School and Doodles from By: George Fall 2023 Szczerba
See if you can find all the cats! The correct number of cats is at the end.
This is dedicated to my Aunt Diane, who stalked me on Life360 to make sure I was going to class everyday. Love you Aunt Diane.
Crash Course Our first project of the year! Crash Course was a fantastic way to start things off and serve as a good introduction to design. The main idea behind the project was to find a problem and design a solution. We began by interviewing someone around us. My partner ended up being Madeline! After very generally interviewing her, I searched for some kind of problem she may have had and attempted to solve it for her. We did all this work on a worksheet which is pictured below.
Working with a real person definitely changed how I built my prototype for this project. I second guessed myself a lot more than I would have if I didn’t have to show it to anyone else. My prototype ended up being more of what I thought someone else would want to see rather than what I think they would need. Having to show my unfinished work to someone is pretty anxiety producing. I was a little defensive of what I made and nervous for any criticism. The pacing of this project was definitely stressful. The time limit would be almost done and all these fun ideas would pop into my mind when I didn’t have enough time to add or change anything. When I normally work on things I plan to show other people I put a lot more thought into the project and how I can incorporate the things that person would want and need out of a useful product. If I could take what I learned in this process and try again, I would try to just go with my first idea, presuming there’s a similar time limit. A lot of my time was spent worrying and second guessing but the first idea that came to mind ended up being what I ran with and enjoyed making.
To me, gestalt is the idea you can get from a piece of art as a whole. The emotion or way the art makes you feel. For example, each of our works were based on a word, that word is the feeling you get, that is gestalt. • I love putting small details into things even when I think no one would notice them. That being said, this project went by much faster than I expected it to and I didn’t end up putting as much little details into it due to the specifications and the medium. • This project definitely changed the way I thought about abstraction with the fact that abstract art can be made even with a certain word in mind. Even with a certain word meant to define the art, it was possible to see other things, unintended or not. I loved that aspect of the project and I’m glad I got to experience that and grow
my love for abstract art in the process. • Learning to portray my ideas without straight up writing it out was a challenge. Normally I’m worried my audience won’t understand what I’m trying to get at so I put a ton of extra effort into art projects. Assuming that people would just “get it” was a little hard to grasp but overall felt more accomplished by the time I found out people really did “get it”. “Get it” meaning my overall idea for the word. • This experience is definitely something I’ll continue to think about if not use in my future art. Learning that abstract art can be easier and more fun to produce than I thought was amazing and learning that people will still understand my ideas even without a safety net was even better.
Comfort
Terror
Energetic
Sketchbook practice.
Dot Line Comfort
The main takeaway from our dot line project was to work quickly! The whole project moved by extremely fast which helped us as designers learn to work a little more freely. This project was our first official project of the semester meaning it first introduced us to specifications. This project proved to be a little more difficult due to specifications but served us well as it showed us what it might be like to work with guidelines from a client!
Energetic
Terror
Letterforms The point of our letterforms project was to work with text. When it comes to graphic design, a lot of it is learning how to use fonts and type to convey a message. Using the idea of gesalt. For example, if you’re writing about a grage sale, you’d want the type to be inviting, not look like you just stepped our of a horror film. To start this project off we made a mind map. Within this mind map we expanded our thoughts of a word we picked, mine was clean, and thought of different things the word reminded us of! I really loved this part of the project as it helped me think beyond my first few ideas. After we took our word and created five pages of different ways of showing type and the emotions we associated our word with. Mind map.
We had to crave letters out of small pieces of linoleum and use them as stamps to create different versions of our chosen words. I made an extra stamp piece for fun of an enemy from the game “Omori” which is pictured to the right. After stamping our letters onto sheets of paper, we were able to mess around with our letters and presentation of them. This was my favorite part! Here are some of my earlier ideas. It’s in a trash can.
This was me messing around with the idea of technology being dirty.
Final results I ended up choosing these final images because I felt they embodied the word the best. Three of the four end results are opposite depictions of the word. I definitely feel as though the opposing meanings are the stronger pieces of the whole group. Overall, this project was extremely fun and I loved exploring new forms of art.
My favorite.
With this project, I learned that font doesn’t create all of the meaning behind words. I definitely thought this project would be a lot harder after hearing that we couldn’t change the font. However, I feel like the ideas I was attempting to show worked well enough with just the space surrounding the letters. Overall I feel as though the font is not the only thing that adds to text, the composition, straightness, letter thickness and size, brightness, and so much more are what really add to the meaning behind letterforms. If I were to continue adding pieces to this project I think I would definitely mess around with more of the complimentary definitions of my word. A lot of the work I produced was in contrast/opposition to my word; clean. I would love to add more photography to the overall compositions I produced.
For this project we needed to create collage art, text collage art, two artist renditions, a geometric composition and a continuous line drawing. That can end up being quite a few different forms of media we used to compose this project. The final draft of this needed to be in black and white only, but we can have color in this book so some color you get!
Iterative Illustrations Iterative illustrations was one of our longer projects of the semester. This project showed us that we don’t have to go with our first idea and that we should go beyond the normal ideas of something. The animal I chose for this project was Axolotls. If I’m
being honest, I just chose them because I think they’re cute but I think it worked out because there isn’t much media about them which forced me to think a little more outside the box. Once again, we had restrictions on what we could or couldn’t do, we had to
have a certain amount of images on our final copy and they had to all be black and white. I did really like this project even through it needing to have no color. 10/10 I would recommend.
Final results
Through this project I learned that more people didn’t know of axolotls than I originally had thought. I knew before that they weren’t super popular and were more so within the gaming community due to them being added to Minecraft, but I thought more people had heard of them or seen one before. I also learned that people find them kind of cute, like I do. I’m used to my aunt telling me they’re freaky looking. I found the type collage to be the hardest for me to
grasp. Taking the time to look for words that could be read in the axolotl was harder than I thought. Eventually I gave up and just flipped the text upside down so it couldn’t be read. I learned more about the clone stamp tool in Photoshop, I hadn’t ever used that tool before this project even though I do use Photoshop quite often. Normally I just use the healing band aid tool instead. If I were to spend more time on this project, I definitely think I would spend more time cleaning up my images in Photoshop instead of settling for ok enough to present to other people. I think I would also spend more time trying new forms of art that I’m not used to, I found that artist renditions to be a fun challenge as they were both forms of art I hadn’t really dived into beforehand. I also enjoyed taking some art I already do, origami, and adding a fun touch to it to make it apply to my animal.
Who Designs? Even without knowing it, you’ve probably seen Massimo Vignelli’s work. Vignelli is most well known for his work in designing the NYC subway system map. Seen clearly in his work with the NYC subway system map, Vignelli often worked with only two fonts: Helvetica and Century Expanded. There were three other fonts that he occasionally used but never as much as the last two. Vignelli also loved to work with grids. He had uniformity with his work that included the signature grid, fonts, and colors. While being most known for designing the subway map, Vignelli has a lot of other work as well. He has worked with countless impressive companies such as IBM, Knoll, Bloomingdale’s, and even American Airlines. Back in the 1970’s when most of Vignelli’s most recognizable work was being done, it was almost impossible to walk around New York City and not see something Massimo Vignelli had designed. He had helped Bloomingdale’s with the design of their popular shopping bags. He also helped American Airlines with their logo and some pamphlets used around this time. Around 1977, the National Park Service hired Vignelli to create some brochures about
the parks. Once understanding Vignelli’s signature style, it’s clear the park pamphlets were made by him. All of his iconic works include Helvetica, typically in a white font with a black rectangle as the background, his work for the National Park Service was no exception to this. While his work is extremely simple in some ways, his influence even today is clear from the simplicity of brochures for travelers, map systems in big cities, and even just the massive use of Helvetica can still be noticed today. Vignelli also helped make a short documentary on Helvetica because of how much he loved it! The documentary’s trailer is free to watch on youtube and you watch the full video in Prof. Pirman’s History of Modern Design class.
What drew me most to my chosen designer was how recognizable all of Vignelli’s work actually is. A lot of the time I never know who’s behind the work I see on a daily basis, such as subway maps and shopping bags. Learning about these people who make art like Vignelli’s helps me appreciate the art even more. It can also be extremely inspiring for some people, me included, to see how influential your art really can be and how far it can get. I really enjoyed that we were able to share with our classmates the information we found on our designers. Sharing such influential arts and showing the person behind the art is a great experience. Susan Kare definitely stood out to me as well. Her chosen media seems so easy yet so hard at the same time and is extremely intriguing to me.
PSA posters were so much fun to work on. We had to first create our own proposition as a client. After that we traded our ideas with someone and created a poster for them with the assignment breif they filled out. My partner was Maddie! Shout out to Maddie, u da realest. To really kick things off we all took the same text and created some small thumbnails. This work is shown to the right! For homework we also had to 20 small thumbnail sketches based off of the text we got form our partners, that’s below!
See Something, Say Something Working as both a client and a designer was interesting to say the least. This project moved by super quickly, just like most of the other ones did. For this project we worked with ONLY the text our client gave us, if I wanted to change anything at all I had to ask Maddie. Maddie wrote a super good brief though so there was nothing to change. To the right is my first draft of the poster.
Bystanders are present 80% of the time when bullying occurs Help stop bullying, use your voice.
Scan here for more information on how to help stop bullying:
PSA Posters It was definitely a bit of a challenge to only work with type for this project. However, I do feel as though it was a very helpful exercise. A lot of the time it’s easy to go overboard with images or shapes around blocks of text so attempting to create a whole poster without any images at all was almost refreshing. I definitely wanted the title, “See Something, Say Something.” to be the most eye catching part and have it really draw attention. When looking at the poster from farther away, I definitely think that line did it’s job well. I personally find it easier to see knockout and/or bold text from a distance so I tried to include that, which I think also came out well. From this project I definitely learned that posters are not all about images, the text does a lot for a poster and should never be pushed to the side.
Bystanders are present 80% of the time when bullying occurs.
See Some thing, Say Some thing. Scan here for more in formation on how to help stop b ullying:
Help stop bullying, use your voice!
Conclusion Out of all of my life experiences, I think one of my greatest failures was not continuing to pursue art when I was younger. I was taught by teachers in school that art wouldn’t get me anywhere and that I should focus more on the more money making careers like sciences and maths. Don’t doodle in your notebooks! You don’t have to work so hard on art homework! The art programs in schools are hardly ever funded compared to sports and STEM classes. By example I assumed all I could do with a degree in art was be an elementary school art teacher. I know now that I can do so much more than that. I wish I had continued to draw in my free time or put my all into all my homework and not just “the ones that mattered”. When I’m older I want to be able to use the skills I’ve learned to make more magazine style projects for work. Maybe some park brochures like Massimo Vignelli or logos and themes for businesses. I want to prove that art is so much more important to our lives than people might think at first glance. This class was an absolute blast. I loved every project and every critique. If I could go back, I would do it all again. I met some awesome people and made some art I’m really proud of. I learned a ton of skills this semester that I’ll go on to use in my everyday life. Working with everyone was a pleasure. WOOOO WE MADE IT THROUGH!!!!!!!
Thanks for reading this far! how many cats did you count? Was it 39? Then you would be correct! There were 39 cats scattered through this book from front to back.
This book was made as a part of Introduction to Design at St. Norbert College in the fall of 2023. The fonts used include OMORI_GAME, Hanging Letters, and Sketch 3D. It was digitally printed and saddle stapled at the college’s print center.