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BLACK + WHITE
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The first edition of this book was printed by Carlos Velasco of Chapultepec Publications in December of 2015 This Edition is Limited to 250 copies The typeface used in this book is Gotham Designed by Tobias Frere-Jones of Hoefler & Co.
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6 FOREWORD 7 PREFACE 8 INTRODUCTION
CONTENTS
12
WATCHFULNESS IN THE CITIZEN
20
SOCIAL CAUSE POSTERS
42
SCREEN PRINTING WORKSHOP
66
PASSPORT OF HUMAN RIGHTS
104
ALL HANDS ON DECK
112
TYPOGRAPHY + THE UNDERGROUND
122
BUILD A BOX TO THINK OUT OF
150
THE ESSAYS
160 AFTERWORD 162 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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FOREWORD Advanced Graphic Design Fall 2015 Foreword by Stacy Asher Assistant Professor of Art
In the Fall of 2015, the Advanced Graphic Design course at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln engaged in research about the role of design in creating social change. This course was an investigation of graphic design driven by research. Projects were socially and civically engaged, and focused on the production of communication systems, investigating history and theory of graphic design for social change, and the publishing of self authored work. Collaborative exercises and activities created an understanding of identity systems, social values and how to promote “justice for all� through visual communications. Deliverables for the course consisted of designed artifacts that documented, reflected, analyzed, and synthesized design research. The first half of the course integrated the series of exhibitions, lectures and presentations relating to the topic of art/ design for social justice that occurred on campus through October. The second half centered around publication and experiential design, and the development of identity systems. The course outcomes provided opportunity for students to be innovative, culturally critical and potentially create social change.
Themes for Exploration~ Graphic Design + Social Responsibility / Message + System + Identity / Striving for Viability / Designer as Preservationist + Conservationist / Designer as Witness, Ethnographer and Journalist
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PREFACE This book was created in an almost systematic way at first, a solid grid structure, a plethora of photos and text from the semester, and an abundance of things to talk about. What happened was a surprising exploration into art book design. Why not break out of the grid a little, why not play with composition and color, why not present a process in a unique way? These were questions that I wondered when making the book and ultimately, questions that helped inspire the format of the book. Black + White is the opposite of Black and White, it’s rather a look at how I grew as a designer in the course of one semester. This was a semester that had everything from a show in a forest, a once-inlifetime symposium and a unique climate on a campus ready for change. A book is ultimately a unique way to show design, to look at design as a resource and to document bodies of work. When you read and glance Black + White I invite you to look at what works, what’s terrible, and what has progressed from the old Helvetica Black and White style that I often feel trapped in.
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INTRODUCTION
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Introduction Most often I ask myself, ‘Why do I suck at color?’ That is, why do I always come back to the monochromatic black and white that I feel comfortable with. Yes, Black and White is elegant, it evokes the La Dolce Vita and with it the classical age of cinema with giants like Cocteau and Godard pioneering the avant garde. Black and White is warm and forever classic as a tweed jacket from Chanel, or as timeless as the industrial design of a Jon Ive keyboard. Black and White is infinite in the appeal and power it possesses, yet, the world is not Black and White. We live in a world that is colorful, rich reds flow through our blood stream allowing our dreamy blue, green and brown eyes to see the lush greens,
cyans, magentas, oranges, yellows that fill our world with color. As I’ve become more comfortable with my own design style that I revert to, the Black and White coldness that fills me with hapiness, It’s also allowed me the luxury of time to explore what I don’t know. It’s easy to fall in a rut when it comes to design, it’s easy to become overworked with clients and automate your work into a lovely and beautiful system, but it’s even nicer to have a bit of time and a bit of energy to explore what is out there. For myself, I don’t want to be known as the guy that makes the Black and
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White ads typeset in Helvetica and Didot. I want to be the guy that, can have a style, but can constantly innovate, try something new, fail, succeed, and explore the core of what design aims to do, communicate visually the world around us. Black and White is an exploration into the work created in the fairly small time period of one semester. One semester was what I needed to explore different types of design, to learn more about myself and what I want to do, to fail, to succeed and to escape the norm. I don’t always succeed, at times I fall to the security of the old or thing that it’s ok to just produce something for the sake of producing it. Yet at times
I realized the incredible fulfillment that comes with working on different materials, different eras, and more. What I learned through this process is that yes, I suck at color. I also suck as a designer, and as a person. But we all do, because no one is perfect, no one is flawless, as much as icons like Beyoncé may think otherwise, we are all just creatures on a beautiful planet that try to learn the most we can, we try to improve the world the most we can, and at the end of the day that’s all I want- to always suck, but to always get better.
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EXERCISE I
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THE SALVATION OF THE STATE IS THE WATCHFULNESS OF THE CITIZENS What does this phrase mean to me? Like the government is watching us? The government has to censor to be saved?
1984
Oppression, surveillance, censorship.
AM I CYNICAL?
Everyone is putting this phrase the other way around? What does that mean about me? Am I cynical or gloomy about the world?
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Freakout I don’t know what to do, This is god awefully terrifying, I am thinking about this so negatively, and that’s probably saying something about my personality.
Systematic It’s called conditional design. Don’t design, let the system design for you. Censorship. I like this.
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Let’s Do This! Design! I. Every fifth diamond has to be a different color of the color spectrum.
II. Every sixteenth right facing arrow will be black.
III. Every tenth octagon mass has to be in a bright cyan.
IV. Every twentieth diamond on the bottom has to become outlined instead of filled in.
V. Every shape that has a color fill or stroke has to be followed by a light grey fill around the shapes right side
VI. Every Ninth Diamond on the top has to be cut in half.
VII. Every tenth shape on the diagonal has to be bright red starting from the bottom up every three rows.
VIII. Moving to the right by three rows each time and 19 rows down, there has to be a block that encompasses 4x4 shapes of Bright Green
IX. There has to be a diagonal line from one end of the pattern to the other end signified by tilting of the shape every thirty rows down, starting from the top right everhy fifteen rows.
X. Every fifteen octagon shape to be shifted in position (Top Left goes Bottom Right)
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Patterns Patterns are important. Let’s find Patterns. The Patterns of Architecture and the Capitol. Those are pretty cool.
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Typeface ‘Seen, is one that is developed to block out verboten words that usually make NSA computers spark. It was interesting to see that in all the directions, only a few words were actually censored, here again I had no control as to what would and wouldn’t be censored- it was ultimately the system that controlled everything.
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ASSIGNMENT I
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He’s a cool dude, with some punk influence + a knack for posters. Justin Kemerling, a graphic designer that has a particular interest in designing for social justice came to class to discuss his own work with us, while also demonstrating how to design a beautiful deck and how to mind map and get an idea of his process. Justin was very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about design and allowed us to explore the concept of designing for social justice in a way that would map our interests and create unique final products. The entire process that stemmed from this workshop included a mini critique to check on the progress of our work and a final critique with guest Emory Douglas. This entire project had the same amount of time and intensity as a larger scale project which made it unique.
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At The Studio Caption about the studio
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Workshop During the initial idea workshop there were many ideas floating around for a topic, but in my stickynotes I noticed the majority of the topics centered around and eventually came to focus on racism, microaggressions and ‘looking like a culture’.
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The Illustration Concepts that began to float around included one involving a Tequila Bottle, a photographic one showing two extreme sides and stereotypes of both cultures, an illustrative one featuring an American style house in a Mexican Neighborhood and finally, the one that was chosen, the Catrina Bride and Groom in-between two cultures. In the past few months I had grown fond of drawing the Catrina figure in as many different iterations as I could to develop the illustrative style. I wanted to further explore my cultural heritage and illustrative skills and the catrina allowed me to do so. La Calavera Catrina was the iconic figure chosen to be replicated for the illustration. The original illustration, a print by JosĂŠ Posada, from Aguascalientes, Mexico, was a satire
print criticiszing how Mexican society had begun to adopt European aristocrat fashion and manners. The Catrina image is an intersection between the European style and the skull figure that was important in the celebration of death in Mexcio. Her appearence is usually that of an elegant bride wearing clothes that resembles both European and Mexican tradition, often times the colors are vibrant colors seen in the Mexican landscape.
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Original Sketch placed the Bride and Groom in both the original European inspired top hat and spectator but then placed the rest of them in American-esque outfits that also channeled an outward obsession with visible brands, a common theme found in modern Mexico. Original Outfit Details. Bride, Spectator Hat in Red Green Blue and White among other colors, Chanel logo necklace, Red Dress, Louis Vuitton Speedy, Christian Louboutin heels. Groom: Top Hat, Teal Pocket T-shirt, Salmon Shorts, Sperrys (possibly the outfit I was wearing that day)
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Final Poster The final poster design featured changed typography, changed illustrations and the half-tone effect throughout for stylistic purposes.
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EXERCISE III
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The Design & Social Justice Symposium included a Screen Printing Workshop day that allowed us to gain experience in hands on screen printing graphic work. I was able to learn a lot about the process from the very start of making a graphic. I worked on creating a set of graphics relating to Social Justice and design that could be used on the screen-printed graphics, these ranged from ‘Design Justice, Design Change, to, my favorite ‘Revolution is a process, not an event’ which came from the description of a photograph from Suzan Lucia Lamaina. The event drew a good sized crowd that was able to receive hand-printed apparel items. Screen printing was done by Graduate Student Joyce Bingeman and a lot of extra assistance came from Amanda Breitbach, Stacy Asher, Aaron Sutherlen and Lexi Bass as well as Sheldon Museum staff. One of the most rewarding things was being able to see people around campus continue to wear their screen printed clothing after the event was over.
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Early Iteration of Revolution is a Process Not an Event
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The final version of the graphic
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Revolution, unused graphic
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Justice is a Right in brush script
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The Design Change and Design Justice Graphics that were also used as patch graphics in the event.
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Two High-School Students that were visiting for the event display their recently printed t-shirts. The shirts in the event were up-cycled from previous shirts that were donated.
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Joyce Bingeman works on printing one of the graphics onto a shirt, Joyce is a graduate Printmaking student at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln who operates a screenprinting business during the Farmers Market in the Haymarket.
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The process of getting a shirt wouldn’t be done with simply standing in line and printing, one would have to wait a few minutes afterwards for the shirts to dry and also allow at least two days of time to pass for the shirts to become washable.
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A closeup of the ‘Revolution’ graphic being printed into a shirt.
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A flurry of shirts and posters at the later printing event.
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Abigail Jeffrey, ADPR Student at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln sits down for a design consultation on the creation of a ‘Power to the People’ graphic.
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The Sheldon hosted a Design + Social Justice Week where one of the kickoff events was a similar screen printing workshop to the one for the Design + Social Justice Symposium. At the event, I, as part of my involvement with the UNL Social Practice Coalition had a ‘Design Services’ booth where I was able to ‘consult’ with someone wanting to make a design related to social justice. I got to meet Gail, a sophomore Advertising and
Graphic Design (oddly enough she was in my Avant Garde in France class, I found out the following week) who wanted to create a graphic ‘Power to the People’ featuring a power outlet and a neon sign saying ‘People’. The graphic was surprisingly joyful to make, I learned a lot about looking at mundane objects like power outlets and hand made typography. The entire event took around three hours to produce. It was a great
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PROJECT I
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Typologies and Issues I was initially interested in concepts related to both Immigration, Sweatshop Labor and Free College, I chose Sweatshop Labor. The Typology assignment was inspired by stamps from Japan, I was inspired by how colorful they were and how the mixed contemporary and traditional illustrations and how fun and whimsical they were, a complete difference to the stamps I made in the end.
Extra A client sent me this view from his rooftop of a peace demonstration outside the United Nations.
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Fashion Revolution Fashion Revolution was chosen as the mandatory and possible collaborative organization, the organization promotes #Whomademyclothes a hashtag that asks you to wear your clothes inside out and bring attention to who made it. Alongside the International Labour Organization, I also received a lot of my statistical information and information about labor conditions through Fashion Revolution.
Fast Fashion The main culprits of this project were the Fast Fashion brands that produced clothing with questionable methods. I looked at their photography style and their products to see what the general aesthetic was.
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Dadaism I wanted to, after doing the creative brief, work on creating fashion photography that was glamorous while at the same time critical and
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Hermès Scarf A link pattern that symbolized chains and trapped labor was chosen in part to its relation with high fashion patterns like the link found in Hermès silk goods.
Sketches Planning both the chain pattern and the shoot poses themselves were important steps to make the photoshoot, which was quite crude, as efficient as possible.
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DADA The photo shoot for the project was a culmination of different inspirations and processes, many of which forced me to consider fashion photography and the art of photography in a completely new manner. I wanted to break away from my usual fashion photography style which relies mainly on either very controlled studio setups or a love of using lush nature, with models using similar poses but at the same time I wanted to still create a fashion inspired shoot. The difference came with the inspiration of Dadaism. I began to explore the Dada movement and the use of photography and graphic arts in the movement. I found that there were a few aspects of the movement that I wanted to try, the first one was a completely crud quality that relied on limited resources to create beautiful lighting, composition and stories. It was luck in the end that I had to use a studio in Richards with a very old incandescent lighting kit to create the photographs, with a lack of things like strobe lighting and with only one side lamp to work with you have to learn to get crafty. The lighting in the end was very raw, it had a glamorous quality that felt wrong and helped to also contribute to the next aspect of the Dada influence, the commentary.
Dada photographs were often in collages and they heavily criticized culture at the time, during my research I found numerous compositions created against Adolph Hitler, Communism, Warfare and more. These collages ranged from cutouts to even just photographs of crumpled paper.
Artists that were inspirational from the Dada movement included Raoul Hausmann, Hannah HÜch and to my surprise, people that I hadn’t considered were part of the movement before such as filmmaker Fritz Lang with his epic masterpiece, Metropolis. It was especially after seeing how artists like Lang created art in the movement that I began to understand more about the movement and how it related to popular culture. Metropolis in itself was a film that was also a commentary on industrialization, labor and culture, Lang then went on to escape Nazi occupied Germany and went to the United States where he unfortunately never met the same amount of success in film-making as he did beforehand. I was also surprised to see how Dada-ism influenced fashion at the time. One of the most iconic covers that Vogue has ever had, the 1950 Erwin Blumenthal cover with an arched eyebrow, lack
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Following this is the stamp illustrations. The stamps were created in the Dada style and were then edited through various techniques. The final products include ‘Forever USA Nº etc’ in the corner to add a bit of unique typography to the required Forever USA text. When text appears on the stamps it attempts to glamorize the statistics and facts about sweatshop labor through cold, harsh language with an attitude.
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I chose this manipulation for the main poster because it captured the essence of the project in one, in this composition Jhalisa was liquified to an extreme degree to look sickingly thin, this was in reference to both the starving conditions of workers and the often used thinning of models in the fashion industry. The cuts in this piece were done digitally in inspiration of various Dada compositions with the intentions of the cuts representing where the liquify tool compressed the image. Finally, Jhalissa’s eyes are broken, her cheeks comically sunken and the contrast upped to create a somber and striking image.
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Creating stamps out of the photo series turned out to be impossible to do, Zazzle had strict restrictions on what could be ordered and even after speaking with them, they
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The main series of photos was taken in Richards Hall’s graphic design studio space, there was one incandescent light source the entire time which made the lighting very dramatic and crude, a lack of other equipment and the use of whatever material was available in the studio allowed the shoot to channel the Dada Aesthetics.
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Front Page Back Side The front page’s back side of the carrier features the distinctive chain pattern as a visual surprise. The chain was inspired by the chain silkscreened pattern used in Hermes silk goods and updated to have an oppressive black and white aesthetic. A happy accident occured when duplicating the pattern and enlarging it, creating a perspective-based experience that draws you inside of the pattern.
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Second Page Front The front of the second page feautres the series of stamps developed for the collection. The pattern they are arranged in the page is somewhat more organic than a simple square. Project Credits on the side.
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Front Page Front The front page of the mail carrier is simple in black and white, Didot and Futura are used as the main typefaces and a portion of the chain pattern that was created for the project is used as a text divider.
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Second Page Back The back of the carrier features mandatory information such as USPS logo etc, but the true stand out is the copy. The copy was devleoped to function as both a project thesis and overview while also being written in a manner that seemed like a real world project and collaboration with the USPS
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My presentation combined the poster, carrier, thank you postage and packaging element. I wanted to use a pedestal to display the work because I felt that it added a sort of approachable elegance to the artifacts. Ideally I’d love to have had a backlight to the surface or a backlight and glass simply to help further elevate the idea of it being a limited edition and its relation to the fashion industry.
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ASSIGNMENT III
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A Cycle. When I look at the brief I created for the stamp project and the final product I think it’s interesting to see the differences and how they influenced the actual product. Originally the color scheme was much more warm , illustrations were going to be light and sketchy, patterns were going to be more emphasized and the schedule and budget did not account for issues with the studio and extra printing costs. The final result from the brief was much colder colors, Dada inspired illustrations, one prominent chain pattern, lack of the color red, and an emphasis in the language used by the fashion industry vs. statistics that were originally found. These changes happened very organically and I’m glad they happened because in the end the dada-influence helped to make this project stronger, the lack of a full studio allowed me to get out of my comfort zone with photography and try more raw shoots and direct manipulation of photos and in the
end the language also allowed the series to speak more volumes than just statistics. From the brief I was surprised in the end that I kept relatively well on schedule minus a few things such as the studio, I think the largest changes were the typography and color changes. Helvetica was replaced by Futura because it fit the shapes and compositions of the Dada movement better and was closer to that time period than Helvetica alongside being the second most commonly used typeface in the Fashion industry. The colors became more cold due to the harsh contrast of dada photography, and the color red was eliminated all together. I’d like to actually talk about my issue with color and struggle with it in a separate article.
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ASSIGNMENT IV
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Mr. Rogers is a Radical I examined a few newspapers including Oracle, Seeds, and other published works containing different radical graphics. What caught my eye the most was an article from The Oracle Vol 1 No 11’Notes from the Genetic Journal.’ The one page design that is in the beginning of the paper utilizes two dominant colors, a faded Prussian blue and a faded magenta above the now-aged and yellowing newspaper. The illustration of the piece is what originally drew me, at the center is a meditating outline of a human with floral iconography aligned from top to bottom. The iconography feels spiritual and slightly oriental in origin and aligns with a very new- age aesthetic that is seen in the piece. There is a radial sphere in the center of the figure that emanates a motion-like energy. Above the figure and their very prominent third eye is a radiating ray of light behind a large floral icon. Throughout the illustration is a series of small figures throughout ranging from a shell on the upper right, photographic cut outs on the bottom right, planets, landscapes, tribal patterns and Asian calligraphy in the bottom left, and celestial maps throughout the rest
of the piece. The entire piece feels like a map into a spiritual and universal consciousness that alongside the meditating prose speaks of energy, universal connectivity, the third eye, and the pilgrimage towards the self. The typography is heavily reliant on an italic sans-serif typeface that resembles anything from a Baskerville or Times New Roman and on the very top there is a beautifully created geometrical hand lettering that resembles something from the art deco era with its various decorations. The typography in the piece is scattered around, it aligns itself organically on the page, interacts with image by mostly always avoiding it, minus a few instances. It can be difficult to read the piece at times, large spaces, breaks in text, and inconsistent characters to each line make it also have a certain reading flow that could be argued, helps the flow of reading the piece, or rather just distracts you from it. There is also a mystery of not knowing, much of the type is hidden in other languages that make you curious as to what they are saying. Interestingly, like many other similar works, this is a piece that
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could work as a poster by itself, it could live independent of the rest of The Oracle, yet together it produces a beautiful collective of screen-printed radical graphics and alternative literature that is in itself quite authentic portrayals of the human experience. For my cube topic I’m quite interested in authenticity and looking at a piece like this allowed me to explore that authenticity in a unique way. Analyzing the text, I was interested in two things, the mention of the avant-garde and the influence of music and punk culture. I’m currently in an Avant-Garde in France class that has allowed me to look at different art and periods of art that I hadn’t looked at very carefully in the past, among these explorations I’ve particularly become fond of the authenticity that is found in movements like Fauvism, PostImpressionism, Expressionism, Dadaism and Surrealism. Among this it’s also been interesting to begin to analyze Avant-Garde literature, one of which sticks out
to me as the eccentric ‘Maldorer’, an honestly terrible writer that later went on to influence the surrealists. Maldorer’s fiction is horrendously scatterbrained, but in it’s badly written messes of thoughts there is an absolute authenticity that is not captured anywhere else, a happiness to get his story and human experience out in literature. The Avant-Garde was full of these kinds of artists, one could even call people like Erik Satie the original punk in the way he humorouslyplayed around with piano compositions and threw out all convention. As I’ve furthered my research I’ve been particularly interested in how the Fauves used color and shape, it was a movement I never thought of much before but as I’ve begun to learn more about it and begun more research, I’ve realized how against the grain and authentic they were in their expression. Though quite tame compared to American Punk, Rock and Drugs, there’s a correlation to it all that is quite fascinating. This brings me to my next point, the other thing
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that captivated me so much was the newwave and punk influence all around. There’s something very tied together with concepts ranging from music, MTV, American Punk, the historical Avant-Garde and of all things, Mr. Rogers. Design was very much low budget DIY, with an emphasis in looking dirty, hippie and raw. An interesting point is made in that, although movements like the Punk one try to be edgy and different, they eventually become embraced by mainstream culture and become a part of the culturally accepted aesthetics. This is what brought a correlation to me between the 60s and 70s punk and new wave culture and the emergence of MTV, my main inspiration, in the 80s. By the 80s, much of the Avant-Garde that was seen in punk culture had in a way trickled down into mainstream popular culture and many of the exciting and bold styles that very seen in the advertisements and branding of channels like MTV were simply inspired by those particular art movements. Tying this back to Mr. Rogers and the idea of authenticity I found it interesting that, Mr. Rogers represents popular culture and the idea of authenticity, he started off on a shoe-string budget that was against the mainstream culture at the time, yet over time his influence grew and so did his prominence in popular culture- could Mr. Rogers be a punk as well, probably in the same way someone like Erik Satie would be
a punk, in a very vanilla manner- but it would still be possible, at least to be considered an Avant-Garde Analyzing this particular piece of work allowed me to direct my research into a slightly different and exciting direction. I was particularly thrilled with the universal and still internal conflict of authenticity and how it could be represented by color, pattern and copy and type. Looking at counterculture, the Avant-Garde and different visual examples across various types of art forms allowed me to see a more comprehensive view of authenticity and how it relates to my original idea of MTV style motion graphics, which, as mentioned before, is arguably a mainstream celebration that culminates of the various counter-cultures of the past.
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Caption 1 Caption 1
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PROJECT II
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Mr. Rogers + The Cube
Building small cubes out of paper I found it really difficult to cut these out and to try to piece theme together, I’m the anti-craft and I wanted to try and create a clean cut, and consistent look throughout. This was easier said than done with the final lid which was usually always caving in on itself. Around this time I wanted to get inspired to do something related to MTV, and motion graphics.
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The MTV Phase I wanted to try something related to MTV because of the Mr. Rogers influence of going back to your childhood and to also find your authentic self, I had watched MTV a lot as a kid and it’s influenced how I look at design, I wanted to try motion graphics and started to look at projection mapping. I also began to design with the idea of using color, which was something I was missing a lot in my work.
The Oracle There was a fantastic article that I read in the Oracle that was a poem of sorts with interesting imagery recalling a spiritual and inwards look at the self, authenticity and place in the energy of the universe. It was cool, relating this, Mr. Rogers, MTV and Motion Graphics all together in the essay that was written. Around this time I also began to be influenced by the Avant Garde movement of Fauvism which we began discussing in my Avant Garde in France class.
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Projection Mapping, There are no cube demos. Lots of Google and Snapfeeds Though. There are no cube projection dummies for this project, there was no way or necessity to really make that for the vision of this project. The important thing with this project was location based projection map tests. Once the actual Motion graphic began to be made there were various tests in locations with the projection to map out how it would look and how it would intereact. The process for this was captured mainly through social media, I kept a very annoying amount of snapchat videos that I sent out at wild hours to friends related to the process of the box. Figuring out how to do projection mapping was deceivingly simple. It just took an angle, getting the shapes masked out and placing the motion graphic afterwards. The rest was creating it to also sync with the chosen music, Love Like a Sunet Part I by Phoenix, chosen because of its relation to the film ‘Somewhere’ by Sofia Coppola that was related in many of the same philosophies of finding your authentic self. There was also a Google Cardbaord Virtual Reality edition of the graphic made so that you could go inside the box, because the projection is location sensitive, I want you to be able to experience the box wherever you are, mobile media allows this to happen. http://projection-mapping.org was a great resource for finding inspiration
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From Fauvism to Surrealism Research into Fauvism led me to learn about the different artists that were prominent at the time, but above all else, the technique, use of color and bold creativity they had at the time. Seeing Fauvist art was something I needed to get out of my stale black and white rut because I loved how bold they used color and how they connected it with various ideologies, specifically I began to also become interested in how Surrealism, specifically the ideals of André Breton began to influence the avant garde, his ideas of ‘the consciousness enslaving the mind’ his mind games, the influence of Freudian psychology and other movements at the time looked at the subconscious mind as a tap for various creative and intellectual outlets.
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Creation I really enjoyed making the box, it was interesting and exciting to work with tools and material I wasn’t familiar with. I loved being able to do small touches like beveled edges that I felt made mine just slightly more than a small box. I also enjoyed seeing it transformed from what was just wood to a total projection installation. I’d love to see the future of it, which originally was going to be a footstool, I feel like now I could maybe put it to some more artistic uses.
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Lines The first part of the animation involves static color backgrounds matched to the music and the increasing intensity with lines that go down the box in the same rhyhm as the music. When the music reaches a certain point the box fades to black and the color is absorbed behind the cube as a reflection. The consciousness should still be warming up at this point, so the word ‘No Vacancy’ flashes in neon hotel sign typography above.
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Waves A 3d audio wave form line in rainbow was created that would reflect the audio waves through a series of pulses. This was then manipulated further with flo-motion to create a pseudo-fractal animation leading to the spin. The creation of the effect took around three to four hours while rendering the small wave took around ten hours and was around fifty gigabytes in the end, the most ridiculous effect to render in the project oddly enough.
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Spin The spin uses the existing audio wave forms to reflect audio with now in a spinning graphic. This creates interesting shakes and color patterns. The composition was made in the end to have this at the mid point side of the box.
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Fractal Fractal animation was the main climax to the piece, using both mirrored effects, various algorithms and colors the final Fractal Animation is a descent into the subconsciousness, an ode to the oracle. Vacancy has been gently flashing for a while now.
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The End Energy absorbed by the cube from the fractal animation, in part inspired by 2001 A Space Odyssey’s intense animation scene, is reflected onto the wall, gradually the color intensifies and the cube becomes bright turquoise. Television Static interrupts the peaceful ending and awakens your consciousness, while also acting as an ode to the retro MTV inspiration that launched the project. The cube remains bright turquoise for several moments later, perhaps indefinitely into the infinite.
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The Optimal Viewing Angle To experience the projection at it’s maximum effect one should be seated near the optimal viewing center, with a view of the dominant projection corner and with a upwards tilted view. This allows you to see the mergence of the Fractal Animation. The projection is unique in other angles as well.
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The Aural Experience Beyond the Cube An important exploration in projection mapping is how the object itself can interact with the rest of the environment. Projection Mapping allows you to mask certain shapes out and utilize the rest of the stage for different motion graphics. ‘Vacancy’ used the space around the cube to absorb color from the animation and to display typography.
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On Design I began writing this and now it’s become a rant and I am essentially making fun of myself, and saying bye to academic sounding writing. Looking at the brief I always wonder how color would have changed this project, I keep thinking of why I seem to be terrified of using color so many times and revert to black white and gray so much, in this case it worked for the project, but it’s something I want to work on so I don’t become predictable as a designer. At the same time I wonder if this project was destined to have that look from the start, while the other projects had a lot more ability to add color throughout, this one was really limited to a few colors and a very prominent style throughout was always my argument, I can keep saying that as much as I’d like to, but then I can remember some pretty exciting stuff that’shappened in fashion, the bright red and white Moschino trends, the brilliantly
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colorful Hermes silks, the overload of pattern and saturation from Kenzo, all around color is such a huge component of fashion and yet when you look at the retail experience, the advertising experience and the branding experience around fashion it’s extremely subdued to let the actual clothing speak or to continue a very poised and elegant look that relies on black and white. For the majority of fast fashion companies the black and white color scheme is really prominent since they attempt to steal looks from couture collections that are mostly wearable in real life, so in that sense the color pallet also makes sense, in the case of Dada artwork, the majority of it was also black and white and some of the works are absolute masterpieces in black and white and couldn’t be nearly as effective in color. My struggle is figuring out why I always revert to black, white, grey and warm earthy colors- I think
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the most colorful I usually get is dark scarlet or Prussian Blue and then I usually dilute it a bit, even in my home everything is essentially monochromatic (although I began to add gold elements to my interior design after seeing how chic they looked) I absolutely love sticking to these colors, but I’m becoming scared that essentially the thing is happening where it’s become, oh Carlos is making something, so it will be dark black or white Helvetica text ontop of a black background, there will be a photo with Jhalissa wearing nearly nothing and serving face at the camera, at least five social media posts about it and somehow some sort of influence from some French film director from the 60s that sounds incredibly snobby and boring at the same time but apparently this dude thought the lighting was one of the most lifechanging things ever and wants to push those aesthetics down our throats, oh and have you heard about how many times he says the word aesthetics, it’s comical.
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I’m so boring it’s comical, I guess I’ve found my style and my look but at the same time it doesn’t work for every project. I’m looking at my portfolio and all across I’m noticing similar color schemes, similar typefaces, similar ideas and motifs (I’m obsessed with geometry and flat graphics it seems like). And I don’t know if thats a good thing or a bad thing. You can sum me up with Bebas Neue, Baskerville, Didot, Helvetica, Gotham and Neutra in Black, Grey, White Red and Blue, some sort of half-tone, glitch, or other effect usually snuck in and an almost Kardashian-like dose of sharing on social media. I don’t know if that is good or bad, especially with this far in the program. I know what I like, and I know what I enjoy doing, I like trying new things, but it’s almost like I always go back to the same stuff for the most part. A project like this one, particularly the deck brief and comments from classmates allowed me to really think a lot about this. I don’t know if it’s necessarily a good or
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On Social Justice On the topic of things I’ve struggled with, one of the things that I’ve become most enlightened with has been social justice. I’ll admit it I always tell people that I’m a terrible person and I know deep down inside I’m very capitalistic, self-involved and just everything that I thought was the anti-social justice. I know this about myself and it bothers me, particularly since I know all the beneficial uses for design and how since coming here to UNL I’ve found that I’m actually really dedicated and interested in the environment as a social justice issue. This class has allowed me to see that maybe I’m not as terrible as I thought I was and that I do care about issues that I wouldn’t have considered to be social justice
issues and finally that it’s ok to not care about every issue, to have an opinion about every issue or really most importantly to pretend to be extremely passionate and vocal about every single issue without any real knowledge of the issue. (An issue I think A LOT of college students are so caught up with to the point that they basically become hypocrites in their rhetoric) I am passionate about the environment and in particular the urban environment’s impact, I care an immense amount about immigration, naturalization, and cultural heritage, I’ve become a non-stop talker when it comes to the French Education system, I proudly stand besides a candidate that isn’t popular among my age
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group, proudly talk against bullying and stereotyping and above all I’ve also realized a lot about garment production and ethics, labor conditions and quality of life. These are all social justice issues I care about deeply, why? In part it’s what I’ve grown up with as a Hispanic, it’s the people I’ve become friends with, it’s the issues that have a huge impact through parts of my life, and it’s things I’ve witnessed in my life. You’ll probably never see me personally being a very vocal activist for many issues even if I think one way or the other on them, I’ll never probably put a rainbow overlay on my facebook profile picture, share fifty status’ about abortion, debate gun violence (although it’s tempting when every single time I go to a
movie theatre I fear death) or talk about anything related to war on my social media feed. Why? It’s not that I don’t care about the issues, I personally believe everyone should be happy, but at the same time a major part of my upbringing is that of being silent and not making a huge deal over life. I grew up to be silent, Hispanics can be pretty silent for a lot of issues, except Donald Trump, we are all in equal very vocal hatred towards that cabron. I think a lot of my own background with social justice issues comes from a Hispanic background more than anything else. We are told to respect and love the environment, immigration plays a huge role in our lives, candidates like
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Clinton align far more favorably to our lives than people like Sanders and as I’ve realized standards of living, labor conditions and more are extremely important, we are people that never stop working, our work ethic is to keep going as tough as it may be sometimes. The other issues I’m obsessed with well, I lived in France for a month and became obsessed with education and society there, simple enough. Is it selfish that these are the issues I care about the most and am more vocal and interested about? Social Change has many activists and I’ve become inspired by leaders from all over, and from different backgrounds. I recently went to watch a documentary at the Ross about Malala and, even though it’s not something I’m personally an activist about, it made me feel so inspired seeing amazing activists like her for issues like female education. At the same time, it’s not even that
I’m apathetic towards these topics, I can care about them as well, every time there’s a shooting I die a little inside, the day the court announced same sex marriage was possible I was incredibly happy to hear the happiness of one of my best friends who for the longest time would always call me up and cry about how he would never be allowed to be happy and marry someone, the emotion from that phone call was one of the happiest I’d ever heard anyone I knew. I think everyone has issues they care about more than other issues, and in that case it’s not even being selfish in what you care about necessarily. I have a friend I’ve become very close to who is perhaps one of the most dedicated agents of social change I know, her name is Gloria Kimbulu. She seems to dab in every kind of aspect relating to social change, but as time has gone on I’ve noticed a pattern towards social justice relating to African
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identity in the United States, MicroAgressions, Cultural Appropriation and Congolese Social Justice. She’s perhaps one of the single most eloquent and passionate agents of change that I know. On the contrary I have a friend Gabe, who somehow plagues every social media feed and conversation with extremely one-sided, usually relatively uninformed opinions on literally every topic. His scope is very large but his knowledge on certain issues thin to the point where it was obvious from talking to him about immigration one time that he simply wanted to reiterate what he heard on some overly liberal social media news source and pretend he understood what it was like to be Hispanic in the United States and what Mexico was like. He was very off- but extremely passionate to the point of yelling about how he was right about how it was like to be a traditional Mexican oppressed in the United
States today... as a vegan, atheist, very liberal, white bisexual male, .... right, that hits the typical Mexican demographic right on the head! People like that I feel use a very thin understanding of every social justice issue to make up for the guilt they have about privilege without actually understanding the issues and understanding how they can actually have wrong intentions sometimes. I understand people like that mean well, but I’d rather hold a conversation with someone like my friend Gloria who is very well versed and educated in a select amount of issues where she has already taken steps to becoming a positive agent of social change, versus Gabe who gives social justice a bitter name, often has very narrow views about topics and seems to use social justice as a way to argue with people. In many ways I think that my slightly confused and negative perception of social justice could
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be attributed to people like Gabe that make logging into social media a pain because you’re constantly being yelled at. Make no mistake there’s also people on the opposite end of the political spectrum yelling at people to buy guns, support Trump, kill the gays, build a giant wall, defund Planned Parenthood etc. But then I wonder, at these two extremes, people like Gabe to me seem relatively neutral and the people on the other end just feel like nutjobs, why thoughthey are equally passionate about social justice issues in their own right. To them they are thinking of social justice as well. Not that I think there’s much justice in many of their opinions. That’s how I tend to justify my interest in only a few select issues, I’d rather be very well-informed on a few issues where I know I could take design and create positive change, than try and be active about every single issue. I do think
it’s important to be well informed as a citizen especially in this age, and to have an understanding of most major issues, however, it’s important to not let activism become spread so thin and lose the actual intentions behind it. I also attempt to be neutral on issues. As much as I can be that is, I don’t want my public image to be controlled by being someone that is difficult to work with or unemployable because of his believes. I often refrain from really talking about many issues and talking about issues on social media because I know it’s usually going to be met with backlash or unfavorable opinions, I think my most controversial social media posts have been about politics in nature. I think that, I’m interested in Social Justice because it promotes well-being, justice for people’s rights and equality under the most basic definition. I don’t think there should be
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a partisan divide, or extreme opinions ruining that image. While working on the stamps for labor conditions and the poster for immigration I was so inspired and genuinely enjoyed the research so much because of how it was informing me. I had the opportunity to also be in Mexico in the middle of the two projects which really did help out in creating effective and inspired ideas and having inspired background information. I struggled so much with the first poster, the conditional design poster, because, I thought of the quote as something quite oppressive and morbid, while the rest of the class saw it as something quite positive. Once I understood that not everyone has to have the same opinion or viewpoint that’s when I was really able to start celebrating the concept more and truly liking the project.
This is probably a jumbled mess of thought at this point, I apologize, Social Justice is an issue that I struggled with for a long time because I wondered how someone like me that wasn’t very interested with some of the hot topics of the time that related to social justice could actually have an authentic voice. It took me a while to realize that diversity is wonderful in understanding issues from different points of view.
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Afterword This has been a busy time, that’s how I would classify it, busy. There’s a lot going on every day in my life but it’s something enjoyable to me, it’s not a bother at all to be working on design homework in a studio while eating pizza and watching American Horror Story, on the contrary, it’s something I look forward to. This book was a way to see, at once, how I’ve changed as a designer and the things I’ve done to step out of my comfort zones, and even times I just went back to them. Design has meant a lot to me, and as I begin to find who I am as a designer and who I’m not, I’ve realized that I’m not Black + White with Helvetica, nor do I want to be.
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Noble, Ian, and Russell Bestley. Visual Research an Introduction to Research Methodologies in Graphic Design. Lausanne: AVA, 2005. Print. ”Passport for Human Rights.” Issuu. Amnesty International. Web. 13 Dec. 2015. Read, Herbert, and Andre Breton. Surrealism. New York: Praeger, 1971. Print. Sagmeister, Stefan, and Steven Heller. Things I Have Learned in My Life so Far. New York: Abrams, 2007. Print. Simmons, Christopher. Just Design: Socially Conscious Design for Critical Causes. Cincinnati, Ohio: How, 2011. Print. Skillman, Eric. Criterion Designs. Print. ”Visionaire | Issues.” Visionaire | Issues. Web. 13 Dec. 2015.
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