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May 30, 2006
May 08, 2006
Albert Nobbs Display Case
Describe your ideation + brainstorming process on this project:
The display is all about the ideation. I knew the client wanted a large version of the poster and sketches, but I had to figure out the most effective arrangement. I taped out the shape of the display on my floor and moved the pieces around trying to find a workable overall composition.
What issues came up as you interviewed your client?
My original design had way too many pieces, and the client pointed out many of the posters had only vague differences. I also lacked a chronology, so the pieces were more thrown together than they needed to be. The choice to limit my roughs and place them from loosest to more refined served the concept well.
You were asked to generate two different approaches to the showcase design...what were they?
I had to choose between mounting everything onto one giant piece of foamcore, mounting every piece by itself, or by tacking everything up individually. I had wanted to mount everything onto foamcore but realized mounted roughs made little sense and would take forever.
What issues came up as you began to plan + work with materials?
The large format printer in the VDIL is not nearly as fancy as one would expect. Problems printing from Illustrator arose, which lead to the creation of a 300 megabye tiff for the final enlarged image. A previous failed print revealed my tiling background had seams, so I had to hand erase the lines in the giant tiff file.
Evaluate the success of the concept and the craft of your finished showcase:
The end product hangs together very well. I set the design brief in the same typeface as my final poster, and the ransom-esque title “IDEATION� uses wood type letters present in all of the designs. By working with the available pins and tacks I reinforced the idea of a “rough.� The giant mounted poster also provides an amazing contrast. By having a complete design process, someone can go from a mess of construction paper and white-out to a clean finished piece grounded in meaning. I think design choices done only for form are a cop-out, so I was glad to have a functional reason for my materials and layout.
May 01, 2006
What About Cartoons Makes People Mad? Magazine Spread Design Exercise
Our third major assignment for Graphic Design I was to create a magazine spread with bold use of image and playful typography. We chose articles from Voice: AIGA Journal of Design and researched appropriate ways to support the article content with layout.
I worked with an interview by Steven Heller discussing current issues with editorial cartoonist Signe Wilkinson who came under fire after drawing a cartoon depicting a KKK travel guide encouraging trips to Philadelphia to see young blacks killing blacks. Much of the article also focuses on the Danish cartoons depicting Mohamed, and I was struck by the decision of many large American newspapers not the republish the images out of concern for Muslim readers. The article warns against creating boundaries of free speech and pointed out most readers went online and found the images themselves.
I included some of the Danish cartoons to illustrate the article, as well as two of Wilkinson's works and a turn of the century anti-Catholic cartoon by Thomas Nast. I stuck with a simple color scheme of black and red to highlight the article's controversy and relate back to the editorial page. I also incorporated silhouettes of the cartoons to break up large blocks of text and echo the forms of the images. They play on the idea of censorship and question if the cartoons would still be offensive in reduced form.
View the spreads in pdf format or read the original article.