Construction, Destruction, and Drugs: Art Direction Explorations

Construction, Destruction, and Drugs: Art Direction Explorations

Art Direction I Process Book Rachel Bender

Construction, Destruction, and Drugs: Art Direction Explorations

Table of Contents Project One: Object, an Exercise in Meaning Week One: Object Visualizations ...................................................9 Week Two: Brainstorm and Revisions .........................................13 Week Three: Final Draft Picks .......................................................16 Final Iterations ................................................................................19 Project Reflection ..........................................................................23 Project Two: Sound, a Social Media Message Week One: Research and Type Compositions .......................25 Week Two: Image Making Refinements ....................................31 Final Project and Presentation .................................................34 Project Reflection .........................................................................39 Project Three: Meaning, a Poster Story Week One: Collaborative Brainstorming ...................................41 Week Two: Idea Iterations .............................................................42 Week Three: Full Scale Mock-Ups ..............................................46 Week Four: The Penultimate Poster ............................................49 Final Poster........................................................................................54 Project Reflection ............................................................................56

Table of Contents Project Four: Place Week One: Creative Brief and Research ................................59 Week Two: Title Treatments ........................................................69 Week Three: Type and Image Integrations ..............................73 Week Four: Penultimate Ad and Style Guide .........................74 Final Iteration ...................................................................................76 Project Reflection ............................................................................78 Studio Research Presentation Stefan Sagmeister Presentation Slides ...................................81 Presentation Notes .......................................................................87

Dedicated to those who want to understand what the hell I was thinking

Project One:

Object, an Exercise in Meaning

8

Week One: Object Visualizations

One of my more obvious uses for scissors: haircuts

‘Jaws’ poster-esque compositional strategy

Abstract representation of the range of motion

Cut the puppet strings

Scissors Key Terms:

Delete

Adjust

Eliminate

Danger

Refresh

Creation

Transform

Sharp

Fix 9

Project One: Object, an Exercise in Meaning

The contrast in tension of a piece that has been removed

Clipping the wings of birds

From the beginning, I jived with this project, probably because of my love for the tool, scissors. They are so practical and versatile, I carry around a pair, or three, in my bag at all times. Scissors are like duct tape, no matter what it never hurts to be easy to access. I tried to stretch my imagination with my keywords and research.

I wanted to think about what scissors can represent beyond the simple act of cutting an object. I wanted to try out everything from the very obvious (running with scissors) to the abstract (highlighting where domesticated birds have their wings clipped.)

10

Week One

Comes from the mythology all humans a “life force string� that is cut when they die

Contrast between sharp and tough vs. fluffy and soft

11

Project One: Object, an Exercise in Meaning

Cutting away excess to reveal a clean form

Trying to illustrate the potential danger of scissors

Usually there is a massive pair involved for grand openings

Abstract representation of the motion of the blades

From my initial 25, I narrowed it down to the top 10 sketches I felt were working and were receiving strong feedback from the class. I knew some of the ideas would become much clearer once I started working in different mediums to bring them to life.

12

Week Two: Brainstorm and Revisions

Notes from brainstorm: transform, uncontrolled, finish

Notes from brainstorm: journey, multiple steps, planned, to be continued

Notes from brainstorm: intentional, clean, fine, detail

Notes from brainstorm: craft, transform, create, design, man made v. handmade

During the second week, I started working with a wide range of materials, which was both helpful and detrimental, depending on the iteration. Some of the mediums I was using were raising a lot of questions that were not related to what I was trying to get across. In my attempt to have a variety in textures, my meaning was getting lost. In other iterations, the imagery I was using felt kind of flat and boring. A one on one brainstorm with my classmate helped me pick out some pick out some new key terms that I wanted to incorporate into the next round of compositions.

13

Project One: Object, an Exercise in Meaning

Notes from brainstorm: Create something that wasn’t revealed

Notes from brainstorm: Divide, start of something new

Notes from brainstorm: Start and end, taken away, clear path, carve, create space

Notes from brainstorm: Controlled, Planned; try out surrealist approach

14

Week Two

Notes from brainstorm: Materials, part of a set, combination

Notes from brainstorm: flown, power v. powerless, limiting v. limitless

15

Week Three: Final Draft Picks

A new image made this concept much more successful

Received an important note to change the placement of the text from inside to outside of the shapes, which would make sense if they were actually being cut out

Removed distracting pattern

Intention made much more clear with the addition of text

Adding text to my compositions made them feel much more complete. I had fun trying out different layouts for incorporating words. The adjustment I made with the imagery to make it less distracting/more effective were successful, based off of the reactions from my class during crit.

16

While this was a little clearer to my class this week, I felt it was best to leave this iteration behind after these adjustments.

This concept still really didn’t come through because of the mythology which inspired it, which isn’t super well known

Removed distracting imagery and rethought the framing of the shapes to avoid something that looked like a road going through a static cornfield

Adding a fun “surreal” element to this image and playing around a lot with text placement made this one of my favorite iterations

17

Project One: Object, an Exercise in Meaning

Found a better combination of materials that mimicked their real-life counterparts more closely

18

In the end this concept still wasn’t super clear, but the additions of the lines and text make inform an action and its result

Final Iterations Final Project

For my final three images, I chose ones that I felt worked best as a series. All three incorporated different compositional strategies, but were connected by their simple imagery, typeface choice, and my never end love of white backgrounds.

19

Project One: Object, an Exercise in Meaning

Final Project

20

Final Iterations

Final Project

21

Project One: Object, an Exercise in Meaning

Final Project

22

Project Reflection As far as easing back into the swing of things, this project definitely reminded me that I was happy to start school again. To start off my iterative process, I took an approach that I’ve worked on honing in previous semesters. I tried to incorporate a lot of different mediums and image making tactics, I always like when pieces begin with more of an analog quality and later on refining that with the use of digital tools. Plus I find that it often goes much faster to throw things at paper and see what sticks, often quite literally. I prefer to get my kind of lame ideas out of the way quickly, even though I still think it’s important to see them through until logically they need to be cut or another week of life brings a fresher perspective into my approach.

I wanted the work, for the most part, to be playful. I think that scissors are one of the first useful tools we learn to use as children, and using them is a skill that sticks with us forever. But something about that initial time of just cutting things up in kindergarten and pairing them up in different orders is so fun and brings out the inner creative director and a desire to put weird things together.

I had a few favorite ideas that I felt evolved nicely over two weeks. My first came from a piece of paper on which I had written “Collage?” I wanted to create a pair of scissors out of found images because without scissors, the activity of collaging would be impossible, or least incredibly difficult. The initial image I created captured the tone, but the objects I was using and their relationship to each other was neither surreal or realistic enough. I came back the next week with different objects and a couple more key details to solidify the scissors form, like a button where the blades cross to hold them together and using a blade of grass and a popsicle stick as the blades in various weights.

The second idea I worked through came from the phrase “cut loose.” Initially, I glued a piece of ribbon cut in half to a sheet of paper; one half taut and still, the other flowing away off the page. Although because of image capture method, gluing the ribbon and putting it under a scanner, the movement I was craving fell kind of flat. The following week, I found a looser ribbon, photographed it from above, and then added the text “uncontrolled.”

My final favorite image was based off of an idea so simple I thought I was going to get “tsked” at for not thinking deep enough. The “Cut Here” lettering and tiny scissors along a dotted line is an incredibly familiar sight, but I wanted to see if there was a way I could create that same connection to the action of cutting without the words or symbol. Turns out, it wasn’t too hard and everyone seemed like they wanted to walk up to the image and cut out the shapes. Adding text created a rather serious deeper meaning, I chose the words “journey” and “plan” done in the same style and letter case as typical “cut here” instructions.

23

Project Two:

Sound, a Social Media Message

24

Week One: Research and Type Compositions

Phantogram, 2007-present

Members: Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter Genre: Dream pop, electronica, trip hop # of Release: 3 studio albums, 4 EPs

Info on their Audience: 20s, Students, usually more male, interested in music festivals http://spotright.com/resource/typical-personphantogram-concert/ Interview About New Album: http://pitchfork.com/news/66209-watch-phantograms-new-you-dont-get-me-high-anymore-video/ Sound Clip: Fall in Love, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsQjC5zVnt8 Other samples: http://www.phantogram.com/#media Visual Style Evolution: Album Covers 2010

2011

2014

2016

If I could only work on projects involving musicians and musical events I would.

The relationship between sound and visual art is so potent, plus it always feels a little better to be promoting something that isn’t necessarily a physical object. The shelf life or usefulness of music is never ending. I chose a group, Phantogram, that I love listening because I wanted to create artwork for music that I have a connection with, there’s nothing like an imaginary situation where you get to “work” with a preferred client.

25

Project Two: Sound, a Social Media Message

I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t try to work in at least one truly obvious visual pun

26

Week One

27

Project Two: Sound, a Social Media Message

Using a sleeve of matches as the backdrop for my text. It didn’t quite fit in the parameters of a type-based image, but I’m cataloging this idea for a future project

Tried using more “getting high” based imagery, but putting my text on rolling papers proved difficult to transfer in a flat image

Admittedly I ran out of time this week to try and actually safely burn paper, but I liked going this route to show destruction.

Another attempt at using matches. Fun, but a little too hokey.

28

Week One

I was playing around with an alternative phrase taken from an interview with the band when asked to describe what their new music made them want to do.

29

Project Two: Sound, a Social Media Message

Iterations that involved treating the background more so than the text.

Another paper treatment that manipulates the text

Hard to tell in this scan, but this piece of paper is riddled in holes that started making cool shadows when help up against a back light.

Over the past year, I’ve grown very fond of working more with my hands first and then moving on to digital translation. In a world where a lot of designs are similar, it feels good to be able to put my personal touches in my work, things that no one else can do because they don’t quite write a word or manipulate an object the way I do. My more successful iterations were the ones that clearly had been made physically in the real world and then documented. I chose to go forward with the concepts above in my next round. I also voluntarily increased my workload to attempt to make three series instead of just six images.

30

Week Two: Image Making Refinements

I ran into a bit of trouble when assembling my series because of how I was organizing them. I gave each series one of each “type” of image treatment: a back lit cutout, a computer manipulation, and a type in space piece. As I presented, my class kept calling out different ways to mix and match the images, putting the ones similar colors and compositional strategies together instead.

My strategies that involved physical manipulation and destruction were well received. The only problem with that was I knew it would be near impossible to recreate the conditions that created the original marks, so making revisions on these proved to be difficult.

Also in my initial mock-ups, I put all of the images together, which isn’t realistic, in real life they would be released at different times

31

Project Two: Sound, a Social Media Message

32

Week Two

33

Week Three: Final Iterations Final Project

Phantogram

Style: Dark color tone imagery, serif typeface Genre: Dream pop, electronica, trip hop Audience: 20s, students, pretty balanced between genders but a little more male; interested in music festivals Quote: You Don’t Get Me High Anymore

Final Presentation Slides

For my final, I ended up with two different series. I think they both serve the same purpose, but show some range. I spread them out more within the mock up Instagram grid so that it was easier to see how they integrated with the band feed’s aesthetic and content.

34

Final Project

35

Project Two: Sound, a Social Media Message

Final Project

36

Final Iteraions

Final Project

37

Project Two: Sound, a Social Media Message

Final Project

38

Project Reflection Similar to the first project, I found making iterations for this to be fun. I picked an artist that was having a very culturally appropriate moment, Phantogram’s new album was dropping in only a few weeks, so I was pretty excited. I’d already been reading up on the articles where they talked about inspiration and the direction for their music. Based on the life events that had happened to the band since their last release, it seemed they were inspired to create a different sound. What had already been building in “Voices,” a chaotic blend of electronic beats and emotional and vague lyrics, was now a different beast. The first single, from which I grabbed my song lyric quote, felt angry and direct. It reminded me a lot of the quotes you find littered in the Tumblr feeds of teenage girls across America. It was the kind of song that made me want to break a dish, metaphorically. The album art for the single feature a cloud of dark gray smoke, rising from a fire outside of the frame. The destruction was implied, and I thought that was how I needed to approach my type treatment.

So I went about thinking of ways to translate that idea, how much can you imply destruction or distortion without showing things on fire? (Which I did try, but it was a little too dangerous to capture on camera.) I ended up treating the paper I was writing on. I wanted things to feel like somebody had just finished burning a note, slashing into a piece of paper, or crumbled up a letter only to have it unfurl again.

Once of my most successful production techniques was taping cut out strips of paper to my ceiling fan’s lamp shade and photographing it from below, capturing a curve from the cover that would’ve been hard to make in Photoshop. I had a lot of success working with my hands and off the computer screen. I tried to avoid photo manipulation beyond fixing some stray lines and bumping up legibility, but I did go back to my scanner for more than one iteration.

I had so many ideas that I didn’t want to get rid of more than expected. I was on the ambitious path of creating two series simultaneously, which offered some challenges like trying to keep straight in my mind which piece belonged to a particular set. I think it was easier with my artist, in particular, to try two different directions because unlike a lot of musicians these days, their Instagram platform isn’t meticulously curated or gridded out. It allowed for a certain amount of flexibility regarding color and content, though I did research their feed and other promotional materials to make sure it felt like my pieces wouldn’t feel off brand.

By the end, I had six images that I felt were legible enough and were sparking a friendly debate in class. My favorite series was the one with more earth tones and unusual type created from my two preferred methods of paper manipulation: slashing and burning. Such an emotionally cathartic project would love to do something involving physical type treatment again!

39

Project Three: Meaning, a Poster Story

40

Week One: Collaborative Brainstorming

Screenshots from our first “meeting”

Admittedly my involvement in the first phase of this project was minimal, but to be fair, I was recovering from carbon monoxide poisoning (life lesson learned: don’t camp near RV tail pipes, the consequences can be gnarly.) Since I wasn’t able to meet with my team in person or contribute any physical sketches, I helped guide the direction of the message of our poster. In general, I try to avoid infusing politics in my work, but for project about a social message it was unavoidable. I wanted to pick a topic that virtually nobody could make an argument against. I think I’d be hard pressed to find somebody who says they wish their prescription drugs were more expensive. Thus the Drug Lords Team was born, with a goal to pass Prop 61 in California to work towards government regulated drug prices.

41

Week Two: Idea Iterations

My mood boards for the next phase were very eclectic, in part because I didn’t want to have two pages full of photos of medical equipment. I wanted to incorporate images of greed, colors typically associated with medicine, and cutouts to inform my ten compositions.

42

Your Life for Your Life?

43

Project Three: Meaning, a Poster Story

You See Your Prescriptions Through An Orange Lens

But The Guys Who Make The Drugs Only See Them As Green

Prescriptions and Poverty Should Not Be Taken At T he Same Time.

Support Drug Price Regulation For All. May Cause Better Health.

Why should your life

Is there a magic pill that will make my other pills cost less?

come at the cost

of the greed and health

of someone else?

44

Week Two

Dr. John Smith 123 Main Street Springfield, USA 12345 Phone: (555) 555-5555

Chicken Scratch for Less Cash.

Drug Price Regulation Now.

After narrowing down Caela and Sean’s sketches and divvying them up between the three of us, I had a rush of ideas. Some of them were obvious, anything involving an entirely recognizable physically rendered pill or pill bottle felt like a dead end but was necessary to try out in the process.

Even though we were only supposed to be creating images at this point, adding copy was giving my visuals a clearer direction. I wanted to infuse a humorous tone into a somber topic. For some reason, the phrase “get well soon” turned into “get paid soon” resonated in my mind; I had never seen it anywhere else before, and it felt appropriate for the topic. I moved forward with the idea of creating work that seemed like screwed up Hallmark greetings.

45

Week Three: Full-Scale Mock Ups

Kim, 2016 and Sean ela Harp, nder, Ca Rachel Be

With Lo ve The Ph , ar ma

ceutica

ls

Support Fair Drug Prices

Thinki ng of You and How M uch Money You Owe U s

Vote Yes on Prop 61

The only time I have EVER used the typeface Apple Chancery in a college class. Also fun fact: The flowers are made out of pills!

46

de r en lB ch e Ra

Get Paid Soon

ela

Ca Se

an

Kim

rp

Ha

20

16

Your Finances Shouldn’t Stand In The Way Of Saving Your Life.

Vote Yes on Prop 61.

Embroidered the pills in real life then combined then with a found typeface to create this crazy cross stitched poster

47

Project Three: Meaning, a Poster Story

Rachel Bender, Caela Harp, and Sean Kim, 2016

Your focus should be on saving your life, not on paying for your prescriptions.

Vote Yes on Prop 61 for fair drug prices in California

I created this wallpaper pattern myself and the stitches digitally, placing them without snapping to a grid to give them a slightly more organic look

It was at this point that I realized my images might have become a little too funky for their own good. I dove deep into this bizarre idea of incorporating cross stitching into my posters, in part because I had never seen this type of imagery combined with a social message about drug prices. The “granny� vibe is quite appropriate because older people take more prescriptions, but the message was getting real muddled amidst all of the decorations. I was a little heartbroken when we didn’t move forward with it, but the iteration above is neatly tucked on my hard drive. Hopefully, I can draw inspiration from it for another project one day.

48

Week Four: The Penultimate Poster

In order to experience some more team unity instead of continuing in our own mostly separate directions, we came together to go back to an idea that we’d had in some form since the beginning: making things out of pills. While the object was obvious, the message we combined it with was not.

Everyone collected various prescriptions and we worked together to set the type to photograph.

I did some cleaning up on the imagery (shown left) so that everything looked like it was part of a real typeface. To me at least, the spacing of the pills made it look like it was still inspired by hand sewn stitches.

49

Project Three: Meaning, a Poster Story

50

Week Four

Once we had our lettering done, we set out to try and figure out what we should put it on. In Sean’s iteration that we based this off of, the background was the pattern from a typical hospital gown.

But the image also resembled how genes are represented in science textbooks, so we tried to create a more abstract, but hospital reminiscent, background pattern. The text was getting lost in the background, so we added in a bright orange rectangle to represent a prescription bottle and blue stripes to represent break on a bottle’s label. Then began the endless process of messing around the proportion of all our elements.

51

Project Three: Meaning, a Poster Story

When we turned the image to the left in our supposedly final poster, I wasn’t very stoked. I thought it looked really busy, but I also didn’t know what we should take away. I was getting frustrated looking at it. My suggestion for the background to mimic the proportions of a prescription bottle label was a misfire. Unless you get your prescriptions from CVS like I do, chances are the labels are different. I was unaware there wasn’t some national standard.

After a long, somewhat painful critique, we agreed to come back the next week with a true final version that brought focus back to the most important parts of our poster: the type in space image and the copy.

52

Week Four

Our challenge for our final was to simplify, so I went super simple and presented two choices to my team: orange or black. We all agreed that the pills popped nicely against a darker color, and that was that.

53

Final Poster Iteration Final Project

54

Final Project

First experience for all of our group members in attempting to capture a poster in-situ with a blurred human subject walking by it. We tried, but it’s a skill to continue expanding in future documentation situations

55

Project Reflection Group projects are my weakness. I love talking about other people’s work, and my work improves by hearing feedback from others, but collaborative projects for school seldom let me hit a sweet spot.

When I’ve had to create designs for jobs with other people in a team, there is greater incentive to do good work efficiently because often there is something very tangible on the line, like a prize or a paycheck. In school, the commitment level between students can range because of personal agendas within their academic careers. Some people are much happier putting in a smaller amount of effort because they only see it as a part of a participation grade. They aren’t thinking macro into how this affects their attitude and ability to work within a team for future “real world” projects. Other people take them very seriously and commit to the point where it can feel like only one person is trying to take on the lion’s share of the work. I fall into the latter category out of an intense desire to try to push myself and create pieces I’m proud to put into my portfolio.

This project was difficult to begin because I wasn’t there the day we started, and I was sick for the first week, so a lot our communication was done over group text, which after a while isn’t productive. It makes me feel like I’m being bombarded with questions that would be so much easier to answer in person. I was unable to render sketches for the first week of idea iteration physically, so I left it in the hands of Caela and Sean, who I trusted to come up with 20 unique ideas.

I know that I have more experience than my group members working in Comm Arts, so already the pressure was on to be a good leader, but at times it came at a cost. I wanted to push our campaign into a weirder direction because I think school is the time to do weird work. You can make standard designs for the rest your career and hone that skill to bang out things that, for the most part, are normal and will be accepted in any design area. But in school, without money or prestige on the line, there’s more room to explore. And in general, I have gone on interviews and been hired for jobs because of the weirder pieces in my portfolio.

I felt held back a lot because of how little time we spent together working and talking through ideas. The group enthusiasm just wasn’t there, and the desire to play it safe and rely on cliches or incredibly off-base without a point was prevalent. I felt that if we weren’t going to be together in person, then the online communication should be much richer. I chalk some of it up to different communication styles. I don't like showing people my ideas until I’ve hit an assignment quota or an iteration that I feel needs feedback to push it to a complete level. As one of my teachers told me last year, “Rachel, if it were up to you I wouldn’t see your process for a hundred years.”

I also realize that I am more expressive than most of my peers when it comes to critiquing, but at times worry it makes me come off as a bit of a know-it-all, which I am not. I only comment when I think things can benefit from more attention and care or a different perspective. Admittedly, this happens often. So as much as I 56

wanted to thoroughly critique every single thing Caela and Sean were making before we presented in class, I am one person and didn’t want it to feel like I was trying so hard to comment on every aspect of their process. And because of the way I work and how I feel about getting feedback when I’m not done with a particular stage, and didn’t solicit them as often as I should have.

In the end, our poster ended up coming from one of my ideas, so, selfishly, I should be satisfied.

Composition wise, the copy is clear and is formed in such a way that it requires a double take. Our CTA was clear and connected to a real life, important cause. But I feel like we lost the message I had initially intended to have a final production stage where we could all work together in person more. It relied on a cliche for the genre of medical imagery, no matter how useful that cliche may be. True, the pill formation does reference the “granny cross-stitching” style I worked on, but the poster exists separately from that vernacular and floats somewhere in between the expected imagery and experimental “get well soon” message subversion. Had we all been more on the same page with how much time, effort, and thought we were going to put into the project, I think I would’ve felt slightly less overwhelmed, but probably still not that relaxed.

57

Project Four: Place

58

Week One: Creative Brief and Research

Final Project: Place Creative Brief Neighborhood: Frogtown Overview Is there a predominant industry or commerce? —What are my area’s strengths?

There aren’t very many stores open for people to walk through, there’s very little of anything that implies it’s ready for public access. Frogtown is very industrial, with large kind of secretive warehouses and smaller creative businesses throughout. The houses are nondescript, but the streets are quiet and pleasant. The area’s strength is its subtle signals of community, like a flourishing public garden, new LA River Visitor center, a community center, and a very up to date and full community bulletin board.

What are this community’s needs?

Protection that encourages progression, centralized business areas, more thoughtful housing propositions that won’t knock out long time residents nor discourage younger people from moving there. There has been desire expressed by residents for a some type of grocery store, which would be beneficial to all residents.

Culture/Demographic Around 8,000 people, mostly Latinx working class families with younger single white people moving in within the last five years. The culture of Frogtown is very insulated, quiet and DIY. There are no big corporations keeping shop in the area either.

What could it be?

A community that benefits from the revival of the river with new infrastructure in place for public resources; blending the old and the new in a way that thoughtfully considers the needs of the community and brings it up to date with too much disruption Event: A building project weekend to create Frogtown’s first marketplace, a space to sell produce from the community garden seasonally and goods such as food, clothing, and art from local vendors.

Audience: Residents of Frogtown, but also those in the greater Los Angeles area who would like to be involved in an event that is more about contributing to something than just observing or buying things.

Tone: DIY, grassroots, independence through unity, progress, Message: Frogtown is evolving and improving, but on its own terms and putting its existing residents first.

Deliverables: A print ad to be run in Los Angeles Magazine and also posted locally on the Frogtown Bulletin Board and in local businesses, where it can reach its core audience and beyond

For this project, I wanted to push myself to pick a neighborhood I was unfamiliar with, and I had never heard of Frogtown until seeing on the list of suggested places. I was intrigued after reading a couple of articles in LA publications about the area. I liked that the area was a mix of different people and was firmly devoted to the idea of keeping the neighborhood more like a small town than a part of the greater downtown landscape. I wanted to create an event for this area that celebrated its DIY spirit, addressed the needs expressed by its current residents and didn’t encourage too many outsiders to participate.

59

Project Four: Place

60

Week One

61

Project Four: Place

62

Week One

63

Project Four: Place

64

Week One

65

Project Four: Place

66

Week One

67

Project Four: Place

My visits to Frogtown were solitary explorations, I only ran into three people on the street in my three visits there. It is an eerily quiet place in Los Angeles; I roamed streets that were free of traffic and large crowds of people. I documented the different textures and texts I found throughout the small area. I sat at the local brewery and drank alone at 2pm, watching the other people around the room. I drank good coffee and befriended the sweetest owners of an incredibly tiny sandwich shop. I walked along, and in the drier parts, of the LA River. I understood why residents didn’t want the area to be subject to large amounts of development; there is something nice about the silence.

68

Week Two: Title Treatments

Jumped ahead a bit in the process to incorporate type with image, but I loved the idea of text weaving through plants

69

Project Four: Place

I loved this graffiti inspired type treatment and wanted to keep incorporating it into my ad

70

Week Two

The biked actually does spell out Frogtown, albeit in a very abstract fashion

71

Project Four: Place

In this week’s episode of “Concepts That Don’t Make a Lot of Sense” Frogtown spelled out on a bench

Based off the images I took in the area, I knew my type treatment for my ad had to be handmade, or incorporate at least items and textures from the area. I didn’t want things to look too polished because in general, nothing in Frogtown looks super new. I took a lot of direct inspiration from signage that exists in the area. I played with ideas involving the text representing the relationship between the organic and industrial elements of the neighborhood. Some of them are a bit kitschy, but it’s part of my process to try out less original ideas at the time so I can see what really isn’t working, or what can be reworked in such a way that it feels fresh.

72

Week Three: Title and Image Integration

ELYSIAN VALLEY

Frogtown FarmStand

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing

I was overwhelmed by life and sick during this phase of the project and was having trouble coming up with ideas. I received a boost by revisiting Frogtown to collect plants from the area to photograph and incorporate into my imagery, but I still had no idea what I wanted to call this event, so I had trouble coming up with additional lettering ideas. I felt lame; thus my work turned out lame as well. The one idea I pulled to keep working with was mixing plant photography with vector shapes, which I thought was a nice way of incorporating the neighborhood's “industrial v natural� landscape.

73

Week Four: Penultimate Ad and Style Guide

Project Come help build Frogtown’s first marketplace! We’re creating a spot in the neighborhood for the Community Garden to sell its produce seasonally and for local vendors to sell their goods year round. We need help building and decorating stalls and seating areas that can be used by everyone.

Volunteers of all skill levels and ages are welcome.

8-5pm Saturday, March 4th Sunday, March 5th Meet at: 2820 Newell St

More Info at ranamarket.com

I was getting closer to achieving a balance between my plant and text elements in this round, but I wasn’t pushing it far enough with this idea of “weaving” them together. I was pleased I finally came up with a title for the event though, Rana Market rana means frog in Spanish, but calling the event the “Rana Market Project” was a little clunky. There was also the issue of the two different hand lettering styles I was incorporating not feeling different enough, but I was trying to pay homage to the lettering I found in Frogtown which was very similar to this. While I had all of the elements I need present, they needed a little more massaging to feel complete.

74

Rachel Bender In-situ shot of my ad in a magazine Frogtown Rana Market Project 12/5/16

Neighborhood Title Treatment:

Event Title Treatment:

Project Type Specimen:

Akzidenz Grotesk Medium Akzidenz Grotesk Regular Akzidenz Grotesk Medium Italic

Color Swatches:

Image Options:

Advertisement Style Guide

75

Project Four: Place

Final Iteration Final Project

Come help build Frogtown’s first marketplace!

We’re creating a spot for the Community Garden to sell its produce and for local makers to sell their goods year round. We need help building and decorating stalls and seating areas for everyone.

Volunteers of all skill levels and ages are welcome.

When: 8-5 Sat, March 4th Sun, March 5th Where: 2820 Newell St

ra

na

m

ar

ke t

.co

m

For my final, I added a background with a warmer color value, amped up the blue and green vector image colors, and incorporated the plant weaving more throughout the page instead just as one big block in the left corner.

76

Final Project

Rachel Bender Frogtown Rana Market Project 12/5/16

Neighborhood Title Treatment:

Event Title Treatment:

Type Specimen:

Akzidenz Grotesk Medium Akzidenz Grotesk Regular Akzidenz Grotesk Medium Italic

Color Swatches:

Image Options:

77

Project Reflection My favorite part of this project was that most of the time when I worked on it, I was moving around. I visited Frogtown several times and walked throughout the neighborhood, discreetly taking photos and stealing leaves from people’s yards. I continued my research at home, reading articles online and looking through the images I took in my explorations.

All of my research made me realize I didn’t just want to create a “block party” type of event, rather I wanted there to be a lasting contribution to the community after the event was over. Two issues that most residents of Frogtown agreed upon was that they didn’t want big housing developments and that it would be nice to have some form of a grocery store. Initially I wanted to tackle the former, but the event I had in mind would be creating a life-size doll house of sorts to show what housing in Frogtown could look like. In short, things were getting a little over complicated.

I thought that building farmer’s market-esque stalls and a seating area could provide a place for residents to sell produce their growing in the community garden and other items that I’d seen them selling out of their yards on the weekend.

It could also help to facilitate a small, informal “business district” for locals. My intention was not to create some annoying hipster market, but more give a spot to those who are already that allows a more formal, centralized setting that might help them attract more customers.

Because my event was vague, I wasn’t sure what images to use. I knew I wanted to represent a more abstract relationship of building and nature, which is how I ended up with the plants weaving around the sharp vector frame, but I don’t know if it was the most successful. Using items sourced from the area was helpful to me. I wanted everything to feel like it could’ve been picked up from a park or sign in Frogtown, and nothing that felt too commercial or branded.

Something I learned while doing this project is that I need to get a new camera; my point and shoot is holding me back. The image quality on my plants was not as high as I would like it be, but since they were live plants there was no way to reshoot them once I rented a nicer camera; they were already dried up.

Overall, I had fun researching the area and getting to hang out in a new part of LA, I just wish I’d had a little more time to figure out what imagery truly is best for an event that involves construction and produce.

78

Studio Research Presentation

80

Stefan Sagmeister Presentation Slides

Rachel Bender, 2016

Stefan Sagmeister

Rachel Bender, 2016

AIGA AIGADetroit Detroit 1999 1999

I have a girl crush on Sagmeister’s partner Jessica Walsh, but had never done much research on him before. I was surprised to learn he was behind some of my favorite type in space pieces; I’ve always found them inspiring to my own typographic journeys.

81

Studio Research Presentation

Rachel Bender, 2016

Obsessions Make My Life Worse But My Work Better

2008

Rachel Bender, 2016

Obsessions Make My Life Worse But My Work Better

2008

82

Stefan Sagmeister Presentation Slides

Rachel Bender, 2016

Having Guts Always Works Out For Me 2012

Rachel Bender, 2016

Having Guts Always Works Out For Me 2012

83

Studio Research Presentation

Rachel Bender, 2016

Having Guts Always Works Out For Me 2012

Rachel Bender, 2016

40 Days of Dating 2013

84

Stefan Sagmeister Presentation Slides

Rachel Bender, 2016

40 Days of Dating 2013

Rachel Bender, 2016

Appy Fizz 2016

85

Studio Research Presentation

Rachel Bender, 2016

Appy Fizz 2016

Sources Stefan Sagmeister: https://www.aiga.org/medalist-stefan-sagmeister/ Having Guts Always Works Out For Me: http://sagmeisterwalsh.com/work/environmental/having-gutsalways-works-out-for-me/

AIGA Detroit: http://sagmeisterwalsh.com/work/print/aiga-detroit/ Having Guts Always Works Out For Me: http://sagmeisterwalsh.com/work/environmental/having-gutsalways-works-out-for-me/

Obsessions Make My Life Worse and My Work Better: http://sagmeisterwalsh.com/work/environmental/obsessions-make-my-life-worse-but-my-work-better/

40 Days of Dating: http://sagmeisterwalsh.com/work/print/40-days-of-dating/ Appy Fizz: http://sagmeisterwalsh.com/work/print/appy-fizz/

Rachel Bender, 2016

86

Presentation Notes Stefan Sagmeister: “bad boy” Known for upsetting norms, he tricks the senses through design, typography, environmental art, conceptual exhibitions and, lately, video. Long ago, Sagmeister, whose motto was “Style=Fart,” replaced style with attitude. His designs are rooted in disorienting images and self-defining aphorisms. Graphic designer to conceptual typographer to performance artist.

Born in Bregenz, Austria in 1962, Sagmeister began his unorthodox career at age 15 writing for Alphorn, a small, left-wing magazine, but quickly realized that working on the layout was more enjoyable than writing articles. He earned an M.F.A. at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna in 1985, and received a Fulbright scholarship to study at Pratt Institute in New York. Even as a young designer he was peripatetic: he took a position with the Leo Burnett Hong Kong Design Group in 1991. During his student days in New York, Sagmeister had courted another design bad boy, Tibor Kalman, of M&Co. When M&Co eventually hired Sagmeister five years later, in 1993, Sagmeister discovered that Kalman had an uncanny knack for giving wisdom-laced advice, which had a deep influence on him as he began cultivating his own career. Perhaps most importantly, Kalman encouraged Sagmeister’s own creative restlessness After M&Co abruptly disbanded, Sagmeister began to specialize in CD cover design. “I get a bigger kick out of meeting some of my musical heroes than sitting in meetings with a marketing director.”

Sagmeister created unique artworks based on the artists’ personas. He used printing and packaging tricks that involved laser-cuts, die-cuts, model building and more, but the witty, elegant and eclectic concepts were the engine that drove the outcome, and he received two Grammy Awards for his designs. During the early 2000s Sagmeister was totally invested in this genre and medium.

In 2008, he announced a one-year sabbatical from all commercial work, and retreated to Bali. It was during this sabbatical when, after deciding against learning how to direct film out of fear “I might devote a lot of time learning this new language and wind up having nothing to say,” he recalled, “it occurred to me I should try to stick with the language I do know how to talk, design, and see if I’d have something to say in it.”

Thus was born Sagmeister’s text-based artwork, who use aphorisms and text fragments to express, either through poetic nuance or commanding declaratives, ideas designed to foster individual thought and group action. Sagmeister included a personal touch, building letterforms that both spell out and illustrate maxims pulled from his own diary: Some were published in his Things I have learned in my life so far. (Abrams, 2008), while others have appeared in magazines, videos and commercials.

In 2012, four years after his time away in Bali, Sagmeister made another major professional life change: The addition of the then-25-year-old Jessica Walsh as his business partner was announced with an update of another classic 87

Studio Research Presentation

Sagmeister shocker. Walsh had emailed Sagmeister, who is known for his generosity, to elicit feedback on her portfolio and career.

After his 2008 show at the prestigious Deitch Projects gallery in New York, Sagmeister had fixed his focus on the broader impact of design—to change perceptions and possibly behavior. Clients have afforded him opportunities to expand his visual language, but exhibitions and videos allow him the freedom of authorship. “The Happy Show,” Sagmeister’s 2012 exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, was the evolutionary result of this shift away from the commercial. He did not design someone else’s ideas; instead, he offered visitors the experience of “walking into the designer’s mind as he attempts to increase his happiness via meditation, cognitive therapy and moodaltering pharmaceuticals” through interactive digital and analog typographic investigations of his “rules to live by.”

“I follow the direction that seems juicy, and has the right balance of newness and familiarity,” Sagmeister told me. “If it’s too new I get anxious,” Sagmeister once said, “if it’s too familiar I get bored.”

AIGA Detroit For this lecture poster for the AIGA Detroit we tried to visualize the pain that seems to accompany most of our design projects. Our intern Martin cut all the type into my skin. Yes, it did hurt real bad.

Having Guts Always Works Out For Me Six newly commissioned double page spreads for the Austrian Magazine .copy.

These are dividing spaces, each opening a new chapter in the magazine. Each month the magazines commissions another studio/artist with the design.

Obsessions Make My Life Worse and My Work Better On September 13, 2008 Sagmeister Inc. began the installation of 250,000 Eurocents on Waagdragerhof Square in Amsterdam. Over the course of 8 days and with the help of more than 100 volunteers, the coins were sorted into 4 different shades, and carefully placed over this 300 sqm area, according to a master plan.

The coin mural spelled out the sentence “Obsessions make my life worse and my work better.” After completion the coins were left free and unguarded for the public to interact with. Less than 20 hours after the grand opening, a local resident noticed a person bagging the coins and taking them away. Protective of the design piece they had watched being created, they called the police.

After stopping the ‘criminal’ the police–in an effort to ‘preserve the artwork’– swept up every remaining cent and carted them away.

88

Presentation Notes

40 Days of Dating When New York–based graphic designers and long-time friends Timothy Goodman and Jessica Walsh found themselves single at the same time, they decided to try an experiment. The old adage says that it takes 40 days to change a habit—could the same be said for love? So they agreed to date each other for 40 days, record their experiences in questionnaires, photographs, videos, texts, and artworks, and post the material on a website they would create for this purpose.

What began as a small experiment between two friends became an Internet sensation, drawing 5 million unique (and obsessed) visitors from around the globe to their site and their story since it was launched in July 2013. 40 Days of Dating: An Experiment is a beautifully designed, expanded look at the experiment and the results, including a great deal of material that never made it onto the site, such as who they were as friends and individuals before the 40 days and who they have become since.

Appy Fizz The new Appy Fizz identity visualizes carbonated bubbles through a dynamic graphic language of 3d spheres and circles. From the print campaign to the television commercial, this circular language in the bold red/white/black color palette unites the various mediums with a distinct look and feel. We worked with brand ambassador & Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra for the TVC to create a bold film for Appy Fizz. In the film Priyanka “sheds” the sweeter tone of the brands past for a strong, bold, sexier tone that will continue for future campaigns.

This project was featured all over India, specifically targeted in main markets like Mumbai and Delhi. Appy Fizz is advertised through a large television presence, outdoor campaigns, large-scale digital advertising and activation, print, and cinema advertising.

89