Graphic Design Project #2 - Juried Show Poster pt. 1

The second project, for which we have the same groups, is to create material for the annual undergrad juried show, which is called Not Yet Famous Artists Revealed. There are 3 parts to this project. The first is to create a poster that encourages people to submit their work. My group decided to play off the name, and use a method of "revealing" the text. We went to Raven Press, the awesome letterpress my school owns, and used wood and metal type, a careful selection of ink, and a mirror to reveal the headline.  We will use the printed text in the second part the project, in which we have to design the entry form.

We shot this once, but after critique decided that we should include a call for entries in the actual lockup, rather than add it digitally, so I went back and reshot.

I thought I would include both the raw photo I took and then the finished poster, so you can see the editing that took place to really make the poster as good as possible. (color correction, obsessive highlighting and darkening of shadows, removal of white tshirt in foreground, removal of stray ink marks where they don't belong, addition of spacing between Not&Yet... ect.)

Graphic Design Project #1

Graphic Design Studio is a course set up to run like working in a Graphic Design Studio. We are assigned groups and then do work for clients.

Our first client was the Food Bank of Delaware. We chose from 3 different programs to create material for. My group chose the progam "Plant a Row". This program gets people with a garden to plant a little extra and then donate their surplus to the Food Bank so that needy people can receive a nutritious diet.

Our group created a poster, a small brochure, and an email blast.  I haven't documented anything printed out, and the brochure is really best seen printed out, since it has folds. (so I haven't included it in this post)

We wanted to have a tone that was encouraging and approachable. We used white space in a way that would work for the printing situation. Since the Food bank will be printing these in-house, we incorporated a border that doesn't bleed to the edge of the paper into our image.

The client chose to put our poster and email blast into production.

Documentary Photography Project #2

Our second Doc Photo assignment was also open-ended, but we had to write a proposal for what we wanted to do. I wanted to go down to the chicken coop across campus and photograph inside of there. When I got down there however, I learned that it is closed off to everyone who is not in the ag department, because they want to keep disease controlled. While I was down that way however, I saw that there were a couple of greenhouses that are used for research. I decided that would be just as fine, and did my photo series there. There was no set number of photos we needed for this assignment, but I took about 350, and wanted to edit it to ten.

Documentary Photography Project #1

The first Documentary Photo assignment was open ended. Out of convenience I went somewhere on main street. There's an antiques shop at the end of the street. We had to get turn in 3 shots. Based on the advise from another teacher that we should have an establishing shot, a medium shot, and a close-up shot, I chose the following:

My favorite was the last one, and my teacher said he would have liked to see more of them. If I had chosen to do that, rather than use the advice to have the three different types of shots, I probably would have included this photo somewhere in the mix.

Illustration Project #3 - Aesthetic and Emotional Response

The 3rd illustration project involved research. We read an article, and then were to portray our response visually. The idea wasn't to illustrate what happened in the article, but rather, how we felt about it.

My article, from the New York Times, was about a bill that was introduced in San Francisco, which would ban the sale of shark fins.  Shark fin is popular in chinese cuisine, being used in shark fin soup, which is seen as a status symbol.  San Francisco has a very large china town, so this is a big deal there. The elder chinese see this as an attack on their culture, while the younger say that it is a necessary step curb the brutal killing of sharks, which is greatly damaging their numbers as a species.

The more I sketched for this assignment, the more I saw myself on the side of the sharks. My illustration is a depiction of the chinese culture attacking and preying on the shark fins. We were allowed to use black and white, as well as one color. I used red as a symbol of China, and to represent brutality.

Red and Black India Ink

10" x 12"

Illustration Project #2 Mixing Media

The second illustration project was aimed at getting us to try mixing media in possible new ways. Each piece has at least two media. We were given a list of topics, and asked to choose six. Each had to be the same size as well.

Each illustration is 5" x 5" with the exception of the last one, which is very close in size.

(I'll probably redo at least half of these by the end of the semester.)

 "Afterwards"

Ink and Color Pencil

"Beneath"

Xerox Transfer, Ink, Watercolor

"Burning"

Scratchboard and Digital

"Chicken"

Cut Paper and Pastel Pencils

"Double"

Gouache and Watercolor on Clayboard

"Prehistoric"

Acrylic, Matte Medium, and 

Micron Pen on Wood Stump

Illustration Project #1: Love

The first illustration project of the semester (due on Valentine's Day) was on the topic of Love.
I chose to focus on love as a connection between two beings. The medium is digital with scanned textures.