*Internally Screaming* Kyra Kronberg ART 130 Spring 2018
*Internally Screaming* Surviving my first Art class
Table of Contents DSchool........6-7 Dot-Line.......8-9 Text/Letter....10-13 Iterations.....14-19 Data viz.......20-23 Saul Bass......24-25
Overview
This semester, I decided to try design. I didn’t know what to expect from this class, however, I gained an appreciation for art and learned a lot about what design is. I only took one art class in high school, so this class proved to be a challenge, but as I learned more through the semester, I was able to grow as a designer. There were times I loved this class, and other times I considered flinging myself off a building, but it was in those challenges that I was able to learn the most. At the beginning of each project, I would have moments of panic because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do. But that’s the point, nobody comes up with the perfect ideas right away. Design takes time, development, trial and error, and that’s exactly what this book reflects.
DSchool
Objective/Reflection When working with a client, designers have to get to know their clients in detail to be able to come up with the finished product. In this activity, we hat to designate a problem, and provide a solution (gift) for them using anything that was in the room in ten minutes, and this also allowed an opportunity for us to get to know our classmates. I was paired with Cate, and her “problem” was that she needed to spend more time with her sister. So after a little thought, I decided to create a wheel that Cate and her sister could spin, to decide how they could spend time together. Engaging with someone else made me think outside of my own mind, and try to look at things from their perspective. Since I was making something for them, I had to keep them in mind with every step we continued with. I was ok with giving them unfinished work with the knowledge that it was a “prototype.” They also knew it wouldn’t be perfect because of the time constraint. However, I know the real world wouldn’t be as forgiving.
The pace itself felt quick and rushed, and my mind sort of went into a panic, so I literally just started grabbing supplies, building, and my “Eureka!” moment didn’t really come until there was two minutes left. From the beginning of the 10 minutes I was just putting stuff together not knowing what I was making, until the idea hit me. I learned that design is a lot of trial and error, and you don’t necessarily need to know what you’re doing to start. You just start with nothing, build, and that’s where the best ideas come. .Cate wanted to spend more time with her I ended up making cate a Twister inspired contraption to help her decide how she could spend quality time with her sister. With this, she is able to spin the circle and whatever it lands on, is the activity they will do.
Dot line
Objective/Reflection The goal for this project was to learn how to think abstractly. Our instructions were to create iterations of words with dots and lines, using value and scale as our only tools. Gestalt kind of reflected simplicity and clarity. We had to portray objectives without being too literal and using actual symbolism. We used our natural (sometimes cultural) reactions and concepts (reading right to left, sense of gravity, etc.) to try to explain an image through dots and lines. Gestalt reflected this project well because we had to explain something visually, yet be as simplistic as possible. You can’t really get
simpler than lines and dots. It was crazy how even just flipping an image could give it so much more clarity. It also gave me insight into design in a way that its not about expressing something necessarily, but explaining. It took me a little while to realize this. Abstraction was a difficult concept for me to grasp, but I work as hard as I could to complete this project to the best of my ability. I found the cutting and gluing frustrating and I’ve also discovered that I have difficulty cutting straight. I am usually a perfectionist when it comes to the projects or anything I work on, so I was beyond flustered with this project at times. It
also forced me to think in an empathetic view point, and try to see my projects through the viewers eyes without making it too literal. I even had to change my words a few times to get a word I could work with. I started off doing stability, but I found it a little too difficult to express. Each person is different in how they think, so it was a matter of trying to capture the general view of everyone. I don’t think I will master abstract art anytime soon, but this project was perfect to introduce me to design and art.
Oppression
Freedom
Longing
Text Letter
Objective/Reflection The purpose of this assignment was to practice and create four different text forms and iterations. In the process we used systems like mind mapping to draw text forms from ideas. For mine, I used charcoal, paper, paint, as well as a real life iteration. I learned a lot about letter forms, mostly how they can communicate and send different messages. I never realized how much font could affect the context of the word or express different
messages. If you worked for an ad company and were trying to make a logo for say, Rave, you wouldn’t use pretty cursive, bubble text, or in the case of a 3D model, you wouldn’t spell out “Rave” in books. We took the literal route of using specific words, but it was more about finding the communication of subjects associated with the words. Certain fonts send out different messages, so I know when thinking of the word “Ache,” you don’t
see a straight, clean, serif looking font, it should look like more of a gritty style. I would like to spend time improving calligraphy. I love cursive style letters, and I would love to learn how they can be better incorporated into designs. What I mean about that, someone in the class did an amazing cursive design that I would love to learn. It wasn’t just cursive, but there were designs within the words that made it more visually
appealing. I have yet to master a paint brush, but for someone whos never used paint outside of an elementary school art class, this was a great project to teach me how different brushes can affect and communicate
fonts and letters. I was able to fill tens of pages with different ideas on how I could communicate the word, but I could go hundreds more trying to perfectly execute it. I got most of my final drafts close to how I wanted
them to communicate, and from the critiques, I seemed to have gotten their messages across. I hope to develop more skills in Typography in the future and get better as I go.
Trial and Error
With this charcoal iteration, I wanted to express a darker form of mind. I drew a more ragged form of mind.
For this form of mind, I experimented with cursive. I used water deluted paint and various brushes to get a cloudy formed background.
Though this text iteration turned out the best, it was actually my last minute piece. It was actually the night before these were all due, and I came up with the idea to use the background as a source of the text.
For my three dimensional iteration, I went to the library to use books. I recieved a few weird looks in the process, but I was able to use various sizes to balence the books into the word “mind�.
Iterations
Objective/Reflection
For this assignment, we were able to pick an animal or object to make iterations of, so I picked a Red Fox. We were to create six different iterations with typography, collage, continuous line, geometric, and two with different master artists. This was my favorite project in the semester because it allowed me to learn how designers actually work. I learned so much by just playing around on photoshop. I learned a lot about Red Foxes through this process. I have always been intrigued by the way they’re portrayed in pop culture as the thieves or villains, but I’ve come to the conclusion it’s because of the fact they commonly feed on poultry, rabbits, and other newborn animals. I’ve read several articles exploring this theory, and I came across stories in comments of said articles of foxes
attacking chickens and other small animals, giving foxes a bad name. However, foxes do need to eat and unfortunately, that’s just the way of the food chain. Though I learned a lot more about the red fox in general, this was a question I had in my head when selecting my object. I also learned of the specific details that distinguishes a Red Fox from other foxes and animals in general, not using the colors red or orange. InDesign was pretty challenging, although I picked up on it pretty quickly in the beginning, I relied on classmates help figure out ways to layout my iterations. I had used inDesign in high school to layout the school newspaper, but everything was always just kind of set for me, so it was just a bunch of pasting text and images. I really enjoyed using Photoshop because I got to learn quite a bit about what I could do
with it. The “shift” key to make straight lines was probably my favorite trick I learned… I used it so much! My classmates were super helpful in teaching me small tricks that made HUGE differences in my work. I used Photoshop in a Graphics class I took in high school, but though it was sort of just a filler class I didn’t learn much in, the object iterations project really helped me expand my knowledge of photoshop! I’ve also started looking into animation through photoshop as some side projects. What can’t Photoshop do? Just learning and getting familiar with the concept of layers was huge for me. The Roy Lichtenstein iteration was very difficult in the fact my layers had to be specifically placed. Then using the halftone and cutting around where it needed to be placed was a helpful in building
skills with the magic wand tool. I also learned about creating in general within photoshop. I never knew that designs made in photoshop are commonly started by hand.
This opened up so many doors for me in terms of making future content and exploring Photoshop outside of class! I can’t express how helpful the knowledge I’ve gained of
Photoshop through this project will help me in the future. Also, I’m in love with the shift keystraight line tool.
Trial and Error
This iteration is made from text from various magazines, after sketching several forms in my sketch book, I was able to form them with glue onto grey paper. From there I scanned in, and used photoshop to adjust the coloring, straighten lines, and erase glue marks.
For this collage iteration, I used a picture of a some tablecloth pattern in a magazine. I was able to reverse the color, adjust the lines, and touch it up with the paint bucket tool. Out of all of my iterations, this one probably took the most time from a lot of trial and error.
I chose Saul Bass because a lot of his previous work looked familiar, so I decided to look into his work and try an iteration after him. Some of his work are geometric silhouette forms, so I was able to form this fox with paint.
The continuous line involved the most trial and error. We started this project out with practice drawing my classmates in a continuous line, which were not the prettiest art forms I’ve made. Once I started on the fox forms, I was able to simplify it, and later touch it up in photoshop.
Because a fox’s form is commonly imagined to be triangles, I decided to form the geometric iteration from various triangles. This was probably the least time consuming, and in the end, I reversed the color because the white lines on black really made the shapes stand out more.
Out of all of my iterations, I am the most proud of this one. When I chose Roy Lichtenstein as a master artist to copy, I chose him because I am a huge fan of comic books and his use of half tones gave it that comic feel. When it came to actually copying his style, I got beyond frustrated and didn’t know where to start. Just when I was about to switch to a different artist, I played around with some fox iterations I had drawn out on photoshop, and gave it more feminine looking eyes, and put a half tone on it. This iteration is my favorite because of all the frustration I went through to get the final product. I was also able to reference my favorite middle school meme in the process.
Data viz
Objective/Reflection
For this project, we began by talking about credible data, and how to spot a good source from a bad. Visually, we were limited to one color palette, and we practiced using visual hierarchy. From this project, I discovered the Adobe color wheel, which has since become my best friend when selecting colors in any of my projects. I particularly liked working on this project because it gave me a chance to research a topic I am very passionate about. My father was a police officer for over twenty years and was heavily involved in fighting the epidemic in Plymouth by organizing presentations and drug drop offs, and I personally know so many people who have fallen victim to prescription opioid abuse, so being
able to express a story on an issue like this was a great opportunity, and I would love to continue making posters like these in the future. I learned a lot about visual hierarchy just by trial and error of asking my classmates to critique my work throughout the process. One big thing that I didn’t notice right away, was that my poster had a white bottle cap on it, when there wasn’t any other white in the poster. I realized the importance of balance in color, but also that there might be things you would like to stand out more, so you can use that to your advantage. From my classmates’ feedback, I was able to realize the importance of visual hierarchy, and balance out colors, and make the items I want stand out. I also learned
a lot about research and the importance of finding accurate sources. There are several bias websites/sources that don’t give out accurate information or even leave some out. As for color, I loved being able to explore the Adobe color wheel. I didn’t realize all the different types of color matching (Monochromatic, etc.), so it was nice to see all that put to use. There were so many options and it took a while to decide, but someone in the class told me to try a color scheme that reminded me of my topic, so that helped narrow it down. As far as visually showing data, we had a few mini assignments to help us get an idea of how we could visually portray data...
The first assignment was to visually show our family in some way through data representation. I decided to show my family’s facebook usage because it dramatically varied, and the only form of social media my whole family uses. I used photoshop to make mini phones that I used in a bar graph to represent my family, labelled on the x- axis, and our hours of usage on the y- axis.
For the second and final mini assignment, I was able to expose the embarrassing amount of time I spend on social media. We had to rank each social media site we used on if we were a “visitor” or a “resident”, and then if we used it for personal or professional use.
Prescription Opioid Abuse in US Prescription opioid are prescribed by doctors to treat moderate-severe pain and are often prescribed following surgery or injury. Today, too many opioids are prescribed, leading to potential addiction.
89
States with Highest Death Rates due to overdose
Deaths Everyday
(Per 100,000 people)
32,445 Deaths from abuse in 2016
Number of Opioids Prescribed per 100 people
52- 71 72-82 82-95 96-143
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid
https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/index.html
https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/prescribing.html
1/5 Patients are Prescribed Opioids
West Virginia: 52 Ohio: 40 New Hampshire: 39 Pennsylvania: 38 Kentucky: 34
Saul Bass
Objective/Reflection As far as presenting to my classmates, I could’ve talked for the full hour about bass, but sadly, we were only allowed so much time. I also have a slight fear of public speaking (getting better), so it was kind of hard to portray just how excited I really am about Saul Bass. He did something nobody else dared to, and that’s something I’ve always
tried to live by. As far as presenting to my classmates in particular, I felt perfectly fine, mostly because I’ve made friends with the majority of them. As far as other designers, I would love to look into Jessica Walsh who Maddie talked about. I was working on trying to get my PowerPoint on the Google Drive during the beginning of
her presentation (still listening in), but when I looked up and saw Walsh’s work I was amazed and just stopped what I was doing to watch closer. The image that shocked me was the image with “be bold” floating, kind of using typography with dust. I think in general, Jessica Walch just seems like an amazing modern designer that I’d love to look into.
I remember looking through the list of designers and their art and after seeing Saul Bass, I knew I wanted to focus on him. I looked through his designs and they looked familiar to the end title sequence of the Incredibles. I was intrigued and decided to look into him further and found that he did not in fact design the end titles to the Incredibles, but he did title sequences for several other films, and looking through his work, he displayed a simplistic style of design, that really emphasizes the importance of storytelling. Creativity and storytelling are the primary reasons I decided to study Media, so researching someone who is so passionate about storytelling is so inspiring. I would love to go to film school one day, so to research a designer who also dabbled in film was a lot of fun!
Dear Classmates, Thank you for a great semester. It is not only through your instruction and constructive criticism that’s allowed me to grow in art and design, but it is also the encouragement I’ve received from you to take risks and try new things. I have made several friendships this semester that will span outside of the classroom, and I am beyond grateful for that.
This book was made as part of Introduction to Design at St. Norbert College in the Spring of 2018. The font used includes Monaco. It was digitally printed and saddle stapled at St. Norbert college’s print center.
Fail Harder.