Final Motifs with Text

I have narrowed my text down to two bold fonts. One is a sans-serif, Futura Bold, and the other is a serif font, Hoefler Black. The bold darker fonts were chosen during class but I still can't decide between the typefaces. Any feedback is welcome for certain.


I'm torn between the two because the color balance of black to white in the Futura Bold is nearly the same as the black and white balance in the motifs. On the other hand the form of the Hoefler Black with its elegant and rounded serifs reflects the form of my motifs better.

Time and Motion Response (and a little Liquid 9)

Some serendipity again? I think so. Today I joined AIGA for the first time in one of their studio visits, and I will have to say that it was a good visit to begin my involvement with AIGA. We went to visit Liquid 9's studio. This was the first time I've ever seen a design studio in person and it was really everything I could have hoped for and even more (the basement was used as a place to record and play music!). What really blew my mind was how expansive Liquid 9's work was. They covered a lot of aspects of design and it really seemed (or maybe my bias just took over) like they focused a lot on designing for musicians. As I've said several times before, designing album artwork and other artwork for musicians (t-shirts, logos, and music videos) is my primary aim with my design work. And they did all of this. The music videos they showed us were amazing and really captured the mood behind each artist. Although I was a little disappointed to see designs and videos primarily for rappers, I was still just dumbfounded by the work they did.

So where does the serendipity come into play? Just a few hours before we visited the studio we had learned about storyboards and movement in animation. Storyboards were essential in the making of Liquid 9's videos. They also used several of the transitional elements we talked about in class in some of their videos. Watching these videos and listening to the members of Liquid 9 talk about the constant communication between the musicians and the designers just amplified the need for storyboards. When done well, storyboards provide a great visual of the progress of a video. Since the designers are dealing with frames, changes and improvements can fairly easily be integrated into the storyboard in a nice and neat way.

Reach Out and Read First Digital Iterations

In my three posters I chose to follow the path of limited text. I wanted the phrases I used to be short, affirmative, and immediately understood. I also wanted to maintain a childish context. In the Read & Soar poster, the rendering style suggests this childishness. In the seed poster, the letterforms and playful colors suggest haptic quality of a child's handwriting. The Read Grow poster maintains the child context withe the children's books that were used to make the letterforms. 

Based on critique, the poster that will be pursued for the class assignment will be the seed poster. I have to think of a way to contextualize the font to children better though. The setting the poster is in now (just on top of a school desk) is not quite working. It isn't seen as a desk and it doesn't provide too great of a contrast for the letterforms. I plan to try sidewalks, classrooms, playgrounds, a garden, and pouring excess seeds around the phrase to stress the use of seeds in the letters.

On a personal note, after talking with Marty, I have decided to enter the Read Grow and the seed poster into the poster design contest. I feel like both posters have potential and the Read Grow poster is really close to its final form right now. It won't take a lot of extra time to finalize the poster. My focus for now though will certainly be the seed poster.

Taxonomy Organization

In our poem, there is a struggle between an umbrella and the wind. This is what we based the classification of our book on. It is divided into natural objects and manmade objects. And from there divided into the objects used and then the way they were used.

A working idea right now is to include a photograph of the object and a silhouette of the object to act as a divider page for each item.

Speaking of Leo Lionni

While I was at Half Price Books the other day, I happened upon a book by Leo Lionni. I was looking for children's books for my poster design for the Reach Out and Read program. The book was called Tico and is about a bird that was born with no wings. The story was interesting enough (of course I read it) that I decided to post it. And it's a good example of Leo Lionni's work with children's books. And it really is a small world. It seems like just the other day I was looking up Leo Lionni for some class or something.

The cover. Ignore the price sticker. I bought it and now I don't need it for my poster anymore so I'm going to return it. Anyway, here's a summary of the story

 So, Tico was a bird born with no wings.

 One day he dreams about having golden wings and then he is visited by a bird that grants wishes.

 He wishes for golden wings and then his friends reject him because they think he wanted to be better than them.

 Tico then starts to give away his golden feathers to other people to help them.

When he removed his golden feathers, some black feathers then appeared to replace them. When all his golden feathers were gone he returned to his friends and was welcomed without question.

The moral? I have no idea and I'm sure most wouldn't from reading this summary. The moral is even harder to understand when reading the actual story. So I made one up instead, that suits it and probably makes better sense of the story than the story.

Be loved for what you do, and not what you have.

Thumbnails to Motifs

Mackenzie and I chose two haikus that we thought had the best visual picture portrayed by the lines of the poem. We originally had around fifteen selected from various sources and decided on one of the haikus Mackenzie found and one that I had found. The first, and rejected haiku, is:

Empty trees, bare bone

Dancing skeletons caper

Hear the howling wind.

These are the ten thumbnails produced for each line.

The second haiku, and the one that we decided to continue the project with, is:

Windy winter rain

My silly big umbrella

Tries walking backward

These are the ten thumbnails for each line, and also the first round of iterations for the haiku sketches to be used in our final project.

Second round of iterations. 

 Final iterations of haiku line sketches.

 This is where the objects we found relating to the haiku came into play. We had accumulated marks produced by the objects. These marks were unique to the objects and unique to the way the object was used to make the mark. These objects were covered in ink and then dropped, splattered, pulled, twisted, and pressed on paper to make a mark. We then looked at all of these marks to find the forms we needed to recreate our haiku sketches using just the marks. In some cases, these motifs are basically direct translations from the sketches and in other cases the most similar marks were applied to replicate the sketches. In these instances, a difference is evident in form, but the same concept is still communicated.

Windy winter rain

My silly big umbrella

Tries walking backward

Reach Out and Read first sketches

My main concern behind these poster designs was to keep the text limited. In my own opinion, the parents that this program primarily needs to reach probably don't like reading and therefore don't read to their kids. They don't understand the importance because they never benefited from it. Therefore, they wouldn't stop to take the time reading statistics and research and all these explanations behind the importance of the program. So I tried to use rhymes and short phrases in my posters to keep it simple and appealing to those that don't appreciate statistics and text. I hope to catch the attention of people with the posters imagery (analog letters or imagery) and then hopefully from there they would read the bottom of the poster for the information that wouldn't have attracted them in the first place.

I wanted the phrases and words I used to be affirmative but somewhat vague. Vague to provoke the viewer to think deeper about the importance behind reading to children and just reading in general. 

Periodically Speaking Yo (Final Deliverable)

 Here's some digital versions of the final deliverables for the Periodically Speaking project in Typography 1. I was particularly interested in this project. The use of typography in creating the monogram and both layouts was very interesting. I often get lost in details with my work, so working with the details in these pieces (the leading, rags, orphans & widows, alignments, and grids) was an enjoyable experience. I am also very fond of chemistry and science, researching (chemistry and physics research especially), and the histories and stories behind many things. It was nice to design for something not human or human related. There are set characteristics in elements and we set out to exemplify them in the designs of the monogram, two-page spread, and web layout and these characteristics don't change like human moods and preferences do.

Leo Lionni and The Urge to Make Things

Leo Lionni wrote and illustrated children's books. He was born in Holland in 1910. He moved to America in 1939 and worked as an art director for a few advertising businesses, including Fortune magazine. In 1962, he moved to Italy and began his career as an author of children's books. Before moving to the U.S. Lionni painted in Italy, strongly concentrating on Futurism and avant-garde aesthetics. When working in America, he was commissioned for some work by Saul Steinberg, Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder, and Willem de Kooning. He also won a Gold Medal in 1984 from the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

Creating with no end in mind is certainly my favorite aspect in art. It allows for the most creativity and it also relieves the pressure of deadlines and having to survive on what you create. When the issue of surviving (financially) comes into ones life, a constant worry is created over maintaining an income. This would tend to cause artist's to "sell out" and many do. This isn't a bad thing by any means really. I just feel like the need for an income really distracts from the idea of art. Art is meant for creation and reflection. It should provoke thought and curiosity. It should inspire viewers. Many artists do this, even the ones that are commissioned to do work and must work within certain perimeters set by the buyer of the work. Basically, I'm saying that the concern for money limits art. Art should just be creation and the enjoyment felt just by creating. Experimenting allows the most learning. Artists don't really learn if they are commissioned to do the same thing over and over again.

In this project, in this step of said project, we experimented. We created. We played. And it was all without any definitive idea in mind. We just set out to learn. Learn how our objects could be used to make marks. Learn what kind of marks can be made from these objects and processes. It was like being a child. No worries, just play. The process of creating these marks was an artistic experience. The task assigned to learn, and in this learning there was an enjoyment. I learned for the sake of educating myself artistically, not for producing one, final, restricted, and expected idea.