Words

List of words for type:

Windows • Winter • Wallpaper • White • Water • Whales • Worms • Words • Wire • Wings • Wheel • Wish • Wisp • Wool • World • Wreck • Wrinkle • Watch • Willow • Wreck • Wrinkles • Wish • Wheat


er, every time I try to upload this image the colors distort. these are not the colors of my images, of course. :(

Edit: Thanks for the tip Jamie, now the colors are showing up correctly. :)

Drawing System

I'm just finishing up the book for Color Drawing Form, and it's full of nice finished delineations. For each page, I took some time to clean up the errors that I had made in the old versions. I especially focused on the plan and elevation obliques, to clear up some problems like layering and line weight.


I redid the environmental designs, adding some more text to make it balanced, and changing some of the line weights. I almost paid more attention to the layers, making sure that the letters were behind things on the building like pipes and windows.

Final Statement

a blue medley

It's pretty cool to see how this project began as tiny thumbnails and black canson paper circles, and has ended as a ring-bound, hand-made book. It represents all of the design elements that have been learned over the past several weeks, and holds the hours of hard work in it's little 6x9 pages.



Compositionally, there are many elements that hold this book together. I made an extended effort to use similar colours on each page, but made sure that they were varied enough to keep it from being too repetitive and boring. Finding images was an fun task too, and I have become very familiar with the staff at Half-Price Books, since I was there so often. I hope they don't think I'm weird for coming back to buy more ocean books every day. The orientation of the dots on the page was something that I had a LOT of fun with, and with each page it got easier and easier to come up with fun arrangements of images--tiny details like the directions that fish are facing, and the way that coral makes implied lines across the page.




The text/image overlays turned out pretty well, and it was interesting to see how each page looked when put together. While working with the type, I tried really hard to think of each composition independently from the dot composition it was destined to be paired with. This made the construction of the book even more exciting, as I got to see those "magic accidents" happen as the two halves worked well together.

I found myself looking through the lectures that Jamie had left on her blog a lot. Even looking through the design element pages helped me on both my type and dot compositions. I tried to pay extra attention to the elements as I continued the iterations in both classes, and work hark to make images that were both clear in their meaning and visually engaging. I've come a long way from the first set of black dots (comparing these compositions to the dots in my first viscom blog post, it's embarrassing how bad those are).




There are definitely things that could be improved about this book. That's not to say that I'm not proud of it though. I'm not very exact with measurements, and it's something that I need to continue to work on. Either that, or I need to get better at hiding my mistakes. I also wish that I had found some more imagery with similar colours to help tighten up the pages as a cohesive group. Looking through it now, I'm not too sure I'm ready to be any more critical of it yet. I just finished it today, and I'm still happy with it. I'll need to wait until after the critique and edit this.

Reading Response Transparency

While the dot compositions should be strong enough to convey the meaning of the word they represent without explanation, layering the text strengthens the piece and adds additional complexity. As the dots and text both progress and begin to come together in my book, it's really interesting to see how they begin to interact with each other when overlaid. Even though the arrangment of both are completely different, they all seem to work really well together, neither overpowering the other, and the information overlay seems to be working without any snags.

It will be very interesting to see what each page will look like once printed on the transparency. I tried to keep my ideas for the compositions of each half separate, to allow for some "magical" surprises to happen when they overlap. But I don't want to be too surprised, so at this point in the project I'm thinking of both parts when I work on the final compositions . I'm going to continue to refine both halves of the project to make sure than when added together, they are harmonious.

Project 1 Reading Response

In Principles of 2D Design, Wong focuses on the importance of contrast in images. Wong touches on many areas such as size, texture, direction, position, and space to explain the dynamic relationships that shape can have with each other in a piece. He also touches on the connection between the dominance of majority versus the emphasis of minority.

Meggs also touches on contrasts when speaking about a composition's field of tension in Type and Image. Diagonal movements and countermovements are some of the way of creating a dynamic, visually stimulating image. Meggs goes on in pages 19-29 to talk about visual syntax. The correct arrangement of pieces in an image is essential to conveying a cohesive message. Images can be altered, exaggerated, combined, and transformed to better help form the piece's meaning. The author touches on the unreliability of photos as computers are more and more able manipulate them. I thought this was funny, especially as they explained the process in which an image in scanned into a computer as if it was something new. Then I realized the book was made in 1992, and it made more sense.

Dondis uses a system of pairing opposing visual techniques to talk about elements used to make a visuall compelling image. The Primer of Visual Literacy goes on to explain the following pairs:

Balance - Instability
Symmetry - Asymmetry
Regularity - Irregularity
Simplicity - Complexity
Unity - Fragmentation
Economy - Intricacy
Predictability - Spontaneity
Activeness - Stasis
Subtlety - Bold
Nuetrality - Accent
Transparency - Opacity
Consistency - Variation
Accuracy - Distortion
Flatness - Depth
Singularity - Juxtaposition
Sequential - Randomness
Sharpness - Diffusion
Repetition - Episodicity

Some of these are pretty self-explanatory. Others like the economy - intricacy pair for instance, were a little less clear. That is when you choose between using minimal units and are "frugal" in your composition or you create a more detailed, ornamentation-based piece.

All three readings were VERY relevant to what were are doing in both Visual Communications and Typography, and I learned quite a bit about making visually striking images by using all the different elements discussed in the texts.

Turbulant Tides: Ups and Downs of the Ocean

Um, title is not finalized, for sure. I'm still sitting on it. But here are the final 9 words for the 9 - page book:

• Vast
• Calm
• Deteriorate
• Recede
• Cyclical
• Symbiosis
• Aggression
• Turmoil
• Swell

Words Words Words

20 words to describe the ocean (from the umbrella topic "nature") :

• Encompassing
• Deterioration
• Calmness/Peacefulness/Tranquility
• Upheaval
• Overtake/Reclaim
• Recession
• Restoration
• Uproot
• Murkiness
• Inundation/overwhelm
• Reproduction
• Symbiosis
• Aggression
• Termination
• Safeguarding/Protection
• Overgrowth
• Interference
• Turmoil
• Flowing
• Cleanse

Find + Share 1

I chose to look at several posters by Rene Gruau for this Find + Share. Many of Gruau's posters rely heavily on the relationship between the positive and negative space. In both posters, the women's clothing is combined with the background space; but they are still recognizable figures. The simplistic nature of the posters plays with the eye and helps create a visually pleasing, clever image.

All Leading Up to the Best

Here are the letter sketches that I've done so far in Typography 1. All of these lead up to the
"perfect letter." I'll upload it after it is up on the wall, which should be soon. :)

Learning the Tools of the Trade

Here are some of the line drawings that I have been working on for color-drawing-form. They've been cropped down a lot so they fit on the webpage, but rest assured - they're all perfectly centered on a 8.5 x 11 piece of paper. Crisp and clean. :)Orthographic drawings of a square, a circle, a triangle, and a rounded rectangle. Initially, it was a little tough figuring out all of the lines, and getting the shapes exactly centered was difficult (since I tried to center the largest, front side, drawing, and then the other views were off center). But after doing several, it became easier, and I move on to:

1" = 1' Filing Cabinet Drawing

I overlaid the scan with another scan containing some of my rough sketches that included the measurements of the dementions of the cabinet. It was trickier than the practice shapes, but I guess that's the point. The most difficult part was definitely the drawer though, as it did not line up with the very top of the cabinet. Tricky, tricky stuff. I think I learned a lot though.