2
contains Project I: Dialogue First
sketching.........................................4 digital sketch.................................6 revision.............................................8 reception..........................................11 reflection..........................................12 Project II: The Type Exhibition ideation.............................................18 The Speed.......................................20 development..................................21 FirstBuild........................................22 designing........................................24 mocking...........................................26 Unique Imaging............................28 Solid Light......................................30 real world.........................................32 building............................................34 reflection..........................................36 Project III: ??? research...........................................40 plan A...............................................42 plan B................................................44 plan B: addendum I.....................46 plan B: addendum II....................48 I Don’t Like Who I Was.............50 Peach................................................52 Puppy Love.....................................54
3
4
Our very first project in Letterforms II is to create a poster and flyer series based on the importance of dialogue inspired by the highly divisive 2016 presidential election. This is not a “political poster”, we’re not taking sides or making jabs or making any kind of political point aside from acknowledging that there is a rift in this country, posing the question to the audience on how to fix it, and doing both in a manner that is approachable and resonates with people on opposite ends of the political spectrum.
But great work doesn’t come from me doing what makes me comfortable. It’s easy to be angry. It’s easy to make passionate, incensed art about how doomed we are or how I’d like to send every single one of them to the moon, and then be patted and congratulated by my peers who already think and feel like I do and be affirmed that yes honey, you’re right, and everyone else is wrong. That kind of art is easy, but after the initial wave of self-righteousness wears off, it accomplishes nothing. It’s masturbatory, cheap, and in the end, worthless.
This poses an immediate challenge to me, and it’s going to be difficult to write about it without letting my bias show a little bit.
Meaningful art isn’t always what’s easy and comfortable. Mature work with the power to change hearts and minds takes active effort—effort to put my own feelings aside and reach out to people and ideas that I’m not necessarily ready to calmly confront. Aside from the angry and ugly little part in me, the softer part that I try to nurture knows that the spirit of this assignment is right: the road to progress is in understanding, and understanding starts with honest, pride-aside conversation.
I’m not over it yet. I’m not ready to hug and make up over it yet. I thought by inauguration day I’d be more approachable, but like a nasty bruise on your knee that you poke every so often to see if it still hurts, it definitely still stings. I came into this semester pissed as hell and ready to make angry political statements but instead I have to extend an olive branch. The ugly little part of me is upset that, yes, I have to make art for them too.
Solutions need to be about building bridges, not building up walls.
5
sketching For my idea generation, I tried to focus as much on typographical designs as possible. My first really good idea was a concept that involved using the horizontal and vertical strokes of the type to make it appear like two different languages were being spoken, only for the strokes to combine to say the same message. I think that this was my most powerful concept, which made it kind of difficult to keep sketching new ideas. I ended up developing that one and another that featured the Statue of Liberty saying “Make America Talk Again.� The idea there was to show a symbol of America talking and also to directly reference the 2016 election.
6
7
digital sketch
I ended up further developing the two sketches that I had singled out. During the class critique, both designs did equally well initially, but many of the people who preferred the Make America Talk Again design changed their minds after they kind of “got” the opposing strokes design. I was happy that my preferred design ended up being the favorite, but I want to work on finding a way to make the message come across clearer and faster so that that “ah-ha” moment happens after seconds instead of after several minutes of contemplation—design students owe me contemplation, but the average viewer has no such responsibilities.
8
make america talk again
I feel as though this option, while visually striking and easier to digest, 1) isn’t as powerful as my other option and 2) runs the risk of being perceived as biased against right-leaning folks on account of its use (and light mockery) of the Trump slogan.
9
revision My revisions mainly revolved around size issues and organization: I wanted the type to be readable and recognizable so that the viewer could still “get it” fairly quickly, I was just having some difficulty balancing the size of the type with the space. I had gotten feedback from my classmates telling me that the message of the poster should be central, and while I prefer the way that looks visually, I felt as though it hurt the readability of my concept. I knew I was too close to my piece to tell on my own, so I showed to a few non-design friends to gauge their reactions. Most were able to put it together after a few seconds, but some still needed it pointed out before the “ah-ha” moment happened for them regardless of the position of the message. Since the arrangement of the panels made no discernable difference to readability, I placed the overlapped text in the center so that even if someone doesn’t “get it” right away, the poster is still visually appealing.
10
11
12
reception The final step in this project was the dreaded exercise of accosting strangers. Luckily, people in the Student Activities Center are pretty used to being propositioned by strangers far more annoying and demanding than I on a daily basis. I approached people sitting alone or in small groups at lunch tables and asked them if they minded looking at something for me. I only explained that I was a design student doing a visual project on communication and showed them my flier to gauge their reactions. Two people immediately asked if it was in reference to the 2016 election, which was good because I chose the colors to communicate a political theme. I had the same issues with the readability as I had all along: not everyone got it, but once they did they liked it. I next asked each participant if they thought it leaned politically one way or the other. Most said no. One girl said she thought it leaned right because I had the red panel on top. Another guy said it seemed to lean left, but only because I had blue hair. In all, I took that to mean I was successful in staying neutral in my message.
13
reflection I really enjoyed this project. It forced me to design for a topic I wouldn’t have ventured into on my own and lead to one of my strongest pieces conceptually. That being said, I’m not 100% satisfied with my piece yet. It’s a really great idea, and I’m proud of it, but I know that the actual execution doesn’t do the idea behind it justice. I know there’s a better way to get my concept across, and this will definitely be a project that I will revisit later on.
14
15
16
This next project focuses on something new for me personally: exhibit design. The purpose is to create a well-designed (obviously) and informative largescale exhibit on a type style, in my case Grotesque sans-serif fonts. I’ve never done a project on this large a scale before, but I’m excited to take it on.
But I’m not really nervous about this particular project, and I think that’s because I’m surrounded by competent and talented people who actually care about getting something from this class. I’ve never done a group project that spans over this much time before or with a creative group, so I’m actually very excited to see how the next few weeks unfold.
The twist of this exercise is that it is not only physically large and will take several weeks to complete, but it is a long-term group project. The mere utterance of the words “group project” still gives me shivers. I’m met with vivid flashbacks of nights spent dividing notes and completing slideshows because if I was in a group, I was the one doing the work. Sometimes this was because I was assigned to a team of slackers, sometimes because I’m a bit of a control freak, but most of the time it was probably a combination of both.
17
18
ideation The first step once we got into our teams was group ideation. We did this by making quick concept sketches individually and then coming together to share and compare ideas, then improving on those sketches individually and coming together again to discuss changes. We repeated this three or four times until we came to the basic idea of what we wanted for our final display: we knew early on that because we were showcasing the history of sans serif typefaces that we wanted to emulate a swiss modernist and Bauhaus inspired style. We wanted clean organization, a simple and bold color palette, and lots of white space. This desire to leave the display clean and open is what inspired our decision to create sliding panels for information so that we could include all the information we wanted without hurting the simplicity of our design.
19
The Speed Our trip to the Speed Art Museum was informative for the sake of this project. I’ve been to plenty of museums and even the Speed itself several times, but never really examined or criticized the organization of exhibits as a designer. It was helpful to learn from the inside how to tackle largescale design; how to approach the problem of readability, visual hierarchy, and even more technical decisions like selecting vinyl and actually building the displays.
20
development Our development stages were where I felt most productive over the course of this project. My group all had a very similar idea of what we wanted our exhibit to look and feel like, so honing in on a specific vision and carrying it through to the actual design was fairly painless for us. It might be because my team was compatible working with one another, or it could be a virtue of the simplicity of grotesque sans serifs that made this part such a cinch.
21
22
FirstBuild I’m really glad we made the trip out to FirstBuild. I knew it was a great resource to have so close to campus and I have already been encouraged in several of my classes to visit and take advantage of the tools there, but actually taking the time to go and approach a facility that I only vaguely understood made kind of a mental barrier for me. It was nice to see exactly what options were available for more industrial projects and also how easy it was to actually use the tools. I feel more comfortable taking projects to an actual physical level of completion, and while we’ll be needing it more immediately for our type exhibit project, I’m exited to see how I can utilize FirstBuild during the final year of my undergraduate Design journey.
23
designing When it came to the actual nitty-gritty design work for this project, Kaytie definitely took the lead. Not being in charge of every aspect of my design was a new experience for me. At times it was kind of a relief not to be under the gun constantly and to let someone else take the lead on a group project, but other times, I felt as though I was losing agency in the production of our display. Sure, my ideas, writing, and research are all included, but I can’t help but feel when I look at our design that it’s not fair to call it mine.
24
If I could have changed one thing about the life of this project it would have been to have more studio time with my team so that we could edit the design together instead of piecing together different versions before one of us (Kaytie) had to unify all the mismatched pieces. I think our strong lead on the project was largely due to a long brainstorming phase where we worked together and I can’t help
but wonder what the final design could have been had we been able to maintain that momentum. Not to say that it should be the professor’s responsibility to give us class time to work, it just proved difficult for 3 adults with jobs and other classes to get together outside of studio. In the end I suppose that’s just a cost of group work, and I’m proud of our work regardless.
25
mocking Our little first-run paper model looked fantastic, and I think that our impromptu presentation was one of the more organized of the class, but my team’s weakness at this point was knowing how to divide up the presentation. I know the project well enough to talk about it confidently but I don’t know when to add a word in. After the presentation we talked more about dividing up talking points, so hopefully we’ll do a better job distributing workloads for the remainder of the project.
26
27
28
Unique Imaging The trip to Unique Imaging was interesting. I had heard the term sublimation before but had no idea what it meant, and it was great to see what kind of alternative printing options I’d have not only for this project but for future pieces that paper and mounting board might not cut. As we sit on the edge of the rollercoaster hill before senior year, it’s definitely not too soon to be considering better and more dynamic ways to present my portfolio.
29
Solid Light I think our formal presentation went well, and it was great to have Ben Jett from Solid Light with us. If nothing else, I think we all definitely needed fresh eyes on our projects; we were all so familiar with not only our own pieces but the entire class’s that it became hard to give accurate feedback. For example, I never questioned the alignment issues on our piece—it had been that way since the beginning, and no one ever brought it up during our first 3 presentations so I never thought to change it. Ben asked a lot of great why questions that the rest of us had kind of looked over, which I think really got the rest of us to rethink each other’s work from a fresh perspective. It was also pretty cool to show someone from the field you were dabbling in your work and hear that you didn’t do too bad.
30
31
real world As a bonus, I took a trip to DC over spring break near the end of our Type Exhibit project, and my professor will be happy to know that the project totally ruined my vacation. I spent more time critiquing and admiring the typography in the Smithsonian than I did actually reading what the displays said. Pictured right is Barbara Kruger’s Belief + Doubt, an immersive typographic installation at the Hishorn Museum that made my stomach hurt with design envy.
32
33
34
After Spring Break and a brief but uncomfortable period of getting our design sorted with Unique Imaging, it was finally time to build the physical comp of our exhibit. This was the most satisfying part of the process: after weeks of theoreticals and “it’s supposed to look like”s we finally got to bring our vision to life and see it for ourselves for the first time. It was definitely easier said than done. As I mentioned, getting the sublimated panels done was a challenge both logistically and financially, but they turned out beautifully. We also had to cut our vinyl and acrylic features at FirstBuild, which ended being more complicated than I originally thought. FirstBuild is a great resource but it was really hard to get help— every employee we asked for help with the laser cutter told us they didn’t know how, and we were more or less left to figure out how to operate a few dangerous and incredibly expensive pieces of machinery on our own. Silver lining: I now know how to operate two dangerous and incredibly expensive pieces of machinery on my own.
35
reflection I had two big takeaways from this project. The first was that it forced me out of my comfortable world of mockups and slideshows and made me actually make something. Going to FirstBuild and learning how to use the machinery on something fairly simple like type made the whole idea of going somewhere and bringing my designs into the real world far less foreboding. The second was that, when working in a team, you don’t always have all the control in your design. I felt very involved during the sketching and research phases, but felt as though I lost that grasp over the process during the digital rendering. I felt that I wasn’t doing and was wasn’t getting to do enough: that I was letting my team down but also letting myself down by missing out on a strong portfolio piece that I felt I had no claim over.
However, as we phased from designing to building and could better delegate tasks and responsibilities, I felt better. I learned that problem solving through design doesn’t always necessarily take the form of slaving over an InDesign document. Sometimes it’s writing body copy or researching while someone else sets the type, and sometimes it’s trying to figure out how adjusting the power and speed settings on a laser cutter could potentially ruin your project while your partner tries desperately to guess the password on the FirstBuild computer that connects to the vinyl cutter. Just because I wasn’t the one to fiddle with kerning and font size on our project doesn’t mean it wasn’t mine, and I feel comfortable being proud of my team and the work we accomplished together.
36
37
38
For our final project, we had about a month to work on a totally self-driven and defined project that could entail anything we wanted, provided it had something to do with typography. The project didn’t have any predetermined deadlines, either—everything was totally up to us. That kind of freedom was a little overwhelming.
I loved the idea of having time carved out in the semester to focus on a passion project, but I felt that at the end of the school year I was overexerted and in many ways squeezed dry of new ideas by my Adventures class I was taking at the same time. I wanted to do something big and expressive to add to my portfolio, but I also had to be mindful of how little time was left and how best to balance a large scale project with everything else I had to accomplish before summer. I felt paralyzed by all the options and requirements to consider, and it took me a little bit of exploring to find something I was comfortable with.
39
40
I knew that whatever I did, I wanted to utilize big, illustrative text as image like we looked at on the first day of class. I started the research for my mystery project by creating a mood board of expressive typography that I liked or was inspired by.
41
plan a
Plan A was to redesign the logo and bottle for Louisville Water Company’s Pure Tap campaign. I got about as far as my sketching phase before I lost interest, which is one of the downfalls both of a personal project and with me as a person: if I’m given too much freedom, I’m picky about what projects I invest my time in. With a required project, even if it doesn’t interest me at first, I’m forced to make the best of it and usually end up enjoying it. In hindsight, this was probably the strongest of my ideas and I wish I had made myself finish it.
42
43
44
plan b
Plan B was my expressive lyric poster idea. This was one the of the suggested assignments on Basecamp, and after watching a few of my classmates work on something similar, I wanted to join in. At the time it made sense: I have a special interest in music design, but aside from my freelance work I’ve done for local bands I don’t have anything “Design School” level to do with music in my portfolio. I thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to express my interests and practice hand lettering.
I was inspired particularly by the work of designer and illustrator James Heimer who has done tons of work for one of my favorite bands, The Wonder Years. I wanted to combine the big, expressive lines from his art and type with the more free, feminine hand lettering style that I workshopped with Elise Welsh from Old Glory Paper Co. last fall. Since I was riffing off of James Heimer, it only made sense to me to feature lyrics from The Wonder Years in one of my posters. This was my first draft of the first installment in the series.
45
plan b: addendum I I was off to a good start, but I received feedback that I should break away from the poster format to add a little more interest to my portfolio. Leslie suggested that I create a series of lyric folios—folded booklets using my hand lettering so that the viewer reads through it linearly. I was really into the idea initially, but it was easier said than done; I had already finished two of my type designs, and neither worked well with the new format. I spent the majority of the time on this project trying to resolve this problem, but no matter what I did, I was never satisfied with my progress.
46
47
48
plan b: addendum II After two weeks of frustration, it became pretty clear that I was spinning my wheels in the mud on my codex concept. With the deadline fast approaching, I knew I had to switch things up so that I would have something somewhat substantial to show for my work. I thought back to what I wanted to accomplish with this project—I wanted to create something relating to music, something to do with expressive type, and something I could use to practice hand lettering. So I went back to my poster format. However, I don’t see it as a surrender: I can always go back to the booklet form once I perfect my initial design, and just because something is concepted as a poster, doesn’t mean it has to live as one. I was able to make progress very quickly once I switched back. Pictured are the new drafts I did for “I Don’t Like Who I Was Then” and “Peach.”
49
I Don’t Like Who I Was As I got more comfortable with my process, I began to carve out a cleaner unified look for my three posters. I nixed the drop shadow from the earlier versions and opted for a cut-out white letter because I liked the way it contrasted with the black and white photography. I added in colored filled areas for a twirled ribbon effect that I had seen in some of the hand lettering I collected as visual research.
For “I Don’t Like Who I Was”, I chose to use a picture of pigeons in the background because The Wonder Years’ mascot (incidentally also designed by Heimer) is a pigeon named Hank.
Towards the end of my project I realized that I had chosen all three lyrics from songs of the pop punk/folk punk subgenre, which is a heavily male dominated area in music. While I can’t say that it was my intention from the beginning, I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of the lyrical content with the more soft, feminine style that I had rendered the posters in.
50
51
52
Peach
The second installment, “Peach” is probably my favorite of the three typographically. Given more time, I would probably restructure the entire series to more closely resemble this one. This was the point in my process where I decided to center the photos in white frames which provided a polaroidesque feeling and to write the title and artist information in the margins. I thought my own hand scrawl would compliment the calligraphy and also lend to that warm, handmade touch that my posters had developed.
The background on this one is an unflattering picture of my fiancé and I, which I don’t plan on leaving in in later possible versions: if I want these posters to live as mugs or greeting cards or anything else, I doubt anyone would want our faces on them. However, I left it in for now because I enjoyed the way that the S in “smiling” interacted with his face, and it was received positively by my peers.
53
Puppy Love The final piece, “Puppy Love” came pretty naturally after I had defined my visuals in the first two. The background photo is of a 3 week old puppy named Rocket, and looking at the series together, the idea of pairing punk lyrics with froofy typography and pictures of cute animals is actually a really compelling and interesting direction.
This project, in my mind, is far from finished. I really took this time of self-direction as a few weeks of exploration, and even though I didn’t end the semester with a polished, portfolio-ready project, I did gain a few things. Firstly, I have not one but two seedling concepts to work on in my senior year: my new bubblegum-punk Hallmark card collection, and my Puretap redesign. Secondly, I got to practice my hand lettering, a skill that I hadn’t really gotten to devote much time to before. The difference between the first and second installments in this series was just two weeks of daily practice, and the progress I was able to make is obvious in the outcome.
54
55
56
57
Emily Johnson ART 572 Professor Leslie Frieson University of Louisville Spring 2017