Project 4 Thumbnails

I've had these sitting in my sketchbook for about a week now and haven't gotten around to posting them yet... and I'm already halfway done with the animation! So without further ado, here was my original, rough concept for what the animation would be:

I hadn't quite figured out what I wanted to do with the little stone animation, but now I know I'll be having it move across the screen at several point. I'll also have what is going on in the poem itself affect the qualities of the stone (color, light, objects hitting it, etc). I'm going to try and post a SWF of the animation as it looks right now in the next post and explain the changes further.

Project 4 Initial Work

Following a brief crisis in which I thought I couldn't access my process blog, due entirely to my own forgetfulness (of what email I used for blogger... it logs me in automatically here!), I can finally post an update about how Project 4 is going! I meant to post my choice of poem a lot earlier, because I thought I had it picked out and set in stone about a week and a half ago, but I've since changed my mind...

I planned to use Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, which I really like, and I sketched out thumbnails for it and even started the basic flash version. Over break, however, I started to realize exactly how much I need to get done in the two upcoming weeks and I decided I needed to pick something a little shorter to make this project more manageable. So, after much angst, I am officially starting over on the flash project. The poem I'll be using will be Emily Dickinson's How Happy Is The Little Stone:
How happy is the little Stone
That rambles in the Road alone,
And doesn't care about Careers
And Exigencies never fears--
Whose Coat of elemental Brown
A passing Universe put on,
And independent as the Sun
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute Decree
In casual simplicity--


I like the pleasant imagery in this one, and while I would still love to do the Thomas poem, I just think this one will be a little more manageable with the very limited time frame I have left.

Project 3 Synopsis

After the Dadaism project, I definitely found myself eager to stay in "historical mode" for a while and this project was, luckily, a way for me to continue that. I love history, and I love referencing it in my art and designs whenever it fits, so I knew from the beginning that I wanted to try a classical, traditional design style for this project. This is what led me to choose Garamond Premier Pro as my typeface: I knew that Garamond had a long, rich history--and I also simply like how it looks--so narrowing my selection of current revivals of historical typefaces down was fairly simple.

The reading on grids was very helpful when I started to set up the proportions of my brochure. I initially went with the very traditional 9x9 grid, but after guidance from Prof. Fender I decided to go with a modified 13x13 grid... this allowed me to retain the look and feel that I wanted while giving me ample room to work with text. There was initially a lot of disconnect between my poster and brochure designs... I intended for the brochure to showcase Garamond as it was originally designed (for body copy) and for the poster to show the progression of Garamond into the modern, multi-use face of today. The only element that really remains from that original poster design is the sketchy, hand-drawn letters that I was intent on using from the beginning. They became the uniting factor between the poster and brochure and I think they are a successful design element. I certainly got a lot of interested questions from my classmates about how I created them, followed by compliments on the idea, and that was encouraging!

Overall I'm very pleased with how the finished poster and brochure look, feel, and work together. I think the choice of cream paper was a good move for me, and I love how thick and rich the ink looks printed on it. I also love how the red color shows up... I was iffy about it when I saw it on regular white paper, but I think it works so well with the cream and I'm very happy with it now. I think there is a strong unity between the two project pieces and that they work well as a promotional set for the typeface. After living with them for a few days, I do see a few things that I may choose to tweak in the future, but I am content with how they both turned out and I'm glad I made the design choices that I did.

Project 3 Final Designs

Here are some photos (of very poor quality; I apologize for my senile camera and the non-ideal lighting conditions of my apartment) of the finished poster and brochure.

They look much better in real life, I promise! Also, here are jpegs of the finished digital images:

More thoughts on these in the synopsis.

Project 3 Thoughts on Final Critique

The final critique was very helpful for me, especially in pinning down the major design flaws that I needed to correct for the final version. I was aware of some of these flaws (such as the terrible idea to place all of the title settings on a single, disgraceful spread), but I hadn't yet put thought into how to correct them, and the crit helped get me going on the refinement process. I also enjoyed seeing other classmates' work up to that point and the huge variety of approaches they were taking to showcase their typefaces. I thought it would have been nice to get to see everyone's work, and I felt bad for those who didn't get to have theirs up for the full-class examination, but I understood the need for the final small-group crits during that time as well. That was helpful too, since my small group had seen each other's work every step of the way and was thus reasonably familiar with each member's progress.

Project 3 Poster, update

And an update on the poster as well:

Project 3 Brochure, update

I feel like I should do a quick update on what the brochure looks like going into the final weekend of production. I still need to work on pages 6 and 7 but I haven't quite figured out what I want to do with them yet so I'll come back to those.