Project 2: Materialism X 4

Set of 4

Economy & Emphasis 

Movement 

Balance

Proportion 

 I initially struggled picking a concept for project 2. I started with 'bling' but found it to be too specific and narrow. Once I chose materialism, my ideas came to life. After hundreds of sketches, I decided on four images to transfer and cut. Using proportion, movement, economy & emphasis, and balance design principles, I depicted materialism as an addictive, all-consuming condition. Above are the final designs on bristol paper painted with black & white gouache with details done using microns.

Erte Research

Since I am new to Roski and don't know too much about famous artists and their styles, I decided to educate myself on another one of the artists from the design principles assignment.

His name is Erte and I love his romantic style. The French artist's work consist of stagnant figures, he does a great job at still creating movement within the piece. This is something that I personally struggled with in my preliminary sketches of the design principle assignment.

Erte is also exceptional at creating balance within a piece without it looking completely balanced. He uses the Rule of Thirds in the third piece. I absolutely love his work and hope to learn even more about him in the future.

Project 2!

I began my project in a panicked state as I rattled my brains for a theme that could be somewhat related to my artist models Karl Benjamin and Cassandre. Lego was the best I could think of so I rolled with that. I took a lot of inspiration for my drawings from Cassandre's posters and also from the Bauhaus movement which was coincidentally around the same era that lego was made, 1932. 

I am really happy with the way mine turned out after battling with gluing and having to re-do one. 

clockwise from the top left they are movement, balance, proportion, emphasis and economy.

Words come to life..

Finally our class project on Movement, Proportion, Emphasis & Economy, and Balance is complete! I am so relieved to be done with it after over 100 sketches and numb fingers from cutting all the designs. I decided on a concept of "Words come to life" through endangered species. Here are the final pieces and some sketches from along the way. 

The entire set...

Design Principle of Movement...

Design Principle of Emphasis & Economy...

Design Principle of Proportion...

Design Principle of Balance...

BrainStorming Map

Here is my brainstorming map from class for the second project. My theme was dreams, it starts from the bottom and then creeps up. 

"Hand Made" Collaboration With 400 Students - Joanna Lee

For this collaborative project, our group decided to work with typography. Instead of solely utilizing computer graphics, we decided to go back to the basics by also experimenting with hands-on, tangible material so that we could explore all realms of type and font production. The idea itself was very general from the start, which opened up all doors for every group member to bring fun, exotic, everyday items that would form letters and eventually pertinent, cute little phrases. During the first group meeting, we brainstormed the concept of our project; we all came to the consensus that we wanted a visual book (almost like something that could be found pleasantly sitting on top of a table at a coffee shop for passersby to stop by and flip through) that provided both the artistic and entertainment elements to its readers. 

Link to the E-book, Hand Made: http://issuu.com/michael_bermudez/docs/handmadefont_project

"Hand Made" book cover page

Doing so brought more life to the text, and showed me that not everything in the design world had to be computerized and technology-based; sometimes going back to working with materials with one's own hands makes the experience even more intimate because one can feel the textures and how the objects themselves physically function and create the piece. Personally, it was a good wake-up call because I had assumed that design immediately associated with only computer-made layouts, spreads, etc. But through the experience that I gained while working on this project, I noticed that you can do both computerized works with an integrated hands-on creative aspect to it as well. 

Previously, I had always seen typography with a very skeptical eye because it only appeared to be a very narrow-minded, tedious process of learning the intricacies of text. Working on this project definitely showed me how the letters of the alphabet have unique shapes and symbols that all hold certain significance. Physically forming them with my hands when tying the rubber bands from one pin to another created a tension that I as the artist could feel while creating the rubber band "strokes" to create each letter, and positioning the safety pins in a rational and artistically-pleasing technique was a very fun concept to learn as well. Other different media that were used included grass blades, which had a very sharp and pointy feel to it, the tea bags, which held a very strong and fortified feel to it, sticky notes, which signified playfulness, and pixy dust, which was a very soft medium to work with (which meant that it took a lot of time to form.) The creation of the alphabets took about 2 to 3 class work studio days, and the rest of the work (compilation of the e-book) was done in and outside of class. We decided to include little phrases that correlated with the material used to make the words and the alphabet letter themselves because not only would it be practical, but more engaging because it shows the functionalities and readabilities of the letters we made from the rubber bands, grass, pixy dust, wet tea bags, and safety pins. 

Not only did I learn the valuable art of different typographical creations, but I also learned how to work in a group with varying interests and emphases. At first, being grouped up with a pair of advanced level students was overwhelming to me, but it was great that they encouraged us to be free in our thinking and to include input into what kinds of materials we would want to use to make the fonts. It was also a technical project because we thought about how to place and space the letters and which witty phrases to incorporate with each font.

Overall, I really enjoyed participating in this project, and I would definitely want to try it another time if I were given the opportunity to do so because I know for sure that every group learned something valuable, worthwhile, and unique from their own experiences.

Wet Teabags

Grass Blades

Pixie Dust

Safety Pins

Post-It Sticky Notes

Rubber Bands and Push Pins

Rubber bands + push pins on the wall

Rubber bands + push pins on the wall

Rubber bands + push pins on the wall

Rubber bands forming the alphabet

Developing Concepts and Brainstorming Session

In order to develop our ideation skills, each student  set up a map centered around their concept and we brainstormed individually, in small groups and then as a class.  Here are some of the results:

My Favorite Designer (and My First Post)!

Hello! This is my first post!!! May it be the first of many (hopefully good quality) contributions to the blog. How exciting!
I've chosen a designer named Paul Morrison for an upcoming class project. He's from the UK and did his MA and Postgraduate work at Goldsmiths College of Art. His art features a lot of varied line measure, negative space, and organic subject matter. I really like his work and his style. Hope you do too!

by Paul Morrison

I think this is my favorite of his pieces. The asymmetry and economy made it stand out to me.

A Great Designer

I love the use of color and shapes in the work.  I think his designs just pop and are incredible intriguing.  This designer is Ryan McGunniess.  Check him out, for sure!

Project 2

This took forever, or so it felt like. I liked drawing them. It was the cutting and pasting that took all the fun out of it. It's weird how it seemed like so much effort to get the designs to begin with. I had other designs that I like more than the emphasis one. And the the Movement one with the music staff didn't have the puddles at first. The puddles had to be painted on. I'm most proud of it. But it was also the one that gave the most trouble. I feel like I should give a name to the piano monster. He reappears a lot. He's close to me because he feels like a character out of "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends". In fact he does resemble a character named Cheese. The repetition design is the record alien. If you notice he's pretty high. I know guys who would love this design. Vinyl lovers who sit and smoke and play some crazy music. Good music, not that they needed to be high to make good music. After all that work, I have decided to make shirts from a lot of my designs. We'll see if they're really as popular as I hope. Student loans don't come cheap.

Composition

Project 2 began as a difficult project because I was unsure of a theme to choose. I knew I was completely inspired by Shepard Fairey's work, and I wanted to do something that I felt worked not only with his style, but with his message. I chose Hip-Hop as my theme, because like Fairey's work, it has a feeling of rebellion and misunderstanding. His style and technique also function well with the feeling of flowing and motion that one gets when listening to hip-hop.

I decided I'd focus on different elements of hip-hop for this project.

Repetition

For this piece, I decided to use the graffiti aspect of hip-hop. I chose to do a spray can with paint flowing out of it for the piece, because I felt it had a lot of repetitiveness. I used different styles and patterns that Shepard Fairey uses in his work to stick to his style for the project. This turned out to be one of my favorite of the pieces, not only because it stuck to the composition so well, in my opinion, but alsobecause it was one of the first pieces of drawing I have ever done (the finger was esp

ecially difficult) and I managed to do it successfully. I also enjoyed creating shadow without the use of values in gray, something that was challenging to do, but it opened up a new way of thinking for me.

Balance

I feel that although this is one of the more simple pieces of the 4 that I completed, it not only sticks to the composition well, but it also incorporates Fairey's style. He often times focuses his attention in the center of the frame and has beams moving directed outward from the centerpiece. This piece is supposed to be a microphone, a major piece of hip-hop and rapping, and by making the microphone so large and having it take over most of the piece, I feel like it conveys that image very well. I wish I could have thought of a more interesting way to do the micr

ophone, rather than drawing in the lines with my pen, but at the time, that was the best I could think of.

Movement

For this piece, I decided to use hands/fingers once again because I felt this one should have a human aspect to it, since human motion is so natural. I thought of spelling the words “hip-ho

p” out on the hands because I felt it showed a sort-of punching notion, and it gave the effect that the words were popping off the page. Another way that I created a feeling of movement was to have the words “leaking” off the page, to create a downwards flow of motion.

In my original idea, I had the words “is dead” on the bottom of the page, but I felt it created a stop and didn’t really have the same fluid effect that I was aiming at for the piece, so I didn’t include it.

Emphasis and Economy

For me, this was surprisingly the most difficult piece to work with since I was trying again to stick to Shepard Fairey’s inspiration, and his work is oftentimes very busy, and not so simple. This one shows a record dripping—the same effect I use for the movement piece. It is supposed to show the fluidity of hip-hop. I feel like in my mind I had a greater idea behind this piece than what I was able to convey in this image. It was surprisingly the most difficult of the pieces which goes to show that sometimes just thinking simple is one of the most complicated tasks.