Visual Principles

Dynamic Page

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Statement of Intent

For our design, we focused on movement with shapes. We chose to portray two jazz songs, one from the past and one more modern. We chose the songs Take Five by The Dave Brubeck Quartet and Bag Lady by Eryka Bahdu. The movement of the shapes correlates with the different styles of the song. The first sequence focuses on geometric shapes with jagged movement, while the second shows a shift to more organic shapes that flow around the screen. The change in style emphasizes the shifts between instrumental jazz music of the past to the present. The style has been seen to shift towards more techno-style beats, which is represented by the soft flow of movement. The section of Bag Lady that we chose to go with is a very repetitive and round feeling, so we portrayed that in the stop motion through the organic shape moving in a circular pattern and returning to its original position and shape, while the other shapes appear steadily and repetitively. The organic shape orbs as it goes around as an abstraction of the way the chords move within the song. We also chose a mix of neutral and vibrant colors to signify the randomness of jazz music. We chose to hand-cut our shapes rather than use any machines with the intention to match the genre, as it is more free-form and unique. We focused on movement and different shapes to convey the different messages seen in the two songs, but there were elements that we kept similar to show the connection between the past and present. In both songs, softer beats were represented by circles and blobs, while the more intense beats were viewed as shapes with harsher edges such as rectangles, zigzags, and triangles. 

Ideation

To begin this project, we were paired up with someone in the class according to a predetermined list that our professor had created. Oddly enough, both of my professors for visualizations and fundamentals paired me up with the same lovely lady, Sydney Greenwell. Although we had already gotten to know each other a little bit in our other class, we still had to do some conversing in terms of this project. The first thing we did was compare our current playlists. We found that we actually enjoyed a lot of the same music. From there, we created a short list of some of our common favorites:

    • SZA
    • Jazz
    • Cigarette daydreams
    • Dayglow
    • Arctic Monkeys
    • Lumineers
    • Elvis
    • Beatles
    • Tame Impala
    • La vie en rose
    • Talking heads psycho killer
    • Dream a little dream of me
    • Brian Newman
    • Duke Ellington
We did a lot of in-class exploration of music; what it feels like, what it looks like, how it sounds, etc. In this exercise, we listened to a song and were told to draw what we heard. This was my interpretation.

We had a lot of in-class discussions about what different instruments look and feel like. We discussed what shapes could represent different sounds and how we could relate the sounds to the visuals. For example, deep, low chords may be represented by large, dark circles to show their round sound and the way they resound. Meanwhile, short, snappy sounds may be represented by small triangles or squares to visually portray their sharpness.

The next activity we did in class was more individual, where we chose our own song and similarly drew what we heard. For mine, I used the ending of Good Days by SZA. It is a very complex and layered song but I love how it sounds and makes me feel and I tried to portray that in my drawing. I used colors and shapes that I thought matched the sounds.
From the beginning of the project, we both agreed that we wanted to do stop motion. At this point in the year, we had been using paper a lot and not being able to experiment with a lot else, so we wanted to try our hand at stop motion just for the experience. Above you can see my very first trial run of stop motion that I did on the mobile app called Stop Motion. I was attempting to draw a stick figure doing a flip and it actually turned out much better than I expected. The app was really easy to use and made your images into a stop motion then and there so I decided I was going to use it for this project.
Here is a page of notes from my sketchbook. The top part of the page shows some notes from an in-class exercise that we did to practice describing sounds to then visualize them. The remainder of the page shows some of our ideation and research. We went back and forth for several days on our song choices; which song(s) we would do and how they would relate to each other. You can see above some of the ideas we came up with in artists, genres, themes, specific songs, and contrast narratives that we were considering.

We had to decide at this point what type of contrast we were going for. We narrowed it down to either two different songs that were related in some way or two different sections of the same song. At this time we were really starting to lean towards using jazz music in some way. From our beginning bonding in class, we both had a lot of adoration for jazz so we decided to go with jazz music. We also decided to work with two different songs because we thought it would be easier to discern the two halves. We were worried that if they were from the same song, having the same instruments in play wouldn’t provide the right contrast we were going for.

I also found it incredibly useful to use Synesthesia as a resource. Synesthesia is a neurological condition that leads stimulation in one sensory pathway to trigger an experience in another. There are multiple types of synesthesia, but the most valuable to this process are the cases in which the person can visualize what they hear. This website has several examples that were very useful for our process: https://www.themarginalian.org/2011/01/26/synesthesia-music-visualization/

We were also inspired by the Monsters Inc. movie introduction and Saul Bass.

After discussing our ideas and concepts, we finally decided on a concept and the two songs we wanted to use. We decided to visually show the evolution of jazz music over time. As we were researching jazz songs, we noticed that there was a lot of contrast in the sounds and instruments used in older songs versus more recent ones. There was, though, a lot of commonality between them, so we wanted to explore that. For our song from the past, we chose Take Five by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, and for our recent song, we chose the instrumental version of Bag Lady by Erykah Badu (no lyrics). Above, you can see the notes we took on each song once we finally picked them out, highlighting certain sections we liked, what instruments are used, and what musical aspects stood out the most to us. There is a little shape ideation on the right side of the page but I will discuss that more in-depth below.

In terms of choosing our songs, we had a lot of reasons for choosing the ones we did. We listened to a lot of random jazz playlists that we found, including different types, styles, and ages of jazz music. We found these songs repeatedly amongst the playlists and decided to consider them. Take Five is a very famous and complex jazz song that we thought really represented the past of jazz well. We chose Bag Lady because we thought it represented the current state of jazz well, and for another reason that is actually quite odd. We browsed these playlists for a few days, and we heard Bag Lady on one of them and jotted it down as a consideration. That night, I went to the SZA concert that was at the Schottstein Center and SZA sang a cover of Bag Lady and I didn’t even recognize it. In class that Wednesday, Sydney was asking about the concert and I told her about this random song she did a cover of and played her the video I took of the song and we both realized that it was the song from the day before. We knew then and there that we wanted to do that song for our project.

After we picked the songs, we needed to figure out what sections of the songs we were going to focus on. For Take Five we decided to focus on a section more towards the end when all the different instrument parts are playing together to provide a lot of instrumental contrast. For Bag Lady we decided to focus on a section in the middle that was very repetitive and steady, but also complex, because it contrasted with the Take Five section really well.

To portray the evolution of jazz between our contrasting parts, we wanted to emphasize the use of technology that has been introduced into the genre. Modern jazz has a lot of electronically generated sounds in it that weren’t really possible in the past, and we wanted to show how that affects the genre as a whole.

Above is a link to the song Take Five and Sydney focused on the 4:15- 4:30 section for her half of the diptych.

Above is a link to the instrumental version of Bag Lady and I focused on the 2:40 – 2:50 section for my half of the diptych.

Once we decided on the songs and segments, it was time to begin visualizing what they looked like. While we decided as a team that Take Five would have more rigid/sharp shapes and Bag Lady would have more organic/round shapes, we mostly did this part individually. For my portion, I was really inspired by lava lamps and a sort of spiraling motion. When I listened to the song, I got this very groovy vibe overall that almost made me feel like I was spinning and rotating. The other elements of the song, like the electric beats and the percussive elements, looked more like circles and short little bursts. The images above show some notes and sketches that I created in my sketchbook just to begin to visualize what I was hearing.
I was very excited to experiment with color on this project. I personally think that all songs have a color scheme for the way they sound so I was excited to express that here. Above is a model I made with a random shape to see how the colored paper moved and worked together.

Iteration

I then began making my final shapes. I drew these shapes on my iPad, one at a time in relation to the previous one. I drew all the shapes that would appear on the screen over time and made a map for each category to help me visualize what they would look like as a whole. For the chords, I chose to go with an organic, lava lamp “goo” like shape that morphed as it moved around the screen. The top image shows all of the stages of the morphing. I chose to make it return to its original place and position to emphasize the repetitive and groovy nature of this section. I combined the bass instrument line with the high hat rhythm because I had this idea that the high hat would be a triangle that would burst out of the bass line and I think it worked very effectively to show their relationship to each other. For the bass line, I did two different-sized circles that appeared back and forth moving around the screen to show the change in pitch of the bass chord. These elements are shown in the bottom left image. For the electric triplet sort of beat, I chose to make it a circle that appears and gets smaller until its gone, all very quickly. You can see the different-sized circles that appear around the screen in the image on the bottom left.

 

I took screenshots of each shape in this same rectangle and then used the sliding feature on apple images to make a mock stop motion just to see how it was looking so far.

Once I was done drawing the shapes digitally, I decided to cut them out physically with colored cardstock. In the image on the left, you can see all the blob shapes cut out, and in the image on the right you can see all the other instrument shapes cut out. We mutually chose to hand-cut the shapes because jazz is a very freeform and flowy genre and it seemed too rigid and strict to have them be perfectly cut shapes.

When I cut out these shapes, it was important to choose my colors before I cut them out. For the blob shape, I chose this deep, rich red because I felt that it matched the tone and sound quality of the chords it represented. For the circles, I chose dark blue because I think that the bass notes it represented were deep and resounding, like the color blue. For the high hat sounds, I did a mixture of yellow and green because I felt that they contrasted each other nicely, and together greatly contrasted the other two colors I had chosen already. I chose green for the electric triplet notes because green is an electric color in my opinion, and it needed to be a color that came and went quickly.

After cutting all my shapes, I then attempted to make the stop motion video for the first time. The setup that I had in the student workroom was quite unreliable and wasn’t giving me consistent images. As you can see here, there were a lot of issues with lighting and shadows that made things blurry and flashy when played back and it was just not what I was wanting. I also took all these photos directly on my camera roll, rather than in the app I was planning to use, so editing them would have been very difficult.

Here is the stop motion of my first attempt. My_Stop_Motion_Movie(4)

I decided to retake all of my images at a different photo setup and these are how they turned out – much better!

Above is a link to our final diptych.

Reflection

I generally enjoyed this project a lot. I liked being able to learn how to do something new. It was very challenging to come up with the shapes and colors because I personally do listen to music and visualize what it looks like, but I struggle to express that physically. After that part was done, however, the process was much easier than I anticipated. Taking the photos and setting up the set was very time-consuming but with the app I used, all I had to do was download the video and maybe make a few edits to it. I love that this project begins to introduce us to how design encompasses our entire world, not just the visual part of it, but through every sense. I found it valuable that we began to learn how to express difficult-to-describe things because I think that will be very useful in my design future.

Final Work

View final project at Dynamic Page

Sketchbook

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Statement of Intent

In this project, I aimed to create a personalized sketchbook that was functional and tailored toward my ideal sketchbook. I used a range of different materials, from recycled papers, to new plastics to create a range of ability in my book.

Ideation

These are images of some of the sketchbook practice we completed in class. For the sketchbook on the left, Zach brought in a bunch of random materials and told us to make a mini sketchbook out of them. This exercise inspired many ideas to flow in my mind, and I realized that I could truly use any materials I chose if I thought outside of the object’s conventional use. The two images on the right show an experiment with binding that I did with regular drawing paper, cardboard, and embroidery thread, and an embroidery needle. It was within this experimentation that I found that I really did not like the sewn binding methods. I didn’t enjoy the process, nor the way it lay when opened. Through this, I was able to narrow down my binding options so I could find something that satisfied the wishes I had, which will be described later.
Here is an exercise we did in class related to a lesson about mind mapping and documenting ideas. We chose a prompt and as a table created a visual representation of our conversations.
Here you can see the development of my ideas that I documented using Adobe Fresco. This document started as more of an idea board to compile all of my inspiration, desires, and ideas, and quickly morphed into a task list as I progressed through the ideation process. All the writing in black and the images are my initial ideas and also the “wishlist” Zach had us create to envision what features our dream sketchbook would have. The writing in red is the second stage of my ideation, where I began to decide on what I actually wanted and what I needed to do to get there. Finally, the writing in green is the very last list of features I decided on, and the steps I needed to complete to finish the project.

Inspiration Sources:

Iteration

At this point, it was time to begin designing my physical sketchbook. I designed all the page cut files on Adobe Illustrator, which you see above. The image on the left shows the cut for the pages of the book as well as the divider pages, with holes for binding and rounded edges. The image in the center shows the front and back cover layouts, including the holes, rounded edges, cover window, and back cover etch design. The image on the right shows the layout for the plastic pocket that I included just inside the front collage. For the pages of the book, I used a mixture of graph paper, sketching paper, cardstock in both white and gray, as well as a brown paper. For the covers, I used a piece of chipboard from my old bristol pad and covered it with faux leather which I will go into detail about later. Finally, for the pocket and the divider pages, I used recycled plastic binder dividers that I purchased from Walmart, and just cut off the tabs that were included and made my own to match my intended theme. I cut everything on the laser cutter except the plastic because I didn’t want to risk emitting toxic chemicals.
From the first introduction to this project, I knew I wanted to include something that added my personality to the sketchbook. I love scrapbooking/collaging, as well as showcasing my favorite photos and stickers, and I figured I could easily incorporate it into my sketchbook in some way. At first, I thought of making a collage on the cover, but I realized I preferred to keep the cover simple. I then remembered the inspiration photo of the notebook with the window in the front and realized it was perfect for what I wanted to achieve. For the collage materials, I used a piece of bristol that was cut out with the same page layout as the other pages, random materials I had in my dorm room that I already had from just collecting the last few years, and pages from an old book that I purchased at the thrift store. I found the colored paint samples in the student workroom and chose the colors that best matched the color scheme I was going for, which were muted tan and yellow shades. I printed out some of my favorite photos with my mini printer and added them to showcase some of my favorite moments. I think this will really motivate me to actually use the sketchbook because I have a connection to it, rather than it being just a plain, boring object.
The cover was definitely the most troublesome process for me. At first, the issue was that I couldn’t choose which fabric to purchase from Amazon. I ended up going with this frosted brown faux leather and I love the way it looks and feels. After waiting and finally receiving the fabric, the issue was then the terror I felt for the application process because I have never worked with fabric like this before. Despite my fears, it actually went quite well. I was most anxious about the corners because I intended them to be rounded, but I think they turned out nicely. I simply used tacky glue to adhere the fabric to my cut pieces of chipboard, as shown on the far left. The glue kind of got everywhere which caused a moment of panic, but it evidently rubbed off the fabric pretty easily when dry. The window was the most tricky part, which I did evidently cut wrong a few times, but luckily had plenty of extra fabric to work with in case of mistakes. Although not pictured, I used the awl tool in class to re-puncture the holes in the fabric for the binding. I honestly am not super happy with how the holes turned out and would probably try something else in the future. The last thing I did for the cover was etched my name, class, and year on the back, which is shown on the far right.
For my binding, I chose to go with the binder rings that I purchased from Target. I chose to go with this method for a few reasons, the first being influenced by my binding experimentation earlier in the process. With that being said, I really wanted the sketchbook to lay flat, and that was one of the main priorities in my initial wishlist. I also prioritized the idea of the sketchbook being replenishable if possible, meaning that you could add pages to it later on if you wanted. I found that these rings gave me the best outcome for all of my priorities and were also very durable, as composed to a spiral binding. Here you can also see the details of all the laser cuts that turned out very well, as well as the thickness of the book itself. I wanted it to be thick and hefty so it would last a long time.
As you can see in my idea spread, I wanted to include a bookmark as my hidden element. I knew that I wanted to make it look pretty similar to my inspiration picture with elements of my own personality, but I attempted to experiment with other ideas to see what they looked like. I first started out by choosing what size I wanted my bookmark to be and made a rectangle that size in Illustrator. I included a circle for a hole at the top that I planned to feed ribbon or twine through. In the second column from the left, you can see my first idea, where I just created a pattern out of this retro flower that I image-traced. I didn’t like how this idea panned out, it almost looked too childish for what I was going for. I then reverted back to the first inspiration photo and tried to replicate it. The second column from the right shows the pictures that I used and image-traced to get my flowers and butterfly shapes. I chose to use butterflies rather than the bees that are shown in the original because I am fascinated by butterflies and I think they are just very majestic which is more the vibe I was going for here. I individually cropped the flowers I liked, rotated, rescaled, and inverted them to get a layout that I liked. I did the same with the butterflies. I then took this file to the laser cutter, where I first did the design etching, and then cut out the bookmark itself.

Bookmark sources:

Reflection

I honestly really enjoyed this project. Although I do love the way it turned out, there are a few things I would change about it. The main thing I am not a fan of is the paper placed on the inside of the covers. I did this to hide away the rough edges of the fabric, and although it does look better than before, I wish I would have done something different, or had a piece of the flower paper that fit the entire cover. I also think I would make the whole sketchbook smaller dimensionally. I do like the number of pages it has, but the 7.5×10 size feels too bulky in retrospect. I also do not love the way the folder/dividers turned out in the end. I think there was some laser cutter residue on the pages that rubbed off onto the plastic and made them look kind of dirty. Besides those few things, I loved being able to use recycled materials, stickers, and weird papers to create something of my own. I’ve had this huge stash of random papers and materials in my room at home and something over winter break told me to bring them to college and I am very glad I did! I learned a lot about bookbinding and how to work with different materials, along with furthering my knowledge of the laser cutter which I am very excited to utilize in the future.

Final Work

View final project at Sketchbook

Observation & Communication

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Statement of Intent

My main goal in this project was to create something unique and accessible in more ways than one. I always had the idea to include sign language in some way, but coming up with a way to naturally incorporate it into the map in an intentful way was my goal.

Ideation

At the beginning of this project unit, we were asked to read the first two chapters of Slow Looking by Shari Tishman to put us into the right mindset for this project. We were asked to find two quotes from the reading that stood out to us and these are the ones I chose:

“slow looking is an important counterbalance to the natural human tendency toward fast looking…”(5).

“altering our distance from things, or adjusting our breadth of view, in order to bring certain features into relief” (20).

This reading really opened my mind to the idea of slow looking because I had never really thought about it before. It brought to my attention that experiences are not just about what we see but also about what we feel, hear, and smell. Taking those elements into consideration when creating designs, in general, is so important for how it is interpreted.

We then learned about shading and textures and how to create those effectively. Here you can see my attempts at shading gradients and shapes, and creating textures, along with the pin activity we did in class. In this activity, we were to find a location on the oval, make a sketch of what it looks like, and write a poem about the location.
When it was time to embark on our “slow-looking journey,” I really had no clue where my destination would be. I then remembered about a week before this day, I was walking to work (Raising Canes), and I saw this stunning tree. It was right at the beginning of fall and this was the only tree that had begun to turn in this area. It stood out so starkly from the other trees and it captured my attention immediately. I decided to walk to this tree for my project. When the time came to document the journey, I walked to the tree and it was completely bare. If I’m being honest, it made me sad. But it made me realize a beautiful lesson; just because something isn’t at it most beautiful state when you come across it, doesn’t mean it never was/will be. I aimed to portray that on my map in some way.
These are the pictures I took on my in-class journey that show the points of interest that I describe in both my map and my video directions.
While I was walking my journey, I created this collage (before I even knew we were going to have to do it in class!) on Notability, writing all of my observations, directions, landmarks, sounds, and smells, and later inserting the pictures I took and labeling them. This was really just a note-taking method for me and I used this as a reference when brainstorming ways to include the other senses in my map. It also captured how I was feeling/thinking while I was walking which was useful to have as well.
Our next in-class task was to create a collage to represent our journey. I struggled a lot with this part actually, because I didn’t have any clue where I wanted to go with it. Oddly enough, though, my final map actually turned out to look very similar to my collage. I went into apple maps on my iPad just to see what kind of layout I was working with and discovered that you can make the buildings look 3D on the app. I took the screenshot you can see on the left, uploaded that image to Adobe Fresco, used layers to trace the buildings and roads, and went from there. I then sketched in notes, directions, landmarks, shading, and added the images I took on the journey to their coordinating places. After I had completed this, I had it large-scale printed at FedEx so that I could easily trace it for my final, and also make revisions to it. Click on the image to see a timelapse of the creation of this collage.

Production

Here is the draft that I created based on my collage. As you can see, it’s fairly similar to my collage but quite different from my final product. When I began moving from this draft to creating the final, I had a very productive conversation with my professor about my intentions. I wanted to include QR codes that led to videos I was going to create in which I use ASL to show the directions of my journey. She encouraged me to use the “QR code look” to inform the style of the rest of my map. From there, I focused on incorporating the blockiness while keeping it fun and balanced. Here I also used the foil flakes not quite as they were intended and it looked more like glitter which I did not like and began to second-guess my choice.
This image shows the testing I did on how I wanted each building and the trees to look. In my draft, the buildings were more rounded and had little to no detail on them. Here I blocked them up and added windows and brick-like patterns to them. At this stage, I also decided to keep the trees the way they were in my collage, forgoing the blockiness.
I then filmed and edited my ASL videos. I filmed the videos of me signing on my phone and uploaded them into Adobe Premier where I inserted any contextual images and captions needed. I then took those videos, downloaded them, and uploaded them to YouTube. I then used the YouTube links to create six separate QR codes for each clip in Adobe Express. I arranged these codes into a Google doc, printed them, and tacky glued them onto my map.
These are just a few stills of my ASL videos; to view all the clips, Click on the image to view the YouTube playlist I created of all the clips.
Here you can see each of the steps in creating my final map. The first step was to ink in the buildings, roads, and paths, the second was to paint in the trees, followed by inking in the tree trunks. I also printed and glued my first qr codes here. I spoke with my professor about her recommendation for gluing down the foil and she suggested trying out gold size, so I ordered some on Amazon. At this point, I considered foregoing the foil. My trials weren’t looking the way I wanted and I hadn’t yet tried it with the gold size. But I decided to take a risk and use it anyways and I am very glad I did. The foil was very messy but I think it adds a lot to the map. I also put the foil on the main tree to separate it from the other trees. While I was placing the foil I accidentally got the foil on the qr codes, so I decided to reprint them in red and that made them blend in much better. I also added the key, context, compass, title, and start/end.

Reflection

I loved this project. Compared to the previous projects in both this class and design fundamentals, this has felt the most like what I hope to do in my career. It was so much less about precision and more about exploration and creating something unique and experiential for others to join in on, which was the most exciting part for me. I was also able to incorporate new mediums, techniques, and lettering, all of which were amazing to work with and get used to. I personally love lettering and this was the first project in which I got to express that.

Final Work

View final project at Observation & Communication

Structure

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Statement of Intent

Within this structure module, my primary goal was to learn. I had never taken any actual art classes before this semester, so all these exercises and projects were brand new to me. I aimed to establish the basic strategies of drawing so I could build on them throughout my design career. In the end project, we were to create a room using one point perspective and include anything we could accurately draw.

Ideation

These are a few of the exercises we completed in class to build our line drawing skills. We focused on the basic movement when creating lines and how important it is to rebuild our drawing habits.
This is the first project we created for this unit. The goal was to create a diptych using a primary contour, one of just the contour itself, and the other using the contour to show movement. Here you can see my ideas on the left, the process on the top, and the final products on the bottom. I chose to “break” the contour of my facial oil bottle while still maintaining the primary contour.
This is the second project we did in this unit – the still life. This was also meant to be a diptych, the first being an accurate drawing of our model, the second being a “reimagining” of the first. On the top left is my model, the top right is my first version, and the bottom two are my final products. When I was creating the final for my second piece, I focused on creating a 3D reality through my drawing, and also utilized white on black paper.

Production and Iteration

This is the production of my final product for this unit. The top right is my grid in process, the top left is after I added a few pieces of furniture, the bottom left and middle both show more progress, and the bottom right is during the tracing onto bristol via the light table.

Reflection

This project was a long one, and therefore generated many different feelings for me. I found the basic exercises to be quite useful in realizing that I had no idea what I was doing. Creating the still-life was certainly the most frustrating part of this unit for me. It was really difficult to draw what I saw to scale with accuracy, and I spent many hours trying to perfect it. The final project, though, was very enjoyable for me. I loved creating the grid because it was satisfying for me and I could draw more accurately than with the still-life. Overall, this project taught me a lot about myself, my art skills/habits, and how to better them and use them to create something unique.

Final Work

View final project at Structure