Lara Deshler Process Book

This was my first year at SNC and I have already experienced many new things throughout my time here. In just a few short months I have changed my major, competed at the colleigte level in track, and took my first ever design class. Thought this course I have not only learned more about design but I have learn a lot about myself. This class brought me out of my comfort zone as an artist, and brought light to what I want to do with my future. I am excited to continue my education in the design field.

D-School

Objectives: This was the first actitvity we did in design. This was a very fast paced partner activity that introduced us to the idea of working with a client. They presented us with a problem they had experineced this year at school and we were given the task of finding a solution to their problem. You had to work fast and efficently which was a big challenge when you are trying to come up with solution that satisfies your clients wants and needs.

These are the five rough sketchs that are personalized to hopefully help slove my clients problem of not waking up on time. I chose to make the shaking bed as the final product with a few alterations from my original idea

Reflection: As someone who likes to take their time on projects this was a real challenge for me. I was not able truly pay attention to the details or make sure my work would meet the standards of my client so this was a very stressful activity for me. After engaging with my client I was able to get a good idea of what they wanted which made it much easier to finalize my design. Through this process I learned that I get stressed in these situations and in the future I would plan out more materials I could use so everything is more stable and less messy when I am done with my creation. This would’ve given me a better outcome even in a time crunch.

Final Design: My final design is a bed that shakes you awake for extra motivation to get your day started. Not only does it wake you up in the morning it also has a heating or cooling setting that comes with a massage. To portray my design I used cardboard, wine caps, blue and red string, and a few stickers to add some color.

Dot-Line

Objectives: Dot-Line was one of the most time consuming and tedious projects we completed this semester. We were told to represent emotions without illustrating them with only dots and lines. By doing this we learned about value, scale, line, and visual heirarchy while making strong abstract compostions.

These are the thumbnail sketchs I did for the three words I picked to portray. Which included Rejection, terror, and energentic.

To help form ideas for the very small thumbnail sketches we used our precut shapes and aligned them in a 4x4 square so we could see how it made us feel on paper

These compositions are my work in progress compositions made on 4x4 sqaures of construction paper. After this critique I was able to make the proper revisions and finishing touches for my final compositions from the feedback I recieved from my peers.

Energetic

Reflection: This project really allowed me to move away from trying to make the circles and lines into shapes that represented something more than a dot or line. To do this I chose to focus on making my compositions more emotional and attempted to create a vast variety that were different from my peer’s art. One of my pieces ended up being the odd one out and ultimately made it the most interesting to most of my classmates during the in process critique. The process of coming up with lots of thumbnail sketches was very challenging for me at first. It was difficult to represent ideas I had in my head without illustrating them. After I worked with the pieces of paper I cut out a rearranged them physically this became an easy task to accomplish. I got into a groove and was able to come up with ten more compositions super easily. I really enjoyed making well-crafted objects and really taking my time on something. This is ultimately super relaxing for me and I am glad we did this project although it took a lot of time and effort. I was able to clear my head and just focus on what my hands were doing rather than focusing on everything else that is going on around me. Spending that little bit of extra time perfecting these pieces was more relaxing than stressful for me.

Letterforms

Objectives: This project was designed for us so we can work with one of the biggest parts of design. We did this project to work collectively as a class so we could go from carving 2 letters individually to making an entire alphabet with our class. The final goal of this project was to have a total of four typographic ink prints of the same word.

To begin this project we made a word map and did handlettering to pick a word we wanted to print in ink.

The versions seen above are my first four prints I completed in both ink and through stratagies using the photocopier. These were the prints I presented for the in process critique . Two of the four original print I made ended up in the final critique and the other two had dramatic changes from the time between the in process critique to our classes final critique.

Final Letterform Compositions

This is my final iteration for the letters plus a modification. I ended up steering away from the music staffs and replaced a letter with a treble clef instead.

This is the iteration of my choosing I used sheet music from on of my favorite songs “Let It Be” by The Beatles for this iteration. I originally printed directly on the sheet music but for contrast I chose to use the sheet music as letters.

Final straight print which included letters only printed in a straight line.

Final typographic variation which included letters with modifications. As you can see I only modified one letter for this composition.

Reflection: Working with ink during the letterforms project I learned how difficult it was to print by hand. Getting the correct placement and correct amount of ink is a very tedious process that takes a lot of time. When you change the placement or amount of chatter you get many different outcomes and you can depict many emotions. If I were going to continue working with the letters and I would reprint my word with real ink to get the texture of the real ink on the page. I think the texture brings a lot to the piece and it would be really interesting to see my final pieces with real ink rather than a copy of it.

Who Designs?

Objectives: The who designs project was put in place for us to learn and research a designer that interests us. Not only did we get to research a designer we also got to share the information we learned with our peers. We did this because researching someone elses work can often improve our own and give us new ideas and way of interpreting art.

Reflection: I chose to research Steven Heller. Steven Heller was born July 7, 1950, in New York City, and attended the Walden School as well as military school. Steven Heller, is an author, critic, commentator, speaker, and educator, and is one of the main leading voices in design criticism and writing. He attended New York University, School of Visual Arts and began his career as an art director in 1974 for the New York Times. Heller is now a co-chair of the School of Visual Arts MFA (Master of Fine Arts) Design program. Throughout his career, he has written over 170 books and articles from graphic design and illustration to political art. These books helped him bring back the importance of history to design and many young designers have learned to cherish his work and now credit him with their success. He has truly helped so many people shape their careers in design with his generous amounts of advice for students and readers in need of inspiration. I was drawn to Steven Heller because of how much publishing he has done as an artist. I find it incredible that he focuses so much on educating the next generation of artists. I am happy to have someone in our world that cares this much about the history of design and will not allow it to fade away in history. Being able to share information with my classmates was a great experience and I really enjoyed reading everyone else research as well. When I have more time I would choose to research Gail Anderson. I originally had Gail Anderson as my top artist to do research on but it was taken by three other people.

Object Iterations

Objectives: This project was designed to encourage us to think and create in new ways. We used many different types of media and learned about many different artists and were encouraged to try their process of making art. This project shows a wide variety art that were made with many different techniques. The techniques I used included variaions of art by Banksy, Eric Carle, continuous line, geometric, collage, and a typographic iterations.

Banksy Iteration

Rough Draft Object Iteration Poster

Final Object Iteration Poster

Reflection: During this process, I learned that fitting a tall object in a square space is more complicated than I imagined. This kept me from using many of the designs since it did not fit the specifications of the poster. Making this poster pleasing was a challenge since there were not many options for the giraffe’s body position. This made my iterations all very similar and was not the most interesting to look at overall. We used many different type of media for this project some were much more complicated than other. The media that was the most challenging for me was the master artist. Using Banksy as one of my master artists was fun and was a great experience but the spray paint was very messy and easy to mess up. It took many rough drafts in order to to the the Banksy iteration to my standard. The most enjoyable media I got to work with and learn more about was the collage making. I really enjoyed using all the different objects in magazines that you could use to make my giraffe iterations. The biggest thing we tackeled during this project was using photoshop! I learned that using Photoshop is a very slow process for beginners and it is easy to get frustrated when you do not have much time to play around with it and figure out the tricks of Photoshop on your own. I think moving forward I will watch more videos and follow along making it easier for shortcuts and tricks to stick in my head.

PSA Poster

Objectives: This project was designed so we could be both the designer and the “art director”. We started out by giving our own brief to a fellow designer and recieved one from them as well. The goal of this project was to work and gain more experience working with type as well as working with another person.

Potential layouts for client

WHY SAY GAY?

• Teach them to accept difference

• Create a safe space to explore their identity

• Make them feel seen

• Help them understand they are not alone

• Give them a support system outside the home

For more information on LGBTQ spaces

Contact your state legislator and tell them you support LGBTQ inclusive education

Kids deserve LGBTQ inclusive schools!

Why Say GAY?

Kids deserve LGBTQ inclusive schools

!

• Teach them to accept difference

• Create a safe space to explore their identity

• Make them feel seen

• Help them understand they are not alone

• Give them a support system outside the home

For more information on LGBTQ spaces:

Contact your states legislator and tell them you support LGBTQ inclusive education:

My PSA poster compared to other campus posters

Reflection: Working with type was one of the eaiser parts of doing the PSA poster project. It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be to work with only type and have no images. My client provided me with a lot of type to work with which made it much easier for me to fill in the space on my poster. I really liked working with type rather than pictures because it really stretched my brain on how to present it in a well-mannered order that fulfilled my client’s vision. For my poster I wanted it to look neat and put together, so it was attractive to anyone who looked at it or passed by. For this poster I used very bold text that stood out and reminded me personally of what the poster was trying to portray. I also used negative space to outline each individual portion of text to give it structure so I did not have to use strokes to separate the text since it was able to stand on its own. My favorite part of this project was learning how to use type in InDesign. This will be very helpful in the future for other design classes or even a campus job. Something new I learned during this project was he idea of having a hierarchy. This is something I have never thought of when doing design so I will use that strategy in my work moving forward.

Vocational Questions

What is the greatest failure you’ve experienced in your life?

One of my greatest failures was something I noticed just this year as a freshman in college. I started to choose other things over my own mental health which was one of the greatest failures I have experienced in my life. I lost all motivation to do homework, participate in choir and track, and even lost the motivation to go to class. By doing this I failed myself and let myself down and others in the end. At first, I just over booked myself so I was unable to deal with any mental health issues I was experiencing. It was about February when it started to affect me physically and not just mentally anymore. I was exhausted and mentally drained when I finally told my roommate that she needed to hold me accountable for ignoring my mental health on a daily basis and she helped me make an appointment with CAPS. Recognizing my own mental health issues was one of the hardest things I have had to overcome this year and I will never fail myself like that again. It set me back in life for a few months and I was unable to thrive here at SNC like I am now.

Are you called to creative work? If so, how do you recognize that calling? If not, to what do you feel called to?

I do not always feel called to creative work but something that helps me get into a creative mood has always been and always will be music. I have been called to music my entire life because of the town I grew up in and the family that surrounded me. I have loved music from a very young age especially singing whether it’s in my room, at choir, or with my dad’s band. Singing is something I really enjoy and often resort to if I am stressed or feeling overwhelmed. I started singing when I was about 4 years old with my dad and older sister at his acoustic gigs in downtown Hastings. Since then I have continued to sing in choir since I was in 4th grade till now as a freshman in college. Singing is something I am able to enjoy and be myself when I do it and it truly is one of my callings. I do not have many ways to deal with my stress and I do not know what I would do without having music constantly around me. As I have grown I have learned to appreciate this calling more and more and so have the people around me even though singing in front of people is not the easiest thing to do. It has brought me out of my shell as a person from time to time and it is a gift I would not give up for anything.