EXPLORING A DEAD END
BY: SARA DZIUBEK
INTRODUCTION When I chose my new major, I thought I would take an artistic direction with it. I have always been a performer, but I've longed to do something different artistically, and I thought this could be a what I was really called to do. I've always wanted to be able to draw the beautiful images that I see in my mind, so I thought that maybe I should try something that involved art and design techniques. I've never been the best at art, but I figured that was because my grade school education wasn't the best. Now that I've given serious art and design a try, I'm starting to realize that maybe it's not what I'm called to do. I think I would enjoy it as a personal past time, but I think I'm meant for something different. This decision turned out to be a good one, but not because I've found my calling. The greatest failure I've experienced would probably be my first semester here at SNC. I really dropped the ball with my grades, and I faced several personal challenges that crippled me mentally and emotionally. Though I struggled through that semester, the experience helped strengthen my resolve and determination. This lead to probably my biggest success, which was how I handle the second semester here at SNC. It also lead me to try taking this design class, which has made the path that I'm supposed to take even clearer. Though it turns out I'm not meant for designing, I now have one more thing checked off of my list and am able to narrow down what I want to do with my life.
DOT/LINE I originally thought that the difference between art and design was that art was something you made by hand and hung in a museum, and that design was more digitized and used for store logos. I decided to choose the side of design since I'm not great at drawing by hand, but now I don't particularly favor either. This feeling started to become apparent when we began our dot/line project. The objective of this project was to choose four words and come up with a depiction for each word using a combination of dots and lines. This project interested me from the start, because I felt certain that I could take a big step in my artistic ability by starting small. I sketched out several iterations for the words that I chose, being careful not to make any iteration too similar to another. At first I found this to be really fun, it was something I 'd never done before and I was really excited to find that I was actually creating visual representations for words. However, I started to get tired of recreating the same iterations over and over.
After making iteration after iteration, it was finally time to make the last ones. I think the biggest challenge I had here was trying to get my pieces to actually be straight. I've never been great at seeing straight lines even when I think I've finally got it, someone points out that it's not straight. This was really frustrating, but eventually all I could do was make it as straight as I could based on what I saw. However, even though I struggled so much with this part, I still think the finished products are what I'm most proud of. In the past two years the only things I've created have come from this class. Looking back on all of our projects, I think I'm most proud of this one, especially when I look at my Chaos iteration. It took a lot of work to get the positioning of all of the pieces just right, but I persevered and created something that I could look at without feeling disappointed. For the first time in my life that I can rememer, I was actually genuinely happy with something I had created.
EXPRESSIVE TEXT This project was definitely the most difficult for me. I've never been great at writing, so trying to create my own font and design for a words was extremely difficult. The objective was to choose a word and create four separate iterations for it that could represent the word for those who may not know it. Every day I am tested by some new challenge, but this one nearly broke me. In my opinion, a good life is being able to give up gracefully, but a significant life is being able to persevere through every challenge. By finding the motivaiton to persevere through this project, I took one more step towards living a significant life, even if I'm the only one who remembers it.
Keeping my motivation up was definitely the hardest part of this project. The word that I chose, wake, was fun to write a few times, but soon my creative ideas were running dry. Every letter became more of a challenge, and soon the work itself was begin to seem like an enemy, rather than a creative endeavor. Unfortunately, my work definitely suffered because of this, but after renewing my interest by using different mediums I managed to pull my work out of the gutter and polish it up to be presentable.
Though I'm glad I managed to make it through this project, and I'm proud of my work, this made me officially realize that I don't have any real interest in art or design. Even if I knew I would be financially secure in this field, I still wouldn't want to design anything for a living. I've found that rather than enjoying what I'm doing I look forward to forgetting about the project. This is not what I want out of my career, so I decided not to follow this path. However, my work is still important for me, so it was done to the best of my abilities and it is something I can be proud of.
OBJECT ITERATIONS Example of blind continuous line sketching of a fennec fox.
The third project for the year was to create several different iterations of an animal of our choice. We would then need to pick our best work from every type of collage we had tried, and compile them into one grand collage to turn in.
The first step we took in creating our collages was choosing an animal, and practicing different ways of sketching the animal. The animal that I decided to use as my object was the Fennec Fox, which is a very petite fox that is known for it's large ears and house pet qualities.
Example of blind modified sketching of a fennec fox.
While we were busy making several iterations of blind continuous and blind mod. line sketches, we also needed to find two famous designers. I chose Banksy and Alex Katz, because I thought they would be the most interesting designers to try and imitate. After examining both of their styles, I needed to make an iteration of my object using the method that each designer used.
The next step I took to create my project was to decide which iterations were best out of several categories, such as geometric collages, continous line sketches, and my Master Artist pieces. Once I had picked the iterations I wanted to display, they needed to be cleaned up in Photoshop.
The final step was to place my iterations on a one page spread in InDesign. This was by far the most difficult part of the project for me, because I was completely unfamiliar with the software. Trying to get my designs to fit in their designated boxes, and to get rid of pixalation was a real struggle for me. I ended up completely restarting my project four times because I accidentally hit a button I didn’t mean to, and then couldn’t figure out how to undo the mistake. Thankfully, the pieces all started to come together, and soon the finished product was done. By combining iterations that had darker backgrounds with ones that had lighter backgrounds, I managed to create a nice contrast that caught many eyes.
DESIGNER PRESENTATION Our next project objective was to give a presentation on a graphic designer of our choice. We needed to research their work, and find several examples of their creations to show the class. Out of all of the projects we have done this semester, this was the one that I liked the most and had the greatest confidence for.
The first step was to find a graphic designer whom interested me. This was easier than I expected, since we were given a list of pre-approved designers that we could choose from. I chose a few names from the list, and started to get a feel for which designer I would like best. I was quickly drawn to Woody Pirtle when I read an online interview with. The interviewer asked him several in depth questions about designing and his opinions, and I felt inspired by his responses. I thought he was an interesting person, and that motivated me to want to learn more about him. Finding out that he was very accomplished, and had even had work put in museums, was very inspirational to me.
After I determined which designer I wanted to present on and got it approved by my professor, I started to gather information. It actually turned out to be very difficult to find descriptions of Mr. Pirtle's work, and often I couldn't even find why a company had asked him for his work. At first I wanted to have lots of solid information to present to the class, but it soon got to the point where I had to interpret my designers work based on other information I had found. In the end, I'm actually really glad that I couldn't find more information, because it forced me to look even deeper into my designer, and get into his head.
The biggest challenge of this project was something completely unanticipated. The research, though a struggle at times, still went fairly well, and I didn't have a problem with creating the powerpoint presentation. The problem came while I was giving the presentation in front of the class. My work was all prepared, and the presentation was running...but my mouth couldn't keep up. I quickly lost hydration, and was becoming unable to form my words through my thick tongue. Thankfully, the presentation ended before I completely couldn't speak, and the class seemed to like the work I had choosen to use in my presentation. Overall, this project probably had my best work and effort.
CHILDREN’S BOOK The objective of this project was to illustrate and typeset a children’s book using a story written by another student. The goal was to accurately portray the story that was being told, but in a simplified manner that would appeal to both the child and the parent reading the story. At first I was very excited to be able to illustrate and typeset a children’s book for the course, but I soon found that my interest in the project wouldn’t be enough to keep me motivated.
I started out with some small iterations that I could present to my author when I met with him for the first time. Instead of going page by page, I picked a few select pages that I could use to develop a style.
After I met with my author, I started to create rough sketches in my sketchbook. I had to redo a few of them because they weren’t big enough when I scanned them into the computer, but this part went smoother than anticipated.
The next part of my process was to scan all of my images into the computer, and then refine them in Photoshop. My version of refining including tracing over my sketches with black ink, hiding the original sketch lines, and then coloring in the background of the picture. This part was probably the most enjoyable for me, at least as long as I did spend too long hunched over the keyboard with my eyes glued to the screen.
Finally, I placed the pictures on their corresponding pages in InDesign, and placed the text over them. The most challenging part was in this final step, because it was actually very hard to find the appropriate font to use for the book. It was also tough to determine how big I wanted the text to be, since I wanted it to be readable, but not overbearing. Once I finished placing everything where I wanted it, I exported the file to a PDF and sent it to the print center for printing!
Volcano Town
This book was made for Introduction to Design at St. Norbert College in December 2015. The font used is Kannada Sangram MN regular and bold.