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Letterforms 2 etterforms Process Journal Kylar Ware Spring 2017 University of Louisville
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Table of
Project 1: Creating Dialogue Project 2: Type History Exhibition Project 3: Self Directed Project
PROJECT 1
Page 3
Contents
Task:
* Design a campaign that consists of a poster, Instagram post, and flyer that addresses the need for “Dialogue� in society
Include:
* The hashtag #dialoguefirst
One Project
Creating
It’s no secret that the world has been particularly divisive lately, especially in light of the recent presidential election. Our first assignment of the new year is to address the idea of “dialogue”. According to trusty old dictionary. com “dialogue” can be defined as “an exchange of ideas or opinions on a particular issue, especially a political or religious issue, with a view to reaching an amicable agreement or settlement” It seems to me that people nowadays seem to have forgotten the art of reaching an amicable agreement or settlement. “Discussion” has become synonymous with “argument” and as a result people are unable to calmly discuss anything. It’s led to a tangible discomfort between people who have dissimilar ideas, which is a shame because I fail to see how new ideas are to be thought of and solutions to be found if people only spend their lives talking to people who already agree with them. In order to get some ideas on how to approach this project, I have been talking to people that I know outside of our class and seeing what their ideas of “dialogue” are. Some key words that have come up a few times have been balance, connections, respect, listening, and common ground. I really like the idea of balance. How many times has my mother told me that “balance is the key”? Given, she’s usually talking about not eating too much of one food, but the sentiment remains true. Whether you’re calling it Yin and Yang, black and white, or light and dark, opposition is necessary.
January 11th, 2017
PROJECT 1
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Dialogue
Sketches Research &
Idea generation is usually the most difficult part of the design process for me. I could spend forever tweaking and fine tuning a project, but it’s the initial stages, coming up with a strong concept, that I often want to skip. I have gotten much better at it since I began the program however. I used to get caught up in it, thinking that anything I put down on paper had to be perfect, but now I’ve come to realize that I can’t get my good ideas on paper until I get all the bad ones out. I began this project by researching what’s already out there on the topic. How have other’s solved this problem, and how can I solve it in a unique way? As I said previously, I also spent some time talking to people about their ideas of dialogue. What kind of visuals kept coming up? I looked up quotes and made connections, all the while jotting down snippets of phrases and doodles that I somehow linked to the problem at hand. I then took those and worked on coming up with something a little more substantial. We also got into groups to discuss our sketches and concepts, which was immensely helpful to me. The introvert in me always hates the idea of showing people my unfinished thoughts, but bouncing ideas off of other designers, and seeing which ideas come across without me having to explain them is invaluable.
January 11th, 2017
Digital
After meeting with a small group of my peers, my next step was to decide which of my sketches I was going to take to the next level. With design, I always have to remember that just because I like an idea, it doesn’t mean that it’s getting the message across. Unlike when I’m painting, when the success of my piece isn’t necessarily measured based upon whether my audience understands the message, with design, the message IS the purpose. If people don’t understand my message, what’s the point? I typically work on design at my house, however lately I have had a lot going on with my sorority so I have been working in our suite on campus. This has actually been really helpful because I constantly have new people to get feedback from. When I spoke to my design peers, they gravitated towards the sketches behind the top and bottom design of the image on the right. However, when I asked people without the background knowledge of my assignment, they had a more clear understanding of the middle image. Today in class we printed off our digital roughs (and as you can clearly see, mine are very rough) and we discussed which idea was working best for each of us. I got at least a few votes for each of mine, but again, it was decided that my most clearly stated idea was found in my “Find Common Ground” exploration.
January 18th, 2017
PROJECT 1
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Roughs
Forward moving
When I’m working on something it always amazes me how all of a sudden, these other things in my life seem to connect to it. Everywhere I turned this weekend the idea of dialogue was on my mind, especially with the inauguration on Friday and the subsequent protests on Saturday. Social media was a complete nightmare of course, so I mostly tried to stay away from it. It was clear that no one posting was interested in hearing the other side out. The need for dialogue, true dialogue, is more apparent than ever. One place I especially did not expect to hear political talk was at church this morning. I have to admit, while I enjoy going to church because it offers me some quiet time to focus on something other than school, or work, or whatever else I have going on in my life, I am guilty of sort of spacing out during the homily. Today I was pleasantly surprised by the topic, and how well it tied into this project. Our priest really likes to tell stories, so today he began with one about two priests who grew up together. Once they were ordained, due to different assignments, they had to part ways. When they finally retired, they decided to be roommates. Nothing had changed between the two old friends except that one had become extremely liberal, and the other a radical conservative. So how did the two remain roommates without arguing? They found a common ground in their dedication to the church. I like this little story of his for a few different reasons. One, the obvious reason that having differing political views doesn’t mean you can’t remain friends or get along with someone. I also appreciated the fact that they were the same religion and still had different political views. I
January 22nd, 2017
PROJECT 1
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feel like many people just assume that all Catholics have the same political views, or all Muslims, or all (insert social group here). The point is, everyone has different experiences that shape their beliefs and their political views, no matter which groups they align themselves with, everyone is different. When I got home from church today I was refreshed and ready to work. I spent most of my day today illustrating and trying different layouts for my poster. In class tomorrow we are getting in groups to discuss our progress and get feedback on our poster, flyer, and Instagram post.
Feedback Getting
Each group was assigned a different bulletin board to tack our flyers up and see how present they were in this environment. We also hung our posters up in the hallway and showed our groups our Instagram layouts on our phones. I had never really considered it before, but designing the flyer was actually the biggest challenge of this project. We were told the poster would be displayed in a gallery type setting, and the Instagram post would obviously be on the digital platform with more or less full bleeds. In both of those settings it is easy to ensure your design has presence. The flyer on the other had is at the mercy of whatever bulletin board you find to hang it up on, where literally everything is just trying to be as loud as possible. There were neon colored flyers for the bookstore, large scale advertisements for study abroad trips, and various other papers and announcements to contend with. No matter what color you chose for your design, there was a risk that something else would have a brighter, less common color. My design, with its dark background showed up really well as a poster against the white walls of the art building, but the flyer got lost on the bulletin board because there were already so many dark posters. I also received some feedback on my face silhouettes. Some of it was rather conflicting. For the most part, people understood and appreciated my concept, however some disliked the texture on the faces, and some wondered if they needed to be there at all. My main concern with taking the faces away completely was that my audience would not grasp the idea that the earth was made of speech bubbles, which was essential to my concept. People in my class had too much prior knowledge of what I was trying to accomplish with the project, and they also already knew
January 23rd, 2017
“In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.� - Nhat Hanh
#dialoguefirst
PROJECT 1
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what my illustration was supposed to look like, so I decided to ask some girls in my sorority for their opinion. Most people with no background information on my concept or the entire project itself had trouble understanding the concept when the silhouettes were taken out. With the silhouettes however, they immediately understood it was about speaking to find common ground. While I think that visually my piece worked better without the faces, taking them out hindered the understanding of my message. Therefore, with some edits, I ultimately decided to leave them in.
The Final
I’m very happy with the way my final product turned out! After getting feedback last class I spent a long time working on making the silhouettes work. I recreated new silhouettes that thankfully look less like baby heads (or at least I hope they do). I also decided to add a border around my image after receiving some feedback from my boss at my internship. Brian made a good point that having something to balance out the emptiness of space and make the entire thing a little more self-contained would be nice. I was definitely skeptical about throwing a border on it, but figured that trying wouldn’t do any harm. It took me a little while to find the right combination of things, but I ended up really liking the border (to my surprise) because it also provided something to anchor the silhouettes to so they didn’t look like they were floating around either. I also enjoy the duality that having separate colors provides. I think that it adds to my message. I am also much more happy with the text at the bottom of my poster after refining it. I not only worked on the spacing between each separate piece of information, but on text sizing as well. I even tiled my poster to print it out at full scale so I could pin it up and look at it. I have sent my poster to be printed at Material Print Shop by Michael Winters, and now I just have to wait for the final product to be delivered along with the rest of my classmate’s designs.
January 25th, 2017
PROJECT 1
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Product
Put on
Today Michael Winters stopped by to drop off our posters to our class. There is something really exciting about unwrapping the protective plastic and seeing your final piece for the first time. All of the posters looked great printed out. I ordered a matte finish for mine and I love the look of it and how great the colors ended up coming out. We took our posters to the hallway and hung them up next to our 90% print outs and wow my design came a long way. At the moment, each little change I made didn’t seem like much, but seeing them side by side I am glad that I pushed myself to make those changes.
February 6th, 2017
PROJECT 2
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Display
Task:
* Design a hypothetical exhibition on typefaces throughout history
Include:
* Category Information »» Time period »» Contributing factors »» Category characteristics * Context »» What else is happening historically? »» Examples »» Letterform Diagrams »» 3-D element * Timeline * Typeface Designers * Citations
Two Project
Type History
I n today’s class, we received our instructions for our next assignment. Our task is to design a hypothetical type history exhibit. There’s a twist however, it’s a group project. We were told in advance that this would be a group project, and I’m sure that there were a lot of inner groans about it, but I’ve actually been very excited about the opportunity to work in a group. I think that working in groups is really beneficial because you have the combined forces of multiple creative minds. Bouncing ideas off of other people is a big part of how the best ideas are formed. Also, I’ve come to realize that I will probably be working in a group for a large part of my career, so it’s probably a good idea that I get accustomed to it.
PROJECT 2
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Exhibition
 y teammates for this project are Kylie Henderson and M Sam Morrell, and we were assigned the slab serifs. We spent most of the class working on idea generation. Even before we researched our typefaces we began sketching. We took about 5 minutes to jot down as many ideas as possible on our own, and then pinned up our sketches to go over as a group. After swapping ideas and talking about aspects we all liked, we did another 5 minute round of sketching. Again, we hung them up and discussed what directions we liked. In fact, I think we spent more time discussing and jotting down ideas together than we did sketching on our own. For our last round, we did one more detailed sketch of what we felt like our ideas had amounted to in order to decide on a clear direction. After working on our sketches for awhile and seeing what ideas we came up with, I think that sketching before doing any research was very good for us. Most of the ideas we came up with probably wouldn’t have happened had we been influenced too much by things we found online. I think that our idea will continue to grow and change, but I also feel like we have a really good foundation to build off of.
January 30th, 2017
PROJECT 2 Page 21
Museum Speed Art
Today our class took a little field trip across campus to the Speed Art Museum. An alumni of our program, Carrie, works there now, and recently worked on putting together materials for an exhibit on Native American art. I’d never really thought about how different designing for an exhibit is as opposed to a magazine or even a poster, but there is so much that goes into planning a design for such a large space. For example, you have to work on a smaller scale. Apparently Illustrator doesn’t like it when you try to make an art board the size of a wall. You also have to figure out the best range to put your type. It can’t be too high on the wall, because then people have to strain their neck to read it, but it also can’t be too low because then they might have to stoop down. It’s like finding the Goldilocks spot on the wall, so that it’s easily read by people of all different heights. Carrie said that she tries to keep her text above 3 feet, and below 6 or 7. Now how are you going to install your design? You can’t just print out a wall and call it a day. Do you have plaques for your text? Are you using vinyl? What color? There are so many things to think about. Despite all the differences between designing for walls as opposed to pages, I was relieved to find out that there are similarities as well. Carrie talked about how she used flow lines to organize the content and make everything in the exhibit look cohesive. Also, even though all of the text is bigger because it is meant to be viewed from further away, hierarchy is still important in your design.
PROJECT 2 Page 23
When we left the Speed, they were kind enough to give each of us a Speed Art Museum tote bag filled with goodies. In addition to business cards and a pen, we each received a copy of book for the exhibit and a poster. Of course, our class had to take this as an opportunity for a class photo.
February 2nd, 2017
PROJECT 2 Page 25
Art Library
Our next step was to actually learn about our topic. In order to split up the work, we each chose two different Slab Serifs typefaces and worked independently on researching our two typefaces as well as information about the category itself. I chose Archer, one of my favorite typefaces, and Glypha to research. I began my research online, and found a lot of good information, but I also went to the art library and spent some time looking through the typography books on reserve for our class. I always forget how much I love the art library. It was really nice to trade scrolling through text for flipping through pages for a few hours. Unfortunately, I didn’t find much about my specific typefaces, but I did find some information about Clarendon, one of Kylie’s typefaces, so I left with some notes and photos anyway. When we met back up as a group to choose our typefaces, we decided to go with the ones we found the most information on, and ones that showed a good range of what our category was all about. Slab serifs first started showing up in the Industrial Revolution in England, and new ones are still being created, so we chose Clarendon, Rockwell, and Archer to showcase in our exhibition.
February 6th, 2017
PROJECT 1
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Research
Presentations
Rough Sketch
Today’s class was spent on presentations. Each group was responsible for presenting background information on our typeface category as well as presenting a rough sketch of our exhibit. After each presentation, we filled out an evaluation sheet and left comments so that each group had written critiques to look over. Our idea for our exhibit is to showcase our three typefaces as a sort of timeline, so as your walk through the exhibit, you are walking through time. We want to make our typefaces our 3-D elements by cutting them out of some sort of material so that visitors can pick them up and reveal the type dissections underneath. The white boxes on our digital sketch show where we would place photos and other visuals. Overall, I think that our presentation went well, but after seeing what everyone else came up with, I think that our idea needs some refining. I always tend to stay in a pretty safe zone when I come up with designs, but some of the other groups came up with such out of the box ideas. I wish I had pushed myself harder during the idea generation phase. I’m hoping that as we learn more about our category and continue discussing our idea that we will come up with something more interesting.
PROJECT 2
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While it’s sometimes stressful to write an evaluation for each person in the class, having written critiques is really helpful for me as a designer. When I’m critiquing, writing down my comments gives me more time to sit and evaluate the work instead of saying the first thing that comes to the top of my head. When I’m getting the feedback, written critiques allow me to absorb more of what people are telling me. Some of the feedback we got wasn’t very applicable because at this stage of our design we just don’t have a lot done, but some of it was extremely helpful. Some comments included ensuring that we keep information within the readable zone for the audience, and making sure our body text doesn’t appear too dense.
February 8th, 2017
FirstBuild Field Trip to
Today we took another mini field trip to First Build. First Build is a workspace across campus that’s available for us to use. There are 3-D printers, laser cutters, etc. Amber Kleitz, one of my best friends, works at First Build, so I had been there before, but I had never considered the fact that I can use the facilities there to improve my design work. Leslie, prepared as always, had brought some materials to show us some demos of the equipment. She had a photo laser etching into piece of wood on one of the laser cutters, and was cutting a giant ampersand out of a piece of white acrylic on the other. As a side note, all of the materials needed can be purchased at FirstBuild for less than you can buy them at other retailers, which is really nice, and a pass on the laser cutter is only $2. We also took a look at some of the 3-D printers. We passed around a little dragon figurine that someone had made, as well as some 3-D keys. Learning about all of the things I can make at first build has not only revolutionized my crafting and gift giving, but it opens a lot of doors for what I can make in the future for my design. I doubt I’ll have a reason to laser etch anything for our type exhibition, but it’s definitely a handy resource to have in my pocket.
February 13th, 2017
PROJECT 2 Page 31
Making
Today we had another casual presentation to the class. Over the course of the past week our design has changed considerably. I’m not sure how it all happened, but our current design is almost completely different from what we started with, which is great. This past Wednesday we all just decided that none of us were excited about the project, and that needed to change. We each worked individually on making changes for a little bit until suddenly Sam had the idea to turn our typeface headings on their sides. She took inspiration from the newspaper headlines where slab serifs first began to appear, stacked on top of each other, fighting for attention. We could model our exhibit off of that idea. After that our group was engaged again. This was interesting. This was fun. Before we knew it we had broken our 10x20 foot wall into panels that would stand alone in the middle of the room. Instead of walking from one end of a wall to another, you would walk around each individual panel, and from the side, the panels would be arranged to show the typefaces stacked on top of each other. Kylie suggested that at the bottom of each typeface panel we could put a vector of the city where it was designed to add visual interest. We got much better feedback from this arrangement and I’m glad that we’re all actually excited to work on the project again. We’re hoping to nail down our color scheme and refine the layout of the information on each of our panels.
February 20, 2017
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Progress
Mock-Ups 3-D
My group has made a lot of progress since our last presentation. As I mentioned, we worked on our color scheme as well as just generally refining our design. Now that we had a firm direction that we were all comfortable with, we were able to make changes and refine things much more quickly. Choosing a color scheme was probably one of the most difficult things for our group to agree upon and I think it just comes down to the fact that each of us has a different style of designing. When we first began to discuss color in our exhibit, before we even researched our topic, we talked about either a blue or maybe a mauve kind of color. After I learned about our typefaces, however, I realized that those colors wouldn’t make any sense at all. The entire premise of slab serifs is that they are noticeable and loud, light blue and mauve don’t convey that at all. I tend to lean towards using bright colors in my designs, so it would have been nice to use lighter colors for a change, but being able to articulate a reason for the colors used in a design is really important. I think that having definitive reasons for doing things, aside from personal taste, is one of the biggest differences between a fine artist and a designer. As designers it is our job to solve a problem, whether that be making something functional or conveying information through the choices we make. Color has a big impact on the way our audience will view our design, so our colors need to make sense. It took some coaxing, but Kylie and I finally convinced Sam to trust us on the color palette we picked out and I think now that we have our panels laid out together, we’re all happy with our choices. The yellow is reminiscent of the newspapers that slab serifs would have appeared in when they were invented, the red was a popular color when Clarendon was invented, we used the orange as a transitional color, and we kept the teal from our last presentation because it is a popular recent color, just as Archer is a popular recent font. Most of the critiques we received for our design this time were nit picky things. Our next task will be to make our individual panels consistent and determine what information we are going to put on the Egyptian? panel.
February 27th, 2017
PROJECT 2 Page 35
Field Trip Unique Imaging
Today our class spent part of class at Unique Imaging, where we are going to print our final designs for this project. Unique Imaging specializes in sublimation printing, which is something that I had honestly never heard of before. Sublimation printing is a process where heat is used to transfer the ink onto different materials instead of just laying the ink down on top of the materials. According to the owner, Dan Rutledge, sublimation causes the ink to go directly from a solid to a gas, without becoming a liquid in between. I’m still no expert on how the sublimation printing process works, but I do know that it produces extremely nice prints on sturdy materials. Dan explained how he spends time adjusting levels and ensuring that the colors of the prints come out correctly. They print everything from photographs for galleries to advertisements (and now mockups for typeface exhibits!)
March 1st, 2017
PROJECT 1 Page 37
Presentation
Solid Light
I think that one of the most difficult parts of working with a group is communicating and setting deadlines that work for everyone in the group. Overall, my group has worked extremely well together, however during this phase of our project we have been having communication issues. Today we presented our almost completed exhibits to Ben Jett from Solid Light. Typically presentations in our class are relatively informal. We’re presenting to people we’ve been in class with for 2 years now, so we’re all comfortable with each other and we take a rather relaxed approach to things. Add an outside specialist in the field to the critique mix, however, and the entire climate changes. We have a guest so we want to take on a more professional air and show what we’re capable of. It’s good practice for us, and the feedback from a professional is invaluable. In order to prepare for our presentation, my group divided up the remainder of the work on our project. I read over the body copy and made sure that our written information had a cohesive tone, I made each type dissection for the back of our panels, made the back side of the Egyptian panel, and threw together a presentation to use as a visual during our presentation. Sam took each of our individual panel files and ensured that everything was organized on a grid and that all of the panels looked unified when presented together, while Kylie volunteered to take care of our 3-D mock up, a required part of our presentation. I quickly figured out that dividing work this way is difficult because my ability to complete my tasks required Kylie and Sam to complete certain portions of their tasks and vice versa, but we all had certain portions of the weekend blocked out to work on things. Kylie and I are both members of Greek life, and Sam has her own extracurriculars going on as well. This is where communication becomes really important. Sometimes a text message explaining your game plan for completing your assigned portion of the project is the difference
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between having peace and wanting to strangle members of your group. I also think that going into group projects with a consideration for the lives of your teammates is important. Everyone has a life outside of the project. Everyone has a different work ethic. I’m not going to lie, I often run my projects right up to my deadlines, whether I’m making small changes or big changes the day of, but I recognize that not everyone works well under pressure and instead prefer to get their projects done early. I had to change my personal time-frame to account for that. I also worked on being understanding when problems arose. Sometimes life happens and things don’t go as planned. You have to adapt quickly and find a plan B.
Communication issues aside, I think that our presentation went well. I am a self–diagnosed recovering perfectionist but I worked on stepping back and allowing my teammates to talk during our presentation, and everything ended up fine. We even accidentally coordinated outfits. Also, during each presentation the rest of the class filled out a Google form with comments, and at the end of each presentation Ben and Leslie gave advice on how to make improvements. We got a lot of great advice on how to make our exhibit even better. We took all the comments that were given to us and used them to make some final adjustments to our design before we worked on sending our files to print.
March 6th, 2017
PROJECT 2 Page 41
Print Preparing to
Printing projects has got to be my least favorite part of the entire design process. I take back everything I said about idea generation sucking. It’s printing that is the real issue. First of all, there is so much stress involved in ensuring everything is pixel perfect before it becomes permanent, which is bad enough when you’re printing on paper, but it’s even worse when you are trying to send your files off to a place you’ve never used before and you are about to drop a significant chunk of change on your final product. Sam and I met up before class today and spent about an hour double checking everything in our file and then trying to determine the best way to export our document to send to Unique Imaging. When we weren’t able to finish everything up before class, we decided to use the first hour or so of class to work on it. That first hour or so ended up being the entire class, and almost an hour after class had ended. In theory, our panels should have been easy to produce, right? Except we had to factor in space to glue them together, adding bleeds, and determining how Unique Imaging produced their images. Did they print and then cut? Or cut and then print? Should we send them one big file with all of the panels stuck together? Or separate Pdfs of each panel? We settled some of those questions with an email to Dan at Unique Imaging (complete with photos of our mock up). He instructed us to send each file separately with bleed, which we did. However, after doing so our estimated cost was $144, instead of our self-estimated $40, due to a misunderstanding about the way square footage was calculated when dealing with separate pieces. At the
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end of class it was decided that we needed to join all of our panels together on one document to send and have printed front and back, and then cut each panel apart ourselves at FirstBuild. Despite how much I have complained and hated this part of the process, working with printing companies and not exactly knowing what I’m doing is probably something I’m going to deal with in the future. I’ve learned a lot today about what questions to ask and how to problem solve. I also know that our project will probably (hopefully?) look really nice when it is printed out, assembled, and on display in the art library.
March 22nd, 2017
Assembling Final Prints &
Leslie has told us a million times how important it is to have a good relationship with your printer. I always accepted that as good advice, but with this project, I was actually able to see it in action. After last class my team ran out of time to get our newest file (all the panels together for us to cut apart ourselves) to Dan. In the email he sent me regarding the price, he said that he would wait for our go-ahead before printing. Because he said he would wait, we didn’t feel the need to email him back until we had our new file ready to go. Due to a misunderstanding, Dan went ahead and printed our files and I received an email two days later saying that our panels were ready to be picked up. Because Leslie and Dan have such a good relationship, he picked up the extra cost that the miscommunication had cost him, which ended up being around $200 I believe. That’s an incredibly nice thing for him to do for us. So, instead of having to cut our panels apart ourselves, we picked them up and they were ready to be assembled! Last class, after swinging by to pick up our panels, Kylie, Sam and I went to FirstBuild to cut out our white acrylic letters for our Archer panel to use as an example. Today we worked on actually assembling our panels. After a failed attempt at regular glue and hot glue, we decided to use gorilla glue to stick them together.
March 29th, 2017
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Product The Final
It’s finally finished! For the past month and a half or so we have been working on these projects. This hasn’t been an easy assignment, but I think in the end, we have all learned a lot. Not only did we learn about designing exhibits, but we also learned about our assigned typeface groups. We learned about working together with other designers who may or may not have similar taste as us. We learned about printing, and that communication is key in all steps of this process. Our final product is actually something that I’m very proud of. After working with it for so long, I felt like I would absolutely hate it, but all of the frustration and effort was worth it, as it always is. If I had done this project on my own, I wouldn’t have come up with a design anything like this. It took input and work from each of us to get our finished product. The sublimation printing came out beautifully, and the gorilla glue worked like a charm. We have very professional looking finished pieces and we are displaying them in the Hite Art Library.
April 3rd, 2017
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Task:
* Design a self-directed project that somehow focuses on large format type.
Three Project
Self-Directed
Our Final project is a self-directed one, which is something that I’m never prepared for. I always have a ton of creative projects I want to do…until I’m required to come up with one. Leslie said that she wanted our choice for our final project to be something that we would be excited and passionate about. I have always loved hand lettering, but creating a poster series or anything like that would be too easy, and something that I could always do on my own just for fun. I wanted to choose something that would challenge me much more than that. At a loss for ideas, I ended up perusing the example projects that Leslie posted on Basecamp to kick-start my creativity. One assignment that really stuck out to me was the Kinetic Typography project. Essentially, the requirements were to choose a quote and create a 30-60 second kinetic typography piece that expressed and enhanced the meaning. I’ve never had a reason to learn how to do any type of motion graphic, so assigning a project to myself that forces me to learn a program such as After Effects would be good for me. I really enjoy quotes, but I decided to customize the assignment a little more. I have always been extremely passionate about music. I play piano, flute, and was in choir in high school, so it’s always been a huge part of my life. I spend way more time than I should online looking and listening for new music. I have watched many lyric videos on YouTube so I thought that it would be fun to use my hand lettering, illustrations, and typography skills to make my own. While I want this project to push me to learn new software, I was hesitant to hang my grade on my questionable skills of selfteaching After Effects. When I met with Leslie today, however, I told her about my idea for the project and we worked on a way to soothe those fears. Story boarding is an important part of any type of project involving motion graphics or video editing. Therefore, the biggest part of my project will be the creation of my story board, and the actual animation of my designs will be more of an exploratory, learning process. I left class feeling a lot better about my requirements and excited to start researching After Effects tutorials and choosing a song.
March 20th, 2017
PROJECT PROJECT 21
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Project
3/20
Meet with Leslie to discuss project expectations
Research After Effects, watch basic
3/22
tutorials, choose song and begin idea generation
3/27
Begin storyboard
3/29
Continue storyboard
4/3
Journal 1&2 due. Completed Storyboard
4/5
Continue animation
4/10
Continue animation
4/12
Continue animation
4/17
Continue animation
4/19
Continue animation
4/24
Finish animation.
4/27
Final class meeting
Making a
Sticking to schedules has never been one of my strong points. I don’t think it’s because I’m unmotivated, it’s more because I get distracted really easily by other things that I need/want to do. I feel like lately my entire life has been this game of “what’s due the soonest?” and even though a large chunk of my spring break was spent working on homework, I’m still barely treading water. That being said, today I tackled the horrifying task of creating a timeline for my self-directed project. I decided to give myself until April 3rd to get my storyboard flushed out, which gives me a little over a week. I wanted to give myself plenty of time for this part of the process because the storyboard is the entire foundation for my video. After completing my storyboard, I’ll have 6 class periods to work on digitizing my design, creating any illustrations I decide to use (if I decide to use them), and learning After Effects. Once I finished writing up my schedule and uploading my proposal to Basecamp, I looked up examples of kinetic typography videos that were created with After Effects, as well as some basic After Effects tutorials.
March 22nd, 2017
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Plan
Song Choosing a
So far I have spent some time watching After Effects tutorials and trying to decide what song I want to use for my lyric video. Honestly, I think choosing a song could be the hardest part of this project for me because I love music so much. I’ve never been able to choose a single song to focus on. I ended up making a playlist of all the songs that I thought would be fun to make a kinetic video for. I narrowed my music library down to 5 songs that I thought would have a lot to work with visually and that I wouldn’t hate myself for having to listen to a million times. I chose “Castle” by Halsey, “I Lived” by One Republic, “Alaska” by Maggie Rogers, “First Things First” by The Pentatonix, and “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles. Since I obviously can’t do all 5 for this project, I still had to figure out a way to focus on just one. I thought a Pentatonix song could be fun to work with because of all the layering of the voices, but that was my main idea related to that one, so I threw it out first. “Here Comes the Sun” could be really cute, but I feel like it’s also overdone. Two down, three options left. “I Lived” has very uplifting lyrics. I think of a lot of cute vector illustrations and bright colors when I think of it. “Castle” on the other hand has a darker feel, I think I would use textures and dark colors for it, maybe black and gray with a pop of red or gold. Finally, “Alaska” feels a little more like a narrative and I think of earthy tones and maybe some sketched visuals to go along with it.
March 27th, 2017
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Looking at the last three options, “I Lived” is the most in my comfort zone. I know I lean towards bright, high contrast things when I have the opportunity to. I love color. I think to force myself to grow, it will be a good idea to choose either “Alaska” or “Castle” to continue with. Because I keep changing my mind, I’ve decided to just sketch some ideas for both of them, and then see which ideas are the strongest and go from there.
Remembering to
I finally bit the bullet and chose a song, and I’ve decided to go with “Alaska”. According to my self-made schedule, today I am supposed to be continuing my story board for my music video. I’m actually not as far behind as I thought I would be, however that may be because I made my own schedule, and I know how I operate Just listening to the song gives me ideas about colors and textures, but I realized as I went to begin sketching, that I skipped an important part of the process when creating my schedule. Research. How could I create a lyric video that does the song justice when I hadn’t even bothered to look up the artist? Because Maggie Rogers is a fairly new up-and-coming artist, there is not much in the way of branding for her. So, I found photos of her to reference her style, and I looked up interviews with her to see what she was like. I ended up pulling my color scheme directly from a screenshot of her music video for “Alaska”. Somewhere along the way I found a photo of her journal. In it, she hand-writes letters to her fans, and the writing is beautiful, just like her lyrics are. It’s the kind of optimistic from-the-heart writing that just inspires you to live life. That is exactly what I want to express in my video. I want that sense of genuineness that she expresses in her songs and in her letters and interviews.
March 29th, 2017
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Research
Deep
Getting my head into the space of this project has been really difficult, and I think it’s mainly because I bit off a lot in trying to teach myself After Effects. I haven’t felt this way about a design project since ART 205, and after I considered it for awhile, it’s because I’ve learned so much about the programs since then. When I first began my design career nearly every project was filled with this selfdoubt and struggle that I’ve been feeling during this project. It’s kind of nice to look back and realize how far I’ve come, and to know that I’ll get through this project and be a better designer because of it. After meeting with Leslie last week, we decided that a better approach than trying to learn AE while designing would be to design what I want to happen in my lyric video and then work on figuring out how to do it. I have a decent start with my actual lyrics and the words I’m trying to highlight with my hand lettering, I just need to start creating a digital story board so that I feel a sense of real accomplishment. I still felt a little lost about what aesthetic I’m really going for however, so I spent a little more time reading interviews and trying to pinpoint an idea. One thing Maggie Rogers has said about her music is that her goal is to make pop music feel as human as possible. That gave me the idea to try incorporating textures and hand done illustrations rather than vectorized art into the video.
April 12th, 2017
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Breaths
Stress Overcoming the
Finals season is as busy as ever this semester, and after stress crying in the art library for about 20 minutes and bemoaning the fact that I didn’t decide to animate a logo or something instead of an entire song, I think my emergency store of creative juices was triggered. I dropped the idea of making textures and hand done illustrations and instead opted for using actual photos of Alaska which is working out a lot better. I also use watercolor textures in at least one of my projects already, so trying something new is probably a good thing anyways. I set to work hand lettering and digitizing my vision in InDesign. I then sequenced my story boards and wrote a little caption about how I wanted each animation to function, and I’m feeling at least a little better about everything. I opened After Effects for a hot second, in the hopes that something may have clicked in my brain, but after fiddling around for a little bit and being unable to change the color of the background I created, I shut it down and went back to my storyboard.
April 17th, 2017
MAGGIE ROGERS
MAGGIE ROGERS
MAGGIE ROGERS
MAGGIE ROGERS
MAGGIE ROGERS
MAGGIE ROGERS
MAGGIE ROGERS
MAGGIE ROGERS
MAGGIE ROGERS
MAGGIE ROGERS
MAGGIE ROGERS
MAGGIE ROGERS Maggie Rogers
MAGGIE ROGERS Maggie Rogers
MAGGIE ROGERS
MAGGIE ROGERS
MAGGIE ROGERS Maggie Rogers
MAGGIE ROGERS
MAGGIE ROGERS
MAGGIE ROGERS
MAGGIE ROGERS Maggie Rogers
MAGGIE ROGERS Maggie Rogers
MAGGIE ROGERS
MAGGIE ROGERS
Maggie Rogers
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MAGGIE ROGERS
“Alaska” by Maggie Rogers Lyric video Story Board Kylar Ware
MAGGIE ROGERS 1) “Alaska” writes itself out and “Maggie Rogers” appears on two beats.
MAGGIE ROGERS 2) On the last beat of the intro, the background transitions with an iris wipe.
THROUGH ICY
I WAS
THAT
3) Footprints appear on each beat of the measure, while the words appear as they are spoken.
TOOK MY
BREATH
5) Words appear as spoken, away is written out. Blue background slides up to transition to the next background, taking text with it.
WEST WARD
THROUGH
7) Words appear as spoken
4) Words appear as spoken and the blue “water” shape moves up to transition to the next background
MOVING
6) Words appear as spoken
OVER
GLACIAL 8) Words appear as spoken
Getting
Something amazing happened today. I actually accepted help on figuring out After Effects. Amber Marsden sat down and showed me some basics and it’s as though a huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. I tend to get in a rut whenever I’m having difficulties with a project. I over react. I look around our class and think that no one else ever struggles and that because I am struggling, they’re better designers. It goes downhill from there. I’ll have a terrible project, they’ll all laugh, they’ll wonder how such a terrible designer got into our highly competitive program in the first place. It’s crippling self doubt. Then I don’t want to tell anyone I can’t figure out the programs, and then I don’t ask for advice, and then I feel even worse about my design/project. If future me is reading this, STOP DOING THIS. Amber sat down with me for maybe an hour of class, and it was so nice to finally tell someone that I had no idea how to use After Effects. That I was falling into a pit of despair. And you know what she didn’t do? She didn’t laugh, she didn’t call me a bad designer, SHE UNDERSTOOD. It’s hard to learn. It’s ok. I left class today feeling much better, with some basic knowledge of After Effects, and with some tutorial links in awaiting me in my Facebook Messages. So, just as a reminder, ask for help. It’s 100% worth the humility.
April 19th, 2017
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Help
Project The Stages of this
1 2
Excitement:
I have the opportunity to create my own passion project for this class. I can tailor it to my own interests and set a pace that I’m comfortable with. The world is my oyster. I can do anything.
4 Stress:
Doubt:
I have to come up with a project that’s good enough. One that pushes my limits, while also being an attainable goal in the amount of class time remaining for the semester. One that teaches me how to use large form letterforms in a productive way.
3
Finals season begins. I have a 15 minute presentation, 8 posters, a humanities paper, class readings, an art critique, and work, in addition to this project. Survival is dependent on copious amounts of coffee and minimal sleep.
Determination:
Hopes for the project are high. I have a schedule planned out. I’m going to be motivated, productive. My project will blow everyone else’s away and be an amazing portfolio piece.
I begin to notice everyone else’s projects, and wish I had been smart and chosen something easier. My aspirations may have been too high. Anytime anyone asks how my project is going the reply is a groan and some mumbling.
7
6
Survival Mode:
I realize that I have about 2 weeks left to get something, anything, together. Emergency creativity kicks in and it’s time to sink or swim. I pour another cup of coffee and dedicate as much time as possible to the project. Falling asleep on the couch with my laptop open occurs frequently, but progress is made.
Acceptance:
I realize that while I may not accomplish exactly what I set out to do, I learned a lot, and that perhaps that’s all that really matters. I come to terms with the fact that one “failed” project does not define who I am as a designer.
April 25th, 2017
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5
Despair:
The 8th Stage:
I’m adding an 8th stage to my list. “Success”. It is April 26th, aka the night before this project is due, and I still haven’t given up trying to get at least part of it animated. After last week’s breakthrough with Amber Marsden, I could get maybe an hours worth of work done in After Effects before hitting the wrong button, messing everything up, and contemplating throwing my laptop out the window and dropping out of school. After expressing my frustration to my Dezine group message, Ann Wood offered to come help me out. She finished portfolio and suddenly had free time again. I quickly took her up on her offer, but the first time we could both meet up, do to other finals, was tonight. After working for about 5 or 6 hours I had accomplished more than I ever imagined. All the layers I made for my story board are animated in some way. I can finally see my vision coming to life, and believe it or not, I even had a little bit of fun working in After Effects. Is the timing perfect? No. Is everything exactly how I imagined? No, not yet. But I know how to get it to that point now. And that’s huge. On another note, it really is kind of fun working on this project now that I’m sort of rounding the learning curve. I actually really like working with timing because it reminds me of playing an instrument. I found myself counting beats for the song and matching (or at least trying to match) visuals up with rhythms I knew were underlying the music. So, after all my heartache, and all my struggling, this project has caused me to grow a lot. I learned about new software, which was my original intent, but I also learned about how I handle things as a designer and things I need to work on . As an added bonus, Ann said she learned a lot about After Effects too. I can now confidently open AE and I at least sort of know what I’m doing. A few days ago if you asked me if I would continue this project I would have said “hell no”, but now I really want to work on it and I wish I had been able to meet up with Ann sooner.
April 26th, 2017
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Success!
“Alaska” by Maggie Rogers Lyric video Story Board Kylar Ware
MAGGIE ROGERS 1) “Alaska” writes itself out and “Maggie Rogers” appears on two beats.
MAGGIE ROGERS 2) On the last beat of the intro, the background transitions with an iris wipe.
THROUGH ICY
I WAS
THAT
3) Footprints appear on each beat of the measure, while the words appear as they are spoken.
TOOK MY
BREATH
5) Words appear as spoken, away is written out. Blue background slides up to transition to the next background, taking text with it.
THROUGH
WEST
4) Words appear as spoken and the blue “water” shape moves up to transition to the next background
MOVING
6) Words appear as spoken
OVER
GLACIAL
5) Words appear as spoken, away is written out. Blue background slides up to transition to the next background, taking text with it.
WEST WARD
THROUGH
7) Words appear as spoken
AND I WALKED OFF
9) Words appear as spoken, then footprints appear and disappear on the beats
MOVING
6) Words appear as spoken
OVER
GLACIAL 8) Words appear as spoken
AND I WALKED OFF AN
10) Words appear as spoken
I THOUGHT IT WAS A SO IT SEEMS
11) words appear as spoken, and disappear as the next word appears
12) Words appear as spoken
PROJECT 1
BREATH
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TOOK MY