ITerativity
Callie Wiesman Art 130 - Fall 2017 St. Norbert College
DSchool
Overview I believe this class has truly made me a more thoughtful and, in turn, better designer. From the very beginning of the semester, this class has worked to get me thinking. It got me thinking more about the design process as a whole than ever before, and I think that is visible in the work as the semester goes on and as progress is made within each individual project. I struggled this semester particularly with creativity. I hit creative blocks at a few point, but as I got past each of them, I think I just learned more and more about how to do what I was doing, and I believe that brought my work to a higher level of quality than I produced prior to this semester.
Engaging with a real person for this D-school crash course project seemed to make it more real and more personal. I feel like working through email or other online communication methods with a client you just follow the guidelines they give you, but you have a style and make what you like too. With in person interaction, it’s harder to want to present something to a person that is any less than exactly what they wanted, so it might not be your favorite work to do, but you are likely to please more clients. It’s still a little weird to me sometimes to show someone unfinished work, but it is better to check in along the process and make sure you are headed the right direction, than to finish and have someone not be happy with it. The quick cycles of work time we had were very different though, because normally when I do a project I work slowly and commit a lot of time in one go. If I did the cycle over again, I would try to put more time into thinking logically. My solution wasn’t a very abstract thought, but it wasn’t really something that could be done either; although, I may try to build off it because it did help the needs of my partner (client). D-School made me think deeper into the design process, especially the beginning of a project or piece of work for a client. Having a process so broken down makes you see every little thing that you should do in order to most efficiently work through a project and make it to your set or given standards. It also was a great project to get a person thinking “other-centered” so that you can impress whoever your making it for the most and make sure they get just what they want. To produce quality work that the client likes is the goal, so it’s important to have a plan for beginning.
DotLine
Gestalt uses specific terms to describe the works of art made and the elements of it, but the work as a whole is more than just those pieces or the description. This relates to our project because we broke down these abstract works we made into simple terms or these principles of gestalt, but by using these we were trying to describe and create something really complex, and something that was supposed to convey a powerful word. I sometimes find myself wanting to work quickly, but it is in me to try and make things as perfect and orderly as I can create them, so more often than not I would like putting in a bit of extra time to have something turn out clean and neat, so overall, it was not too much of an extra challenge to try to improve the craftsmanship of my work. This project changed my take on abstraction because I’ve never made something abstract that was trying to convey an idea instead of objects (like an abstract animal or landscape portrait), so to take objects and try to make them seem like a concept was something new and troublesome at first. For some ideas it definitely was very difficult to represent my words without illustrating them, or at least without having the freedom to have as many dots and lines together that I wanted, but at that point then it would be because you would be able to illustrate an object with those dots and lines, which would take away from the point of this extremely minimalist geometric abstraction. After this project, I would be very interested in trying to do a series where I attempt to convey concepts or words using colors, possibly painting. Use abstraction with different colors more so than definite shapes to try and describe something could end up being really fun because it wouldn’t be about shape and it would be fun to use color.
For the dotline project, the goal was to visually represent a word by only using dots and lines within certain perameters. A limited number of dot and line combinations and any number of just dots or lines were allowed. It was difficult at first to work in this type of way because I have never done any abstraction, and then we were brought right into this very limited geometric abstraction. One of the pieces I made (see dots abstraction above) I chose to use all dots to represent the word energetic. I thought that the continuation of the dots from left to right showed motion, and the change in size shows depth so there are multiple directions of movement. I think that engery can be represented through visual movement.
This is another of the final pieces I made, and it is supposed to represent the word stability. I got the idea from photos that have rocks of various sizes balancing at seemingly impossible angles (meaning they must have enough stability) So I used two lines and one dot rotated in different directions and stacked asymmentrically. I brought the bottom line off the page a bit to give it more of a feel of overall stability, so that it didn’t feel too much like it was balancing on the “ground” and “wall”. I wanted to represent stability through visual weight distribution.
The last of the final pieces I made for this class is supposed to represent the word rejection. I get a sense of smallness when I think of being rejected. Because you are turned down you feel alone and pushed away. That is why I used the scale of the small dot to the larger line. I wanted the dot to look small and easily pushed into the corner by the line. I used the proximity of the shapes to each other to make it look like the line is touching the dot and pushing it away from the negative space in the rest of the frame.
Hand Lettering
What I learned from hand lettering is really, I just have a lot more respect for people that design fonts, design fonts by hand, and just in general design things by hand. I learned how difficult it is to make precise work by hand, and that you may need to make many many iterations before you have exactly what you want, especially working as an amateur typographer. I am super into working with the ink, I just loved the way the different washes worked with each other, and I liked how you could work with wet and dry brushes. I would like to keep working with ink, and just experiment a ton more, but I would also like to just try more 3D stuff and photograph it because I had a lot of fun doing that and kind of bringing a photographic element into the work. I think the content is better in my finished pieces. I tried to recreate the water dripping iteration, but I couldn’t get it to look the way I wanted it to like the first one. So I cut it out and glued it on to the computer paper, and the form was not quite as good, but I think the actual water coloring dripping content was good. I liked the idea and what it was conveying, but I think I could have executed the craftsmanship better. I also think the content of my 3D was better than the form of the printed version I turned in, but that I could work on improving both of those.
Throughout the hand lettering project, I had so much fun working on the detail that each individual character can have, and seeing how one letter can very in shape and size. I experimented a lot with ink, but some with sharpie/pen, some just pencil, some with cut paper, and some with 3 dimensional things and photography. These photos not outlined in purple boxes are the process work of experimentation and brainstorming I did to reach my final iterations.
This one fills another requirement of using ink. This was definitely my second favorite iteration because of all of the process work I did learning how to use ink. Then I found that if I loaded the paper with water and blew on it, the dripping effects look dreary and represent ache.
This iteration is the 3D photographed iteration of my chosen word. I wanted to represent it with a scratched font that resembled the look of a cut. This iteration, though I admit it is not made to the rubric guidlines as well as my others, I think still uses font to get across the message but it is my favorite because I got to experiment with other art foms that I don’t usually get to.
The photo to the right shows my cut paper iteration of ache. I showed dimensionality with the different layers of paper, and then made the edges of each layer rough and torn to show an aching effect because when you ache emotionally it can feel like you’re torn. This final iteration was up to your decision on medium, so I chose ink again because of the different washes I was able to use. With the ink I used lots of strokes to represent scratches, which is something that can make you ache.
Object Iterations
I thought about a meerkat in much higher detail than I ever have before, so I learned a lot about its body and how it moves/ is positioned differently. I also learned about how its features may be similar to some other characters, but there are still things that make it distinct. I learned about those details like the way its tail hangs when it stands. Collage was the biggest challenge for me just because I felt like it was really difficult to find pieces to put together to make a meerkat. My favorite type of iteration was the geometric one because I got to play around with those specific meerkat features that I learned about but simplify them and give them a bit more structure. I learned more about curves in photoshop in this unit, and I know for sure I’ll keep using that because I already use it more for my photography I do for fun. I think I would try to branch into 3 dimensional work if I could. I think sculpting a meerkat out of clay or paper mache could be really fun.
This project probably gave me the most trouble of all this semester because of the endless iterations, but it also shows the most progress over the course of the project. I think my strongest iteratoin is the one in the middle, which is why I used visual hierarchy, its position, to make it stand out the most. Picking a meerkat as my object was something that became somewhat of a struggle when trying to make them in different postions and styles. I thought I could take an opportunity here when I saw the old style woman in a jacket in a magazine, so I collaged it by drawing a meerkat face over the woman’s. I also cut out letters and put them on the collar of the jacket to make a statment about animal fur being used in high end clothing.
Data Visualization I created visual hierarchy in my poster with the use of color and scale. I used a different color, particularly a font that was not black or white but used color, font for the main words or the most important information in the facts that I used. Doing this drew attention to those so that the viewer would get the best takeaway of the information on my poster. I mostly just learned more about In Design which was fun and stressful. I mostly just got used to how it is a little different from Photoshop or Illustrator a bit, and learned where some functions are and how to do more things, so I’m excited to dive deeper into Indesign and into other programs in the Adobe suite too. I really enjoyed being able to use color because I think, when used well, color can be a very powerful tool. I also was kind of The data visualization project for me was very fun because I got to work completely on the computer. That is probably my favortie way to produce work, and I got to present about a topic I feel strongly about. Being vegan myself, my lifestyle is intertwined with animal rights and the industries that exploit those animals. I think it is important to try to make a difference, in a respectful and positve manner, about topics you feel strongly about. It can be very difficult for people to get past the vegan stigma, but when you look at the industries statistics, the blatant cruelty cannot be ignored.
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Animal agriculture is the leading source of greenhouse gas emission
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Animal agriculture is the leading source of greenhouse gas emission
Every
six
seconds
...
of rainforest is cut down for cattle farming
Watch What
Every
six
seconds
...
You Eat
of rainforest is cut down for cattle farming
Watch What
You Eat Going vegan is more effective in fighting climate change than switching to a hybrid car
b.
1l
x2400
it takes 2400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat
Going vegan is more effective in fighting climate change than switching to a hybrid car
Resources: “35 Mind-Shattering Facts Linking Factory Farming to Climate Change” PETA. Retrieved from https://www.peta.org/features/meat-climate-change/
b.
1l
x2400
it takes 2400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat
Resources: “35 Mind-Shattering Facts Linking Factory Farming to Climate Change” PETA. Retrieved from https://www.peta.org/features/meat-climate-change/
Artist Presentation
What drew me to pick Shepard Fairey as my artist to present on is the style of his work and the topics he chooses to create work on. I find his work to be really cool in that he uses a limited color palette and that a lot of his designs are vector prints, but so detailed. As for the topics and themes that show up in his work it is heavily based on political statements. He tries to draw the public’s attention to different big industry issues like tobacco and oil. He also makes art promoting peace and moving from those big industry problems to a more inclusive and thriving society which all together I think is not only cool, but very necessary. As for if I was nervous about presenting in front of my classmates, I was and was not at the same time. I am not particularly fond of presenting in general, but our class has become a pretty relaxed environment in a way that I am comfortable around my classmates, and even if I screwed up I wasn’t as worried about the social pressure. Another artist I would like to learn more about is the LFP or JW and Melissa Buchanan because I am very interested in printmaking alone. I also really enjoy their style of work and how they use a limited color palette almost like Fairey sometimes, but their work has a kind of youthful quality in the cartoony way their work looks.
Vocation
Before this semester began, I had already begun to question my role as a future professional designer. I wasn’t too sure if I really saw myself waking up every morning and doing things like this after college. I wasn’t sure if I felt called to creative work so much anymore. That is why I was particularly excited to take this class now. I thought that this class would help me see if there was more to design that could still excite me, and more that could make me want to rethink my previous inclination to switch majors. The very beginning of the semester started to steer me into the opposite direction of design. I didn’t take too well to the process of D-School, and I thought, if this is what I have to do all the time, I don’t think I can. Dotline made me like everything a bit better because it was our first real full project which was an exciting thing, being able to finally complete a piece of work this year. Handlettering actually made me like it all more as well; however, I ran into something new. I found that I had more passion and inspiration for handlettering, and I just kept wanting to experiment, but that also meant that I spend more time on things. I spent more time on particular final iterations of the handlettering project that I enjoyed more, and that led to less time for the other ones. That project taught me a thing or two about time management. At this point in the semester I was feeling pretty good, I had decided that changing majors was probably not something I wanted to do (I had another elective of the other prospective major and that one didn’t strike my fancy as much). Then came object iterations. During this project I got very frustrated in the class. I was particularly struggling with my object and coming up with iterations of all the different sorts, and I wished I had picked an inanimate object instead of an animal like the rubric allowed, however I enjoyed the delve into photoshop for this project so I was still keeping interest. Data visualization was probably the most fun project for me because it was the type of work I am most used to doing, but I also was just very happy with my data content selection. The final project before the beginning of the end, the artist presentation, I think really nailed in that I liked what I was doing. I liked not only doing design for the most part, but I liked learning about design, and seeing what other people have made. I knew that after this class what I wanted to do was simply creative work. I know that there are people out there doing things athat are just what I’m drawn towards, so if they can do it I supose I can try.
I believe what distiguishes a good life from a significant life how you choose to act on the things in life you are called to. I believe that a good life is one where you are generally happy, generally consisting of things you like and thinks you want to be doing. You have a stable source of support and shelter you need. You probably have good people in your life and you sleep well at night. A significant life, I believe involves what makes you happy, what you are called towards, and how you choose to act based on those things. To be significant, it is my belief that I must choose to make some sort of positive impact on the world and people around me. There is so much hate, so much violence, and so much injustice around you and all across the world. Every one person’s small actions make a difference. You may not feel like it, but every positive word or action you make sets the standard just a little higher. Maybe you will be the inspiration or the catalyst to someone else’s actions of change. Maybe you will go less noticed, but it doesn’t mean you go unnoticed. I think that is why I am so drawn to Shepard Fairey’s work because he found his calling, and he uses it to try to change the world with the platform he was fortunate enough to recieve. So for me, the difference between a good life and a significant life lies with your thoughts, words, and actions. I am living a perfectly good life at a good college, with good friends, stable financial support, and a good roof over my head, but some people may not have that. They may not have a good life, and I think taking your good life, using what you are called towards and what you are passionate about to make a positive impact on the world around you and try to make other’s lives better, that is where significance lies. Where your deep passion meets the worlds great need is where you find a significant life.
This book was made as part of Introduction to Design at St. Norbert College in the fall of 2017. The fonts used include Geomancy, Aardvark Cafe, and Bell MT. It was digitally printed and saddle stapled at the college’s print center.