THE ROOTS OF CREATIVE EXPRESSIBILITY
By: Cameron Stefanowski Intro to Design
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I N T R O D U C T I O N
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Hi my name is Cameron Stefanowski class of 2016 and I was able to take Introduction to Design here at St. Norbert College under the teachings of Professor Katherine Ries. This class I feel was truly a journey and I found where the roots of my creative expressibility truly grow and prosper. I hope all who read this process book can be inspired, expand their own ideas further, and find the roots of their creative expressibility as well. This has been an amazing class I have learned so much and if you are currently a student enrolled within this course, enjoy it, absorb everything and don’t be afraid to try things outside of the box!
D-SCHOOL CRASH COURSE.........4 HOW TO ASSIGNMENT..................5 OBJECT ITERATIONS.......................8 DOT LINE ITERATION....................12 DESIGNER PRESENTATION..........18 HAND LETTERING.........................19 CHILDREN’S BOOK........................24 DOODLES OUTSIDE OF CLASS...29 CONCLUSION..................................35
T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...............36
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D | S C H O O L C R A S H C O U R S E 4
Objective- to find ways to expand our ideas of a design process so we can have the ability to push our work as designers further to make the best possible iteration.
I found that this assignment was very unique and difficult all on its own. What I loved about this assignment is I was able to get to know my classmates through dialogue and design. I was able to find better ways of laying out my designs, for instance having a simple idea and digging deeper and pushing that particular design to be the best. What I have found surprising about this particular assignment was that I was able to connect my feelings and perspectives on life and create a design from them. Where I might also apply this method is within other classes, for instance writing papers, pushing my thesis statement further to create a strong and rigid argument. I can share this method with my family, friends, and even a stranger. Everyday as a designer aka art student designs and creations pop through my mind all the time, and I need to find ways to organize, process and push them to be their best. I have found those ways through the d-school crash course, as Professor Reis says, “Push it further.�
Objective- to illustrate some form of action such as how to cook mac and cheese, play catch, or even how to tie a tie... I found this project to be very enjoyable, and allowed for me to grow as a young designer. I am very proud of this piece as I feel I learned a lot of concepts and tools found within Photoshop and In Design. For instance, I feel I was able to finally grasp and understand how to use the curves command allowing me to adjust the darkness and lightness of each of my images. I prefer to hand draw my iteratations first, scan, and then make final edits. I found this type of design process to be slightly longer than most however I feel as I was able to push my iterations farhter to make them the best they could possibly be. I learned how to make shadows utilizing the multiply function within Photoshop as well, this allowed for my final iterations to look more realistic and overall more professional, as you will see with in the next few pages. This assignment made me really fall in love with the concept of design again and I am looking forward to see how much I will grow as a designer within the future.
H O W T O A S S I G N M E N T
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C O N C E P T D E S I G N S
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Here you can see how I drew out the ties with sharpie and edited them with curves within photoshop in order to sharpen and make the silhouette more visible. On the next page you will see the final project, which I believe turned out beautiful the color choices and text complete this piece, and suits the topic of “How to tie a tie.�
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O B J E C T I T E R A T I O N S
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Objective- to utilize different mediums of art such as sharpie, charcoal, and watercolors, in order to iterate an object with a known silhouette.
What I learned about my object through this process is that the Dusky Dolphin can be a simple yet hard object to iterate depending on what medium it was illustrated in. The media I found most challenging was painting, iterating a dusky dolphin in the style of Picasso was fairly difficult for me however after many iterations I was able to push the work further and have it be a great iteration. The most enjoyable medium I found was type iteration; I found it to be very challenging as well however, quite intriguing and very fun. What I learned about Photoshop that I think I will use going forward in design in Curves, Multiply and the various brush tools.If I was able to continue this object for a year I would like to represent the Dusky Dolphin through clay sculpture, molding and quilling. All would be a challenge yet exciting for me and I would love to experience new mediums of art and design.
E X A M P L E S
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B E S T
Above is my interpretation of the Dusky Dolphin in the style of Pablo Picasso. I found this piece to my favorite and my best out of all of my iterations of the Dusky Dolphin. Painting is not my go to medium when it comes to design so I feel that I did a fairly good job on mastering the strokes and placement of the paint throughout the entire piece.
I T E R A T I O N
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D O T L I N E I T E R A T I O N S 12
Objective- to use dots and lines to express certain words such as: Oppression, Chaos, Freedom, and Stability. Gestalt: something that is made of many parts and yet is somehow more than or different from the combination of its parts; broadly : the general quality or character of something. From this definition of Gestalt my understanding of his works is that many different shapes can come together to describe emotions and identifiable objects. I found that it was not entirely difficult to make a “well crafted object” when creating art and design it is impeccable to me to have exceptional craft. I would rather spend two hours making a perfect circle than spending two minutes and having it look like an oval. This project changed my view on the idea of abstraction because I found in our in class critique of our dot line iterations that everyone has a different view of “Chaos”, “Freedom”, “Stability”, and “Oppression”. After successfully completing this assignment I learned that artistic abstraction sometimes contains one if not all these different parts: proximity, similarity, continuation, figure and ground, and closure. I found it was fairly easy to represent ideas with various sizes of dots and lines compared to illustrating them because I see abstraction within everyday. I found that being able to represent various ideas with different shapes allowed me to think more out of the box and take the idea given to me in a different light. I would be able to use this exercise or the ideas of gestalt and abstraction also within photography, painting, and when sketching out my ideas prior to forming a more final draft.
C O N C E P T S K E T C H E S
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E X A M P L E S O F D O T L I N E S 14
I found out of the four dot line iterations I created this was the best because I felt that I displayed the word stability in its entirety. I am trying to convey that to opposites can come together and still be able to find balance, comfort and stability.
STABILITY
CHAOS 15
OPPRESSION
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FREEDOM
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D E S I G N E R P R E S E N T A T I O N 18
Objective- to explore an established designer’s work, gather notes, pictures, of said designer’s work and present your findings and interpretations to my classmates. I chose Giorgio Armani because his designs have very sharp lines, contour and great color variations as well. Whenever I think of design, I think of suits, then immediately Armani I find his work very inspiring. I felt pretty great about presenting to my classmates, I wanted my presentation to be engaging and have my classmates involved as well. I asked them questions about each piece I presented and truly found this assignment to be fun. If there was one thing I took away from this assignment is that every designers thinking/planning process in order to produce work is different. Everyone’s design process is very different and that is beautiful. If I was able to do this assignment again and discover more about another designer I would have choose to explore the life and work of John Varvatos. I am intrigued by Varvatos’ work because he uses dark colors, rounded lines and many different textures to produce amazing lines of clothing, accessories, and shoes.
Objective- to explore an established designer’s work, gather notes, pictures, of said designer’s work and present your findings and interpretations to my classmates. Hand lettering communicates differently than digital letters because it conveys more emotion, and I believe a message. Hand lettering I believe connects to people more than digital type, this form of typography is unique, original and not boring compared to a standard typeface as Times New Roman. What I learned about my hand lettering is I found that I am very good at making type out of various shapes and objects as well as standard lettering. As you can see I developed the word “Tear” with tear drops, and I believe it turned out very well! I believe typography is a strong point of mine after taking this course and I believe I could hand letter fairly large, for instance large enough that you would be able to see my typography on a billboard if driving on a highway. I really learned a lot from this assignment and the one thing I will take away from this is that it is important to note that everyone’s perspective is different and that should be accounted prior to finalizing a design.
H A N D L E T T E R I N G
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C O N C E P T D E S I G N S
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F I N A L S K E T C H E S
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B E S T
I feel this iterations of the word tear were my best out of the five I created because I feel that the concept of the word tear is illustrated very well because of the blob like typography I established.
I T E R A T I O N S
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C H I L D R E N ’ S B O O K
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Objective- To iterate text given by two education students, as well as meet deadlines, make appointments, along with creating something a child would absolutely love. What surprised me about working with my partners is that within the first week they had all of their text done and gave me free reign on how I could draw the characters and scenery. The strengths that my partners brought to the project are their efficient communication skills, I found that this project would not have been possible without suburb communication. I found the critical feedback from my partners to be very helpful and I took it in stride. They helped me become a better designer and artist, so I can’t thank them enough for that!The aspects of this project that were the most challenging I found were working with InDesign the layout I found was somewhat difficult and a trigger for stress however I got the handle on it and pushed my work further. What I would do differently if I were able to start this project again is I would have drawn the characters with ink instead of sharpie as I now feel that the dark colors would have scanned much better and look a bit more shaper compared to iterations drawn in Sharpie. Three sources of inspiration for this project were my own childhood experience, feelings and emotions when reading the text, and my classmates. I found this assignment to be quite difficultand stresssful at times however I feel that my designs and concepts came out better than I thought.
B E G I N N I N G S K E T C H E S
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F I N A L S K E T C H E S
EYE DOCTOR 27
MIGHTY MIKE AND GALAXY GIRL 28
Objective- to explore new techniques/mediums of art, along with applying what I have learned in Intro to Design thus far to my projects. On the follow pages what you are about to see are a few illustrations/designs I have created outside of class. I feel that it is important as a design student that you consistently practice and hoan skills that you have learned within the classroom. What you will see is some more typography, other sketches that I created, and a poster that I designed for a very good friend of my who truly inspired my creation because of his passion for travel. I was able to really grasp the concepts of proximity, negative space, and contrast throughout these pieces. I explored new concepts of photoshop as I digitally drew/painted my friends cabin for the poster I created for him. I am very proud of how these pieces turned out and I am glad that I am going to be able to share these pieces with those who to choose to take a peek at this book. I find being able to create art and design a privelage and I hope you have enjoyed what you have seen and what you are about to see!
D O O D L E S O U T S I D E O F C L A S S 29
C O N C E P T S F O R P O S T E R
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As you can see above this is the picture my friend gave me off his cabin. I adjusted the exposure and contrast of the picture in photoshop, where I created a great balance in lighting prior to painting the design over this photograph.
Here is the final digital painted copy of the cabin. My friend really wanted the cabin to have that painted look and I delivered the best I possibly could. I utilized the brush tool with a softness of 15 in order to make the affect of snow on the roof look more authentic in comparison to a painting. I utilized the blur tool on the background so the focus could be more on the cabin. I also darkened the trees so the focus could be on the cabon as well. 31
F I N A L P O S T E R D E S I G N
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Here is my final iteration for the poster I made for my friend, and I even added my own fleur de lis to make everything come together. I am extremely proud of this piece and I am glad I was able to apply what I learned within class to this project.
M O R E D O O D L E S
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T Y P O G R A P H Y
I thought the use of the colors fit well and expressed my friends personality, she is a fan of the 60’s decade and I figured I could suprise her with something of the sort. I am really proud of how this piece turned out and that I was able to utilize the color appropriately. I call this piece “Jaime’s Groove.”
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I hope you have truly enjoyed what you have just seen and have read. I have had a blast throughout this course constantly creating, designing, and experiencing different outlooks upon the design process. I can not wait for what else is in store for me as I pursue my minor in Graphic Design here at St. Norbert College. “Art is work” ~ Miton Glaser
~Cameron Stefanowski ‘16
C O N C L U S I O N
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A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S
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I would like to thank my fellow classmates for inspiring me to push my work further and expand my own design process to be more effective and more efficient. Also my family and friends for appreciating my art and designs, as well as encouraging me to keep designing, drawing and exploring new mediums of art. I cannot say thank you enough for these wonderful people in my life for they truly helped me find and expand my roots of creative expressibility.