STILL NOT AN ART MAJOR A PROCESS BOOK BY KATIE CAMPSHURE
DOT LINE EXPRESSIVE TEXT OBJECT ITERATIONS CHILDREN’S BOOK
A note: I first enrolled in Introduction to Design because I was considering the subject for my college major. This class has taught me what I think I’ve known all along - art is an escape for me, and for my sanity’s sake, it needs to stay that way. I really genuinely enjoy creating things, and in that sense, art is a perfectly plausible career path for me to pursue. However, while balancing this course with the rest of my workload, I kept finding myself looking forward to the work for this class more than anything else. I’ve realized how important art is to me, and I don’t want it to become a chore. I think part of me is afraid that if I make art my career, I’ll lose that spark, which is the last thing I want to happen. So for now, I’m perfectly content using art as a personal endeavor - something I can do for me so I always have a place to escape to.
DOT LINE
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This project involved the creation of a design that was able to successfully communicate a word by utilizing only dots, lines, and the principles of Gestalt to do so. In terms of design, Gestalt is essentially the visual relationship between individual aspects of a composition. Differences in space, continuation, value, and the like can add to the perception of the meaning of a piece of work. I happen to be quite the perfectionist, so it is not much of a struggle for me to create a “well-crafted” project. I’ve always held the belief that if I’m going to put the time and effort into creating something, I might as well do it properly the first time, otherwise I’ll regret it and end up re-making the project later. The abstraction involved in this project was difficult for me to wrap my mind around. Abstract art has never been my “thing,” and, to be honest, it usually confuses me. Representing ideas without illustrating them or personifying them with human traits was very difficult for me, especially in such a minimalistic project. The parameters and limitations of the project made me resent abstraction a little more than I used to. I feel like understanding abstract art is largely in the eye of the beholder - the meaning can be different to everyone who observes it. Surely, this is freeing in some ways, but for a girl who has always prefered to see things in straightforward black and white, it made this project difficult.
GESTALT
The top image on this page and all the images on the following page are rough thumbnail sketches of my brainstorming sessions for each word. I found that, in this case, the key to a successful product was having an abundance of options to choose from. Sometimes the smallest of changes to value or scale make all the difference.
E X H A U S T I O N
L O N G I N G // FINAL ITERATIONS
S T A B I L I T Y
T E R R O R // FINAL ITERATIONS
EXPRESSIVE TEXT
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DIVE
This project involved taking a word - in my case, “dive” - and reiterating it in as many different ways as possible. I went through quite the brainstorming session trying to come up with as many different definitions of “dive” as I could. Once I had come up with several ideas about the meaning of the word that I wanted to explore, I sketched out thumbnails of different designs (as seen on the following page), then utilized different techniques to bring those sketches to life (as seen in one of my final products below). Hand lettering definitely seems to add more of a personal touch to any work of art. It’s not a piece of cookie-cutter text that just anyone can use it’s something uniquely specific to the artist. Taking the time to utilize hand lettering techniques makes art custom, and in a world that is so dominated by digital text, it is refreshing and interesting to look at and experiment with. I think the larger I attempted to hand letter, the more precise my techniques would have to become. I’ve used hand-lettering in the past for a few art commissions, usually on large canvas. I always enjoy the way the lettering looks in the end, but it definitely takes me a lot longer to get through the lettering process when it’s on a large scale.
Through this project, I have definitely learned that perfectionism in hand lettering isn’t always the way to go. Sometimes the techniques I used communicated best in my lessthan-perfect iterations. I found that it was much easier to compare hand lettered text when there are lots of options to consider. The smallest changes in the smallest details can make all the difference.
// SKETCHES
// FINAL ITERATIONS
OBJECT ITERATIONS
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UMBRELLA
This project involved observing an object - in my case, an umbrella - and reiterating it in as many different and unique ways as possible. This involved a lot of drawing and redrawing and imagining and reimagining. I found it really interesting that certain methods, like contour line drawings could communicate “umbrella” in such a simple way, while some methods, like mimicking a master artist (see following page for my Van Gogh iteration), were much more complicated. Personally, finding unique ways to collage together random parts and still iterate an umbrella was particularly challenging for me (see below). Umbrellas don’t have that many unique parts to mess with, so finding images to use in collage was frustrating. Illustrating umbrellas digitally with geometric shapes was my favorite method (pictured on left). I prefer working digitally, and I have a decent background in Photoshop, so I found that those iterations were my personal favorites - both to create and to look at. If I were to continue with this project for a longer period of time, I’d love to experiment with creating a 3D sculpture of an umbrella. Seeing which parts are the most important and which ones can be skimmed over would make that sort of iteration interesting to look at and work with.
In the process of continually depicting umbrellas over and over again, I discovered that I HATE THEM and I NEVER WANT TO SEE THEM AGAIN. Seriously, though, I learned a lot about determining the most identifiable parts of objects. For instance, you can essentially stick a curved handle on any object and still manage to get across the idea of “umbrella.� There are so many angles to observe an umbrella from that it was easy for me to focus on individual parts at a time to see how well they communicate an idea as a whole.
Final text collage (above) Final general collage (below)
CHILDREN’S BOOK
// ARNOLD
This children’s book project was a collaboration between an education student and a design student. It served as an exercise in working with a client to create a final product that satisfies both parties. I am fairly familiar with working with clients because I do a lot of customization in my other art endeavors. Throughout my many projects, I’ve learned that messaging back and forth and having a decent forum for open communication is vital to the success of any collaborative process. My partner didn’t have many specific guidelines for the design of her story, so it was much more of a conversation about our personal tastes. Any feedback from her was greatly appreciated. I really wanted to make sure the familial, playful tone from her story translated to my illustrations, so her critiques were helpful in making sure our visions aligned. One of our ideas was the limited color palette I ended up utilizing (see bottom left).
My inspiration for the design of this book came largely from watercolor paintings. I liked the way those paintings didn’t have a stroke or a hard edge to them - it seemed whimsical and perfect for a fictional children’s book, so I incorporated that idea into my illustrations and the individual backgrounds on each page (see my final page spreads on the following page).
I am not super comfortable working in InDesign, so actually compiling my illustrations into a final product was the most challenging part of the process for me. I actually utilized a workaround by compiling all my pages in Photoshop and exporting the final spread to InDesign - that way, there were less pieces to combine and deal with in the unfamiliar program. If I had known this process would work, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time and effort in the beginning trying to make the design in InDesign. A big part of this process was learning to play to your strengths.
This book was produced in fall of 2014 at St. Norbert College, in DePere, WI. The book’s body text is typeset in Gotham. It was digitally printed by the college print center. All illustrations and images were produced by Katie Campshure.