Week 10...Project 3 Critiques

We spent our time in class this past week doing critiques of Project 3. From the start I noticed that most people chose to incorporate specific words in their designs that held special meaning. Many people chose not to hide the fact that they were using text in their design, contrary to the approach that I took. Richard, for example, choose two words and revolved his designs around these two words. After hearing Richard talk about the idea behind his project, I found that I was more attracted to it. I liked his choice of the word "fight," and I also enjoyed the blood red color of the texture he used and the image of the skull with wings that he scanned in. I think that his choice of color and imagery created a solemn and dark mood. I was especially attracted to Nicole's designs. Right when she placed her images on the sill of the white board my eyes lit up. I really enjoyed the fact that she used photo paper to print her two images on. The colors she chose were so vibrant and appealing. I really liked her use of blues, purples, and hot pinks. Her decision to keep her text simple was a good move on her part as well.

During my own critique, I found it very interesting that it was pointed out that my decision to work with a grid pattern perhaps says something about the way that I am apt to work as an artist. I know that I am someone with an eye for detail, but I never really considered how much I like to see order and consistency in my work. Looking back on the projects that I created in my art class last semester, I recognize that I worked in a very orderly way with not a lot of randomness in my designs.

I am really looking forward to working in Flash next week, and I am very curious to learn about digital animation because I have never tried anything like it.

Week 9...Spring Break!

Thankfully I was able to finish both parts of the third assign prior to Spring Break. I brought my two images home to be matted, and despite much frustration with the assignment's guidelines, I am pleased with my final result. I am a little concerned because I definitely think that I took a different approach to the assignment than many of my classmates; however, I feel that I created images that are aesthetically pleasing despite their lack of figurative qualities or need for interpretation.

Week 8...Lab Time

This past week in class we were given the opportunity to work on our projects and have any of our questions answered regarding our third assignment. We also learned about exporting saved files to Adobe and Photoshop for printing purposes. I found this information to be very helpful, even though I was satisfied with the appearance of my projects when printed from InDesign. In addition, we learned about placing images inside of text outlines and closed paths in InDesign. I utilized this technique for the first part of Project 3. I really liked the idea of adding texture inside of the designs that I created with text.

I really struggled with coming up with my creative concept for our latest assignment. I spent four or five nights in the Steel Plant last week working on my project, and I found myself throwing out things that I worked on for hours and starting from scratch again and again. Eventually I decided on a springtime theme. I used text, including the shapes created by the text's negative space, to create pictures of butterflies, ladybugs, and flowers. I incorporated texture in the background of both of my images. I created a checkerboard pattern with scanned textures for part one of Project 3. The design that I created reminds me of a quilt. Tools that I found particularly helpful were Illustrator's LiveTrace tool and the opacity tool. In the end, I feel that my two pieces are similar in style and work well together despite their different color schemes and orientations.

Week 7...InDesign

This past week in class we began working with type in Illustrator and InDesign. We learned various ways to format type and how to place type on paths and within shapes. Our third assignment consists of two parts once again. The first piece of work is bound by certain guidelines, including how many scanned images or textures we must incorporate, the color of typeface that we can use and the number of sizes and fonts of a specific typeface that we must use. The second project also involves using one typeface; however we are not limited in the number of scanned textural images that we can use, and there are no restrictions on colors or number of different sizes of type that we need to use.

Prior to class on Thursday, I spent some time working in Illustrator trying to start my first project. Honestly, I had a creative block. I think that I was a bit frustrated with the guidelines for the first project. I feel like incorporating five different sizes of one typeface as well as bold and italic fonts will be a challlenge.

I hope that for our next assignment we will learn more about InDesign because I am really interested in understanding how to set up a webpage or create something like a magazine or newsletter.