I kinda wanted to experiment. I'm tired of seeing text set in a "Graphic Designer" way. It seems too boring to me. And now that i've learned and seen how they do it with a grid, it seems to easy and cheap almost. I began to look at type in a way that's not looking at type. Type isn't meant to be boring. So I looked at type through compositions. Doing whatever I wanted to the text and then seeing and playing with it. Surprisingly, it didn't take me as long to do. Because I wasn't thinking, I was breezing through my studies and enjoying myself. Before I would do something, look at it, critique it, and just be so careful in designing and try to be precise and exact like what I thought a graphic designer would do. NOPE, I kinda took the route that I would take painting. And i'm so glad that I finally got back to that way of thinking. In a way I feel that I was stuck in this zone of carefulness since i've came to Ringling. But I think it was a zone necessary. Everything was foreign to me. I'm a fine artist, a painter. The way of thinking and doing things on the computer was just something I wasn't use to. And in making something commercialized rather than for me or a small elite group of people with all common knowledge of what I was concepting for. Anyways, I took and designed based on composition and relativity. Also with inspiration from my history class and the modernist designs stemming from the Bauhaus. The school was meant for people to basically be the inventors of a new tradition. Not even that but more of an radical perspective of a Post Modernist. Something so awesome to be apart of, something kinda of what is happening with the Motion Design department right now.
Well, after designing I went to printing. Even explored with printing, as usual lately, and found out a way to make "happy accidents" within these studies. I printed on top of prints, a way of incorporating a way of juxtaposing different structures without even realizing what I was doing. I stuck my last piece of cardstock into the printer with the the instructions on how to use the paper on the back, ran it through the printer, and realized I did this backwards. It looked awesome though so I decided to hang that up for critique to just see what was said about it. I'm kinda taken to that approach of design lately. Do something to see what happens. Does it make someone really uncomfortable, uneasy, mad? Or does it inspire someone? Taping into either emotion like that is kinda interesting, a way of juxtaposing totally different emotions that give you mixed feelings. That kinda twists up the syntax and makes it interesting at least, and seemed to be something of great meaning. The meaning really of the person viewing anyways. Its not that I don't care about my work, but I don't care if I mess it up anymore. But what I do care about is the communication between the two.
Critique:
INTERESTING. Everyone hung their studies up as usual, but this time there was a twist. It was normal for Cory and I to hang our studies next to each other, not so much normal but just not thought about, but Dorian looked around the studies and the room and asked us to carry on the critique. WHY WERE WE BEING PICKED ON?!?! Haha it was fun though. We organized the the room into 3 categories.
1/ yes. yes. yes. at least something to look at and be interested in. I found that not even half of the classes studies were in this pile. Just under 10! I'm pretty sure we were'nt judging that harshly just that all the designs sucked to us.
2/ almost there, getting it. Together between group one and this group made half the class but..
3/ AWEFUL. I feel these studies just needed to be reworked in general. or done some changes that didn't bother us. some of them got under our skin. some not quite as bad
Throughout the critique we justified and gave examples of what worked, what to do, what not to do. It was a lot of fun to critique, but not very fun knowing whose work was who. I didn't wanna hurt anyones feelings because practically the whole class is my friend. I had to realize that they knew I wasn't going to critique them, but their study. We are all very mature, but you always have concerns.
Points made:
-Not trimming!
-Folio problems
-overlaying text on top of images that are suppose to be used for your portfolio, why?! crazy
- contrast issues
- auto setting text. NO
- horsy/clunky text
Not only did we give feedback, but so did the class. If they didn't understand what we were saying they replayed and asked questions. It was awesome. People cared. It was good to give people feedback. And maybe now that they hear it from people like them then maybe we connected on a different level, or so that I hope.
Next Dorian critiqued our studies.
Again my grid was weird aligning with my folio. Which I forgot again until the last second. I think now I finally get it, after struggling for so long. I'm kinda mad at it, and when you feel that emotion with something it's strong, it's like missing the answer to the test when you knew it all along and get mad. So next time when you see it it's inevitable that you're going to get it right. You have a memory associated and a gut istant. Hope to get it right next time.
The actual design he was happy with, along with myself. I'm very happy for this class right now.
After another critique followed by this one, we went over last minute details over the things we missed from the last review. For the most part last class Corey and I's critique helped people out, but now Dorian just went over a few more things. Some people completely missed the mark, so some of us were chosen to help others out.
I was to help out a friend of mine, within the time span of an hour to completely show her everything that she was doing wrong or right. For me this was really hard, especially because of the fact she was so far behind. Not only did she do everything we are not suppose to do, she did not understand why she did it or why we weren't suppose to do it that way. Instead of going directly and pointing out everything from critique again, I just decided to help her understand the way of thinking when designing. Like, she kept having feelings that she couldn't do things like that, like it wasn't allowed, or the computer wouldn't let her do that. NO NO. Don't think that way. I also explained to her what makes a good composition, and pointed out to her the basic rules of composition, and looking by squinting, to see what she was really focusing on without thinking about it. I also gave her a few suggestions. I feel that she gained a little bit of understanding, but to fully grasp it she needed longer than a hour and a lot of help. I think she'll get it though, when it comes to things hands on she's great at it. She just needs to incorporate the two. It's hard to explain things to someone on that level of teaching, something I give big props for people that do that.
For next class:
The only thing we are to do is to refine these by the end of class now, and then to also start working on a grid for our final WEDU booklets. I plan to keep it traditional with this one, I don't wanna do anything crazy to take away from my actual concpeting work.
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