DREAMSPIRED A BFA Graphic Design Thesis project by Mary-Anne Ramirez
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DREAMSPIRED A BFA Graphic Design Thesis project by Mary-Anne Ramirez
(DREAM + INSPIRED)
TABLE OF CONTENTS What is Dreamspired?......................................................7 Research............................................................................13 Sketching..........................................................................21 In-progress......................................................................31 Final.................................................................................41
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WHAT IS DREAMSPIRED?
DREAMSPIRED
is a collection of dreams submitted by creative people brought to life through illustration. The project also aims to teach others how to remember their dreams, how to keep a dream journal, and lucid dreaming techniques.
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Why do we need it? Not many people understand their dreams. They also don’t know that much about them. When I was learning about dreams, I often found that the websites were too text heavy, used little to no imagery, and were not well designed. DREAMSPIRED aims to show how the creative mind can be inspired by dreams. The project also informs readers on the different techniques all in one simple, compact, well-designed website.
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During my Pecha Kucha presentation, I explained the four main components of my project: collecting dreams, illustrating those dreams, and informing people about lucid dreams and their connection to creativity and inspiration. 10
REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage is where dreams occur. This happens between one to four hours after the person has fallen asleep. It is important for lucid dreamers to understand the sleep cycle. 11
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RESEARCH
INTERVIEWING JARED ZEIZEL After talking to Jared Zeizel, co-author of “A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming: Mastering the Art of Oneironautics” I started to gain more inspiration for my project. He studied film-making in college and told me that he often uses his dreams as a source of inspiration for his short films. He gave me a general background on the techniques of lucid dreaming and was interested in my project idea. Jared told me that he hasn’t seen a site that has tried to tie dreaming and creativity together. He suggested that to make my website interesting that I could include different types of art (drawing, design, photography, and even feature video or animation on my website). This pushed me in the right direction.
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I watched the movie Waking Life which was very interesting and dealt with the concept of lucid dreaming and becoming aware when one dreams to control what happens.
“Seems like everyone’s sleep-walking through their waking state, or wake-walking through their dreams.”
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Jessica Walsh This was an interesting interview with Jessica Walsh, a graphic designer who lucid dreams and incorporates her dreams into her work. Lucid dreaming was also mentioned in 40 Days of Dating, Day 35. Walsh designed a handwritten poster showing her 5 steps to lucid dream. 16
The Strange World of Your Dreams (1952) by Jack Kirby This comic, which only lasted 4 issues persuaded readers to submit their dreams and would create comics out of them. Fictional dream therapist Richard Temple interpreted the dreams sent in by readers and the dreams were illustrated by Jack Kirby and Mort Meskin. The first issue promised $25 for every dream that would be selected for publication! This is similar to my idea of taking the stories of the creatives I interviewed and creating illustrations based on them.
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Uncanny Surrealism and Graphic Design curated by Rick Poyner The Moravian Gallery Brno, Czech Republic 22 June – 24 October 2010 Uncanny: Surrealism and Graphic Design, conceived and curated by Rick Poynor for the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Czech Repulic is the first major exhibition to explore the influence of Surrealism on graphic design. Featuring more than 250 items — posters, prints, books, magazines, typefaces and films — Uncanny investigates the profound impact of Surrealist ideas and images on visual communication from the 1930s to the present day.
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Work by graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister
I began researching Surrealism. The aim of this art movement was to “resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality.” I found myself most interested in Dali’s work. He created paintings by often falling asleep before working and dreaming what he wanted to create. He depicted a dream world in which commonplace objects are juxtaposed, deformed, or otherwise metamorphosed in a bizarre and irrational fashion. Dalí portrayed these objects in meticulous, almost painfully realistic detail and usually placed them within bleak, sunlit landscapes that were reminiscent of his Catalonian homeland.” The purpose of this research was to show how using dreams in a creative way is not a relatively new concept. Dreams have been used as a source of inspiration for many years in art history, even prior to the Surrealist era.
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SKETCHING
EARLY MAKING I began sketching ideas for my logo and creating wireframes to help me figure out which direction I wanted to go for my project. I decided that I wanted to create a website which showed the collection of dreams I would be illustrating, as well as all the information about dreams I had learned about from my research prior.
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Brandon Grotesque DIN 30640 Std
I created a mood board to help me decide which colors were appropriate and what tone, imagery, and typefaces I wanted for my project. I liked the idea of incorporating textures of clouds and keeping the palette light green and blue.
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In order to collect dreams, I created a poster which I hung around campus. When people emailed me, I asked them questions like: Where do you normally gain inspiration from? What do you dream about? How do you incorporate dreams into your artwork? What about dreaming do you wish to learn more about? 24
I also shared the poster on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr (www.dreamspired.tumblr.com). I found that after I created a Tumblr, lucid dreamers started to follow me, and the emails about dreams started rolling in.
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I created wireframes for my website and designed a splash page which played with the idea of entering the dreamworld and a sleeping brain.
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FEEDBACK Here is a list of feedback I got from the midterm: 1. It wasn’t clear that the artwork was created by me and not the dreamer. Find a way to show that. 2. Show more imagery. “People don’t like to read.” For the About page I need images of me creating the illustrations or sketches of what I’m working on to show that I am making illustrations based on people’s dreams. 3. Play with the top banners more, and the nav bar (works better for a mobile rather than desktop). 4. Play with layout, make illustrations the focus of the page. 5. What is the purpose of the project? WHAT MAKES IT INTERESTING?
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I met with Aleanna to get feedback from another professor. She suggested that I needed some abstract elements and showed me a project where students took photos of textures and cut them up to collaged them back together in a different way. So, I took photos of clouds because I felt those related to dreams and I created collages out of them, getting more abstract as I went along. I tried using these in the dream guide on my website, but they competed too much with the content so I decided to use it for something else.
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IN-PROGRESS
POST CRITIQUE After the last critique, I was stuck and ran out of ideas. I began looking at what I had done previously. I examined my list of design practitioners and research again for inspiration. I purchased a one page, scrollable theme for my website, took photographs of my process, changed the look for the dream illustrations and created a whole new aesthetic.
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I chose to use the photos I’ve taken of my process for my website’s homepage. I decided to have the photos black and white to make the blue I chose stand out. Images shown are the illustrations in progress and my dream journals.
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After I changed my project name from Dream Creatively to Dreamspired, I needed a new logo. I chose two shades of blue to represent night and day and to also be reminiscent of dreaming. I also designed a pillow/cloud shape to surround the title of the project.
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I’ve became inspired by Martin O’Neill and Andre Bergamin. They are illustrators who create collage art and incorporate them in book jackets, type, magazine layouts, etc.
Martin O’Neill
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Andre Bergamin
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My messy work station After numerous sketching, I found that I wanted to show the most important details of the dream. I started with pencil sketches and traced them with ink and soon found myself experimenting with watercolor and photo collage. I wanted to create interesting dream-like compositions by combining all the elements of the dream into one almost surreal like atmosphere.
For my process, I collected about 30 dreams on my blog. As soon as I read a dream, I imagined what it would look like and began skecthing. I wanted all the illustrations to have a collage-like quality and be 10 x 10 inches. I knew I wanted to make them into animated gifs, so I decided what part of the illustations would move. I liked this technique because I could use hand drawn elements (illustrations, lettering, etc) and photographs together. Once the illustrations were done on paper, I worked with the different layers in Photoshop to create the animations.
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FINAL
BRINGING DREAMS TO LIFE Out of the 30 dreams I collected, I decided to illustrate twelve of those dreams and feature them on the Dreamspired website. The website has six sections: a home page, an about page, a page for the dreams, a dream guide, a submission page, and a page that provides links to my portfolio.
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THE ILLUSTRATIONS
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12 illustrations based on dreams submitted by creative people: writers, filmmakers, graphic designers, and fine artists.
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The Dream Guide I designed a dream guide that was easy to follow and included an edited version of all the research I found about dreams, along with my personal experience. I included a section on how to remember your dreams, how to keep a dream journal, a list of dream signs, and a detailed description of lucid dreaming techniques.
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After all the content was placed on the website, I designed 5 x 5 inch takeaways for the thesis show. I chose 3 dreams that had a similar color palette. The dream illustration is shown on one side of the takeaway and an excerpt of the dream, description of the project, and site URL are on the back.
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I also made a box to place on my table for the show so people can write down their dreams and place them in the box to be potentially illustrated and featured on the website.
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Getting People Dreamspired I created a promotional video in Hype which can be found on the About page of the website. I wanted to inspire people to write down and submit their dreams. The video gives a brief introduction to the project in a fun, playful way.
I decided to design a 22 x 30 inch poster. I thought it would interesting to take one of the sections from the dream guide on my website and make the poster informative. However, I felt that the poster looked too visually different (lacked color and imagery) from the rest of my project, so I decided not to persue it. If I had more time, this is definitely something I would like to have explored more.
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How did this project impact you as a designer / student / person?
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Overall, I would say I am happy with the way my thesis project turned out. I had no idea the result will look like this when I first started. I’m glad that I let myself explore and experiment more than I ever did for any previous design project. I learned a lot about web design, which was something I once struggled with. As a dreamer, I learned not only more about myself and why I find so much inspiration from my dreams, but I also learned about others and how sharing dreams can be interesting.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY • DeAngelis, Tori, “The Dream Canvas. Are Dreams a Muse to the Creative?”, 2003, Vol 34, No. 10, http://www.apa.org/ monitor/nov03/canvas.aspx Web. 22 Oct. 2013. • Tuccillo, Dylan, Jared Zeizel, and Thomas Peisel. “A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming: Mastering the Art of Oneironautics.” New York: Workman, 2012. Print. • http://www.lucidity.com/ Web 27 Jan. 2014
Dreamspired Designed by Mary-Anne Ramirez BFA Graphic Design Thesis Spring 2014 Professor Amy Papaelias 55
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