Project water

So, projectwater.org look it up for more info, but it's a pretty nice organization. I was excited at the beginning of the project to work hands on with something that had real world applications. We started by brainstorming initial ideas on how we could most effectively help the organization, whether through fundraising, or awareness. We were limited on time, so we thought awareness would probably be the easiest, along with a small fundraiser type deal, we decided we would make chandeliers out of used water bottles to donate to the university, hoping to get the presidents office and department involved. For the awareness campaign we decided on doing pretty simple stencil like posters, as well as postcards that could be mailed as xmas cards, asking for donations rather than presents. For the posters and card i wanted to keep them pretty simple using basic images to convey the message, i felt it worked pretty well, leaving little to the imagination and stressing the website. The chandelier as a group project went really well, we decided on a central idea pretty quickly and went to work pretty quickly. We drew up some sketches to scale, leaving much of the process in the busy work. It was nice working with an organic form, leaving a little room for error when working with a semi-difficult material. It would have been nice to have all uniform bottles but there's a lot of bums in portland, and they get to the bottles quick. We all worked together pretty nice, i had a few doubts about how it would turn out, until we actually got the lights in and turned the overhead lights off, it was wondrous, i had vivid images of my childhood on mars.

THE book

So the conceptual basis of our book is outlined on the class blog. Using the guidelines we set out at the beginning i had a decent idea with the subjects and imagery i wanted to deal with. To keep variety between the 10 images i also knew that i wanted to work in 3 mediums more or less also: photography, illustrator, and mixed media. I think that by doing that the contrast between the different types of imagery will be able to be presented stronger. I wanted to work with images that were pretty graphic in their presentation, images that people would look at and not necessarily feel comfortable about, especially since we're working only in black and white. Using pen and ink and a lot of illustration detail for this worked pretty nicely. I chose to counter this with photography to do a few images that were related to beauty and nature rather than corruption.

5th set

The fifth set of compositions was similar to the fourth, only paying better attention to details, making sure that the actual composition was abstract. These would all be done in illustrator. The first one i wanted to keep really simple, using color to create a sense of shallow depth, with movement, but not a whole lot going on. I used the eurostile type face because of its simple style, i really like the subtlety of the font. Overall its a decent composition, pretty basic though. For the second one i wanted to create shapes using the same font. I'm not really happy with the composition, the shapes really aren't that interesting, i was trying to develop a design similar to one of the first compositions i did during the first exercise. I'm really not too happy with the color overall either, but i wanted too keep to primaries. It had a lot of negative space i didn't really feel worked well witht he piece, and tried to come up with a solution, but wasn't really happy with the results. The third one i wanted to keep a little messier, mainly just work on somewhat emulating the style that i use when i use mix media to create the compositions. It turned out alright, its a pretty weak use of font. Having to keep it abstract makes me feel limited in my approach to creating the images on illustrator. Sometimes its hard keeping fresh outlook on createing compositions like these, I really need to work better on being able to step back and then approach it with new energy and thoughts. and I forgot you can't upload .pdf files, so they'll be on here soon.

4th set

same guidelines as before, only throw in some text and another color if we want. Apparently i didn't listen too well though, the text was supposed to be abstract. Minus that fact, i wanted to expand a little more on the ideas that i had from the previous compositions. I really liked the the composition i did the week before with the explosion coming out of the head, and i wanted to see it feel more refined, fixing some of the issues i had with the paint from the time before. I really like how it turned out when i spent a lot more time on it, incorporating more detail. To incorporate text i treated it somewhat of a comic illustration, which i liked, maybe needs more emphasis on the actual text box, but that can be resolved if a final design is done with it. The second composition i wanted to play around with my pigs some more, they've been pretty fun to work with, and i wanted to make something a little crazier with them. With the election coming up i've been paying a lot of attention to the designs for campaign posters and have decided that i really don't like any of them for the most part. It reminded me how much i like propaganda posters throughout the years, and i wanted to play around somewhat with the two ideas. I pulled the quote of a book by Robert Anton Wilson, and felt that it worked pretty well with the imagery, he incorporates a lot of bogus fanatical movements and political activists in his novels which i find pretty funny. I played around with this idea a little more in my third design, which i did on illustrator. The lettuce image is a design i'm working on for some kids i know in mexico. I was a volunteer english teacher down there last year and really enjoyed working with them. I'm working with the owner of the restaurant they work at to design a t-shirt to sell there and use the money so that they can continue to take english lessons. The design won't incorporate the text that i used in this design, once again i wanted a little comic relief with the design and pulled part of the text out of the same book. I liked how the ché lettuce turned out.

Third set of compositions

For the third set of compositions we were to do pretty much the same thing as the last set of compositions, only incorporating one more color this time. I liked how my pigs turned out in the last series so i wanted to play around with that imagery a little more, i thought this composition turned out okay, i'm not too sure how i feel about the red being somewhat of a local color. The second composition was an image i can of had in my head that i wanted to expand on a little bit. It turned out pretty good, although i had some craftsmanship issues that i wasn't very happy with. I'll probably buy some better paint to remedy this and refine the overall design. My third composition was sort of a break from the style i generally use. Patrick Nagel is one of my favorite artists and i was looking at a lot of his artwork. While a lot of his back grounds are pretty cheesey I really like how well they work with his figures. Most of it had to do with designing in the 80's, which looking back on i really like a lot of the elements that artists used.

Second exercise

Our second exercise was to create 3 compositions using 2 colors this time. For the first composition i wanted to keep it somewhat simple, focusing on line once again as i did with the first assignment. By the time i was done with that i was somewhat bored, and wanted to create a more interesting design which meant ditching the abstract/non-objective aspect of the design. I had a general idea of the style i wanted to go with, so i created the images fairly quickly, i liked the way the pig fit into the design, as well as the brain. I added the target image to break up the space a little bit more and add a little bit of depth to the design in the negative space. Overall i really like the composition and feel that it works pretty well. The third design was more a little bit of comic relief, i had originally created another composition similar to the second, only a little more complex in both design and concept. However, me and my pen got in a smudge fight, and i lost. So i printed out a t-shirt design that i made. I like it, but it doesn't really fit what i was going for with my designs so far in the class.

Our first exercise was to create 3 abstract compositions using only one color. For the first one my main focus was to create a composition using mainly line, with a few geometric shapes to help fill negative space and to create balance. The second one I wanted to throw a few more organic shapes in as well, along with line to create movement throughout the piece along with achieving a sense of balance, which i felt worked pretty well. The design was a little more interesting than the first one so i was able to play with shape more and focus less on the positive and negative space. For the third design i chose to try and loosen up a little bit, and free handed a pretty loose design compared to my normal style. While its balanced, its really not an interesting design, but it helped me to try and remember to use some of those components when called for. Overall I feel the second design is probably my favorite, and most successful, however the first one is pretty close as well. I feel they both work very well.