Oh God, I have no idea what I’m doing, please help.
By Sam SatterleeOn our first day we were paired with a partner and interview them to figure out a problem they were having and how to solve it. We would then Have to throw together an invention from found objects. My partner needed a better way to for college so invented a fishing rod that could pick up money and then be thrown all the way to finances to pay for school.
How did engaging with a real person change the direction your prototype took? It was pretty fun. I think talking it over with someone gave me the opportunity to get another perspective on the project which was pretty helpful. While I don’t think the extra person’s input chartered me that far off my original course for the project, was still enough to change some minor things up like aesthetic and personalization of the product. Since I knew it was meant for a specific person, I tried to put elements of the design I felt they would like.
What was it like showing unfinished work to another person? For this project it felt kind of goofy turning our creations in unfinished, since I knew it was a project about not finishing a project, I still feel like I completed it, if that makes sense. However, as someone who has had to turn in an unfinished art project in high school in order to get a grade before the end of the semester, it does not feel good. I remember feeling kind of disappointed that I couldn’t bring in a better piece of work.
How did the pace feel? Quick, iterative cycles – how did that feel relative to how you normally work? It was pretty fun honestly. Made it kind of feel like a game, which is always fun. I’ve done a few art projects where the requirements were to finish whatever piece I was working on before the end of the class, but they’ve never gone this fast. While I would never want to personally give someone a piece of this unfinished in a professional setting, it’s fun to do as an exercise. Design thinking is an iterative, self-directed process.
Based on what you learned—what would you go back and do next? What would you do over again? I kind of came up with one plan for the more detailed planning part of the project, and then completely switched more than half through the time limit which resulted in a less detailed more improvised piece. Maybe I should have just stuck with my original plan and further developed it. Or maybe if I could go back, I would further flesh out my second project. I probably would double layer the fishing rod, and then lengthened the amount of twine I used the string. As well as better fit the springs to hold coins. If I’m being honest though the most fun part of this was improvising on the fly so I don’t if would want to go back and fix anything. Improvisation is what made it fun, so I don’t if I’d like the project with hindsight and more time.
Before we got into the digital realm of this class, we first had to go to a little old school with the Dot Line Project. Dot Line was an analogue project that involved using paper, glue, and scissors. We were given a list of words to create abstract composition that gave off the feeling of the word chosen. You would then have to cut the paper into dots and lines and had to use a certain amount for each composition.
There was a plethora of words, and I ended up originally going with Freedom, Oppression, and Comfort. Over a week or so I came up with some design iterations for each word and ended up dropping oppression in exchange for scarcity. From there I chose designs I like and continued to narrow them down till I found one I liked for each of them.
Then I cut out shapes and glued one word together for the inprocess critique and took notes from that moving forward into the final design. Then I glued my compositions together and stuck them on a posterboard with spray glue. Now when it comes to glue as well, its messy which made me aware of the fact that I need to take better care of my projects since it will affect the final product.
How difficult is it for you to make a “well-crafted object”? Would you rather make things quickly and a little less perfectly or spend extra time to get small details right? I hate spray glue, it’s so hard to use. I was not really a fan of it. If I could go back, I’d definitely want to take more time to get it right.
How did this project change or affect your idea of abstraction? It made me think more about the traits s subject rather than its appearance.
Was it difficult to represent ideas without illustrating them? Why or why not? Yeah, but I think it’d be a lot less fun if you could be illustrative. That restriction caused me to think more outside the box.
How else might you use this exercise or the ideas of gestalt and abstraction? I’ll try not to think as bluntly and straight forward in the future when planning my projects.
My next project down the analogue road was the Letterform Project. This project was all about words and how they are presented. Each student carved out two letters of the alphabet to create and print-block alphabet. We would use a roller to apply ink onto the letter to create words. During that time, we’d also sketch out a bunch of words in a bunch of different styles. We’d then show class with wrap around the classroom and see what worked and didn’t work.
Then we’d choose which words to use and workshopped potential designs. We had to come with three different designs. The word I ended up choosing was deal. I worked through multiple drafts and figured out my final ideas.
This project was kind of a slap in the face to me, I was really struggling to come up with ideas for deal and by the time I had three solid compositions planned it was too late to fully explore those ideas and compositions so I ended up presenting the best work that I could have. This sort of sobered me up a bit to the fact that I had to work faster and sometimes just roll with an idea all the way through even if I don’t like it.
: What did you learn about letterforms by working this way? Working with font takes a lot more thought and effort than you think. You need to be mindful placement, neatness, chatter, and a whole lot of other stuff to make it work.
What would you do next if you were to continue working with these letters? I’d want to try working on longer words or even phrases. I feel like there could be a lot more interesting things you could do with, despite the extra amount of work that would take place. I also think maybe trying different font besides arial black would be fun and interesting.
After Letter Form, we began working on Iterative Illustrations which was my favorite project personally. This project involved choosing and researching an animal and creating six illustrations of it using different media. The animal I decided to choose was the Galapagos Giant Tortoise. We had to create a geometric, collage, type collage, and continuous line iterations. We also had to create to master artist iterations, which were based off the style of an artist or culture we found interesting. I ended up choosing the style illustrated in ancient text called Mayan Codices as well a style based off a street artist called Swoon.
We first started with a continuous line and practiced by drawing our fellow classmates in a continuous line so that we could understand how it worked. Then we drew our animals in continuous line for homework in our sketchbooks. I ended up drawing my tortoise three time total through this project. Twice in my text, but I drew those tortoises too big and crossed over the seem of the textbook, so I decided to redraw a final tortoise on normal paper and scan that in for my continuous line iteration.
Our next iterations were the collage iterations. We were given magazines to comb through and find images to cut out and glue together in our textbook. One iteration could use whatever images we want, and one had to be made of purely text.
The final iteration we worked on the geometric iteration made from shapes exclusively. I decided to use adobe illustrator to create my geometric tortoise and reworked him from simple beginning to look more tortoise-y!
Finally, I had to display my iterations altogether on InDesign which really needed to be reworked because I first made it at 3am in a sleep deprived stupor. What I ended up going with was a much more organized look with upped contrast on my scanned in images to better blend in with the white background.
What did you learn about your object through this process? I learned that tortoises are pretty chill dudes. My specific tortoise, the Galapagos Giant Tortoise, likes to eat pear cactus and can way up to 417 kg. Also, it used to be a pass time to ride these big fellas until people realized that they weren’t made for that, and they were harming the tortoises by doing so.
Which media was the most challenging for you? Which is the most enjoyable? The media I found most challenging was my old nemesis, collage. I can never do well with collage ever since I first did collage in middle school. We just don’t click together, and that’s ok. The media I think I had the most fun with was doing both my mater artists. They had fun art styles to explore and if I ever were to do this project again I would 100% pick them again. What did you learn about photoshop you will use again going forward? To be honest, I just used the cutting tool and the opacity feature on photoshop for my edit which are very simple. They still helped me get the effect I was looking for though, and I will probably use them differently in the future too.
If you had to continue with this object for a year, what else might you do to represent it in new ways? The Galapagos Giant tortoises can sleep for 16 hours, and I think that could be a fun angle to work with. I would also explore the fact that they are endangered and their daily routine that they follow every day.
The PSA Poster is exactly what it sounds like, we made a PSA Poster. The only big rule being that we could only use text. However, this class also gave us great insight into how to work with a client. During this project each designer ended up writing up a job for someone else in class to complete. I ended up writing a job for my classmate Jenna to make a PSA Poster about encouraging students to spend more time outside. Jenna ended up assigning me a poster about donating to Salvation Army. We each wrote a job brief for each other about what exactly each of us wanted and any specific detail to be added or left out.
How did you use scale, opacity, rhythm, orientation, and negative space (among others) to create a visual hierarchy?
My poster had a straightforward layout, so my main goal was getting the Donate Goods to work. The only other thing I really
Was it challenging to be limited to type only? It was challenging. In high school I was always one of the kids that was asked to make posters for the upcoming art events (I had no idea what I was doing. I would just slap text on there and hope for the best), and I always tried to include some kind of illustration to get people’s attention. So, this kind of felt like that, but on hard mode. I had fun with it though.
I came up with a boat load of designs to show Jenna. Once she picked a layout, I ended up following that layout and adjusted accordingly with the critiques given by class and my client.
What skills or ideas did you learn in this project that you can take forward to other work? I learned to value space and size more as well as what makes something engage with people,
What is the difference between a good life and a significant life? A good life is one filled with enjoyment. A significant life is one filled with impact. If you choose to put in the effort, you can have both.
Are you called to creative work?
If so, how do you recognize that calling? If not, to what do you feel called? I don’t really know, it’s a question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately. I’m still trying to figure it out.
