January 2010 Archives

Museum on the Seam: International Coexistence Project

The first thing I noticed when this site popped up was the Coexistence poster with the black and white birds on it. Something clicked and then I remembered that I see it every other day right next to the door to go into VKH 131. It made me wonder if who designed that poster thought that it'd be posted right next to a classroom that every single graphic design student at UMD uses. It inspires me to work really hard on our current project because the winner's poster is going to be seen by who knows how many people and that would be really cool!

After reading the article I got to thinking about how designers use colors to express different things. Each color has emotions and meanings that it brings out in the viewer. If these colors are misused the meaning of the artwork could be totally misunderstood. This is why it is important to put thought into the colors we are choosing. Also, each color has multiple emotions and meanings linked to it. We not only need to be conscious of what colors we are using, but also how we are using them. For example, red represents love, but it also represents anger. These are two emotions a person does not want to get mixed up. Thinking about the project we are currently working on I think it is important to think about what colors we are using and how we are using them. For example, if we assign purple to a certain group others may think that we are trying to say that the group is superior or royal, which was not our intentions. By reading this article it made me understand that as a designer I need to be conscious of everything I do when creating an artwork, including paying attention to colors and their meanings.

After reading the sections from the books it gets me thinking about graphic design and how even though, as designers, we work in mainly 2-Dimensional form it does not mean that we cannot make our work "appear" to be 3-Dimensional. With the computer programs and technology that we have available to us nowadays the possibilities are endless. There are so many ways to make our work visually exciting to viewers, including using materials that do not necessarily link to "art". An example of this is the billboard/poster Friends of the Earth created out of litmus paper. Litmus paper is not a commonly used thing in the graphic design world but it worked wonders at getting their message across about acid rain. Another example is Massive Attacks use of heat sensitive material. By making their product more visibly engaging it gets the viewer to look more closely at it and hopefully makes a very memorably impression. Since starting the graphic design program at UMD I've learned how to do things that are not necessarily "traditional" in the graphic design realm and after reading these articles it makes me excited to see what other things I can do.

I'd really like to know more about how to take 2-D objects and translate them into 3-D using CS3 and how to show depth and dimension.

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