Gobbly Gook Gobbly Gook Gobbly Gook

Introduction to Design

ART 130 St. Norbert College Fall 2022

This book was made as part of Introduction to Design at St. Norbert College int the fall of 2022. The fonts used include Bello Script Pro, Century Gothic, Acier BAT. It was digitally printed and saddle stapled at the college’s print center.

This is my (Jackson Venski’s) process book of gobbly gook. Gobbly gook isn’t really registered in the English lexicon, it’s just a nonsensical term to describe a bunch of nonsense. And it sounds funny. Gobbly gook. The nonsense in this book is all the projects I had to do in ART 130 Introduction to design. It turns out that the work that I’ve done in this class had at least some sense to it, even though using dots and lines to convey a complex concept like longing, or making letters and words out of dirt and dead leaves, might not seem like it makes a whole lot of sense, but if you keep reading I’ll tell you all about it.

I’m also supposed to tell you that I am a “mature designer” but I cannot do that. I am a designer, sure, but to say that I am “mature” is a load of gobbly gook.

CrashCourse CrashCourse CrashCourse

britannica Dictionary defines Crash Course as such, “a class in which a lot of information is taught in a short period of time.” For this project with the same name, I had 51 minutes to come up with a design to solve a problem in my client’s experiences at St. Norbert College. My client was another student in the class. She had to do the same thing for me and my experiences. We went through a series of interviews, thumbnail sketches, and other gobbly gook, to come up with a way to solve each other’s problems with design. The problem

I had to solve was to find a way to help her focus on class work. Some of my ideas worked. Some of them didn’t.

Engaging with a real person face to face eliminates any sort of barriers I might face online, and it was nice because my partner was easy to talk to, which made the design process a breeze. Showing unfinished work can be a drag but it wasn’t that bad because the stakes weren’t as high with this project. I was able to finish my prototype pretty quickly mainly because it was easy to talk with my partner about ideas.

Because I could not physically produce friends for my client, I was left to make her a big sign.

These are the thumbnails that worked and didn’t work, along with solution feedback. On the right is a solution where I suggested she used her friend’s support. This didn’t get picked becuase I could not create friends from scratch in less than 51 minutes. If I had that capa bility, I would build an army of friends and conquer the world.

When I do projects like this one, where it’s sort of like a commission, it usually doesn’t go as smooth because sometimes my client won’t know exactly what they want or what they’re struggling with, but with this project we came up with clear and specific problems to solve which made the ideation process a little better. I’m pretty satisfied with what my partner came up with in the end and vice versa. If I were to change my design I would get rid of the little faces that were supposed to represent her friends’ faces. She thought that was creepy, so I’d put her friends’ quotes instead.

This is the final thing I created for my client to solve her problem of focusing on school: a big sign to hang up on her wall that says, “GO TO CLASS!”

Dot-Line Dot-Line Dot-Line

get this: dots and lines made out of black and white paper were the only thing I could use to convey the meanings of the words longing, rejection, and oppression. I had to fit these dots and lines into a 4” x 4” white square for each word. The dots and lines couldn’t overlap one another. I also couldn’t use as many as I wanted, I had to follow specific combinations of dots and lines. Talk about a load of gobbly gook!

Gestalt is a tongue twister that I can never say right. It also is a form of abstraction where you see something as a whole before you see the individual parts that make up the whole. Chuck Close is a fabulous example of this. It relates to this project because I was trying to make images that convey the feeling of a word before you really notice that the images are made up of dots and lines. This was easier said than done. You really have to expand your vision to see the relationships between dots and lines and what visual effect they have with one another. What we are doing here is conveying a concept or idea that usually is conveyed through little squiggles known as characters or letters and words, but with circles and lines.

These are the many thumbnails of possible combos of dots and lines I came up with

Dots and lines were the only language I could use to convey longing, rejection, and oppression. They are usually not at all associated with the meanings of these words so I essentially had to fake it until I made it so to speak.

The romantic paintings of impressionism that I love are on their own tier on the spectrum of abstraction and gestalt because what makes impressionism impressionism, are the broad, unblended brush strokes that make up the whole of the composition. You see the whole painting before you see these brush strokes, which I try to incorporate in the paintings I make. In terms of this project, I don’t think I will ever want to use dots and lines ever again.

I feel satisfied with how the final composition turned out. Although there were a few minor critiques, I feel that longing was easily registered.

Longing: rejection:

I felt confident in my design but was unsure how well rejection would register. To my surprise, it was quite successful in capturing rejection.

oppression:

This design was my weakest out of the three. I felt like it was okay, but I agree with the critiques that were given: make the black lines thicker, fill the picture plan more. I struggled the most with this design because there were too many iterations to choose from, so I ended up choosing the easiest one to do. This resulted in the design being less successful than my other ones. Overall I feel like it still captures oppression to an extent, but just doesn’t quite hit the mark.

Forms LetterForms Letter LetterForms

as you can see from the title page, this project consisted of a lot of letters. The goal of this project was to come up with different versions of the same four or more letter word, using the same font style for each one. I chose the word “dead” because it was four letters, and it was what I felt like at the time. The letters I had to use were carved out of linoleum and physically printed using an ink roller on an 8.5” x 11” piece of paper. The project specifications required me to do four final versions. The first being just straight and neat letters, the second using typographic variations, the third adding modifications to the letters, and one more variation of my choosing.

These are the very first three versions I made with the linoleum cut outs. Ink would get onto all the high spots on the linoleum, which created the chatter marks you see around each letter. For each version I applied less and less ink to give it a decayed feel. For the final version on the bottom right, I tried to print the letters in a way which made them look like they had died and could no longer support themselves to stand upright.

For this version I cut and pasted the clean letters from my first version with out the chatter marks, and then photocopied it so the letters look flush with the paper.

Printing the letters by hand with linoleum cut outs helps you visualize how important it is to be aware of the relationship between each letter of a word, even if it seems so rudimentary. You have to make sure the kerning is even, each letter falls on the baseline, and each letter is tightly registered. If these things are off in any way, the meaning of the word can be changed. If I were to continue working with these letters I would just try to work on the minor inconsistencies with my letters to make the word feel even more finished or professional.

These versions were made using a photocopier. To get the black bars I curled the paper up away fro the scanner as it was scanning the image.

Iturnedmyfirstversionin asthestraightandneat version.

Thisismymodified letterversion.Iputlittle mushroomsonit.

This one is another version I made with a photocopier. I liked how the letters are distorted

And this is the version of my choosing. I used chalk to outline the letters on concrete, and then found dead materials and plopped them in the outline. I put green material at the top of each letter to show a gradient of life to death.

Illustrations Illustrations Illustrations

For this assignment I was tasked with finding an object with minimal moving parts or a specific species of animal, and making a butt load of illustrations of them. I’m unsure if you have noticed or not but the object/animal I chose was the macaroni penguin. I was to take these illustrations and put six of them onto a 12” x 18” black and white poster. The six illustrations all had to be in a different style: two drawings based on the style of a “master” artist, a continuous line drawing, a geometric drawing, a collage iteration, and a type collage iteration. The project dictated that I could only compose my drawings in square frames in the composition of the poster. Overall I’d say my drawings yielded positive results.

My second master artist iteration was inspired by the works of Robert Crumb. You’ve seen this penguin be fore throughout the book as well, but never in her full form. Here she is. I’m happy with how it turned out.

The iteration you see on the left if the first continuous line drawing I made. I did this one without looking at what I was drawing. I didn’t think it fit well with the rest of my iterations so I redid it, this time actually looking at what I was drawing. The final iteration is on the right.

This is me failing miserably at attempting to create an MC Escher inspired penguin tessellation for one of my master artist iterations. I scrapped this and decide to replicate his realism. This is my final iteration:

This project taught me that penguins is practically chickens! The most challenging media to use I’d say was the collage. Much like soiled trousers, collages are messy and take a lot of time to clean up, and the end result looks like a bunch of gobbly gook. The most enjoyable parts of this project were the pen or the graphite illustrations. These are the mediums I most frequently use so these illustrations were like farts in the wind: easy and breezy. This project also showed me that I am a little bit rusty with Photoshop, so I’ll have to keep practicing with it to get better. If I were to continue with this project I would try to incorporate the penguin’s habitat into the iterations and the composition as a whole.

n this assignment, I was to choose a topic or issue of importance to me, and create a brief, outlining my ideas for the poster I wanted created. I was to give this brief to another peer in my class for them to design an 8.5” x 11” black and white poster, and vice versa. My client’s topic was implementing more funding into art education, and it was my task to design a poster for this issue. I could only use the text provided by the brief she gave me and nothing else. No illustrations and no changing, adding, or removing text.

It was quite challenging to use type only because there is a limited range of things to do with type, especially when it isn’t your own type that you are working with. I made the headline the biggest piece of text and used a bold script font because the headline needed to stick out amongst the other san serif fonts I used. The places where I used this script font were against white, and the places where I didn’t use knock out text were against black. I divided up the information into blocks so that it could fit easier into a 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper. I also couldn’t manipulate or change the font in a way to make it fit in the page so lumping text into a box seemed like it would be the easiest way to make everything fit nicely onto the paper. Since printing on colored paper wasn’t a necessity, I instead tried to achieve a high level of contrast by just using black and white. I learned that space is everything when making a composition that needs to be easily readable. Just using text forces you to think and use text in different ways. I feel like there were many things I did well and there are just as many things I feel could use more thought and labor.

Above are my rough drafts for what the poster could’ve looked like. On the next page is the final design.

Who Designs? Who Designs? Who Designs?

me, I design. But seriously, this was a short research assignment based on a professional graphic designer (not me). I had to make a 250-300 word post on our class Slack thread for this project with 3-5 images of their work. Who knew people could design images for a living? But Stefan Sagmeister (my researchee) designed more than just images.

This is The Rolling Stones’ Bridges to Babylon designed by Sagmeister.

This is part of Sagmeister’s Happy Show.

What drew me into Sagmeister’s work was his ambitious and over the top projects that seem more like contemporary art exhibitions rather than just designs. He is an honest, hilarious, and authentic designer, artist, and human being. It’s nice to share something you find interesting even if nobody would read or consume it. But you never know what you might find that somebody else finds and shares. Most of the music I consume for instance, is all from people sharing it with me. There were some interesting figures that my peers talked about that I would have never heard or known about otherwise.

This is Stefen Sagmeister.

Are you called to creative work? If so, How do you recognize that calling?

All of my life I have done nothing but create. Since I was a small boy I would sit at the kitchen table and draw for hours on end. Growing up I would build armor and fake guns of my design out of cardboard and duck tape. I would sit in my room for nights without sleep building with legos. I would create stories in my head and act them out. I write songs on guitar in my free time when I don’t want to draw. If I had an infinite number of lifetimes to live, I would do everything: paint, sculpt, design and build furniture, write books and plays, act, sing and play music, direct movies, design buildings and monuments, etc.. I cannot possibly fathom a life where I wouldn’t create, or be creative. It is all I have to offer in this plane of existence. Without it, I am nothing.

What, if anything, distinguishes art and design?

The hamburger-sandwich theory is applicable in this case. All hamburgers are sandwiches but not all sandwiches are hamburgers. All art has some design to it, but not all design has art to it. To design is to have an idea and plan it. Art is the plan in fruition. There can be no art without a plan or design before it. But you can use design for things other than art. Who designs septic tanks? Do they care about the philosophical implications of it? Or even how it looks to the eye? Or do they design it only to do what it needs to do and nothing else? I don’t think those who design septic tanks consider their works to be art, but rather, to be fart.