overhang
cap height
the MOTHER FOLDER baseline
bowl
“For the love of baby dolphins!” -Prof. Ries, every day of class For the fall semester of my junior year of undergrad at St. Norbert College, I was enrolled in Introduction to Design for, what started as, my graphic design minor. By the end of this class, much has changed. When I entered this semester, and this class, I had plans to study abroad in the spring at a school for the arts in Florence, Italy. I was a communication major and a graphic design minor. I was a plethora of other things with other plans that no longer hold true. My physical health changed, preventing me from fulfilling my goal of studying abroad. But through this difficult process, I had art; and I learned a lot from my art in this class. Art has always been a release for me; but the ways in which I was able to
use different mediums for my art in this class changed the physical work, and eventually made me change my minor from graphic design to studio art. I realized through working with scissors and glue, ink and printmaking, paint and pen, Photoshop and InDesign, that I didn’t want to be limited to only one form of art. This served as both a benefit and a challenge to me throughout the whole semester. However, I have come out of it on the other side with new ambitions, a new understanding of who I am as an artist, and new goals for my work. This process book is an example of the growth I experienced throughout the semester as I worked through my many changes and feelings.
Course Content: Crash Course Dot/Line Letter Forms Object Iteration PSA Poster 20x20 Presentation
ART 130 – Fall 2021, St. Norbert College.
CRASH
COURSE For this project, I was assigned a client that within one class period, I needed to create a prototype piece specifically desgined to her needs relating to a challenge she was facing during the semester. Engaging with a real person helped me get out of my perfectionist brain a bit because I was working with limited information. This took my prototype in a very different direction than I normally would have taken it, had it been a hypothetical person or just myself, because I would have had too much time to overanalyze how I wanted to create my
prototype. It was different to show unfinished work to my partner since I usually am very hard on myself as far as showing a design or project, I typically take a lot of time and make sure I feel truly “finished” with something before I share it. I didn’t feel too weird about it though knowing that we weren’t supposed to be creating a masterpiece for each other, we were both just supposed to “divein” in a sense, and start somewhere. It made me realize maybe I have too high of expectations for myself other times when I start a new piece or project to just “get it right” on the
first try. Taking a quicker pace to just get ideas out feels actually more beneficial than it does when I’m in my head working on something alone. Reflecting on what I would go back and do differently, I would go back to the earlier steps and ask my partner more questions so that I could get more accurate details to help me in the prototype building process. After doing that, I would probably refine or create a second option for a prototype and ask my partner which one she connected to more and thought was more helpful to her.
gestalt ge·stalt
noun /ɡəˈSHtält/
an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of it’s parts.
The first long-term project of the semester was the “dot-line” project. I really loved the challenge that this abstract project proposed. The objective was to choose three adjectives from a list provided by the professor, and create a minimal piece using the philosophy of gestalt to represent the chosen words. The class was limited to using only black and grey pieces of paper to which we would cut out only circles and lines of various shapes and sizes to represent our adjectives. There were also limitations to the amount of combinations we could use: we could use two dots and one line, two lines and one dot, two lines and two dots, or all dots and all lines (but this option could only be used once.) Bearing all this in mind, I decided to create pieces to represent the words “terror”, “rejection”, and “oppression”. Reflecting back on this project after completing it, gestalt reminds me of looking at a piece of art through tinted glasses; the overall composition looks the same and gets across the same message, but the details such as the color of the tinted glasses bring one’s attention to specific details of the piece itself. I think Gestalt is about seeing the piece as a
whole, as a unit, but each individual can pick out specific details that create different interpretations of the piece. Because of this, I think taing the extra time to create a well-crafted piece is worth the extra difficulty so that the small details help different aspects of the piece to pop out. Overall, I thought this project was tedious at times to get all the small details to be well crafted, but I wouldn’t say it was majorly difficult. I liked the task of focusing on something so precise. My ideas of abstraction have grown through the restrictions of the dot-line project: being that we were limited by our combinations I was able to think even more abstractly to represent non-tangible words/feelings. Especially being that we weren’t allowed to use an illustrative approach challenged me to broaden my imagination. It ended up not being that difficult to avoid illustrating, and I think it was because the words we were representing remind me more of feelings than object smbols/ representations. I can see myself using these skills in the future when it comes to my writing, and my approach in problem solving and. to look at the bigger picture, then attend to the details to have my work stand out.
LETTER FORMS
In the letter form project, the goal was to create a print of a word that accurately depicted the energy and meaning of the word, without using illustration to enhance the meaning. Typography and hand lettering was the main concentration, and in order to prepare to work on my actual word, I practiced many different letter forms and hand lettering in my sketchbook (pictured to the left and below). I greatly enjoyed this exercise, working on hand lettering and with printmaking typography letters is a process I learned I really enjoy. I have been drawn to abstract art since high school, and as I was practicing lettering in my sketchbook, I knew I wanted to include distortion of my word in some capacity, I felt it would only further accentuate its intended meaning.
After working this way with my letterforms, I learned how much you can manipulate typography in ways that aren’t illustrative to enhance the meaning of the word. I particularly enjoyed learning the different techniques with inking the letterforms (such as ghosting, and trailing). Another thing I appreciated about this project was the intersection between hand printing and technology, I feel like I learned a lot and broadened my creativity by experimenting with the photocopier to play around with my word. I gave so many different ideas and designs a try and achieved designs that I never would have thought of, let alone known how to If I were to continue working with these letters, I would absolutely want to work with the actual letter prints more and work on refining how much chatter there was around the letters, as well as work on darkening the letters. After seeing some cool designs in our critique where others demonstrated a lot of control over the darkness and lightness of their design, I would have loved to experiment with the same techniques more myself! I also would want to go back and experiment more with my design that included the safety pins so that they are more prominent in the piece.
The Process:
The fourth project required a deeper dive into researching a particular object or animal. The objective was to create a minimum of six different pieces highlighting our chosen animal/object and create a collage of the six (plus) pieces in InDesign. Of the six pieces, there were requirements to make photo collages of our subject, word collages, continuous line drawings, and two “master artist iterations” in which we created a piece featuring our subject in the style of two diffferent artists of our choosing. I chose Frida Kahlo and Jean-Michael Basquiat as my two “master artists” to create a bat that played homage to their individual and unique styles.
Below are examples of my continuous line drawings and two of my collage pages from my sketchbook. The process of creating several different collages and sketches could be overwhelming at times, but for the most part I found it enjoyable: I found myself easily falling into the habit of tuning into music and creating whatever ideas came to me so I would at least have had a “starting place” for more ideas to flow from.
Object Iteration Final Throughout this project, something I learned about visually was the structure and anatomy of bat wings. I used to draw them and see them in a simpler way, but after studying images of my bat species, I realized how much more complex these wings are- especially when folded inward and wrapped around the bat. I also learned a lot about experimenting with my animal in a non-cliché manner. I will admit, as an avid fan of all things spooky and Halloween, it was not easy to avoid giving in to iterations of my bat relating to Halloween, but I am happy and proud of the work that resulted. I think the most challenging part of this project were at times the collages. The amount of detail and scavenging
for the right bits and pieces took a lot of time, effort, and dedication at times. It would have been easy to throw in the towel when I struggled to find text that complimented my bats well enough, but I am glad I took the time to search and put a lot of thought and planning into my word collages. I also found working with InDesign and Photoshop to be more challenging for me than I expected. A lot of my previous knowledge on Photoshop is very spotty at this point, which I did not realize when I started this part of the project. InDesign was a whole new experience since this was my first time working with it. I was happy to be able to start working with this software again, as I think it is super helpful as an artist (and super cool
too!) but I wish I could have had an extra day or class period navigating it given it’s challenges. Something I wish I would have thought to do during this project is find videos online of my bat flying that I could have taken screenshots of it to get a firmer understanding of the way in which they move. I would have liked to include more movement into my pieces somehow, and I feel adding more movement would therefore have contributed to even more variety of the various angles and poses my bats have.
P S A P O S T E R
The fifth project of the semester asked students to create a Public Service Announcement Poster that would be relevant to our campus at SNC. Everyone in the class was assigned a partner as their “client” in order to receive the experience of what it is like to create work for another person who has a specific message or idea in mind. I was very grateful for this practice within the classroom setting. My assigned “client” was looking for me to create a poster that would catch the attention of male students within the business building on our campus. There is a serious lack of representation for women leaders in business, despite the fact that women are very successful in this discipline. The goal my client wanted me to achieve was a poster that explicitly states the problem without turning men away from the poster. Men instead, were the desired target audience. At first, this was difficult
for me, between my own bias as a woman, and not knowing exactly what would capture the attention of men rather than women. I drew over 20 different thumbnails in my sketchbook, practicing many different variations of formats, styles, and potential thoughts.
VISUAL HIERARCHY “according to Gestalt psychology, visual hierarchy is a pattern in the visual field wherein some elements tend to “stand out,” or attract attention, more strongly than other elements, suggesting a hierarchy of importance.”
Creating my PSA poser, I did not find it overly challenging to be limited to type only, there were certainly moments where I felt I had to brainstorm a little longer because of this requirement, but overall, I did not find it to be a huge obstacle. I think this was the case at least partially because we were heavily dependent upon using a visual hierarchy. For my poster, I found I used size, bold font, italics, and made use of a banner one in order to develop my visual hierarchy. I purposefully kept the opacity of my poster at 100% in order to achieve a blunt and bold appearance. I also included the two thick lines to add an emphasis and sense of direction to two of the key words my client wanted included: women and leaders. I felt this made a purposeful use of the negative space that would have inherently ended up somewhere on the poster, whether it was in that section of the hierarchy, or another. In this process, I learned a lot about the strokes and tools (such as the rectangle tool as well as the send to back tool) working in InDesign. I think the practice of creating 20+ different thumbnail designs for a typography poster also taught me more about the importance and structure of a visual hierarchy, I think it is important to learn about this before attempting to create a poster that includes more illustration. I think moving forward, I will have a much clearer idea of what to include and not include in posters that are more complex, either because they include more type or illustrations.
THIS POSTER WON’T MAKE YOU VIEW WOMEN AS LEADERS IN
BUSINESS
• In academia, women have earned the majority of doctorates for eight consecutive years, but only 32 percent of full professors and 30 percent of college presidents are women. • Of the 25 business administration staff members at St. Norbert, only 5 professors are women. • SNC even has its own club for women in business, which speaks to the importance of the issue and the lack of diversity in leadership the field has in the U.S.
• Women will represent only 24 percent of members of Congress: 24 percent of the House and 23 percent of the Senate. • Women of color represent less than 9 percent of members of Congress. • 19 Women of color represent 2 percent of governors and, as of August 2018, only 10 percent of the mayors of the nation’s 100 largest cities. • By and large, women are not being chosen to be in high level positions.
WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT THIS? https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2018/11/20/461273/womens leadership-gap-2/ https://www.snc.edu/academics/faculty/
Luba Lukova Although the proposition of creating a powerpoint presentation composed of 20 different slides that needed 20 seconds of speech per slide for a total presentation length of six minutes was very daunting to me, I felt a little more relaxed when I learned we got to choose what we presented on. The list of possible designers to choose to present on was packed, but I was very drawn to Luba Lukova as my designer to present on since I discovered her work early in college. When I saw her name on the list of designers we could choose to research work of and create a slide deck of 20 slides, I knew immediately I wanted to choose Lukova. I love combining philosophy and art, and her pieces about social justice and ethics really speaks to me and inspires me. All of her pieces are so blunt, clever, and imaginative; they have so much to say in just one piece of work. I truly feel you can never forget or un-see one of her pieces, and that is powerful and incredible. I was very nervous to present just because I put a lot of pressure on myself and get in my own head about public speaking, but I was excited to share my feelings about Lukova’s work. I would really like to research Abby Covert and Ruth Ansel.
C L O S I N G Q U E S T I O N S
Are you called to creative work? If so, how do you
What’s something you’ve made in the last two years that you’re proud of?
I do feel that I have a creative calling. It is something I have had for as long as I can remember, however, I think that once I reached a certain age it became more prominent to me. I think I first noticed this around the age of 15. I was always drawing and practicing different styles, but it became more serious when I realized it could be applied to more than just artwork, but work for other classes too. Now, as a college student, I see this reflected in all the classes I take. I have a creative approach to writing essays: whether it be for a communication class, an English class, or a philosophy class. I have a unique approach to all the projects I am assigned that starts with a vision. I usually create a theme to accompany this vision and I start brainstorming by sketching or writing a stream of consciousness for all my ideas. Usually, these take on very abstract forms. I feel that this process is what leads me towards not only my final results, but is what connects the ideas of one project from a class, to a completely different one. I have discovered a love for philosophy during my time as an undergraduate at SNC, and the ways in which I see philosophy relate to art I believe are connected to my thought process, and has kept my mind open to many new ideas I believe I never would have had without this creative approach.
By December of 2020, my fall semester had already ended due to COVID-19. I had more spare time on my hands at this point than I had during the semester, and I took the time to practice working with paints again, specifically, watercolor. I felt that the last several months had been a time of a lot of confusion, loss, and grief given the start of the pandemic and the way it interrupted my college experience. I started working on a small watercolor painting that I had no intention of it going anywhere or seeing the light of day by anyone other than myself. However, the more I worked on it, the more I felt proud of it. Not because it necessarily was the greatest thing I had ever painted, but more because I just dove into it with the stream of consciousness I felt at the moment. Unlike so much of the artwork I did during the semester for a class, I didn’t waste time being a perfectionist over it. I simply painted what I felt, and the result ended up being a piece that I feel demonstrated the mindset I was in, and the stage of my life I was in the middle of experiencing: which was a stage of growth. Because of this, I titled the piece “Becoming” and I ended up submitting it to the spring issue of St. Norbert’s online literary journal, Graphos. The next semester, Fall of 2021 and the semester I created this book, I submitted it to the Student Art Exhibition on campus and it was also accepted there. This is
recognize that calling?
something that I am proud of because it served as a reminder for me that sometimes, my ideas don’t in fact have to be dwelled over and over and perfected and refined just for me to share them with someone other than myself.
About the Artist: Em von der Ruhr is a communications major and art minor. She enjoys writing and sketching in her free time. When she is not studying or drawing, she can typically be found enjoying the outdoors or reading a book.
This book was made as part of Introduction to Design at St. Norbert College in the fall of 2020. The fonts used were Times New Roman. It was digitally printed and saddle stapled at the college’s print center.