I felt like I was already in a pretty good spot, progress-wise, for the final critique, but it helped to build on everything that our small-group and one-on-one critiques had been working towards up to that point. I appreciated all the comments that people voiced and wrote on the box (particularly ones involving small spacing issues I hadn't noticed), and the input about lining the inside of the box with paper instead of attempting to make the transfers was very helpful and ended up saving me a lot of time and headaches in the long run! I also left the crit trying to think of ways to unobtrusively move the viewer's eye around the box so that the text could be read in basically the correct order. I ended up painting on small "rust spots" as guides, which blend in with the box itself but also help to lead the reader from panel to panel--but in all honesty, I don't mind if people arbitrarily pick and spot and start reading in any order, and I doubt that Dadaists would have minded, either. I think they would have approved of the chaotic and somewhat confusing layout and enjoyed the fact that the manifesto can essentially be read in any way the reader chooses to.
Synopsis:
I am well aware that many of my classmates will disagree with me on this, but I have to say that this is easily one of my favorite projects--if not THE favorite--that I've done for a design class here. It incorporated history, which is a huge interest of mine, and allowed me to work with physical things rather than just on-screen and on paper (there's a reason my studio concentration is in sculpture). I got off to a slower start than I would have preferred, only had my "Aha!" moment after working at it for two weeks, and shed rather more stressed-out tears than I would like to admit over the course of completing the piece, but I am very proud of the finished result and am glad I chose to do what I did!
As I said, I started the project with plenty of enthusiasm but not a lot of direction--I thought of using everything from a book to a toilet, and my early attempts to mimic the Dada style just did not seem cohesive or accurate enough to me. Even after I had decided on the toolbox and inside cards, I still could not quite grasp the design style and struggled with making the cards look satisfyingly Dada. I finally had a sort of epiphany with less than two weeks to go on the project, and after that I made a lot of progress very quickly.
I tried to base the movement of the design around the flow of the text, emphasizing what I interpreted as the emphatic words and phrases with big, bold typefaces and then structuring the rest of the text around that. I wanted to give the appearance of an underlying grid that had been broken and flipped and turned but was still present below some of the chaotic movement. I also tried to keep it fairly readable--some of the Dadaist example designs were just a little too chaotic for what I deemed reasonable for the assignment. As I said before, though, I am truly not very concerned with whether or not a viewer reads the manifesto in the written order... the writing itself is--for lack of a better word--random enough that switching around the paragraphs or sentences does not disrupt a reader's understanding at all. I did try to capture the way that the text builds in intensity towards the end, and I think the final section on the interior bottom of the box shows that the best.
I am very happy with my choice of materials and the way that the transfers turned out on the different surfaces. If I had more time, I would have transferred the type onto the lining paper as well, but time constraints made it much easier on me to simply print those out. I would also try to age the paper a little more, with some stains and fading. The wood, too, seems to be just a little bit too new, which could also be something I fix in the future. The exterior of the box, though, turned out perfectly. This is one of those projects that I would certainly continue to refine in the future to push it just a little farther, but I think it is a strong piece overall and I am very, very happy with it!
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