Introduction to design is a more basic design class that they offer at St. Norbert, as it is an introduction class.

Being able to display certain messages while using many principles of art such as the color scheme or lack there of, composition and spacing of text and images, and what the design says over all is the main goal of this class. Many different forms of media are required as a part of this class as well which also helps broaden the designer’s skills. Personally, I am thankful for those requirements because it made me try things that I was not comfortable with such as collage and now I abso-lutely love making them. It also gave me opportunities to work with other people and collaborate and try out a potential job that I’d be interested in. It also showed that no matter how complicated a project could be, I

would still be able to accomplish and finish it.

About the Class

One thing you wouldn’t know by just looking at me is I absolutely love art. Ever since I was a kid, I was

drawn to art but in middle school is when I found my true talent and potential. After that, I knew that I would

have to continue with art or I wouldn’t be fulfilled in life. As of right now, I’m not sure what I want to do with my career but I do know that it will be in the art field,

whether it’s in graphic design to teaching art to illustrating children’s books. My favorite media is water-color but I have been really enjoying collaging lately. I

mostly do paintings but I am trying my best to learn how to do more in Photoshop and other computer graphics. Learning new things inart in general is interesting to me

and I don’t want to stop learning.

About Me

DOT/ LINE The point behind this project was to try to display emotion in the simplest form possi-ble. We were given a guideline of only being allowed to use one dot and one line, one do and two lines, two dots and one line, only dots, or only lines. Another guideline was placed with the emotions we could choose from. I chose discipline which is shown in the top left and bottom right, exhaustion bottom left and scared top right. It was a challange because we are trying to show an emotion without making the lines into people or telling a story. It had to be clear but not cliche.

Final Projects

HAND LETTERINGThe purpose behind this project was to be able to emphasize certain meaning behinds words that the viewer might not get right away by looking at it. For example the word “love” could be drawn with tears to show heartbreak and how painful it can be. This project was to make the artist think deeper about things and get creative with the word they chose. We were told to test out different words with different fonts to get the hang of lettering in general so I tried doing themes at first to test out different fonts and writing types. Then when we were told to choose only a few specific words and practice with them, I started trying new ways to portray those words.

I decided to choose the word note because I had a lot of ideas forming by the time we chose one word. The fact that we could choose any type of way to depict that word was fun for me. I got the freedom to choose the media, mood and font of it and I really enjoyed that. The hardest part was trying to think out of the box so we were told to make an idea web.

I wanted my version to go with note because with being remembered is noting that something is there and significant, just like their handprint on the wall. The one where note was drawn on the hand with a blurry back-ground is very relatable to people like me; the people who remember things by writing it on their hands and I think that is a very real behavior.

The one with the crumpled up notes is also understandable, especially to artists and writers, because there are so many ideas that at first sound good but then are thrown away and it shows the thought process behind ideas.

I chose these four out of all of them because I thought that these ideas showed the word “note” in a more symbolic sense and in a way that people could relate to. The hand print with note in the middle was actually inspired by my art history class. My professor would tell us about how cavemen would do similar pictures like that on cave walls to leave their mark for centuries and I was very interested in that idea.

Alan Fletcher

My designer was Allan Fletcher and this project taught me a lot about him and his reasoning behind certain designs and projects he has made throughout his life. I got a little back-ground information on him like that he was born in Kenya in 1931 and unfortunately died in 2006. In his lifetime, he

has made many logos like the Reuters Brand logo which was inspired by punching holes into a train ticket. He also made

letterheads and envelopes for Brooks Baker & Fulford Limited after a night of drinking with the lensmen which made him believe that their white shirts were blending in to the table cloth. Another logo that Fletcher made was the V&A logo with the purpose of marking the Victoria and Albert Muse-um’s identity. They wanted a dateless, simple and functional logo for it that would also show grace and history. Another design Fletcher made was the Roarsach Test poster which was created in 1989 for Polaroid’s new color film. Other

designers created their own poster for this film but Fletcher made it loo like the psychology test. When people asked him

what it meant he replied with, “What do you think?”

Object IterationMethod One: Continuous SketchFor this part of the assignment, we were told to draw the object, mine being a lion, without lifting our pen up and continuously draw it. The first attempt for me was a failure because I originally thought we were only supposed to draw that animal so I did not draw it continuously. Then I came back and did a couple more that did not stop.

Method Two: GeometricAlthough lions are very intricate animals, we had to make them in the most basic way we could by making the animal in shapes alone. We had to make them as basic as possible to show emphasize just exactly what made lions what they are but in the simplest way.

This project was to see an object, in this case animal, in a different way and try many different methods to portray it.

Method Three: Text A spin off of geometric was to do essentially the same thing by making the animal very basic but then on top of that making it differentiate the shades of the animal by getting darker text in newspaper. So the mane on the lion would be darker than the rest of the body but in a very simple way.

Method Four: CollageThis was my absolute favor-ite way to depict the lion. Being able to think creatively and in a different way than I normally do was extreme-ly interesting to me and I fell in love with collaging. Although I did not create only the animal, I did have many different other pictures with the lion in it and am very satisfied with how they turned out. How I created the collages was a work-as-you-go kind of process so I would find things in the junk and then figure out a way that I could interpret a lion in it.

Master Artist: Marcel DzamaI chose this artist because I liked the quirky look of their drawings. It was fun and similar to a style I already have. The thing I probably could have done to make this piece better was use color to make it more like the artists. They used a different medium as well, printing and in the class we didn’t have that as an option. Maybe in the future though, I will try this drawing as a print.

Master Artist: Louise BourgeoisThis artist had a similar style to Marcel. They both had interesting drawings and art that I was really drawn to. I would also say that I have a similar style to Louise. They also used more color but since this project required us to use only black and white, I kept it without color. Their form of media are pens, red and blue for color, so it wouldn’t have mattered if I did color anyways.

Final Project

Children’s BookPersonally, this was my favorite project in this class. What we had to do was take the text of an author in a different class and illustrate the pictures for it. We were also given the freedom for this project to choose the medium in which we show the words so I chose water-colors since they are my favorite. After reading the text, I planned out landscapes for each of the pages and then started painting. After I was done with all of the paint-ings, I scanned them over to Photoshop and edited them a little. When I was satisfied with how they looked I put them in to InDesign and added the text. It was nice because the person I got paired with from the other class wasn’t concerned with how it turned out so I could make the book look like however I felt without being worried that he would hate it. I really enjoyed this and would love to work on another book again in the future.

This book was made for Introduction to Design Fall 2015 using Winterthur Condensed font.

Made by Jordan Wood, 18