Mari Beltran
Art-130 Fall 2020 St. Norbert College
Crash Course How did engaging with a real person, change the direction your prototype took? What was it like showing unfinished work to another person?How did the pace feel? Quick, iterative cycles – how did that feel relative to how you normally work? Design thinking is an iterative, self-directed process. Based on what you learned—what would you go back and do next? What would you do over again?
Engaging with a real person changed the direction of my prototype because I was able to get to know them. I learned that Benjamin is a type of person who always wishes he could stop time, so I went off that to make my prototype. I didn't really like showing unfinished work because obviously it wasn't the best I can do. I didn't like how we didn't have a lot of time, but also I liked that you didn't have time to second guess yourself. What I would go back and do is ask some deeper questions. I realized when I was making the prototype I didn't really know what type of add-ons I should put on it.
Dot Line
Gestalt is how you recognize patterns and turn them into your own shapes and definitions. In this project it relates because we took words and represented and created shapes through dots and lines. For this project, I wanted to spend more time on my work because I feel like detail meant a lot in this project. No matter if you just had to nudge a dot or a line over a bit, it changes how you view the project and how it represents a word. This project affected how I view abstraction because, we had to remove obvious shapes to make our project look like the word. We were given the instruction to only use dots and lines which removes stuff from the source of the word. I do not think it was difficult to remove the illustration part of it. Maybe at first for the drafts but once you really put in the work on the detail it got easier. In this project we didn’t really have a lot of time to think about what we wanted to make or what shapes we wanted together. In a way I feel like that was a good thing, because sometimes overthinking designs they don’t look as good. This project we hard to describe and work well with both words and images.
Stability
Rejection
Longing
Letter Forms
I learned in this letterforms project that printing letterforms is very difficult, especially to get them in a straight line and make the spacing equivalent.
Scanning with the letterforms I thought was really interesting, how you can do different types of movements with your paper and make it look cool.
If I were to continue working on these letterforms I would definitely practice printing with the ink more, as I struggled with that a lot.
In this project we got to play around with text, font, and ink. Carving was another part of this project where we learned how to handle carving tools and get a feel for how the motions work. The goal of this project was to understand the impact negative space can have on font.
Object Iterations I learned that monkeys don’t really have a lot of ways to draw them which was difficult at some points. I could’ve used monkeys from company’s like, sock monkey, Paul frank etc... But I didn’t want to cry their work so I used part of their monkeys and involved them in mine.
I thought it was unique the way you can use different type font and bold font to distinguish the features. I really enjoyed overlapping the text to bring out the feature of a monkey.
The most challenging iteration for me was the collage, it was difficult to find ways to make the monkey without using ink to bring out the features of a monkey. The most enjoyable was text collage.
Me personally, I use photoshop a lot to edit my photos that I take, in doing that I knew what tools I was using. My favorite part of photoshop is the clone tool. If I had pencil marks or smudges on the paper I could use the clone stamp to erase them or other things I didn’t like about my iterations.
In this project we were told to pick an animal and show it in different ways using text, collage, shapes, and different illustration styles. This project lasted multiple weeks, and towards the end we were introduced to photoshop and Indesign. We used photoshop to make edits to our designs like adjusting the and adding more negative space. Indesign we used to print out our final project. This project was supposed to make us think more deeply into our object and show different “out of the box� ways to create it.
PSA Posters For me I am somewhat familiar with Indesign as I have used it in the past. But I feel like I learned a lot more about text in this project. In future projects or assignments I have to do in Indesign, I feel like ill know enough to go above and beyond.
My PSA poster was about getting off your phone, or stop sending do much time on it. For me, I had a lot of ideas that I could’ve used graphics with so it was a struggle only using type. Although, I found a way to interpret the social media aspect of it while only using text. I really enjoyed this project and being able to design our own posters with not a lot of restrictions. My poster had a little bit too much negative space in the top of it so I went back and changed that. Now I feel like I have the perfect amount so peoples eyes are drawn to the text I want them to see first, and the most important text.
In this project we chose what we thought was an important topic to be announced. After choosing our topic and giving some information about it, we gave it to another designer and they did all the designing. This was more of a real life project as we served as the art director and sounding board for the piece.
Presentations
The first thing that drew me to my designer was looking her up and going to images that caught my eye. Walsh’s work catches everyone eye with how bright and creative it is. She isn’t afraid to state her opinion in her work about many things. She has her own type of style and attitude in her work.
I liked Sarahs presentation and designer because it was comical and interesting. The designer really caught my eye with how bold the designs were.
In the presentations project, we had to research a designer that interests us and speak about them. This project forced people out of their comfort zone.
Me personally, I was not able to present in person infant of everyone, but i still got pretty nervous even just doing a recording.
Presentations
One project that really stood out to me that Jessica Walsh did was the 40 days of dating. In 2013, Walsh and fellow designer and friend Tim Goodman decided to date for 40 days to see if they could overcome their relationship issues and fall in love. There was a book created with Jessica Walsh’s designs inside it shown here. The project was illustrated by Jessica Walsh using her bold typographic designs. Walsh matched the designs in the book with both of their personal lives which she said was a struggle. The project was such a hit that it also turned into a movie.
Presentations
In 2016, Walsh had an idea to create a nonprofit organization to encourage women to work together rather than to compete, Ladies Wine & Design. Her goal for this organization was to bring together women, determined to help other women, and create a platform where women could share resources and exchange ideas and inspiration and lift each other and support each other instead of tearing others down. Ladies Wine & Design holds free mentorship circles, creative meetups, salon nights, and conferences. Shortly after starting this in NYC, Walsh had people from around the world contact her to start LWD in their own cities, and now they are in over 250 cities worldwide!
Vocation Questions Are you called to creative work? If so, how do you recognize that calling? If not, to what do you feel called? When I tell people that I am an Art minor, I always notice that surprised look on their face. Immidieatley they ask questions like “so you’re good at drawing?” I explain to them that art isnt about how well you can draw a self portrait or how well you can paint. I personally believe it’s always about the creative side of you and how well you can reach it. I do believe in some aspects I am called to creative work, not with a pencil and a sketchbook, but with a computer and brainstorming. My creative calling is through design. I enjoy brainstorming ideas and creating them on my computer through apps like Adobe Photoshop and Indesign. Good art is a talent, good design is a skill. What is the difference between a good life and a significant life? I believe the difference between a good life and a significant life is how one self defines happiness. In my opinion, a good life is a person having the perfect life, the white picket fence, living like the Joneses. Yes, that sounds like an amaziing life but, are you truly happy? A significant life in my definition is maybe not having all the money in the world, but truly being the best you and finding happiness without having the materialistic side of things. A significant life is the quote “money can’t buy happiness.”