A Collection of Ramblings Throughout the Thesis Process
Written by Ashley LaBombard
Self-Care is... A collection of ramblings throughout the thesis process
Written by Ashley LaBombard
Typefaces used were Skippy Sharp created by Chank Diesel in 1995, and variations of Futura PT created by ParaType type in 1995, based upon Futura created by Paul Renner in 1927 Printed by Lulu Press, inc. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from Maine College of Art Portland, ME 2020 ŠAshley LaBombard 2020
Special Thanks to Paul Adams for letting me steal his belt sander during extended spring break, both of my dads for not only teaching how to use power tools and helping me build part of my exhibition despite not being able to see it through to fruition yet, my family as a whole for supporting me through everything, and my friends for keeping me sane throughout the process, which I know was not always easy.
CONTENTS Week One
2
Week Two:
4
9 Self-Care Moodboard
Week Three: 11 Kick-Start Typographic Poster
Week Four: 15 Branding Elements 16 Habit Tracker
Week Five Week Six: 23 Kindness Take Away Cards
6 9 14 16
Week Seven:
18
MIDTERM CRITIQUE
22
Week Eight:
25
Week Nine
28
Week Ten
30
7 Self-Care is...Diverse Infographic 2 28 Mindfulness Prompt Take Away Cards
35 Self-Care is... Infographic
Week Eleven
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Week Twelve
34
Week Thirteen
36
Week Fourteen
38
Week Fifteen
40
Finals 43
Start of a project
Change over to remote learning
Self-Care is...
WEEK ONE My overall Mood: Happy, but getting up early stinks
Something Good That Happened: We got a snow day!!!!
Thank goodness for the key word assignment we were given. Being forced to think of one hundred words surrounding the topic we wanted to study really forced me to look outside the box. Looking back at these words, and eventually flushing them out when I came to a new idea allowed me to assign myself a space to create something different.
Something Nice I did for Myself: I got my schedule all set up
It’s week one of Senior Independent Projects and I already changed my idea for thesis. My original idea was to study the aesthetics of comfort and build a brand identity around this. This idea came from the thesis brainstorm Charles had us do before we left for winter break. I really wanted to make some kind of cafe or restaurant that focused on comfort foods.
My plan now is to look more into aspects of self-care and mindfulness in relation to comfort and design. It is so easy to get overwhelmed by the constant stimulation of the digital age; we need to learn to step back and take a break from the screen. Something as simple as meditating for ten minutes a day can help people live happier, healthier lives. I want to explore ways to help people facilitate things like this into their daily routines.
After our first class on Monday I decided to take a look at the thesis archives in the library to find out what projects have been done surrounding the topic. Low and behold it turns out that this had been done by a graphic design student back in 2013. Not wanting to recreate something that had been done I decided to change my idea. I didn’t want to scrap it completely though I started looking for areas I could riff off of. 2
One Hundred Key Words
One hundred words pinned up and organized
Close up of left side
Close up of right side
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WEEK TWO My overall Mood: Happy
Something Good That Happened: Had a nice conversation with my mom
My current plan is to design something that would be given out in hospitals to patients as they recover from both physical and mental illnesses to help them stay out of the hospital in the future.
Something Nice I did for Myself: Worked hard Friday for a lazy Saturday
Now comes the hard part of narrowing down my design intentions with this. I know I would like to make an almost goodie basket of things that help facilitate and promote self-care. The only problem with this is that while in the hospital you are often given so much stuff you tend to overlook it after a while.
It’s officially the end of week two, and while I now have clarity on my concept, my ideas for projects within this larger one are a bit all over the place. The concept I am working with is self-care, more specifically self-care education. I think that one of the places that it is key to have this taught in is hospitals. Self-care is a huge part of keeping oneself not only mentally but physically healthy.
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Self-Care Moodboard
As an add on to the hundred key words assignment we were given the task to make a mood board based on our topic. I ended up doing a quick survey of classmates in the studio as there were so many possibilities to add in. For Instance, Tyler likes to read as part of his daily routine, and it is something that he says he does for himself, which in turn makes it self-care. From this collection of images I guess one could say that the aesthetics of self-care are both vibrant and muted. It is made up of warm neutral tones, and it's typographic qualities are that of old books and handwritten journals.
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WEEK THREE My overall Mood: Pretty Good
Something Good That Happened: Made myself a nice dinner
With my topic finally nailed down, then came trying to pin down what I wanted to do within the realm of design. Branding, typography, infographics? A mixture of all three? It took me until now, but I think I finally know what I want to do. I want to research how the MECA community handles issues of self-care. What do they do, how do they handle stress, etc. This investigation would be made visual by information graphics and possibly some form of interaction design. I want to make something that can help people take better care of themselves. I think I will research a bit before I fully settle on that idea though.
Something Nice I did for Myself: Had a small spa day on Thursday
It took me a while, but I think I finally figured out what I am doing. I came about this whilst doing the utterly mundane task of cleaning my apartment. I still want to work with the topic of self-care, but instead of focusing on hospitals I want to focus on my own community. College is an incredibly stressful time. Yet so few people, at least so few people I can see, take time to care for themselves. I have friends that will stay up until three or four am working in their studio only to return for classes at eight thirty that same morning. It is ridiculous really and completely unhealthy. It needs to stop, and the only way to do that is through information, education and making things simpler for people.
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Kick-Start Typographic Poster
At the start of this week we were tasked with creating a poster that got people excited about our thesis topic. My first ideas were okay, but they were missing a personal aspect. I decided to blend the best elements together and see what came from it. Being limited to grayscale makes this poster essentially a figure/ground assignment, which is not necessarily my strong suit.
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Self-Care Tip: 001
Week Spell Out Number
Take Yourself Today 8
WEEK FOUR My overall Mood: Pretty content at the moment
Something Good That Happened: Had a great night out with my friends
Everything will all be under the title Self-Care is... with each individual piece being under some characteristic of it. For instance, the tracking journals I am currently working on as my first project will fall under Self-Care is... Awareness. My next project will most likely be to make a logo or brand for my thesis installation. For this, I am currently thinking to give it the title Self-Care is What you make It.
Something Nice I did for Myself: Deep cleaned my entire apartment
It’s almost the end of week four and I have finally, and I mean finally found out exactly how I am going to frame my work. All it took was sitting through my Wednesday night class. As I was trying and somewhat failing to keep up with where the discussion was going, my mind was wondering. I opened my Thesis sketchbook to doodle as I always do when I am bored in classes. Sorry to every teacher I do this in front of. I opened it to a page where I had possible interview questions I was kicking around for a later project and saw the word self-care is and suddenly it all just clicked. Everything just aligned, and I suddenly knew exactly what I was going to do, or at least the banner I was going to do my work under.
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In process shot of my pin up wall during week four
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Thesis Branding Elements
Self-care is
I went based on the original sketch I made during my Ways of Seeing class on Wednesday night. I knew I wanted something sans serif to both contrast and play off of the handwritten font I was using for other work I was creating at the time.
Self-care is
it e k a m u o y t a h W
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For my first project I chose to do a habit tracker. I did this as awareness is a major part of self-care. Knowing what you are doing allows you to not only see what you need to change but hold you accountable to making those changes. Some people do this through apps, but others like myself prefer to do this on paper. That being said, I don’t know quite how it is going to look yet. My plan is to base it off of bullet journals, but have it in a ready made form for people to use.
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Habit Tracker
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WEEK FIVE My overall Mood: Meh, but with some high points
Something Good That Happened: Some randomly gave me flowers while I was out
As for the branding aspect of this adventure, I am working on it, albeit slowly. I took the notes that David gave me and am in the process of revising it, and seeing what happens. At this point all I can really do is take one day at a time and keep moving forward.
Something Nice I did for Myself:
Cranked up my favorite playlist while working
The one thing that I can say I worked hard on was the habit tracker. I managed to get everything laid out, and it is ready to be printed and tested at the start of the week. After hitting this milestone though, I was thinking about ways that I could expand this idea, change it so I have more than one version of this. My first idea was to change the color palette, but that seems too simple. I started thinking about birth flowers and how that might be a nice addition to these little booklets. I am not entirely sure how I am going to do that at the moment but it is something that is rolling around in the back of my mind.
Self-care is...
What you make it Self-care is...
Self-care is...
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Week Five
March spread of habit tracker draft at pocket size
Weekly tracking spread of habit tracker draft at pocket size
Monthly tracking spread of habit tracker draft at pocket size
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WEEK SIX My overall Mood: Happy
Something Good That Happened: Got a ton of work done this weekend
Watched the Daytona 500, albeit while working
From this I found that a lot of people find personal time to be a major part of self-care, but they often overlook this to perform self-care in a more physical manner like taking baths, going for walks, and trying to eat healthy.
This week saw me pushing a lot of work through. I started on a few new projects looking into how students preform self-care, if they even do. I chose to look at students as we tend to work a lot and can often forget to take care of ourselves, and that goes double for art students.
Doing this also showed me areas where more attention could be shown. For instance only one of fifty students said anything about doing something for their emotional wellbeing.
Something Nice I did for Myself:
Jumping off from this I thought about how I could facilitate this more. I ended up coming up with the idea of “compliment� cards that would be a take away during the exhibition.
I started this process by randomly sampling students and asking them what they thought self-care was and what they do that they consider self-care.
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Take Away Cards
The idea for these cards came out of the
Self-care is...
idea of random acts of kindness and the
Being Kind to Yourself
You are the most perfect you there is
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idea of morning affirmations. People can quite easily be kind to others and compliment a stranger, but it is really hard to compliment ourselves.
WEEK SEVEN My overall Mood: Pretty Good
Something Good That Happened: Had my studio visit with the exhibition team
Something Nice I did for Myself:
Organized my studio space for critiques
This week has been nothing short of completely crazy. It is the week before the midterm critique and to be honest that is a terrifying thought. It has been non stop trying to push this work forward to a place where all my ideas so far are visual for the reviewers coming in on Monday.
Self-care is...
This means getting both habit trackers filled in to the point that the ideas are clear. I of course took this a step further and have everything blocked in and ready to print. I also admit I only started working on the visuals for the infographics literally in the last couple of days so yeah I have put a lot on myself last minute.
Self-care is...
Diverse
Self-care is...
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Project Information
19
Mocked up kindness take away cards for exhibition
So as things always go with me I was
Self-care is...
doing other things in my philosophy class and came up with the idea of mindfulness prompts to go in with the compliment cards. I did tis as mindfulness is on of the ideas I was trying to push as it is something that seems to be overlooked when it comes to self-care.
What are ten things that make you happy?
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n i k Chec h t i w f l e s r you daily Project Information
Self-Care Tip: 002
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MIDTERM CRITIQUE to be something more for people that don’t know or want more ideas for self-care they can do. She mentioned maybe creating tri-fold brochures for each, but the more I have thought about it I am leaning more towards postcards that would be takeaways for people. I have a feeling my break will be spent working on these quite extensively.
Today was the Mid-Term critique. The official halfway point in this whole thesis thing. Not terrifying at all. Please note the sarcasm in that last statement. Knowing that everything is due in like two months is crazy. That being said, I feel like I’m in an okay spot or at least that is what I am telling myself. The work I have created so far is in good shape moving forward. Some minor tweaks in typography and usage of color and they will be ready for install, possibly.
Overall I can say that the information I was given was valuable and it will give me a lot to think through and work on over the break. My hope is that coming back to classes I will have everything somewhere between sixty to seventy percent done.
Given the advice I was given during the individual meetings I think I will be making quite a bit of work over the course of the break. L.K mentioned that the topics covered in one of my infographic posters seemed to be its own branch of self-care, and that other mini posters seemed to be prompts for these different branches. L.K also said that there needed
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I don’t want to admit how long it took me to organize all the print outs I had from projects I was working on. Luckily though I had all my fresh prints ready to pin up.
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Week Spell Out Number
Self-Care Tip: 005
Take a Minute and just....
Breathe. 24
WEEK EIGHT My overall Mood: Great!
Something Good That Happened: I WENT TO NEW YORK!!!
I am not joking about setting my soul aflame either. Travel from New York to home involves about a nine hour train ride, and man if I am not making use of the time so far. I managed to rework both of the infographics from the midterm critique notes I got. They were speaking to each other subtly but needed a major overhaul to function together properly. If that was not enough, I managed to figure out some of the branding or I guess in this case campaign messaging that I was struggling with earlier. I also managed to figure out a more neutral color palette that while still soothing will hopefully appeal to a broader audience. But that’s not all there’s still more. After figuring out that color palette I implemented it in the infographics, and the habit trackers. So Yeah, I got a lot done today and I still have about three hours left on this thing right now.
Something Nice I did for Myself: Used the train ride home to get work done
The New York trip was amazing, but dang if it doesn’t have me discombobulated. Speaking of which I got to see Times Square in person!!!! I learned a lot about the industry and got some inspiration for my thesis moving forward. Seeing such a flat hierarchy in Pentagram was kind of crazy, but also really awesome. Also the interactive pieces we got to see at Zero Space made me want to learn programming like yesterday. Seriously, everything about the city seemed to set my soul aflame and got me passionate about the work I was making again. Not that I wasn’t already, I was just starting to lose sight of my message and what I wanted people to take away from this body of work. I think a lot of it has to do with working on a few small projects continually and not doing something different enough to help me keep a creative flow going if that makes sense. 25
Collection of work that was completed and/ or started while working on the train New York City to Essex Junction, VT which ending up being about a nine hour journey
Self-care is...
Self-care is...
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Week Eight
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WEEK NINE My overall Mood: Nervous
Something Good That Happened: I got to see my family in person instead of on screen
Something Nice I did for Myself:
I did work instead of being lazy like I wanted
I say I was working instead of slacking but that’s not entirely true. I built the shelf and boxes I am going to use to display things in the exhibition, but that was about it. The change of pace from being in class to being home has really thrown me off and I feel like I have all this time despite the deadline hanging over my head.
Rough building sketch for hanging brochure box for potential additional take away piece
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Week Nine
In process shot of filling holes and sanding down hanging brochure boxes for potential additional takeaway piece
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WEEK TEN My overall Mood: Anxious
Something Good That Happened: A friend got married over the weekend
Something Nice I did for Myself:
Decided to go back early to get work done
Thanks to COVID-19 spring break got extended two extra weeks. I have no clue what I am going to do with this extra time. I know I should get work done, and I will try. I don’t see that entirely happening though. I will try to at least move some stuff forward though.
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Week Ten
January spread from habit tracking journal
January spread from secondary habit tracking journal
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Self-Care Tip: 006
Week Spell Out Number
32
WEEK ELEVEN My overall Mood: Frustrated Something Good That Happened: I got to see a friend before leaving Portland
Something Nice I did for Myself: Ate my favorite foods to try and feel better
It’s official. We are not going back to school. All learning will now be online. It hurts. Going back to pack up my apartment and studio left me feeling hollow. To see everyone’s work hanging up in progress and knowing the end results won’t be what we thought. That this isn’t the ending we thought. It stings. I want to be angry and I am but I can’t tell you at who. The school, the world, who knows. I wasn’t ready for this to end and certainly not like this. All I can hope is to somehow finish this work strong despite everything now being digital.
33
WEEK TWELVE My overall Mood: Okay
Something Good That Happened: Classes started back up
I think this week, and this time in general it has been difficult to find the motivation to create work for thesis. The work I have been creating has been geared towards the exhibition, and now it’s not happening. At least it is not happening anytime soon. Now I am left with the question of do I change my thesis to fit the situation or do I keep things as is and hope for it to come to fruition when things return to some form of normalcy.
Something Nice I did for Myself: I got my home studio set up
So we had our first official zoom class this week and it was a time. Knowing I only had to move from my bed to my studio space across the hall did nothing for getting me up and moving in the morning. I will admit though it was nice to see everyone even if it was just over my laptop screen. I think it was interesting to see all the places we chose to work and meet in. The spaces were all so different aesthetically, and I think that talks to who we are as designers and artists . Seeing how put together some people’s spaces were, it made me feel the need to step up my game moving forward.
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Week Twelve
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WEEK THIRTEEN My overall Mood: Good
Something Good That Happened: I talked to my niece over FaceTime
This week saw me working on trying to finish off the “branding” aspect of my work. With suggestion from David and Charles I just started playing around how far I could push the design before it would fall apart. I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t push this as far as I probably could have. I had that original idea of what I wanted for it in my head and really only nudged the boundaries of what it could be beyond that. Moving forward and looking towards next week I will probably do one more round of playing around with it before moving on and doing finishing work on my other pieces.
Something Nice I did for Myself: I made sure to get fresh air and exercise
Much like last week it was hard to feel motivated to do a lot. That being said, I tried to work on elements that I felt interested in or at least things that didn’t take a lot of creative energy. I decided to keep things as is and move forward with the creation of pieces for exhibition. This will be interesting as all printing facilities are closed in the state until further notice. This means I will be having to rely on digital files and hope that colors come out the way I would like as I do not have access to a printer where I am currently am.
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Week Thirteen
Shot of personal and spiritual brochure boxes after the first coat of paint
Self-care is...
Self-care is...
Self-care is...
A selection from in process branding elements
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WEEK FOURTEEN My overall Mood: Okay, but tired
Something Good That Happened: My family tested negative for COVID-19
I have to say I think the worst part about this situation is not being able to interact with loved ones face to face. Humans are social beings. It doesn’t matter if you are an introvert or an extrovert we all need human interaction. The whole social distancing thing while important for physical health is something that I have seen taking a toll on mental health as we are not taking care of our social need for interaction as we should in this time.
Something Nice I did for Myself:
Had a spa night with a bubble bath and face mask
This week has been nothing short of crazy. Part of my family works in a facility that saw and explosion of coronavirus cases in the last couple of days. They were lucky enough to not have interacted directly with the the infected patients so the results of their testing all came back negative. This was a huge relief as my father has diabetes and is at higher risk of contracting the virus.
It makes me want to do something. Self-care in the time of COVID-19 is something that needs to be talked about. When the semester ends I think it is something I will explore as this is something that isn’t going away any time soon.
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Week Fourteen
Self-care is...
Self-care is...
Self-care is...
Final versions of marks for branded elements
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WEEK FIFTEEN My overall Mood: Stressed
Something Good That Happened: I got to see my family in person
Something Nice I did for Myself: Went for a drive for a change of scenery
So we are reaching the end of the road here. It’s scary. It’s scary to think my career as a student is ending, and what a strange ending it is. Instead of packing up my dorm I went to my dad’s place and had a socially distant hangout by the lake. Honestly it was great to see everyone after everything, and it was a nice way to relax and relive a little of the stress that came with this final push to complete everything. This week it was a lot of working on finishing details such as completing the branding and adding it to the necessary items such as the take away cards and the cover of the habit trackers. Also running everything through spell check a final time, which turned out to be a good thing because I added extra letters to January by accident
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Week Fifteen
Self-care is...
What does happiness mean to you?
Front and back side of mindfulness prompt take away cards
Self-care is...
Don’t forget to take a break today Front and back side of Kindness take away cards
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Week Spell Out Number
Self-Care Tip: 010
Learn to Rest not Quit. 42
FINALS Since the exhibition of the work won’t be happening until a later date, this is the best I can do for showing how all this work at the moment.
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Project Information
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Habit Tracker
Self-care is...
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Floral Habit Tracker
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50
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Project Information
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Take Away Cards
Self-care is... In this moment, what are four things you are grateful for?
Self-care is... The world would be a better place if people were a little more like you
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©Ashley LaBombard