Olivia Platz
ART 130 - Fall 2017
St. Norbert College
Sketch, Erase,
Redo.
Table of Contents D-School
1-2
Dot-Line
3-4
Hand Lettering
5-8
Object Iterations
9-12
Data Visualization
13-18
Designer Presentation
19-20
Vocation
21
D-School Interview notes on what my partner tends to do for gift giving.
Notes on what my partner needs in order to fix her gift giving problems.
Final solution sketches on how to help my partner wrap her gifts better.
1
When making my prototype for this project I focused on making it suitable for my partner and including what she talked about in it. By engaging with her beforehand, the end result of my project had ideas from both her and me incorporated in it rather than just my ideas. I enjoyed showing my unfinished work to her because it was just a rough sketch of what I was thinking and the idea of it still got across. I also enjoyed the fast pace of this project because it showed me what I was capable of making in that short amount of time. I’m used to working in long amounts of time that usually have due dates, so to work in quick iterative cycles was very different to me and took some adjusting, but I ended up liking it. If I could go back and change something I would change my solutions to her problem. They weren’t very useful and kind of enhanced the problem she already had. Instead of thinking of the solutions myself, I would have liked to talk through possible ones with her as I was coming up with them.
2
Dot-Line Gestalt is a group of words or ideas that can be used to describe a piece of art work. For the project that we did in class, the dots and lines can be explained using these words such as continuation, closure, proximity, parallelism, figure and ground, and similarity and anomaly. When making a “well-crafted� object, I definitely prefer taking more time to work on it so that all of the small details come out looking right. Being a perfectionist, I like to work on my projects until I have everything exactly how I picture it otherwise I’m not satisfied.
Abundance
Energetic
Stability
This project definitely made me step outside of my comfort zone and think differently than I usually do. I am very literal when it comes to things, so having to think in an abstract way took some time for me to adjust to. In the end, my idea of abstraction was definitely changed and I have a more positive outlook on it now. Some other ways that I will be able to use the ideas of gestalt and abstraction would be to get my quick ideas down before starting something bigger. It would be a good way to lay out thoughts and sketches. 3
4
Hand The first few days of the hand lettering unit were spent filling pages with any fonts or words that came to mind to practice our creative hand lettering skills. Then we picked a certain word to focus on to write out and draw multiple times. The final iterations of my word include an ink iteration, a Sharpie iteration, a paper cut out iteration, and a 3D iteration.
5
Lettering
6
Ink Iteration
Sharpie Iteration
7
Paper Cut Out Iteration
3D Iteration
Hand lettering made me realize that shape of a letter or word can contribute a lot to the meaning of the word. Just one little change in the way a word looks can change its meaning easily. In the future, I would like to spend more time cleaning up my words and fixing the little things about them that need adjusting. I’d first start off with my 3D word and use better dirt for it and make it more realistic by possibly adding a shovel to it. I believe my ideas for this project were stronger than my execution because I had them well thought out in my head and sketched them pretty well, but the final results didn’t exactly match my ideas. 8
Type Iterations
Geometric Iterations
Continuous Line Iterations
Object Iterations
9
Artist Iterations
RenĂŠ Magritte
Frida Kahlo
10
Collage Iterations
More Type Iterations
More Collage Iterations
Rough Draft of Final Piece
11
Final Piece
By going through this process for this project I learned that there are many ways to look at my object, needle nose pliers, and that there are many ways to represent it. The media that was the most challenging for me to work with was the type iterations because it was hard finding type that went along with my object, and the media that was the most enjoyable for me to work with was the collage iteration because I enjoyed finding different pictures to represent needle nose pliers. While using photo shop, I learned how to use the greyscale tool which I definitely think I will use in the future on different projects. If I were to keep working on different iterations for this tool for a year, I would incorporate it into its elements such as maybe a tool shed or someone using it. I would also try new medias to show more variety. 12
Data
Practice data visualization showing websites I visit. Each website is plotted on a chart with the x-axis as “Visitor” and “Resident” and the y-axis as “Personal” and “Institutional/Professional.”
13
Visualization
Second practice data visualization showing my family tree and the food that each person cooks most frequently in my family.
14
For my final piece I decided to research the question “Are people’s favorite seasons related to when they were born and where they are from?” I asked eighteen people their favorite season, the time of the year they were born, and where they grew up. I then sketched six possible layouts of how I wanted to show my data that I collected. After I finalized my layout, I drew each element of my final piece in Adobe Illustrator and then brought it all together in Adobe InDesign.
Sketch 1
All data collected for final data visualization piece.
15
Sketch 2
Sketch 3
Sketch 4
Sketch 5
16
Sketch 6
For my dataviz poster I created a visual hierarchy by making my images the largest and the text smaller so that the viewer would be drawn to the maps, months, and seasons which was the key information on my poster. The text at the bottom was made smaller because it was just summarizing what was shown in the images, which should have been first communicated to the viewer. While doing this project I learned how to show information in a creative and visual way. I also improved my skills on knowing how to put color schemes together. I will be able to use both these skills on projects in the future. I loved being able to use color for this project instead of just black and white because it enhanced the projects even more than before. 17
‘Tis the Season
Are People’s Favorite Seasons Related to When They Were Born and Where They are From?
JAN
JUN
MAR
JUL
APR
NOV
MAY
DEC
Spring Summer Fall Winter
Based on a survey of 17 people, favorite season is not based on where a person grew up, but there is some correlation between favorite season and month born.
Designer Presentation For our designer presentations we were to pick a designer from a list given to us and create a presentation on them to give to the class. Using PowerPoint, we each had twenty slides that were only twenty seconds long and consisted mainly of only pictures. This presentation style is called PechaKucha and was very new to me. By doing this kind of a presentation, it helped us stay on topic and give relevant information on our designer to the class.
19
I was drawn to Aaron Douglas because he essentially paved the way for African Americans in design and incorporated elements in is art that spoke about his culture which really interested me. By using the Pecha-Kucha style for this project I learned how to stay on my toes while doing a presentation and talk about pieces of art on a deeper level than I have before. Presenting this way will definitely help me with other presentations in the future. Another designer that was presented in class was Shepard Fairey. I’d be interested in researching him further because his style of work interested me. Especially how he tended to use the same color palette throughout his work. 20
As for the Future... I believe I am called to creative work. Ever since I was little, I have loved doing projects, drawing, sketching, and putting together creative pieces of work. Because of this I am majoring in graphic design and hope to become a designer. If I were guaranteed it would support me financially, I would love to design album covers and book covers.
21
This book was made as part of Introduction to Design at St. Norbert College in the fall of 2017. The fonts used include Futura and Baskerville. It was digitally printed and saddle stapled at the college’s print center.