on the next page. The page below shows the medium dog and the tall dog side by side, comparing the sizes between the two. The formatting of these spreads is consistent through the rest of the book. The most enjoyable part of this project was editing the typeface of the adjectives. I edited the height and width to represent the meaning of the words in the appearance of the type. Although there were some difficulties with this project (as is expected), in the end, I was very satisfied with the work I had created.
This book was produced in the fall of 2014 at St. Norbert College in De Pere, WI. This book presents the projects and procedures of Caimyn Lutze’s semester as an Introduction to Design student under Professor Katie Ries. It is typeset in Bell MT and Zapfino and was digitally printed by the college print center.