type

Sooo..... Round three.five. Uh.... Well... Playing with type. Positive and negative space interaction. I started by cutting out letters and taping them to my computer screen to play with the light source as the negative space. I "projected" light from my computer screen through the negative spaces onto both flat, and crumpled paper. Different distances from the screens led to clearer or blurrier type. I also tried projecting a movie as the light source to see what interactions I could get between type and image as the light source. From there I tried to do the same things but with the 8.5x11 with the cutout letter forms, thus the light acts as the positive space. The relationship between type and image was much more interested when projected through as the positive letterforms because darker colors didn't show up as well and ended up blocking out some of the actual letterforms. I also played with clear and blurred focus with my actual camera as well as camera angle in relationship to the screen. I believe this set of directions is much more interesting than the flashlight-sheet (previous) versions. The direct layering allows for more control, more play, and more dramatic results.

More random inspiration

I just found these images to be interesting or pretty... some of them I just dig the color pallet. Rick is the one that turned me on to Aaron Horkey... sooo pretty! The thing in the middle is kind of interesting in regards to filling the blocks with type or possibly just in relationship to the Kauffman center thing... rectangles making form and shape.

Typo 4: Design round 2- continuation of experimentation

Typo 4: Not so much bio, as various points of inspiration

Try as I might, I have yet to find any "designers" "designing" "type" with shadows. I've found artists that work with type. I've found artists that work with light and shadow... but no shadow puppet designers using puppetry to create type or alter type.

That being said, there are a few interesting commercials that use hand puppetry that can be found here, and here. They are both youtube examples, but it's hard to find any more information about the firms that made these.

In 2006, the Carnegie-Mellon School of design had a shadow puppet project. "This Shadow Puppet project was one experience to provide students with an opportunity to explore form and content. Students develop perceptual and expressive abilities that allow for thorough interpretation of design problems." Again, this is not typographic based, but it is focused on composition within a frame and that is one of the elements I've been working with. The link to the project is here for your convenience.


I could keep posting links to more and more people that play with shadow puppets and even master them to a certain extent. David Currell is another artist that works with shadow puppets. He "is widely recognized as a leading authority on puppet theater. He was cofounder of the National Puppet Center and its chairperson for nearly 20 years." He has a few books out about puppetry including: Making & Manipulating Marionettes and Puppets and Puppet Theatre. Even the type in relationship to his imagery in his books is still just printed type with no real relationship to the puppets themselves. 

InfoArc: Landing page

I kept over thinking and over working and over thinking this and finally just started over & went simple. Gray bars are the "chrome" no pun intended. Hopefully I can find ways to make this more interesting when I finally bring it into dreamweaver. I'd like almost all of those squares to be links, with the exception of the rectangle with my name in it. Maybe? Possibly? No clue.

Typo 4: The Beginning (aka, the setup)

For my "experimental" type, I'm working with shadow puppets. For the first round of effing around, I cut out a set of Futura letters at about 6 inches. I then taped them up inside of the wheeled cart and covered one side with a sheet. I used a flashlight to back light the images and sat on the sheet side of the cart so I could read the shadows projected on the inside of the sheet and photograph the forms.

Typo 4: Questions for the Experiment

1. What if I have no end outcome? What if I go in completely blind and just start messing around? Knowing of course that light and shadow are my tools and toys. 

2. What if I go in with a set of variables and change them one at a time?

3. What if I change all the variables at once?

4. What if I change the light source from static to motion?

5. What if I work in a controlled environment? Or outside where I have less control? 

6. What if the content of the text directly reflects the type of type I'm creating? What if it's completely different (juxtaposition)? 

7. What medium should I project on? 

8. What position should I take while observing? In front of screen, behind, sideways?

9. What would happen if the light is not still, but flashing/strobing? 

10. Can music inform the feel of the type? -music motion, to the beat, pulsing, slow vs fast music, projecting the sound motion

11. How can I visually represent the outcomes of my experimenting? Photography vs video recordings

12. The clarity of the type will be a reflection of all the variables. Will different variables produce different moods of type? 

Typo 4: mini group meetings/research

Tammy summed her project ideas up as "layering and projecting." She's thinking about projecting feelings/words onto the sources of things the content of the type is about. Projecting is a good way to meld two ideas into a whole or is a good way to take two things that aren't generally physically touching and forcing them to touch. I'm going to be projecting, but in a different manner and without really considering the content of the type too, too much. I won't be projecting a poem about roadkill onto roadkill so much as writing a short dark story or phrase and projecting it in what can be an erie medium. 

Rick summed his project up as either using tangible objects to create type or using different surfaces in relationship to type. We both will be using the concept of "variables" to create different outcomes from one possibly simplistic idea. Rick also gave me the idea that I don't necessarily have to shine light on the sheet but could possibly project a movie and use that as the "light source" of my shadow puppet type. 

http://www.yankodesign.com/2009/05/04/recycling-typography/  is a site I stumbled upon that uses typography in the environment. Where as this concept does not directly relate to my work, they also utilize shadow and light, and create a certain feel in the scenes they place their type in. 

Another site I found is http://abduzeedo.com/incredible-light-graffiti-typography-julien-breton which uses light and shadow to make up the letterform itself (stroke width and such). 

Epp Find and Share- Graphs

Timeline

InfoArc: Summation of two readings

Vignelli:

-Everything can be redesigned to make it better

-Everything can be designed to reflect cultural and ethical values, ethical integrity. Integrity of purpose, materials, and the manufacturing process

-Redesign can come from analyzing a problem and then solving it based on all aspects of the analysis

-Question all assumptions

-Fight the wrongs of industrialization

-Modern movement = good (fight intellectual and material trash, anti greed, vulgarity and cheapness)

-"design is an integral part of the production process and not a last-minute embellishment."

McCoy

-individual experience

-problems of daily life, not all problems

-ethic "was one of discipline, clarity and cleanliness"

-all about minimalism

-possibly more 2-dimensionally focused

-text can be animated, images can be read

-

Both

-idealistic views about design and design as a means of changing society (problem solving)

-believe in analyzing the message and the audience

-functionality is a place to start

-"Graphic design can be a contribution to our audiences. It can enrich as it informs and communicates." Kathy

-necessity for advancement

Change represents and facilitates growth (as an individual and as a society)

Second Semester, Jr. Year begins now.

Tyler's reading assignment(s) response. Typo 4

what did you think of these readings? The Triggs reading was very long, yet I found a few moments of inspiration thrown into the mix (I listed them below). does their definition of "experimental" match what you previously thought of the term? They both kind of speak to the point that experimentation should have an academic purpose behind the process. I don't know if I fully agree with that or not. Experimenting should not just be a cop-out for doing bad work, but if I just start messing around with no real purpose and something cool comes from that, it doesn't mean I had a purpose to start with. Just kind of means that I got lucky. That being said- having no motive or end result in mind, if I "mess around" and come up with nothing worth while, it doesn't mean that I didn't experiment or that the experiment failed. I still will probably walk away with something under my belt. is it really useful to experiment if it doesn't have real application? See above lol. Everything is a learning experience but experimenting should not be a cop-out/excuse for bad work. Cool points in the Triggs reading: I like the idea of challenging the fundamental notions of aesthetics. That to me sums up experimental quite nicely. The Triggs reading breaks experimenting into two categories- type design "with the design or production of typefaces" and typography which "investigates the use of type in layouts" It is interesting to think of the two as being separate. I generally think of letters making up words making up sentences making up paragraphs but the reading is encouraging us to look at the form of each individual letter as a completely different entity than how that form looks on a page. We must take our audience and design right down to individual letter forms for them and for use for projects/products for them. I was very interested in the idea of using typography in order to visually illustrate how a play might be performed. They were not illustrated pages, "rather they demonstrated a symbiotic relationship between word and image. The narrative was seen as well as read." I avidly read and I'm constantly making up voices for characters in the stories I come across. To visually represent their speeches on a page could further my understanding of a character. I enjoyed that the reading brought time constraints into the pool of experimental quality. However I don't know if a time limit would strictly hamper development. If given ten years to develop something great, I might slack off or be slow in my methods. Given ten days I would be forced into working hard and earnestly. Different results would occur, maybe for the better or maybe for the worse but it is interesting to think of how I work under which time sets.

Pieces of advice, moments of insight

These are a few tidbits of knowledge I picked up from the senior reviews today. Putting them here so I can use them in the future.

Package Design
-how many can you fit on a pallet? shipping is just as important as the individual
-user guide- new way to make packages less of a carbon-footprint-leave behind vs packaging one thing

"Edu-tainment"- education and entertainment

Retail space
-can be an experience
-stores with nothing for sale

Through living your life you can better create
-more fun, less stress, better design

Car Free Cities
-"Be an advocate for social causes"

The homeless use graphic design to ask for money
Questions have power- why do you do anything you do? Why not?

fin. <- will become important later.

NA: Show Opener, Final

I used moving video because I have never really done so for any particular purpose. This allowed me to capture real textures and forms of the printing world but also gave me a more engaging opener than something such as photos would have. This was pretty difficult for me since I was not used to editing moving footage. This helped me grow as a designer by introducing me to a new media.

I don't know if this was a success or a failure. It's pretty interesting to look at, but I don't think it ended up being something that I wanted it to be.

I enjoyed the ability to choose what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it. I don't know what I would have done differently if I had to change things. I'd definitely start over if I had the same amount of time, if for no other purpose than to simply see what else I could have come up with.

Less text would have been nice. I know it's already minimalist but less would still have been better or else I just needed to rework it.


Show opener from Abby Gallagher on Vimeo.

Favorite quotes of winter09- comment please?

"boiled eggs and bleu cheese on waffles with bananas and syrup. great way to start your morning. high five. back flip. crawl through a tunnel and get out your brayer. over and out." -Lance


"No, no balls and tape needed." -Jamie


"You need a big bus!" -Kidwell


"Stop doing that shit." -Kidwell


"Get out your brayer and just..." -Lance


"Look at me, I'm Sandradee." -Lance (sung of course) 


"She was just waffling some rubbish." -Tom


Kidwell: That's a cute little car. It's blue! Me: Is it yours? Kidwell: No. I spilled yogurt on my shirt earlier and I'm not too happy about it.


Sean: It'd be cool to be a jet pilot since they don't have dog fights anymore.
Mo: Yeah they do, in the south...


Digital Kitchen guy: Well I guess that one didn't really matter- BWAH-HA-HA-HA!


Lance- You remind me of the Cheshire Cat
me- Why?
Lance- because of yoouurrrr jack-at!
______________________________________________________________________________________
Lance added:


"That would be zippy!... yeah..." -Kidwell


"Take a little nugget... or nip out of it... yeah...." -Kidwell


"Well what do you carve wood with? Oh I dunno, termites?" -Kidwell


"This could be an opportunity to go half to wonkin..." -Kidwell
______________________________________________________________________________________

Please add your favorites in the comment section. I know I'm forgetting some good ones, help me out!

Vislang: Communication Model vol 5.0 Final Statement and artifact

This was a great project for me. Experimentally, I decided to render my entire animation using cut paper and minimal digital effects which is a style I had never attempted before. After learning about the communication models general principal I decided my view of it became something that was very hands-on for all participants. The cut paper reflected the hands-on nature and physicality of the process. I decided to take a very linear approach in order to form a narrative. This allows for a more engaging and entertaining learning experience for the viewer of my animation. This project really drove home all aspects of the communication model and I realize that it is something that I need to focus on every day I work as a designer. Even while making the video, I constantly thought about clarity and tried like hell to minimize noise. 


Narration: Written by myself, read by Jason Gongaware
Song: Edited and looped by myself, from the original riff of Xoxo, Panda's "The Boys and Girls (Good Morning)." 



Untitled from Abby Gallagher on Vimeo.



This year really helped me step out of my box. I experimented and opened myself to failure with the expectation of self-improvement and gain. Though I may not have always acted receptive in critiques, I really took each comment to heart and will use those small utterances to shape my design-mind and my work process and ethic. Every failure was a success. Every mistake was (eventually) a blessing. This year it has become my new-found goal to continue pushing myself beyond my own limits and find my own brand of greatness.