Art 130 - The Product of Procrastination and Pure Determination

Art 130

The Product of Procrastination and Pure Determination By: Elizabeth Schaal Introduction to Design - Fall 2015

Table of Contents

Overview ..................................................pg.2 D- School Crash Course .............................pg.3 Dot/Line Project.......................................pg.7 Expressive Text Project..............................pg.11 Object Iteration Project.............................pg.17 Famous Designer Presentation...................pg.23 Children’s Book........................................pg.25

Overview

Before I first came into this class, I had decided that for the rest of my life I wanted to be a graphic designer. I wanted to spend my time creating movie posters for big blockbusters, cd covers for the greatest bands, and book covers for bestsellers, and this class was just the first simple step to that dream. However, from the moment I first set foot in the classroom, I knew the class was going to be more complicated and harder than I had first anticipated.

It was not that the assignments themselves were hard, those were pretty easy to understand, it was the very strict deadlines for every project that made me stop and look at the difficulty of the class again. The reason it was so different was because every art class I had before was very loose with their deadlines.

So as long as you tried to do well on the assignment, you could turn it in a week late without a change in grade. It was also the fact that I am an avid and practicing procrastinator did not help either. Because of this, I had to change my art-making process so that I could still do the assignment well and to turn them in on time. In the end, I worked more in the art lab before the due date, but there were still many times during the semester that I waited until the last few days to finish a project.

Despite my tendencies to procrastinate, I found that I was able to work more on the projects that I had a higher interest in than the ones I wanted to complete and forget about. These tended to be the projects that I had more freedom with fewer parameters than others. After this semester with the challenges to both my art process and to my artistic abilities as a whole, I feel as though I have grown as a designer and I now have a better understanding of how the design world works. I also think that I now have a wider range of thought when it comes to how I can make a project well, while also turning it in on time.

D-School Crash Course

Objectives

The objectives of this assignment was to effectively create a product for one of our fellow classmates that could solve a problem in their life. This project was to be completed during one class period. This was done after having several interviews with the student as well as going over some different products we had in mind. This was done to help show us how the graphic design business works as well as to help us create a well made project under pressure and a time limit.

Thoughts On Project When I was first presented with this project, I thought that it would be slightly difficult because of the time limit on the assignment. This is mainly due to my procrastination and my attention to detail. I had wanted this project to be perfect and it was very hard to do so with the very few minutes allotted to us for each part of the crash course. However, I am glad that I was able to experience this project. I found it helpful to see what my future profession was going to be like in a one-hour period. It gave me a lot of insight of what I was going to have change about my process and my artwork before getting any farther into the

class or into my major.

Getting to Know Kat

During this part of the class, I was told to ask Kat, the student who happened to be sitting next to me at the time, about some of the issues she had at the time. These questions had to specifically pertain to gift giving and receiving. Kat had said during the first interview that she hated how people are only interested in material goods and less interested in the thought behind them. She had also mentioned that she liked when people thought their gift out in advanced and with the person in mind because it would create a stronger bond between her and her friends. During the second interview we dug deeper into the issue and then decided that it was probably because she was always self conscious of what gifts she gives to people that she hates giving thoughtless material goods to her friends. It is from this idea and issue that I decided to make the product that would solve her issue. .

Generating Ideas

After finding out where the issue was coming from in her gift giving experiences, we were asked to think of five rough solutions to the issue and then show them to our ‘client’. I had thought of just getting rid of gifts all together, getting rid of her friends all together, to just smile and bear the horrible meaningless gifts, to ignore her friends disinterest in her gifts, and finally to get some more thoughtful friends instead of the materialistic friends she had currently. After reviewing these ideas with her, we were told to get their feedback and try to refine the ideas we had come up with. I had decided to scrap all of my ideas except for the “giving no gifts” idea. This is when I decided that the best way to give a meaningful gift to someone is to spend time with them. It was from this idea that I came up with my final product.

Final Product

In general, I am very happy with the final product I was able to come up with in the short amount of time given to me. My idea of a good time spent together involves a coffee shop and just talking with your friend for multiple hours. So I decided to make a coffee table with a couple cups on top of it. The table top is made out of a wooden disk I found in one of the many boxes in the art lab. The stand for the table is made out of a red solo cup and some brown packing tape I had found lying around. the two cups are made of spools of thread that had been lying on one of the tables near by. I had originally wanted to make a Starbucks-type coffee cup, but unfortunately I could not remember what what their logo looks like. Luckily I found the wooden disk before time had run out. I am very proud of what I was able to make and my partner also like the effort I put into the product needed to solve her problem.

Dot/Line Project

Objectives

The objectives of this assignment was to effectively interpret four different words given to us by our teacher. These words needed to be shown through the use of multiple dots and lines. They could be black or grey and there were only five ways in which you could have your dots and lines on the page: one dot and one line, one dot and two lines, two dots and two lines, two dots and two lines, or an unlimited amount of just dots or just lines. These dots and lines then needed to be mounted on a fourinch size piece of paper and then that paper needed to be mounted on a six-inch size piece of black art board. This assignment was graded on how effectively we were able to interpret our four chosen words, how neat and precise our art was, and whether or not we met the size requirements or not.

Thoughts On Project

My first thoughts about this project was that the abstraction needed for the four My first thoughts about this project was that the abstraction needed for the four works was going to be hard to achieve. I am not a very abstract thinker so this was a little intimidating and challenging for me. We also were taught how to properly use an exacto blade as well as a how to glue pieces of paper the right way, by using paint brushes and a piece of wood. After completing this project, I was very proud of the way I was able to think outside the box and find different ways to show these different words in an abstract way. however, I was still pressed for time towards the end and had to spend a large chuck of my time the night before dedicated to gluing and adhering my projects onto the pieces of art board. This proved that even after I had tried to break my procrastination habit, it was going to take more than a few declarations of change to actually affect my bad habit.

Chart #1 This is the first chart we had to make while trying to generate different ideas for our four dot/line works.

As you can see there are four less boxes than the other chart, and that is because I had waited until the last minute to do this part of the assignment before realizing I had not included all dots and all lines.

Despite this, I had tried to give all of the dots and lines personalities and emotions in order for them to feel the word assigned to them.

Chart #2

This was the second chart we were assigned to refine the ideas that our peers had said were the best or that we thought were the best. I pretty much stuck to the same pictures I had thought were the best and the strongest and then chose a few others I had come up with during this assignment for my final four. These are marked with black dots in the corners of the pages.

Rejection

Oppression

This next piece is titled “Oppression” and it is one of my simpler works out of the four.

This piece depicts one grey dot halfway off the page and two black lines moving towards the other end of their respected side of the page. This piece was meant to look like two two walls closing in on a helpless grey dot that is stuck in a corner so to speak. This is how I picture oppression feeling for most people, that the unwanted people looking over them are closing them off from their freedom.

This first piece I had labeled as “Rejection”. It is made of two grey dots and and two black lines.

The thought behind this is that the two black lines are pushing the two grey dots away from one another.

This is a little like how rejection feels to a person when their feelings are not returned. It feels as though you are suddenly pushed away from that person and there is nothing you can do about it. It was very fairly easy to make this piece, but keeping the lines straight was a little bit of a challenge.

Chaos

This work I had titled “Chaos” and it is by far one of my favorite pieces form the four I had made.

This one was also the most fun and the hardest to make as well. In this piece there are multiple lines of grey and black spread out randomly on the page. They are all of different sizes and lengths. This embodies chaos in the way through the haphazardness of the many lines placement. I found this piece the most difficult to make because of the delicacy needed to put the glue on the littlest lines on the page.

Energetic

This work is entitled “Energetic” and it was very difficult to make this piece. This work shows two grey dots supposedly falling down two black lines that are meant to be ramps. This was supposed to embody energy though the use of gravity, or what most people perceive as gravity. This piece was made to only work by looking at it a certain way instead of multiple ways, which might be why it is not as strong as the others.

Expressive Text Project Objectives

The objectives of this assignment was to express the same word for times in black and white so that each picture had a different meaning behind it. This assignment was graded on how well we made our different pieces (including neatness, smudging etc.) as well as the diversity in which we made our four different words. These words were selected from a list given to us by our professor and the many steps leading up to our final works.

Thoughts On Project

When I first relieved this project, I thought that it was going to be fun and interesting. I already had a few ideas to what I could do with the word list, but after many days spent learning the ins and outs of typography, my interest started to fade, that is until we learned what we could really do with the project.

After all of the effort and time I have spent on this project, I am proud of the work I have done. One of the most difficult parts of this project was trying to keep my Sharpie from bleeding all over the paper I was using. That is one lesson I learned to fix very quickly.

Step 2: Working from the List

This section of the project was meant for us to focus on the words found on the list given to us. We were told to choose three different words to write in different forms of typography. These three words needed to fill a page each so it totaled around three pages. I chose the words beam, step, and echo. A few examples can be seen here. I think that the hardest part of this part of the assignment was finding different ways to write the same word over and over again.

It became very taxing after a while.

Step 1: Writing Words

This first step was the first thing we needed to do before actually working with the word list.

We were told to think of different ways to write any words we could think of in order to fill three pages of our process book. In this part of the lesson we were allowed to use as much color as we wanted and I did not want to let that opportunity to escape me. This is why a majority of the words you see here are in multiple colors and styles. In order to get enough words to fill the three pages, I spent my time watching movies and using random words I heard.

Step 3: Mind Map

This section of the project was done with the second step. This mind map was a way to help us think of things we associated with the word we choose to use for the rest of the project. I chose the word step and I could think of many different things that I associated with the word ‘step’. For one i thought of shoes, feet, lists, and also footprints.

Step 4: Variations of Our Word

The next part of the project had to do with the many different ways we could write our word. This was to help us think of different ideas for our final project as well as to help fill some pages in our process books. I thought of a few different was to write the word step, but most of them dealt with the feet and shoes.

I did choose a few different ways to write my word with some interesting fonts shown to us by our teacher.

Cardboard Stamps, Ink Feet, and Sharpies

It was during this part of the project I finally was able to make my four different iterations of the word I had chosen. Though there were many different ways I could have executed my work, I had chosen three different methods to do my four pieces. The first I had thought of when my friend when to a art museum workshop and made a pair of sandals out of cardboard in which she wrote “bitches be crazy� on each shoe. Instead of writing with those specific sentence enhancers, I chose to write my word in each foot like the tread of a sneaker. This then became a stamp I used with India ink and water onto paper. One of the other pieces I did also involved ink but I was also barefoot throughout the whole endeavor. I filled two buckets, one with ink and one with water. I then took two very large pieces of paper. on one I traced the word step in large sans-serif letters before cutting them out and laying it on the full sheet of paper. I then stepped in the ink and walked over the paper multiple times before removing the top piece of paper. The other two I traced in pencil and then laid a piece of paper over it and outlined it in Sharpie.

Foot Prints

This piece is titled “Foot Prints” and it was the most fun out of my four iterations of the word. I enjoyed the fact that I was able to spend more than eight hours in the art lab undisturbed. I thought that this would be an interesting way to interpret the word step as well as being fun to make. I think that I could have added more footprints to the word to fill it out and make it darker, but I also like the spacing and randomness of the foot steps in the words. Overall, I am very proud

3D Letters

This work is titled “3D Letters” and it is the second of my four iterations. For this work I used sharpie to outline the letters I had drawn before going over the outlined letters again on a new piece of paper.

Out of the four I think this is my weakest at interpreting the word “step”. This is because after thinking of three different ways write my word, I hit a roadblock and could not think of another. Again I had waited until the night before to finish this project so I thought of the font I liked to write in the most and this was the resulting iteration.

Shoe Print

This work is called “Shoe Print” and it was one of the works I am proudest of. In this piece, two foot prints are pressed onto paper that look like shoe treads that read “step” in each one. I found that this was my most ingenious design out of my iterations. For this piece I took away the top layer of paper on a piece of cardboard so that the word showed through in the waving waving pieces underneath.

Listed Steps

This piece I called “Listed Step” and this is one of the only pieces that I did that had a lot to do with the meaning of the word, but nothing to do with feet or shoes. For this iteration, there are the letters found in “step”, but they are in a list of steps. This is where the meaning comes from. For the font, I decided to use a serif font. I designed this font by looking at multiple fonts and taking parts from all of the ones I liked in order to make the font.

Object Iterations Project Objectives

The objectives of this assignment were to effectively create different iterations of a moving object as a way to demonstrate the process in which logo designs are made. We were told that there would be several iterations including a continuous line, picture collage, letter collage, geometric, and two master artist iterations. The iterations taught to us and made in stages throughout the course of the project. These iterations were then edited in Photoshop before being placed on a 12”x18” poster made in InDesign.

This project was graded on how well the iterations were made, edited, and placed on our posters.

Thoughts on Project

When I first received this project I was a little scared. Mainly because it sounded like it would take a lot of work to complete and because the last project I had completed wasn’t finished until four in the morning the day it was due. However, I was a little excited to see what I could do for my different iterations. After actually completed the project, I was very happy that it was over and also the work that I had done for it. I had put a lot of effort into my iterations poster and I was proud to displaying in front of the class the day of the final critique.

Continuous Line

This was the first assignment and practice we did for our iterations. The first thing we did in class was to draw other students without looking at our paper. It was a very interesting experience, but I was more interested in what we were going to do with the animals we chose. I decided that the best animal would be a Jaguar. It is one of my favorite animals so I would not get bored drawing it and it is a very beautiful animal. It was harder for me to do the continuous line drawing because of the fact that I can’t pick up my pencil for the many spots on my animal. However, I sort of just scribbled in the spots in order to keep that continuous line-look to the picture.

Picture Collage This section of the was one of the most time consuming for me.

Around this time, we had started to learn about what Dadaism was and also about picture collage in general. I was very impressed with the work I had seen from the other artists, famous or otherwise, and had wanted to do something just as creative and amazing as them. However, my time was very limited when we first started this section, so I barely had time to sleep or eat while making these five iterations. Fortunately, I believe the results were worth the time and the effort. I had wanted to do some that were both black and whit as well as in color. I also added a few that were in between as well. Most of these pictures came out of the many magazines offered to us, a few of them kame from the internet. It was very difficult to find Jaguars in the magazines and Google was the only place I could find any. Unfortunately, I could not find any Jaguar car ads. There were plenty of car-based magazines to choose from but no adds for the one car brand I needed. Overall I was very proud of my efforts, despite the amount of glue sticks I went through in the process.

Letter Collage

In this part of the project, we continued to learn about collage, but now we focused more on turning different letters into the form of our animal. This part of the work was also very hard to do because of all the small little letters needed to make each piece.

It was even worse than the pictures because the glue was very sticky and would get on everything it touched.

However, I tried very hard to come up with multiple angles of my animal using different methods demonstrated by my professor.

Geometric Shapes

This part of the project was one of the hardest not because of the way we had to physically make our iterations, but of the geometric nature of the different pieces. It was very hard for me to grasp the abstract concept of the iterations, and therefore there were not too many choices I had for the finished product. However, I was able to make a few that involved the basic shapes a jaguar would be made of. The end results were very poor but not so bad that it was laughable. Overall, I believe I could have done better on this project.

Artist Iteration -Van Gogh

This piece was the first of my Artist iterations. I had chosen Van Gogh because he is one my idols when it comes to Impressionistic art. I have always found his swirling colors fascinating.

I also believed that the golden colors of the jaguar and the dark greens of the leaves would be very similar to his primary color pallet. However, it was harder to paint this iteration than I first anticipated. It took quite a long time to finish this iteration but I am very proud of what I have achieved.

Artist Iteration - Banksy

My second Artist iteration was of Banksy, a famous street artist that does primarily graffiti to send a message about a very important social or political issue. I have always admired his simplistic and radical work, so I felt it was only natural for the for me to choose him as my second artist.

His iteration was easier than my other Artist iteration, but I had to scale back my plans for this piece.

I had originally wanted to do a Wheate paste image of a jaguar laying on a bench, but time was not on my side, so I ended up using Sharpie on paper instead.

Final Product

Overall, I am very proud of what I accomplished for for this project. I thought that my artist iterations should be the largest squares because they took the most time to make and were my strongest of the seven I used. The other little squares are arranged in a line around the boxes in no particular order, just what square looked best in its given spot. After all the time and effort I put into this project, I am very happy with the results. I could have edited the continuous line drawing more, but I felt that the shading around the drawing made the lines of the box it was in more defined, like most of the others.

Famous Designer Presentation Objectives

The objectives of this assignment were to pick a famous graphic designer either on the list given to us by our professor or one we already knew and could be okayed by our professor. We then researched this famous designer and created a power point about their career in the graphic design field. This project was graded on how well we knew our designer, the amount of information in the presentation, and also how well we presented our information to the class.

Thoughts on Project

To be honest I did not worry too much about this project until a couple weeks before it was due. I already had a designer in mind and I was fairly busy finishing my object iteration project. However, I had seen some of his work previously and had loved the radical and controversial nature of it. After I had the presentation done and ready to be presented I was very nervous. Normally I am very terrified of public speaking and whenever I had to speak in front of class I would find myself out of breath and nearly ready to pass out from anxiety. Fortunately for me, in my anxiety induced haze, I decided to practice my presentation a dozen times before having to go, so I did not need any of my notes for the presentation. Overall, I am proud of what I have accomplished during this project.

Choosing Shepard Fairey

The Final Product

After completing the assignment, I was very proud of my work and of myself. I thought that y work was very well laid out and that the information was very straightforward and interesting for the person watching the presentation. However, I also was very proud of myself because I also finished this project on time without having to spend any time during the earliest hours of the morning editing and revising before class started. It was one of the rare moments where I did not procrastinate on this project.

It was very easy for me to choose my designer for this presentation. I have always admired his radical yet controversial artwork.

So it seemed the easiest of decisions to choose him. He is one of the most famous artists, yet barely anyone knows who he is. That is what I loved most about his work. He strives to make a difference in peoples lives and to direct their thoughts towards an important issue subconsciously, without the onlooker even realizing it. That, I believe, is why he is one of the best designers out there.

Children’s Book Project Objectives

The objectives of this assignment was to take a story written by another student in a writing class offered on campus and to illustrate the story as a children’s book in our own way. This assignment was used to give us a chance to experience what a graphic designer does on a daily basis when they get a project of this variety. We were to take our illustrations, done in any medium we wanted, and then edit the pictures in Photoshop before placing them in InDesign. This project was graded on how well we illustrated the book, the effectiveness of our illustrations and the overall quality of the work we did.

Thoughts On Project

When I first received this project, I was very excited because I had already illustrated a children’s book before this for a friend of mine. However, the story I had illustrated before was a little more interesting and interactive than the one I was given for this assignment. There was not a lot of text for this story, so it would have to rely heavily on large colorful images. I also procrastinated a little in the beginning because I did not know how I was going to draw my characters.

This left me with very little time to finish the project, but I am still proud of the work I had done for this assignment.

The Layout

This first step took me the longest out of the whole project. I originally did not know how I was going to draw my characters or how each page was going to be set up to show each scene. However, after taking maybe a little too much time to mull it over, I finally was able to find the best way for each page be set up so that the story flowed nicely through both words and illustrations.

Drawing the Characters

It was this part of the project that was one of the most detail oriented. I wanted the children to look like alike, almost like twins, yet they had to have their own personalities so that the reader would not be confused while reading the story. I spent a lot of time getting their clothing right not just in how it would look drawn, but also the color of each character’s clothing in regards to shading. The author also wanted the story to be multicultural, so I made the family look slightly Hispanic. Even with the pain-staking attention to detail I spent, I am very proud of the characters I made.

Drawing

The process I used to make this book was probably a little more complicated than it should have been. I first decided that I would draw all of my characters, backgrounds, and objects separately so that when I scanned them into the computer, I would be able to move them around without worrying about any missing background. This took a lot longer than I had first expected. I would first draw the characters, background, and objects needed for a page in my process book, and then I would scan it into the computer. Then I would print off the page so that I could continue onto the next step in my overly complicated process.

Outlining and Editing

The next step in my long process was to take the newly printed sketches I had made in my process book and outline them with Sharpie. This eliminated some of the unsightly sketch marks and also made it easier for the computer to register the lines. I then scanned the image again and emailed it to myself so I could edit them in Adobe Illustrator. I would then spend hours erasing unwanted lines and adding some that disappeared.

I would then place the characters and objects in the correct place on the background before adding text to each page. Because of the time I spent on editing, the resulting images were fairly simple. Once they were edited, I would then export the art boards as jpegs and print off the images for the next step in my process.

Coloring and More Editing

After printing out the edited illustrations, I would then spend many more hours coloring and shading the images I had finished. I tried to add a lot of color to the illustrations so that the character would pop and the reader would not get bored with the simple sentences. I had chosen a specific color pattern for each character so that the reader would easily be able to distinguish one from the other. After coloring all of the images, I then scanned them one last time and before emailing them to myself so that I could edit them on Adobe Illustrator once again. I would take away any white backgrounds and erase any unwanted colored pencil smudges that I had accidentally made. The end result was a box of quality colored pencils used to the very end, and some beautifully edited and colored images ready for the storybook.

Final Product

After all of the drawing, tracing, editing, outlining, and more editing I did, I am very proud of my work. It is fairly simple, but I believe that the simplicity helps the reader to understand the story. I also believe the vibrant colors used in the book help detract from the simplicity of the illustrations. I tried very hard to make a decent book that any child would want to read. The cover is fairly bland, but It was difficult for me to make a cover that was original and colorful with the time I had left before the due date. Plus, all writers say that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. This is simply another case of procrastination followed by the pure determination to make the most amazing artwork I can before my time runs out.