This course was created to be a introduction to a variety of approaches to make successful designs across different mediums. It covers how to incorporate the elements and principles of design in a way that is though provoking and constructive. Introduction to Design also proves to be a thought provoking class in the sense that it pushes students beyond their surface level understanding of design thinking concepts.
The purpose of this book is to track my progress through this course and how I worked with each project specicfication I was given. Throughout will be pictures capturing my final pieces as well as the work in its various process phases. Additionally, reflective writing on each project and myself as a designer is present.
Are you called to creative work? If so, how do you recognize that calling?
I could feel myself being called to creative work, specifically art and design, even when I was very young. I used to snatch printer paper out of our family’s office and draw a picture every day before going to elementary school where I would continue to draw in class to keep myself awake during math lessons. Anyone who has known me long enough could say with confidence that I was always a creative person and had a vision for everything to be an art project. I see this now as a collection of signs that I found my passion in life at a pretty young age. Now, I see my calling to art shown in similar ways; I always think of how things I see could be portrayed through paintings or sculptures and I find ways to incorporate creative elements into my everyday routines and work. Most importantly though, I know creative work is my calling because I could not even begin to imagine my life without it. If I did not have school or work in my life I feel like it would be an easier hole to navigate around than if I could not do art and design. There were a few times in high school where I was convinced art would not have a place in my future and I debated dropping it, but I was never able to because it was a part of me too large to ever remove or replace.
Dot - Line is a project designed to teach us how to transform words and concepts into abstract compositions using only the basic geometric shapes circles and lines. This project required us to make an abundance of sketches and versions of our ideas so that we could learn to work freer and learn to go back and refine our stronger ideas. We could not use color and our pieces had to be four by four inches in size made of cut out paper.
In my work, I prefer to spend extra time to get the details right, but when it comes to collaging and gluing elements together, I tend to lose my patience a bit which made this project particularly challenging. I tried to keep my work clean, but when it came to the spray adehesive I used to attach the pieces to the foam board, there were a few errors I made. When I used the adhesive, I accidentally got a few glue spots on the front of my work which was a bit frustrating. Other than that, I am happy with how they turned out.
The Gestalt theory is a theory on vision that I initially learned in psychology. It is a group of ideas about how the eyes perceive their surroundings and how we find meaning in what we see. It relates to this project because in order to convey a meaning, we need to be aware of how sure our compositions are read by people. This project got me thinking more about how much people want to see a full story or picture even when the level of abstraction is so high. There were a lot of people, myself included, who saw lines or dots as characters and we personified them so it made the work more relatable. If I do more abstract work in the future, this will definitely be something I think about since every color and placement of our shapes had an impact on what story was being told by the piece. It was difficult to represent ideas without illustrating them because I have never done this high level of abstractism or minimalist art. I am a huge fan of details and recognizable figures. My earlier sketches for this project included pieces that were placed to represent people and it took some effort for me to move away from that to more abstract concepts.
Dot - Line Project Intial Sketches
I think the Dot-Line project will help me the same way painting the fence helped the Karate Kid. It seemed basic at first, but during critiques and revisions, I realized there was a lot more to it than just dots and lines. I was able to see how the smallest changes like line placement, color, or space could make a significant impact in the piece’s meaning. I additionally learned a lot about how people interpret the meaning of shapes and colors.
Project Overview: We worked with a partner to find a conflict they had and based on that problem, we designed an object in 15 minutes that could help them solve it. This gave us an introduction to solving problems with design and got us into “design thinking,” which is a way of improving our creative thought process. Working with someone on a prototype changed the outcome because I was able to have their ideas on what they needed out of the project. It was an interesting change because it did not allow me to base work on my personal preferences, but instead focus on someone else which is sometimes difficult. Overall, it was beneficial to have a partner’s input on designing and it helped me improve.
Whenever I can, I avoid showing anyone my artwork before it is completely finished. I always want my art to be seen in its final stage and never in its rougher, process steps. That being said, it was frustrating to have to present work that had many flaws that I knew I could fix with more time to work on my object. The pace of this project also felt very fast. I am normally a slower, meticulous worker, so this was a complete change for me to make a project in such a short time period. I had a few ideas I wanted to incorporate in my prototype, but I had to cut them due to time constraints. On the other hand, working so quick was energizing.
For my partner, I made this idea book where they can track their thoughts and collect references for art projects. It has a string to attach a pen or pencil and a cardboard back to provide stability. The conflict this book solved was struggling to find inspiration for art.
To improve my design thinking, I would focus on the specific problem I want to solve more. When I chose a problem to find a solution for, I think the one I focused on was maybe a bit too broad and I struggled to think of a singular item that could solve all its elements.
Crash Course Final Project
Our prompt for Letterfoms was to create four, printmade typographic samples of a word to explore how the look of text impacts its meaning. We experimented with kerning, leading, negative space, and how we can alter prints to add to or change the meaning of our words.
The word that I chose for my Letterforms project was “deep”. I thought this word would open itself up to a lot of opportunities to experiement with creative iterations using water and bubbles. I though of this word pretty early on in my process and held on to it.
Word Mind Map for Deep Letterforms Practice Sample SheetThese are pages of my sketchbook showing my experiementation with letterforms and deciding which words I was intersted in using for the project.
This page of my sketchbook is the first place where I worked with the idea of the word “deep”. I was drawn to the water theme right away because there are so many routes one can take with it.
What I learned about letterforms through this project is that there is a difference between what words actually mean and what the appearance of the word can tell you. Where I saw this in the project was when I saw the work of my peers. When I heard the words they chose I had specific ideas in mind for them, but the way that they presented them through their art made me change my outlook. It reminded me to take every meaning of a word into consideration before assuming the first one that comes to mind is the “right” one. Besides changing my perspective, this project taught me how to creatively use a photocopier which is something I look forward to doing more of in the future.
Typographic Variations 1 and 2
These were both printed with black ink on white paper. On the variation to the left, I dragged the stamps upwards after I was printing to hopefully create the effect of the letters sinking.
If I were to continue making variants of the word “deep”, I would try doing more pieces with the idea of deep underground. I wanted to do a piece showing a splice of earth and have the surface of grass at the top and have the word deep be at the bottom under the dirt. Unfortunately, I did not have a way to do this since it was such a complicated idea to set up and I was on a time constraint. I would also try experimenting more with having the word submerged in water since my peers liked how that look turned out for one of my pieces where I put the printed word and put it in a bag of water. Adding black ink to the bag to achieve the look of dark, deep water is something I would have liked to do with this idea.
I made this variant by printing out the word “deep” and putting it in a bag of soapy water. I wanted to make a variation where the word was actually submerged in water.
To emphasize the feeling of water, I used ink in my mixture of soap and water and pressed it between two sheets of glass. I then printed “deep” over it for emphasis.
Project Overview
This project was constructed to introduce us to a variety of mediums while encouraging us to think broadly about how to capture the essence of an object or animal through different iterations of it. We made multiple versions of our iterations so we could show our creative and technical range and make art that pushes past our initial thoughts about our object. For we selected a minimum of six final iterations from our geometric, a typographic, a one-line, a collage, and two master artist iterartions - to be featured in a poster we design. The final poster was a black and white, 12 by 18 inch cardstock poster with a layout created in InDesign. For my final poster, I ended up using eight of my iterations because I added an extra one-line and collage iteration for balance.
Where I learned the most about the western painted turtle was through building it in collages and drawing it with one line. These iterations allowed me to get a solid understanding of what their silhouettes should look like and the shapes that make them. Especially in the collage iterations, I used large, chunked out pieces of turtles to replicate their form. Additionally, through my MC Escher master artist iteration, I was able to explore the texture of the turtle’s skin and shell. I also touched on this idea in my Eric Carle master iteration where I used the thickness of the paint to create a sense of texture. Having the opportunity to make many iterations and constructions of the same animal gave me a lot of chances to understand the elements that make the western painted turtle unique.
Final
My MC Escher
Master Artist iteration is my favorite work I completed this semester. I am proud of how I incorporated Escher’s style but still made it my own piece. This style of work will definitely be something I will try again in the future because I had so much fun in the process.
I enjoyed making my Eric Carle piece because it let me get a little messy and loose with the style which was a great contrast to my Escher iteration. It was relaxing to work in such simplified shapes and patterns and I thought it tied well to Carle’s work being an illustrator for children’s books.
Eric Carle
The iteration that was most challenging for me was the geometric because I usually do not work with such basic shapes. In my opinion, once you reduce something to shapes and straight angles like we did in the geometric, you lose a lot of character and naturalness of the animal. The iteration that was the most fun for me was the master artist. I was able to use a medium that I was comfortable with while experimenting with a style that was new. Specifically with my MC Escher iteration, I was able to use a lot of detail and pen which I love, but I was allowed to get creative with how I used Escher’s style in my drawing, for example, including a chain of turtles within a larger turtle’s shell.
I had never used photoshop before this project and I found that I enjoyed it as a medium. After the learning curve of finding where all the tools are located, I was able to do a lot of constructive editing to my pieces. For the future, knowing how to scan my art and refine it using photoshop will be helpful. The tool I was most interested in was the stamp where you could duplicate and stamp textures from various places on the canvas. It was so useful for cleaning up my scans and will be for future projects as well. Another tool I liked was curves, which allows you to adjust the contrast. This was helpful mostly for brightening my one line and master artist drawings.
If I continued on and did more iterations of the painted turtle, it would be fun to try more styles of different artists such as Keith Haring and Roy Lichtenstein. I learned a lot about my animal and my own art style by doing work inspired by masters artists so I would love to try it again. Another idea I had was using the medium of oil or acrylic paint. It would be a nice play on the animal’s name since it is a painted turtle, but I thought the medium would be too time consuming. Lastly, I would like to represent this animal in color rather than in grayscale because there are a lot of unique qualities about the painted turtle that get lost without color. For example, the bright red bottom shell and the yellow stripes are key features of the reptile that I had to unfortunately leave out.
Unedited MC Escher Master Artist Iteration
For our PSA posters, our guidelines were to research and write up poster specifications about a topic we care about. After that, we then switched poster briefs with another designer and followed their brief to design an 8.5 by 11 inch, black and white public service announcement poster of our own. An additional point in this project was that we were limited to text only.
It was difficult to be limited to only text. I am a fan of illustration in my work and not getting the opportunity to do that was disappointing at first. I kept thinking of ways I could add drawings to my poster, but that did not fit the project specifications. Also, my poster had a lot of information which did not leave room for me to be creative with the layout. With these limitations though, I ended up making a project I am proud of because my poster was based on balance and organization which are elements I appreciate in art.
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a condition characterized by difficulties regulating emotion. This means that people who experience BPD feel emotions intensely and for extended periods of time, and it is harder for them to return to a stable baseline after an emotionally triggering event.
https://tinyurl.com/ypvbv8fw
Communication is a key part of any relationship but communicating with a person with BPD can be especially challenging. Listening to people with BPD and acknowledging their feelings is one of the best ways to help someone with BPD calm down. When you appreciate how a person with BPD hears you and adjust how you communicate with them, you can help diffuse the attacks and rages and build a stronger, closer relationship.
https://tinyurl.com/7nwy3nfb
Wide mood swings lasting from a few hours to a few days Intense happiness
Irritability
Shame/anxiety
Ongoing feelings of emptiness Intense anger (such as frequently losing your temper)
Being sarcastic or bitter Having physical fights
https://tinyurl.com/2pue95ux
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is now: 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
BPD Resource Center:Many people affected by BPD have difficulty finding adequate information online as well as a qualified mental health professional.
https://tinyurl.com/2d6mah4w
Some ideas that I got from this project were how small details in posters can change the entire look of it. During critiques, people would mention specific details about handling text - for example, suggestions on fonts, font sizes, and spacing of words and text boxes - that I might not have thought of myself but I definitely agreed with. For future projects when I use text, I will be mindful of how the minor details can have an impact on the aesthetic of the poster and how that message is relayed to viewers.
My poster had a lot of information in it so how I balanced that was by sectioning the text into boxes and placing them evenly on each side of the poster. I think this worked well because by also using gray boxes surrounding the text, I was able to draw readers to a certain direction with the contrast these boxes created. I made the heading and subheading a much larger font than the rest of the text on the poster to make them the most eye-catching. I also bolded the headings on the paragraphs to give them emphasis since originally, they were difficult to see. Overall, to make my poster feel unified, I used the same font, but used bolder variants of it so they all matched. I also kept the text boxes gray instead of black so there was visible contrast, but not so much that it divided the poster.
The Who Designs? project was a written reflection we did based on research about an artist working in graphic design. We made our own posts about a designer of choice and when we posted ours, we responded to the writings of others to gather inspiration and knowledge for our upcoming pieces.
The graphic designer I chose for Who Designs? was Luba Lukova, a NewYork based artist who is most well known for her theme of social justice and equality. What drew me to Luba Lukova’s artwork is how bold it is. I think she introduces well known topics in a new way through her illustrations by using familiar imagery but combines it with something else to portray her messages.
I always get nervous to share information with classmates, but I felt good about the research I did because I got a lot of my content from Lukova’s own website. I also fact checked my information to make sure it was accurate before I submitted my post for my classmates to read.
After reading about some of the designers my classmates chose, I am a fan of Art Chantry’s work with music posters. I would definitely look into more of his work for inspiration in poster design or illustration. I was also intrigued by the work and style of JW and Melissa Buchanan. Their layering, colors, and details are elements of their work that I think I could learn a lot from if I saw more examples and learned about their artistic processes.
Luba Lukova
If you were guaranteed it would support you financially, what would you want to design or make for a living?
If I knew that I would be able to support myself financially, I would love to illustrate graphic novels. I discovered graphic novels in fourth grade and ever since, I have been fascinated by them and started collecting them. I think that when writing has art to go alongside it, the story gets elevated and the messages come across differently than if it was only words. Art has the ability to connect deeper with me than paragraphs on a page do which makes graphic novels so intriguing. My main hope for this career would be to illustrate novels that have already been written because I enjoy creating art more so than writing. I also would be interested in acrylic painting because it is a relaxing medium for me and I can easily lose myself in time when I pick up a brush. I would choose acrylic paint over watercolor or oil because it is the cleanest and the one that matches my style best. Though these options are my top two, I would really be grateful if I was able to find a career where I get to do creative work everyday. It has been my dream for years and any art related job is one I would be thankful to have.
Printmade Personal Project
This book was made as part of Introduction to Design at St. Norbert College in the fall of 2022. The fonts used include Times New Roman.
It was digitally printed and saddle stapled at the college’s print center.
