Nolan Fast
Graphic Design Portfolio Fall 2013
Introduction
This portfolio and the contents within were created while studying for my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Graphic Design at the Universtiy of Nebraska-Lincoln. –Nolan Fast
Table of Contents
Project 01
01-06
Exercise 01
07-10
Project 02
11-16
Exercise 02
17-20
Project 03
21-26
Exercise 03
27-30
Project 04
31-38
Exercise 04
39-42
01 Project 01
Form as a typology, What is Graphic Design?
Project 01 Project Brief
In Project 01 we were instructed to go out into the city and investigate the presence of graphic design. We were to see the various styles and forms used to communicate with the audience; through this I believe that is was hoped that we would find our own particular area of interest within graphic design and what media we as graphic designers would like to focus on at the end of our time at UNL. After exploring a city block on “O” Street, and taking many pictures of retail signs and some of branding, mainly on vehicles, I decided that none of those media’s really interested me as much as other forms of graphic design. I wouldn’t mind if it became my job to design retail signs for the rest of my life, but to me it seems so limited. There is only so much you can do on a business sign, in comparison to what you could do on a product aimed at a younger, more active, and more accepting crowd, such as Monster Energy drinks. I drink them on a very regular occasion, so I’m very familiar with the many artistic and innovative design choices they use on their products. I would much rather be on the team designing the new can for the latest flavor of Monster than the sign for the new drugstore or gas station down the street. I wanted to show the cans as a whole, as well as show closely the different typefaces used on each can. Monster is very good at using the correct color scheme and type to perfectly represent the specific flavors, and I wanted to showcase that. After some research, I also found that the particular font used for the word “Monster” is a custom, one-off graphic that their company created just for the drink line. You can get a font off the internet that mimics Monster’s font, but it is speculation as to the appearance of the other letters of the alphabet outside of “Monster”. Graphic design is a form of communication, a way of delivering the message of one to many. It is a tool for convincing, persuading, and selling something to an audience. I personally believe Monster is one of the best at this. They direct their message to active youth, and they are spot on with their design and display choices. My presentation is successful because it shows the many forms and display choices used by Monster Energy. It allows you as the viewer to get a complete and whole understanding of Monster’s image, and what they represent. It shows the many forms graphic design takes while being used by this company. There are many examples of graphic design, each aimed perfectly at an audience that is young and active, or at the very least envies the actively athletic individuals sponsored by Monster.
Form as a typology What is Graphic Design?
Project 01
Image Matricies
Matrix One
Objective
Core Image
Index
Connotative
Subjective
Macro
Sign
What is
Graphic Design? Micro
Metaphor
Denotative
Matrix Two Core Image
Index
Connotative
Monster Energy Objective
Subjective
Macro
Sign
What is
Graphic Design? Micro
Metaphor
Denotative
Form as a typology What is Graphic Design?
Project 01
Image Matrix
Matrix Three Core Image
Index
Connotative
Monster Energy Objective
Subjective
Macro
Sign
What is
Graphic Design? Micro
Metaphor
Denotative
Form as a typology What is Graphic Design?
Project 01
Brand Typography
Form as a typology What is Graphic Design?
Project 01
Brand Imagery
Form as a typology What is Graphic Design?
01 Exercise 01
Billboard as a messaging center, What is Graphic Design?
Exercise 01
Black & White Proof
Beautifully Effective Co mm
unication
Yeah, that’s graphic design
Billboard as messaging center What is Graphic Design?
Exercise 01 Color Proof
The objective of exercise 01 was to answer the question, “What is Graphic Design?”.
Beautifully Effective Co mm
unication
Yeah, that’s graphic design
Billboard as messaging center
What is Graphic Design?
02 Project 02
Form as language, Designing visual communications
Project 02 Project Brief
The idea behind Project 02 was to use form as language. The goal was to be able to communicate a word or a “feeling” using only form and non-specific imagery. I believe the learning outcome from this project would be that as a graphic designer we would have the skills and the know how to deliver a full and complete message and feeling on a limited and momentary media. We began with the most basic of marks to communicate a set of given words. We used pen and ink studies to get a feeling for what the words may look like as basic forms. Next, we were given a specific word to investigate using print and mark making with pen and ink. My word was “scintillate”. The images we collected were to be abstracted as much as possible while still delivering the message or feeling of our word. This whole process gave me a much greater understanding of how to better convey a feeling or message through imagery effectively. Lastly, we took the images we’ve made and/or collected and made a 17” by 11” poster for our word. The images were to be unaltered by “effects”, they were to simply be organized effectively on the paper to make an attractive composition that precisely delivers the feeling and message of our word. Admittedly, this was a bit of a difficult task because there are endless possibilities and arrangements that you could make, and picking the best and most effective one isn’t the easiest task. Also, art and graphic design rely heavily upon interpretation, so what may look good to you or I may not appear as beautifully to another. I believe in the end I came up with a beautiful composition that conveyed “scintillate” accurately and effectively, not to say there isn’t a million other alternatives to what I created, but I’m confident in what I created, and I learned a great deal from the process leading up to my final product.
Form as language Designing visual communications
Project 02
Shape/Line Studies
Form as language Designing visual communications
Project 02
Shape/Line Studies
(Scintillate)
Form as language Designing visual communications
Project 02
(Edited) Print Images
(Scintillate)
Form as language Designing visual communications
Project 02
Final Poster Design
Form as language Designing visual communications
02 Exercise 02
Quiz, Visable Signs and Visual Research
Exercise 02
Quiz (Front)
Readings and lecture quiz What is Graphic Design?
Exercise 02 Quiz (Back)
Readings and lecture quiz What is Graphic Design?
03 Project 03
Form as Identity, Logo Transformation
Project 03 Project Brief
Project 03 was all about creating identity with form. In other words it was about creating an abstract form that represented a company or organization, as well as form specific to a target audience such as youth or adults. First we collected a library of logos and emblems from print and web, then picked one and practiced using Adobe Illustrator’s pen tool to trace the logo and recreate it. After we had a grasp on how the pen tool works and how it could be used to essentially create anything, we were assigned a logo and traced it. Once we had a traced image we went through an exercise of transforming the logo into a whole new form while keeping the same idea or identity as the original. The logo went through 5 phases of change before becoming a new logo. We sketched out a few different iterations getting different ideas of how the logo could transform into something new and interesting. After deciding which new logo was the best option we used illustrator to animate the process through a series of frames so that the process could be displayed and learned from. It was very interesting to see what other people who were assigned the same logo as myself, came up with for their new logo. Some people’s new design kept essentially the same feeling and audience as the original, whereas mine kept the same general message, but was clearly more applicable to a younger audience unlike the original which fit an older more mature clientele. Lastly, we experimented with the addition of color to our designs. We were given a loose set of guidelines and set free to add color how we saw fit. The final products were very interesting looking, and color was just a whole new dimension to be explored to further the effectiveness of our new and improved logos.
Form as Identity Logo Transformation
Project 03
Prelim. Sketches
Form as Identity Logo Transformation
Project 03
Prelim. Sketches
Form as Identity Logo Transformation
Project 03
Evolution of Logo
Disturbance
Disintegration
Recollection
Diffusion
Reorganization
Evolution of new Logo
Form as Identity Logo Transformation
Project 03 Logo Analysis
Form as Identity Logo Transformation
03 Exercise 03
Logo Colorization
Nolan Fast
Triad
Exercise 03
Logo Colorization
Contrasting pairs of conditions (gloomy vs. happy)
Complimentary
Nolan Fast
Nolan Fast
Nolan Fast
Monochromatic
Nolan Fast
Exercise 03
Logo Colorization
Analogous
Nolan Fast
Wildcard
Nolan Fast
Form as Identity Logo Transformation
04 Project 04
Form as System, Working With a Typographic Grid
Project 04 Project Brief
Project 04 was about using type as image, and arranging it effectively in a grid layout. To begin, we sketched out grid layout designs on paper, gathering ideas and information on what would make a good and effective layout and what wouldn’t. We used many small lines to represent smaller more condensed copy, and fewer thicker lines to represent bigger type such as titles and other more pertinent copy. In doing this we created a composition as well as guide the reader through the layout, showing where to begin reading (bigger, bolder type) and what to read last (smaller, denser copy). Next, we put together a large library of type and copy that we thought were attractive or interesting. We then cutout the type and arranged it on 8” by 8” grids, creating a composition. We were to abstract the type as much as possible, so as to focus solely on the composition of the type instead of what the type itself says. The type will almost always still deliver a portion of its message, regardless of how much you abstract the type. This is because branding is so heavily successful that even a small portion of a certain type or copy could be immediately recognized as a certain brand. However, which the right amount of cutting, pasting, and abstracting we were able to make effective and attractive compositions on the 8” by 8” grid layout. We did multiple layouts with different grid systems in order to make sure we had the most effective and attractive layouts possible. The final 5 compositions were done using the Adobe applications, which added a whole extra element to the process. We were able to adjust the size of the type as well as opacity to add another level of depth and visual interest that couldn’t be achieved in the planning stage using only the basic tools. This whole project gave me a great deal of information and practice using the grid system. It showed me how to correctly and effectively make a layout that my audience will actually want to read and be enticed by.
Form as system Working with a typographic grid
Project 04 Grid Sketches
Form as system Working with a typographic grid
Project 04
Grid Layouts
Form as system Working with a typographic grid
Project 04 Grid Layouts
Form as system Working with a typographic grid
Project 04
Grid Layouts
Form as system Working with a typographic grid
Project 04
Final Grid Layouts
Form as system Working with a typographic grid
04 Exercise 04
Graphic Design History, Eward Tufte
Tufte is an expert in the presentation of informational graphics such as charts and diagrams, and is a fellow of the American Statistical Association. Tufte’s writing is important in such fields as information design and visual literacy, which deal with the visual communication of information. He coined the term “chartjunk” to refer to useless, non-informative, or information-obscuring elements of quantitative information displays. Other key concepts of Tufte are the lie factor, the data-ink ratio, and the data density of a graphic.
Exercise 04 Close-Up
Edward Tufte wrote three books, Visual Explanations, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and Beautiful Evidence. All of which were very successful books. He financed his first book, Visual Explanations, himself by taking out a second mortgage on his home. The book quickly became a commercial success and secured his transition from political scientist to information expert. On March 5, 2010, President Barack Obama appointed Tufte to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s Recovery Independent Advisory Panel “to provide transparency in the use of Recovery-related funds.” Which only goes to show how well he knew his craft. Tufte also invented sparklines – a condensed way to present trends and variation, associated with a measurement such as average temperature or stock market activity, often embedded directly in the text; for example see image 01. These are often used as elements of a small multiple with several lines used together. Tufte explains the sparkline as a kind of “word” that conveys rich information without breaking the flow of a sentence or paragraph made of other “words” both visual and conventional.
Image 02 “Collection of Works”
Image 01 “Sparklines”
Image 03 “Dear Leader”
Exercise 04 Final Product
Edward Tufte The Pioneer in the Field of Data Visualization 1982-Present By Nolan Fast
Tufte is an expert in the presentation of informational graphics such as charts and diagrams, and is a fellow of the American Statistical Association. Tufte’s writing is important in such fields as information design and visual literacy, which deal with the visual communication of information. He coined the term “chartjunk” to refer to useless, non-informative, or information-obscuring elements of quantitative information displays. Other key concepts of Tufte are the lie factor, the data-ink ratio, and the data density of a graphic. Edward Tufte wrote three books, Visual Explanations, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and Beautiful Evidence. All of which were very successful books. He financed his first book, Visual Explanations, himself by taking out a second mortgage on his home. The book quickly became a commercial success and secured his transition from political scientist to information expert. On March 5, 2010, President Barack Obama appointed Tufte to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s Recovery Independent Advisory Panel “to provide transparency in the use of Recovery-related funds.” Which only goes to show how well he knew his craft. Tufte also invented sparklines – a condensed way to present trends and variation, associated with a measurement such as average temperature or stock market activity, often embedded directly in the text; for example see image 01. These are often used as elements of a small multiple with several lines used together. Tufte explains the sparkline as a kind of “word” that conveys rich information without breaking the flow of a sentence or paragraph made of other “words” both visual and conventional.
Image 02 “Collection of Works”
Image 01 “Sparklines”
Image 03 “Dear Leader”
Graphic Design History Edward Tufte
Nolan Ray Fast University of Nebraska-Lincoln BFA Graphic Design Fall 2013 Typeface: Univers Print Location: Office Max 2301 O St. Lincoln, NE 68510
“The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring.” — Paul Rand