Dexter Thielhelm’s Process Book
Introduction to Design Art 130 Saint Norbert College Fall 2022
This book was made as a part of Introduction to Design at Saint Norbert College in the fall of 2022. The fonts used include Arial Rounded MT Bold (basic paragraphs), Futura Condensed ExtraBold (headers), and Futura Medium Italic (captions). It was digitally printed and saddle stapled at the college’s print center.
Throughout the years, I’ve made things I’m proud of, as stuff I’d rather be forgotten. Yet even the projects that didn’t turn out great still are part of my journey as an artist and have some sort of takeaway. My main form of art was character design, whether it be making models or illustrations. Sure, I’ve had to make other work throughout schooling, but nothing has been quite like design. Design pushed me out of my comfort zone, and because of that not everything I’ve made is exactly what I had in mind, more so than my other works. However, without being pushed out of my comfort zone I would never progress as an artist. While a lot of this class was unfamiliar or frustrating to me, at the end of the day I am glad I took the course.
As much as I enjoy art and being creative, I don’t believe I am called to creative work as a career. I am passionate about learning more and thoroughly enjoy it as a hobby, but not as a calling. While I love art, I know it isn’t something that can be financially supportive at my skill level and my interests in the long run. As someone who is a realist (probably more of a pessimist if I’m being honest) I don’t feel that art is something that can make me a living. That doesn’t mean I will stop making art or won’t make any money off of my work, but it does mean that my focus for financial stability will be elsewhere. To me, art is something that I use to be creative, to get thoughts out of my head and into reality, whether it be on paper, on digital, making models, or with other media like writing or music. I’m a creative person, but I am also someone with a massive heart for helping others and learning more about who I am as a person. That has led me down the path of psychology and therapy, which I believe to be my calling. It is a way for me to not only be able to help people, but also understand more about who I am and who I want to be. There are always ways to marry art and psychology, such as through art therapy, so I still have options to pursue both.
Crash Course
To help my client organize
schedule better, I attempted to create a mock of a digital calendar with two seperate displays; one large screen for the month overview and one small screen for the daily overview.
Engaging with a real person didn’t really change much of the direction the prototype took. All it did was combine two ideas into one, basically just slapping one onto the other. It was a bit embarrassing showing the unfinished work to another person, as while I could easily understand my own idea, the prototype looked abysmal and might have given a poor first impression.
My normal work when working on design is to have a base idea, then play around with the pieces I have for quite a while. Sometime I have the base down quickly, other times it takes a lot longer. In hindsight, I would probably spend more time on the outline, taking measurements, making sure things fit, adding more notes, etc. When I have a great outline, I can usually make the end product quicker. Additionally, I’d make the thing look nicer. Clean edges, added color, text lines, etc.
Objective - Communicate with a client to develop and design a solution for their problem
their
PSA Poster
Objectives - Work and communicate with a client to create an eye catching, effective PSA poster using only the text and the information given by the client.
Final
Thumbnail
Rough Draft
At times it was challenging to be limited to type only. However, overall I felt it wasn’t too difficult. This project was one of the most straightforward yet, and the final result is something I am proud of.
I used scale and orientation a lot with the poster to create visual hierarchy. Lots of large text with the basic message/attention getter, and smaller text for the additional information that the audience should know.
Some skills I learned in this project was more information on how to use indesign to create an informational poster. Indesign seems like a very useful tool for designers to use, as well as being fairly easy to use. However, the steep cost is a huge turn off for me.
Dot-Line
Objective - Understand what Gestalt is and use it to create three different abstraction projects, each respectively representing a certain emotion or feeling.
Gestalt theory, as it relates to art, consist of 5 main principles: figure & ground, similarity & anomaly, continuation, closure, and proximity. Figure and ground deal with depth perception, which relates to this project with the background and sizes of the shapes. Similarity and anomaly deal with pattern recognition, which relates to this project in the way patterns apply to abstraction. Continuation deals with overlapping in a 2d space and how the image continues beyond what is visually there, which relates to this project when shapes go off the page. Closure deals with our brains ability to finish incomplete shapes, which can help with the illusion of shapes within negative space in abstraction. And proximity deals with spacial placement, which relates to negative space between shapes in abstraction.
Thumbnail (left) and Rough Draft (above)
Personally I find it difficult to make well crafted objects if I am on a time schedule. I do believe that taking time to make things the best they can be is worth it, but motivation is also a huge part of it as well. I felt it somewhat difficult to represent ideas without illustrating, mainly because I am a very visual person. I might exercise the ideas of gestalt or abstraction in my other artwork to make improvements in areas which I see lacking something. This project didn’t really change my view of abstraction much, but it did give me experience with it which I haven’t really had before.
Final
Letterform
Objectives - Carve linoleum letters to use to print a select word and understand letter anatomy to manipulate the select word to elicit an emotional response
Finals
Working on this letterform project, I learned about letter anatomy, which was very unfamiliar to me, especially when it came to terminology of the anatomy. I also learned a little bit more on how to manipulate text. If I were to continue working on my letters, I would have made my prints slightly cleaner, as well as experiment more with different materials/methods to enhance my work
Itterative Illustrations
Objectives - Create six well made, unique iterations of the same animal; two collages, two master artist iterations, and a single line and geometric drawing.
Throughout this project, I learned that squirrels are very difficult creatures to draw due to them being very, well, squirrelly. They have very emotional expressions and body language that make it challenging to get just right. My most enjoyable iteration would probably be the geometric iteration, due to the fact that it was very quick, easy, and it looked unique in its pose and execution. Definitely one I am proud of. For me, collages were very challenging because I kept getting stuck on the idea that I needed to find objects that looked like part of a squirrel. It wasn’t until later iterations of the collage portion that I was able to break out of that mindset and create something I was proud of.
With photoshop I knew a lot of the information already, but with indesign and scanning, I learned a bunch of new skills that I would love to use in the future for making digital portfolios or other miscellaneous projects. If I were to continue this project for a year, I would definitely refine some of my other works to make them stand out more and give them each their own personality. I might also experiment with other media representations of squirrels, such as print making, photography, and different styles such as cartoonish or anime perhaps
Final
Other Projects this Year
Whether it be for a different class or just for fun, here are some other projects that I have worked on over the past year or so
In the last two years, I’ve made a lot of different pieces of work ranging from sketches to characters to props to display models. There are a few pieces I am proud of, like my thumbnails for character designs or a custom two-foot tall four-foot long lego statue with a removable plaque.
Character Designs
Basic Drawing Class
However, the crown jewel of my work over the last two years would have to be my homemade Halloween costume: The Winter Soldier, a Marvel character with an infamous metal arm and connections to Captain America. The costume took quite a while to perfect, or at least get to where I felt it resembled the Winter Soldier. The process started with a simple realization my friend made that I had similar hair and build to the character. From there I looked up costumes, but they were all super expensive with middling reviews. Instead, I decided to make my own. I already had most
of the clothing that could resemble the look of the film costume, so all that was really left was the metal arm. I started on the arm, making it out of EVA craft foam. It took a few tries, but eventually I got an arm that was form fitting and surprisingly comfortable to wear.
From there I got to adding the detail, carving the crevasse and cleaning it up with a rotary tool. The final step was to spray paint the thing, giving it a shiny metal look. The completed arm looks fantastic, and I am extremely proud of how it turned out and that I made it myself.
