progression progression
Tasha Voss
St. Norbert College Art 130 Fall 2019
What’s the difference between art and design? I feel as though the two concepts are very similar. However, design differs from art because it has an end goal. Often we create ideas and represent them with design. Art is more abstract and free. There typically isn’t a plan for how a piece of art should turn out; it is more of a creative process. As a dancer, I think of dancing improvisationally as art and choreographing a routine as design.
If you were guarenteed it would support you financially, what would you want to design or make for a living? I would do interior design. I really enjoy decorating homes and making them feel cozy. It would be amazing to not have any limits with money and be able to purchase any home good items regardless of how expensive they are. I believe that the design and aesthetics have a big impact on the way we percieve and fell in an environment.
D-School The first exercise that we did in this class was D-School. In this exercise, we were put into pairs. Our partner presented us with a hypothetical problem, and it was our job as designers to create something that would help them with the problem.
I really enjoyed this exercise because it allowed me to get to know my classmates while also exploring my creativity. I found it helpful to engage with my partner about her “problem” rather than just reading about it on a sheet of paper. I felt as though collecting details that branched off each question that I asked her to lead me to a better and more unique solution to her problem.
My partner’s “problem” was that she had a hard time coming up with meaningful, nice gifts for her loved ones. I designed her a “gift idea generator.” It was meant to be an electronic device that allowed you to type demographic and specific information about the person recieving the gift and it would present different ideas for you.
I prefer to complete my work before presenting it, so it was a little uncomfortable for me to present my partner with a project that wasn’t assembled well and lacked detail. On the other hand, I noticed that even with the lack of detail in my project, I was able to create so many ideas in my head of what the object could do. I can think on my feet and come up with different ideas in a fast amount of time, it just takes me awhile to assemble them. I liked that my partner was able to give me feedback because it made me realize critiques that I wouldn’t have thought of myself.
Dot/Line For this project, we were presented with a list of words and asked to create images to represent those words using only dots and lines.
Gestalt We paid close attention to Gestalt concepts during this project and used them to make our critiques richer. Gestalt is a very interesting concept because it allows one to break down the aspects of a piece, opening new doors for interpretation. Many times, when we first look at a piece, a few observations come to mind. Such as, “those colors are really bright” or “that circle in the middle really stands out.” When one gains knowledge on Gestalt, they may realize that these concepts are present in surface level observations.
This project opened my eyes to the powers of abstraction.
Scarcity
Abundance
Stability
I had no idea that a 4x4 piece of paper with 1 dot and 2 lines could have so much meaning and room for interpretation. Every one of my peers had a different interpretation of each piece, which made it entertaining to hear others’ ideas. I learned that it is good to go beyond concrete representations because abstraction allows it.
Letterforms For this project, we selected a word to letterprint by hand. We carved the letters out of linoleum into “stamps” and dipped them in ink to print them on paper. We were told to print various forms of the word including three that represented the meaning of the word and one clean print of the word in a straight line.
My favorite part about the process was carving the letters; I found it very satisfying. In my next project in working with these letters, I would experiment with colors. Both colored ink and colored paper. It would be fun to make birthday/greeting cards with these.
The hardest, most frustrating part about this project was getting the letters straight and in line and avoiding getting ink all over my hands and the excess paper.
Working with letterforms was a unique experience. I feel that doing it by hand really helped me to understand the process.
Growing up in the 2000s, all I’ve ever known is typing something up on Word and clicking “print” and the printer did it for me. I now have a better understanding of what happens, and what people did before computers and automatic printers.
Object Iterations Geometric Shapes
We focused on an animal of choice for this project and made various iterations of it, including continuous lines, collage, text collage, geometric shapes, and portrayed two master artists using PhotoShop and InDesign.
I decided to focus this project on
penguins
In terms of media, the most challenging for me was doing normal collages because I stressed way too much about finding the perfect images to use and it took more time.
The most enjoyable was doing the continuous line iteration because I love to draw, and I found it very relaxing. Continuous Lines
Type Collage Master Artist: Keith Haring
Collage
Master Artist: Malika Favre
I learned that there are 17 different species of penguins which was very surprising to me because I assumed that there was maybe two or three. If I could continue working on penguins for this project for a year, I would do more master artist iterations. It would be fun to use paint or watercolors as well.
I learned a lot about Photoshop, as this was my first time using it. The most important concept that I learned in Photoshop was the purpose of using layers. I would get really confused why the eraser tool wasn’t working and I then realized that layers are important. I also learned how to select items using the magic wand which helps with changing the colors of objects.
PSA Poster
Scale
This project introduced us to the design industry. We were asked to come up with a topic of interest that we think deserved a public service announcement.We were then paired with a classmate and assigned to be their designer for their topic of interest and vice versa. We created a poster based on our client’s guildelines and input.
To create visual hierarchy, I used scale by making the main phrase “you are not alone” bigger so it would stand out. I also made the word depression bigger to show that that’s what the phrase was referring to.
Depression
is the most common health problem for college students
Young adults aged 18-25 are 60% more likely to have depression than people aged 50 or older
You are not alone
Over 300 million people suffer from depression worldwide
tion
rsa onve
Rhythm I think I used rhythm effectively because my poster made it easy to know what it was talking about by just glancing at it. The order and placement of the phrases and words made the poster flow like a sentence.
he c
tt Star
Talk to someone you trust: friends, family members, your doctor, a counselor, or text NAMI to 741741
When we found out that we couldn’t use images in the poster, I was a little disappointed because I love incorporating doodles and illustrations. However, I ended up appreciating this limitation because it forced me to focus on the text itself rather than adding color and doodles that may have been distracting.
From this project, I gained a deeper understanding of InDesign. I have always used Word to make posters, so this was a change. I like that it allows you change specific things like kerning and how tall or short the text was in InDesign. I also learned how to recognize an effective poster verses a non-effective one. I can confidentially say that when I look at a poster board, I can tell which posters actively convey their message with ease.
Artist Presentation We selected a professional artist to research and give a presentation on to the class.The presentation was unique in the fact that we had 20 seconds to speak about each PowerPoint slide, which encouraged improvisation and deeper understanding.
I chose Rebeca Mendez. She was really interesting to research, as I found out that she does pretty much every kind of art and design that comes to mind. From photography and film making to logos and websites, she does it all. I liked Mendez’s work a lot because it heavily included nature as well.
In terms of physically presenting this artist, I really enjoyed it. I am different than most people because I love presenting and being in front of large groups of people. It was hard because I couldn't deeply elaborate on the topics I presented because my time was limited. I enjoyed this experience having only 20 seconds for each slide because it got me out of my comfort zone.
My favorite work of Rebeca Méndez was her photography series called “Here Over There.” The project is a compilation of photos of hotel beds that she has stayed in since 2002. I like it because it is a really simple, yet unique way to display culture differences. There are over 80 images of hotel beds from a variety of countries.
This book was made as part of Introduction to Design at St. Norbert College in the Fall of 2019. The font used was Franklin Gothic Demi Condensed. It was digitally printed and saddle stapled at the college’s print center.