I don’t want to do this anymore. Maria Deau
Introduction to Design St. Norbert College Fall 2014
Throughout the semester, I continuously found myself wanting to give up. I could only do a project for so long before I did not want to do it anymore. I really liked the class, but after I spent five hours looking at a computer or trying to cut perfect shapes with an exacto knife, enough was enough. Although this class was a lot of work, I learned a lot of useful information and had fun.
I Don’t Want to do This Anymore. A reflection on the work of Maria Deau
Table of Contents
Project: Dot Line.....................................1 Project 2: Hand Lettering..................5 Project 3: Object Iteration..................9 Project 4: Children’s Book..................13
Project 1: Dot Line 1
Objectives: • To bring across an abstract idea with only dots and lines. • To try a number of different hand lettering. • To figure out how different forms of type affect the word it is spelling out. • To try and understand that all the work you have to go through will give you a better understanding of the object in the end. • To show you can create a piece with value, scale, line, and visual hierarchy. • To show you can make things well in your final result.
My understanding of Gestalt is that he uses words to explain what goes on in a piece of work. Also that he refers to space a lot and the use of space. I like to spend time on one thing, but for this project it would be hard to work on it for a long time. It definitely got me to think more simply. It was very difficult to represent ideas without illustrating them. I give feelings to things that don’t feel anything a lot. I might use this idea to convey a really complex thing simply. I think a lot of the time we get wound up in things when it could be simple. 2
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Longing
Terror
Chaotic
Abundance
The dot line project was my least favoite projects of the whole semester. It looks as though it was very simple, but it is very hard to portray a word with only dots and lines. On top of that I had limitations to what I could do with the dots and lines. The most challenging part out of the whole process was gluing the shapes down to the square of white paper. It was very difficult to glue everything without getting glue spots on the shape I was trying to glue down. Although it was difficult to glue everything down and come up with the ideas as to what I would be doing, it turned out very well for my first abstract project.
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Project 2: Hand Lettering
Objectives: • To try a number of different hand lettering. • To figure out how different forms of type affect the word it is spelling out. • To try numerous different approaches to come to a final solution after experimenting. • To show you can create a piece with value, scale, line, and visual hierarchy. • To show you can make things well in your final result. 5
Best and Worst: This Project was a lot of fun to do. Without the help of the mind map I made this project would have been a lot harder. It was hard to present it in different ways that no one else would think of trying but it was very rewarding coming up with new things. The thing that I struggled with most was figuring out a way to present them in a way that would make them look the best.
This iteration was my favorite of my finals. It came to me by accident and frustration. At the time I was working on these I really wanted to knit and so I decided to try and draw it in my iterations. It turned out to be my favorite and took me the least amount of time. Digital letters can be boring and bordered. Hand made lettering has no borders and you can do whatever you want with it. It has more feeling. I learned that hand lettering can be difficult to come up with ideas and to make it legible. I don’t think I would be able to make a font with any of the ones I made but it was fun. I wouldn’t be able to go very big. Things become unmanageable when you blow up the size. I always wanted to do street art. I don’t know how I’d do that without getting arrested though.
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Highlights: I loved this project the most. Recreating something was very fun to do and I liked how many things I could make that had a different look to each but still got at the same concept of the object. It also helped that I chose such a beautiful object to recreate in multiple ways. My favorites to do were the master artist and geometric shapes. The master artist I chose was Van Gogh. Although it does not look like Van Gogh a lot it was beautiful result. The geometric shapes was also a favorite. I did not realize how fun it was going to be until I sat down with my exacto knife and black and white paper. I was able to break my object down into simple shapes that gave my object the elegant look it portrays in itself. I enjoyed almost every aspect of this project. I love to work with paint pen paper and text.
Project 3: Object Iterations 9
Objectives: • To try different approaches of creating with different mediums. • To show range, creativity and curiosity when finding a way that works • To create a form that is unique but still recognizable and keeps the integrity of the object intact. • To try and understand that all the work you have to go through will give you a better understanding of the object in the end. • To challenge yourself to get out of your creativity box. • Use cliché to keep your object simple. 10
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I don’t want to do collage anymore.
The final result turned out very well. It took a long time to arrange all of the different iterations to look nice as a whole. It also took a good amount of time to edit all of them to the right grayscale that I wanted in Photoshop. Once I got them all in InDesign It worked out very well. After stepping away from the computer numerous times to look at my ending result from a distance to see if everything looked well where it was, I finally decided to print.
I learned that I could get at my object in so many different ways and that it could be broken down into simple things. The most challenging part was definitely collage. I don’t like it at all, nothing seemed to fit. The most enjoyable was the imitation of the master artists. I love working with paint and it was just fun to see if you could imitate them. I don’t think I did the best job, but it was fun to try nonetheless. The photoshop part wasn’t too bad, I learned how to do a lot of it in my photography class so it was pretty smooth sailing. That’s also another way of how else I could use it. If I could do anything else with this project, it would probably be with fabric. I’d love to make an owl flag or a stuffed animal. An owl flag would be kickass.
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Objectives: • Learn to work with “clients”(other students) in a professional way. • Create appropriate images from the text that was given. • Arrange the book in an appealing manner • Print the final result of your completed childrens book. Downfalls and Disappointments: I was very excited for this project, I was looking forward to it for the whole semester. When the time finally came I was very disappointed with the text I was given to work with. I thought it was going to be a great creative story and it surely was not. While working on the project I decided to try and make the pictures as interesting as I could to make up for the not so great text. That caught up with me in Photoshop. It became complicated when putting in color and taking out the shadow of the binding of my sketchbook. Although it was not as great as I
Original ^ wanted it. It turned out decent. I learned a lot in photoshop and developed my troubleshooting skills further than they currently were. One of the problems was organizing my thoughts. I did two different thumbnails since I started to drift from my original thoughts. In the end it turned out better than I thought.
Project 4: Childrens Book 13
What I went with ^
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I was very surprised to see how laid back my partner was. I thought we would have all the text in by the due date it was supposed to be. Unfortunately I got my text late and it did not meet my expectations of what I wanted. I was very excited to have the chance to illustrate a children’s book, but it did not go as well as I planned. I don’t know if my partner brought any strengths to the project. She supplied me the text and that was it, I did the rest. The most challenging part of this project was figuring out how to do things on photoshop. It is not easy to learn everything one needs to, to make a complete children’s book. If I had not taken my photography class I would have drowned in all the new knowledge. If I had to restart the project all over again, and do it more professionally, I would meet with the author and ask her if we could write it so it would be more organized and try to add a story into it. The story was very plain and I did not like having to work with such dry text, but I had to make the most of it. My inspiration for this project was trying to think of myself when I was a little kid. I remember my favorite children’s books and looking at the pictures in them. Since my text was not what I wanted, I had to make the pictures more interesting so the book would be more appealing to little kids. I tried to think of myself as a child and I went from there.
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I did what I could.
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