semester 2- thesis process book Angela tavernese
Graphic Design Workshop 2 009 professors Richard Hunt & Ali Qadeer 01 2020 — 04 2020
I just want to start this book off by saying thank you to my professors Richard and Ali for being an awesome support duo this year and pushing me to create work I am truly proud of, and also to my peers who I spent the last 8 months working along side with, you guys are all so talented and inspiring and i can’t wait to see the great things you all do after ocad. x
TAPE
14 first exploration digital process masking video
INTRODUCTION
2 artist statement first week back project brief
STITCH
36 invisible labour content attempt one attempt two attempt three Process
THE SET BACK 74 quarantine projects books invisible labour final MINI EXHIBIT 58 midterm presentation project recap process invisible labour tape letters feedback
SO LONG OCAD 90
Artist statement At the beginning of this eight month project, my vision was unclear and I didn’t know exactly what would come of it. Fast forward eight months, and I have created lettering and typographic explorations that have allowed me to construct a creative process for myself that I will practice way beyond this thesis project. When thinking back to the first initial months of this project a few areas of interest that had kept popping up constantly through the course of the first semester were the idea of exploring new handwriting tools, typography as experiment and type and emotion. Going into this new second semester with no set plan of what I wanted this project to look at by the end of the next four months made me anxious but I knew once I started creating, things would work themselves out. The motivation behind this project ended up being a few different aspects. I was always very interested in my own personal practice and process when it came to creating lettering, and after the first term I felt my hand lettering had improved a lot from where it was, so I was intrigued to see this through and tried to keep the momentum of the hand lettering a float and see where it could take me. Over the break I continued to do some lettering explorations and a few turned out pretty awesome looking and one led to inspire one of my final projects. This body of work I created contains explorations which are deeply rooted in documentation of my process. I believe that throughout my different projects I developed, such as Invisible labour, Tape letter forms, and then my quarantine explorations, I always found myself reiterating this process of exploring with non traditional mediums used to create lettering, creating an interesting exploration, trying to add a layer of content to the exploration,
sometimes failing, but always trying to push the small exploration to become a larger project that can encompasses meaning and depth. During the first few project explorations of this second term it was collectively thought that my project was showing itself to be based around the ideas of interpretation through typography. After creating the project invisible labour, this idea of my project seemed to have shifted a bit, in the artist statement sense that the work I had been producing was very much so about my personal process, and my personal process tending to be tackling challenges the harder was in order for me to reach a point of success in my work. My work throughout the course of this term I felt was very personal to me, not only in term of my process but also in an emotional sense, I found that the piece where I could connect with the content I was adding to my work, I became more passionate about it, leading it be more of a successful works than some of my other explorations were. The idea of exploring unconventional handwriting tools and processes has played a significant role in my project from the very early stages, and became a factor that informed my outcomes and the layer of content I added to my work. The projects that you will find in this book are the outcomes of what I’ve been exploring the last four months. As of mid March, COVID-19 shook up our class and made us all have to adjust our project parameters with the new quarantine restrictions we were now up against. The pandemic really affected the way I was able to proceed with this project, and as you’ll find when looking at my body of work, I tried to proceed with my makings as best as I could with the time I had and tools available to me. This project is far from complete and as you read through each project you’ll become aware of where each project had to end and my successes and failures. This project clearly displays
the work I am interested in as a designer and what my personal practice will be for the coming months, post OCAD. It may be hard for me to pinpoint exactly the issue or problem my work is attempting to address but I would say this project demonstrates how I created a process for myself when it comes to creating typographical exploration responses to content that reflects these explorations. This process I created for myself while working through these projects has allowed me to find where my personal practice lies in the world of graphic design, and for that I am grateful. Enjoy my type explorations, and maybe give them a try while we’re all stuck in quarantine :)
TOOLA FIRST WEEK BACK
First Week Back While we were off for the break, I took time to regroup after the final presentations from the first months of this project. I took all of the feedback and started to think about how I can make my project into something that I truly enjoy creating. Over the break I took time for myself but I didn’t want to completely stop all creating while we were off. I didn’t want to lose the momentum I had created the last few weeks of the first semester. I took the free time that I had and tried to letter, in hopes that something would speak to me and lead me in a direction to start of this new semester on the right foot.
5 I started out using the same “marking” material I used last semester, which was black ink. As I started creating I realized I wanted the lettering I was experimenting with to be darker and more dense looking. I decided to mix black acrylic paint and black calligraphy ink and I was able to achieve an amazing black colour that I somewhat became obsessed with. I grabbed 2 different brushed and started lettering, these were the few I brought to our first class to discuss and show. After showing them to the group it became clear that the process of the letters Y & E that I created became intriguing to others as well. In order create these letter forms I taped a box and filled in the box as much as I could and leaving just enough white space to create a letter form housed inside them. In a way having the letter flood the box that they are confined in, this process gave the letter forms a very sharp and clean out side, once I peeled away the tape and be more organic and natural on the inside of the shapes counters which gave the forms an interesting look and feel to them.
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INTRODUCTION PROJECT BRIEF
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Week Two Current Research Question When a non designer thinks about letter forms they more often then not don’t realize the subconscious effect it has on their emotions. With this project I am interested in exploring how humans interact with typography on an emotional level. We can see typography taking on new functions and forms, with this project I would like to question how I could combine traditional handwriting tools with more experimental tools to create a process that will result in letter forms evoking emotions of its reader/viewer.
Project Outline For this project I plan on creating as many letter forms that allude to different emotions as I can and creating some sort of output for them to live within. I’d like to say create a successful group of forms each week so that would allow me to have 10 or so groups of letter forms to work with and produce individual artifacts for each one. Depending on what the forms turn out to be and what emotions come out of them- that will determine their outputs, Whether that be a poster, a book cover, and editorial cover page, a large scale billboard design, a advertisement sign for the movie/book...The possibilities are endless to say the least. A big struggle for me in the past semester was figuring out where I can get my content from to create letter forms based off of,I decided to find content from emotionally riven books or films. I also want the process of my makings to be documented and displayed as a large part of my body of work. I find it fascinating to make new combinations of traditional and experimental “hand writing tools” and find it to be an integral part of the story these letter forms tell. Ways of documenting I will use are video, stop motion video, collage of stills, etc. At the end of this project I will have had developed a font book of 10 or so letter form families which I’d like to display as a “bundle” and as of now I am thinking about a series of zines that encompass of the letter forms.
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TAPE PROJECT ONE
PROJECT ONE Tape letters
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Tape Letters To start of this new project I took one of my initial experiments further and tried to add a layer of context to it to give it some depth. The tape letter forms I had created, gave a sense of overwhelming and the feeling of being confided into a tight closed space. This being said I wanted to find words that expressed these sort of feeling and emotions. I had been reading the book the subtle art of not giving a f*** by Mark Manson, which spoke to how to let go of anxiety and worries. As I was reading this book I came across the quote “My temples pulsate as the blood fills my brain and face� I felt like this quote really encompassed the feeling I got when looking at the letter forms I created, but also encompassed the actual process of creating the letters and how they were made, since it looks like the ink is flooding the taped square.
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TOOLS TAPE LETTERS
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FIG 01
First set of letter forms This was my first attempt at creating all of the letter forms I needed to create the quote (Fig 01) . My process for creating the forms was very casual and I just created each letter and the way I wanted it to look as I moved from one letter to the next, not having a rigid system or anything.
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PROJECT ONE TAPE LETTERS
FIG 02
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First set of Digital letters After painting all of the letter forms needed to create the quote, I scanned each letter and brought them into my computer to create digital versions of each one. Fig 02 is the first set of letters after bringing them into illustrator and creating them into digital forms. They we pretty messy and need a lot of finessing in order to make them look like they all come from the same “typeface�. Fig 03 was after I brought them into illustrator and made some adjustments to the letters, such as widths and heights.
FIG 03
FIG 04
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TOOL TAPE LETTERS
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FIG 05
After getting feedback on the first set of letter forms I made digital, it was suggested I repaint them all at once, and remove all the tape piece by piece while documenting it. I thought this was probably the best idea since there were a lot changes that I needed to make to a bunch of letters. Repainting the letters all at once, allowed me to fix a lot of the issues I had with the letter forms with the paint and ink, opposed to making all those changes digitally which I think made a difference.
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DIGITAL TAPE LETTERS
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FIG 06
FIG 07
After repainting the quote as a whole, I once again scanned the letters and brought them back into illustrator. From the first attempt at creating them digitally (Fig 07), it was suggested that I also think about the composition of the letters as well, experimenting with leading, orientation, and size. Fig 06 shows the repainted letter forms after creating them digitally, and the new composition of the words. I tightened the leading to emphasis the whole anxious and being overwhelmed feeling. It seemed the less white space surrounding the letters the better the letters looked. I tried to create a composition that looked more dense as a whole, so if the viewer stands far away the composition almost looks like a block of black in with white squares, and as you move closer you can see the fine line actual create counters of letter forms, which make up a sentence. Feedback Some feedback I received after presenting this work to my professors was to think about how I can add an additional layer to this piece, to add some more depth. It was encouraged that I test out masking the letter forms with images since they are so block like they would mask well.
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DIGITAL TAPE LETTERS
25 The first thing I thought of when thinking about masking these letter forms with a photo, I automatically thought that the image needed to have the emotion I was trying to portray in order to add that extra layer to this piece. These were a few images I found that spoke to this feeling I was trying to portray with the typography and quote. Feedback After presenting these examples of masking the quote with image In regards to the photos I was using to mask the type with, they were still not working. It was suggested that I take my own photos, that way it would be easier to try and capture the exact emotion i want the subject to be portraying in regards to the context of my quote. It was also recommended that I try also masking with a portrait that has a sort of blank face stare. The thinking behind this would be that just looking at the photo of someone with a blank stare you wouldn’t really know what they are thinking, but then adding this layer of the type and letter forms this secondary layer of information is given to viewer, allowing them to know what the feeling are behind the blank face.
FIG 08
FIG 09
FIG 10
FIG 11
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DIGITAL TAPE LETTERS
27 FIG 12
FIG 15
FIG 13
FIG 16
FIG 14
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For the next phase of this project I spent time to take my own portrait photos in hopes that one of them would work and add the extra layer that this project had been missing. Fig 12- 16 are some cropped in examples of a few i experimented with. Fig 13 was the one I thought was most successful out of the bunch, even though I felt that it was not completely resolved yet, this was the one I chose to be apart of my mini exhibit for my midterm presentation. I often question when looking at these iterations if the image actually does add anything to the letter forms and the statement? This is still something that I have not been able to pin point and the more I would stare at this masked photos the more frustrated I would get.
DIGITAL TAPE LETTERS
31 FIG 17 still from video
FIG 21 still from video
FIG 18 still from video
FIG 22 still from video
FIG 19 still from video FIG 20 still from video
After the Midterm I wasn’t fully happy with where this project had i guess ended at, so it was suggested I step back from it for a week or so and try and resolve other projects I had going on at the same time. Fast forward a few weeks and the course of this semester had been derailed by the pandemic, leaving me to forget about it for a while. After trying to revisit it I thought about other was this could live, and not just be a large format poster. I thought about creating a fast paced video where the photos the type is masked with switch quickly. I also cropped in super close within the images, trying to really capture the blank stare and slight emotion in the photos, removing a lot of the empty space that was filling the letters before. Even though I don’t see this piece as being fully resolved, I find the small video clip really makes you feel anxious and overwhelmed, and speaks to me more than just the static photo. There was something about having the photos switch at a very fast pace that added some sort of reaction to the piece that I felt I wasn’t seeing when it was simply a printed poster.
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DIGITAL TAPE LETTERS
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This piece for me has not be fully flushed out. Unfortunately once COVID-19 hit Canada and our time at school got cut short, this came with many challenges for me. That being said this project is as stands, a fast gif video of about 0:01 seconds in length that I play on a loop that quickly switches between 6 closely cropped photos. I enjoy the feeling this video creates when the viewer watches it much better than the dullness of a static poster and one image but still question whether or not the masking is necessary, and I plan to work this question out once life calms down a bit.
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STITCH PROJECT TWO
PROJECT TWO INVISABLE LABOUR
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At the point in the semester when it was time for me to start thinking about my second projects my professors and I came to the conclusion that my projects is basically interpretation through typography, specifically my interpretation. Some points mentioned during discussion that led me to new makings for this week were
-A poetic response to something, not stating it specifically -Type as editorial illustration -Adding a layer of emotion -Jessica walsh -Responding to things -Take a piece of content and add a dimension of interpretation through type to it -Project is about interpretation through typography and responding to things -Tracey mah -Taking core ideas of an article and interpreting it As ic my as
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I was looking for content to inspire my next typographexploration I came across the following article: Mark words; The Subversive History of Women Using Thread Ink;
This article really intrigued me because I have always had a love for sewing and through my practice I’m very interested in looking at different ways we can create non traditional writing mediums. This article explores “For as long as women have been sewing, they’ve been using embroidery to tell their own stories—often in societies that refuse to hear them otherwise. They’re about who has been given voice, and who has been denied one. They’re about provoking questions, and preserving histories. Capturing them. Marking them. Threading them. Leaving them to be read by others.” For this output I really wanted
TOOLS
INVISABLE LABOUR
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FIG 23 to embroider the saying “mark my words” onto a piece of clothing. Ive sewn and knit before but I’ve never embroidered lettering so this was also something new to me, that can push me out of my comfort zone. These embroideries talked about in the articles are known to be quick, imperfect letters, so I thought this would work to my advantage when it came to me not fully knowing what I was doing, aware that the outcome would be imperfect looking. This project would be an embroidery project, using “thread as ink” I wanted to step away from the paint and ink because I felt like I’ve been at it for a while so I found content for this new medium. The main concept of this project is that it is going to be a challenge for me and allow me to push myself to do something new, which the previous project, I felt like I was still in my element. Fig 22 was my first attempt at this idea. I just wanted to put my idea into play to have something to show for critique to better allude to the idea I’m trying to get at with this project.
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TOOLS
INVISABLE LABOUR
41 Both of my professors were interested in the idea for this next project that I had presented to them, so the following week i really needed to see if I could create better letter forms. This second attempt turned out much better because I used an embroidery ring and thicker embroidery thread. I wanted to play with colour to see how it would turn out, and allow me to decide if i wanted to stick to black thread for the final piece or introduce some colour. There was a revelation made during our conversation when we had flipped over the piece of fabric i had embroidered and all of the raw thread and mistakes are exposed on the back, allowing for it to show process, labour, time, etc.-- all relating and adding the idea of women labour that this work is trying to speak to. We collectively decided it would be awesome to sew the garment inside out to have all of the raw sewn work exposed, also making it kind of hard for the reader to read what the words say, making reading the garment a laborious act. In order to do this I need to sew the letters backwardsmaking it a little more difficult to do and more time consuming but the result will be worth it
FIG 24
FIG 25
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CONTENT INVISIBLE LABOUR
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FIG 26
The next phase of this project was to rethink what the words I’m embroidering on the final garment. I presented the words I chose to embroider on the final piece the following week, the words read “In return for our work you have only asked us to work harder” this was a quote from a wages from work campaign of the 1970s I had come across. I thought these words were the perfect fit for the idea I was trying to convey with this piece. This piece is very much about women labour and this quotes context directly spoke to that idea but also allows for interpretation since it is not directly stating it is solely about women’s work, but can be said about any kind of labour which i found intriguing. Removing the quote from the context of the wages for housework campaign allowed for the words to speak more to the times of today, and gives room for personal interpretations of it’s reader when it’s read on it’s own, which I liked.
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TOOLS INVISABLE LABOUR
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FIG 27
I did a test embroidery on a white shirt of this wording and seeing it just convinced me that this quote was the perfect one to use for this piece. Seeing this phrase stitched out with the black thread opposed to the previous piece where it was very colourful, I realized the black thread it much more fitting and effective for this piece. it just added a whole other layer to its meaning of this project
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PROJECT TWO
INVISIBLE LABOUR
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FIG 28
FIG 29
FIG 30
FIG 31
FIG 32
For my final garment that I had to be very intentional when thinking about what the article of clothing would look like. I knew I wanted something very muted and simple, light in colour to allow the stitching to really be the focal point of the work. Fig 28 is the final garment i chose to go with. It is a smock looking dress, that has pockets, made from a thick cotton material. I thought the fact that it had pockets made this article of clothing even more perfect. It was time to actually start on my final dress artifact since I now had the quote I wanted to use. Before actually beginning to embroidery I did a few mock ups of positioning with the test embroidery ( fig 29- 32) i had done last week, to make sure i know exactly where i want to wording to sit on the dress. For the final piece I went with the placement of Fig 31.
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PROCESS INVISIBLE LABOUR
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FIG 33
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When the time came to finally stitch the final dress I set up my tripod and camera to document the long labourus process that came with this project. I decided to call this project Invisible Labour I used about 70 yards (2520 in) of black thread to create this piece and it took 17 hours of labour. I completed this over the course of 7 days, taking frequent breaks because my hand would cramp up from the stitching. I had my camera set up to take photos of me while I was stitching and when I got up for a break I also snapped a photo. Fig 33 are the photos from my breaks, I thought it was an interesting to have different view points of this process, one being me stitch and the other me being absent (Fig 33)
MINI EXHIBIT MIDTERM
PROJECT RECAP
MIDTERM PRESENTATION
STITCH For my second piece I wanted to step away from the paint and ink because it had been the medium i had been working in since last semester, so while trying to think of other hand writing tools I can create I came a cross an article called mark my words. This article was about the subversive history about how women have used “thread as ink” in the past. They would use thread to embroidery messages, stories, or thoughts inside the garments they would sewas part of their freedom of speech but also as a way to “leave their mark” in their work I never embroidered before so this was a new challenge but after doing research on how these garments looked and were stitched, it was very free hand stitching, messy which was something I thought i could use to my advantage since it would be my first time embroidering
The first attempt to just present this idea was stitching 57 mark my words on a white t-shirt After a few more attempts of just trying to figure out how to create lettering i had an ah ha moment when Richard flipped this test piece over and all of the process, messiness, mistakes were revealed - it suddenly became so much more interesting to look at After talking about this as a concept I about how this was women labour and for heavily apart of unpaid housework, i was the wages for housework campaign of 1970, the final piece
started think the most part introduced to which inspired
This was a protest by women, housewives that were demanding to be paid for their 24 hour laborious jobs as housewives. I found this poster from the campaign protest and plucked out a few sayings that can be left open for more interpretation and not solely based on this idea of paid housework, but can be interpreted in differ ways for different kinds of work more relevant to todays times, since this is a protest of the past.
To achieve the look of the inside of the garment I had to sew inside out in a way to have that revealed on the front instead of on the inside TAPE This concept came from these two letters I created the first week back. I boxed of a square with tape and painted the inside with a brush and acrylic paint mixed with black ink. After showing these a long with a bunch of other ones, it was suggested i moved forward and work these out I then created each letter of the alphabet using this method, the feedback i received for these letter form was that they instantly gave a feeling of claustrophobia- a sense of anxiety, an overwhelming feeling, as if the letter are being tightly confined between this negative space
After hearing this i needed to find some content that would be fitting to set in this typeface , I had just finished the book the subtle art of not giving a fuck by mark Manson, and I went back into the book and found the quote “my temples pulsate as blood floods my brain and my face” - I thought this quote was fitting because it alludes to those exact feelings people received when looking at this typeface I had taped a box for each letter of this quote and painted the whole sentence as one and then removed all of the tape one piece at a time while documenting it- and thats where these photos came from. I then brought it in digitally made some adjustments. This piece still needed another layer of something it wasn’t quite finished and it was mentioned that they would be letter forms that would mask well, so i tried masking the sentence with photos i took, this is just one of them, I took a whole bunch but just thought this one was working, there isn’t too much expression on his face but there is a sense of uncomfortably which then allows the quote to kind of shine and
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PROCESS MIDTERMP RESENTATION
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FIG 34
Since process was such an important part of my project as a whole, I wanted to make sure that my process was presented in an organized and interesting way. For my tape letter forms I created a stop motion video that showed the process of me removing each piece of tape from the first stage of the letter forms. For my Stitched project I also created a small video clip with the photos of every-time I took and break and was absent from the frame which you can see in Fig 34. The idea of creating new and interesting mediums to create letter forms was also a big part of my work, so having the tools used to create each piece were also placed on my process table.
FIG 35
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INVISIBLE LABOUR MIDTERM PRESENTATION
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I took over 300 process photos of me embroidering the final dress and created a process wall paper of the photos to be placed behind the suspended dress as a constant reminder of the labour that went into this piece.
FIG 36
INVISIBLE LABOUR MIDTERM PRESENTATION
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FIG 37
My stitch project to me, was the main project of my thesis work, I wanted to make it the star of my presentation. I suspended my embroidered dress in front of the wall paper of my process I created.
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TAPE LETTERS MIDTERM PRESENTATION
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For the process photos of the Tape letters project i had created this long documentation scroll of small images FIG 39
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TAPE LETTERS
MIDTERM PRESENTATION
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FIG 38
For my tape project I hung the poster I felt was the most successful at the time. I also created a very long narrow scroll of all the process images i took when removing the tape from the letter forms and taped it to the way beside the poster as well.
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FEEDBACK MIDTERM PRESENTATION
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Post Midterm feedback This week was the week after my midterm presentation and I felt like I had completely exhausted all ideas. I needed a bit of time to reset and get back into the mind frame to keep the ball rolling with my project. All in all I was pretty happy with the work I produced up until this point and knew the direction I need to move towards following my presentation. I got a lot of feedback and it helped me reset and realize what my next steps needed to be for the following remaining weeks of the term. Feedback
TAPE The block letters are not fully resolved, but maybe I need a break from them, so I should set them aside and as I create for my next project inspiration may spark and it will resolve itself . The long documentation scroll of the small images I created for the tape letters was also not functioning really well and I needed to rethink how I could present them STITCH The embroidery piece was really working and the documentation and how I presented it was really fitting, and was an interesting way to have the viewer be constantly reminded of the labour that went into a piece that may look like not so much. Make the last work on the dress “harder” show visually that it was the hardest word to finish, because right now it looks like it was the easiest Create a booklet/zine that encompasses all of the inspiration and context of the actual dress that can accompany the piece, having a small handbook to explain what the work was about would be fitting and help push the content aspect further Rethink what I’m actually saying with this work, because it seems to now be going away from interpretation through typography. My work is very much so about my process and my process tends to be taking the harder route to reach the successful points of my work.
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PROJECT THREE
QUARANTINE EXPERIMENTS
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Quarantine projects This week was a tough one for me. We are officially in the middle of a world pandemic and it has been really hard to get work done. Its been a wild shock to the world but also a learning experience to see how quick people come together during these times of need.
After speaking to my professors and them being very supportive and understanding, we’ve established that my main focus should be my process book. I am still making things here and there but with all of the craziness going on in my life at the moment, I’m not in the heads-pace to successfully complete a third project to its fullest. I don’t want to abandon or give up on this project because I’ve been very passionate about my practice through this course and about this project, so I will fully see it through once my life calms down, resources become available again, and this passes, but as for now I’m still trying to create small things here and there to add to my process as things I can maybe work through possibly in a few months. A small project I worked on this week was an attempt to make something interactive. I thought this would be another way for people to leave messages in silence, kind of like how the embroidery was how women would express their thoughts and feelings, its sort of like a customizable poster, where you pull down the tabs to create whatever you’d like, letters or image. I realize the reflective paper makes it hard to read but I was just using whatever I had on hand at home, its a thing i guess! it also was another project that made my hands cramp similar to the embroidery having to exacto each square individually so I thought that was interesting.
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TOOLS QUARANTINE EXPERIMENTS
75 STAY HOME
KIND
WARY
ALONE
TENSE
STAY CALM
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PROCESS QUARANTINE EXPERIMENTS
77 GLAD
LOST
THANKFUL
PANIC
HOPE
OVER IT
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PUZZLE
QUARANTINE EXPERIMENTS
FIG 39
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FIG 40
FIG 41
FIG 42
Puzzle Project I had the idea for my this project for it to be 2 large scale puzzle that can be mixed and matched since they would be using the same puzzle die cut. The idea was to allow this to act as an interactive piece, where the user can mix the messages together, and at the same time form new interesting letter forms with the “mix and match” pieces. After conversations the previous week we agreed that the typeface I use for this piece does not need to be one I had make myself as I did with all of the other ones. I looked into typefaces created by female type designers and found a few interesting ones on the typequality.com, one being called Activist Activist ( Fig 41-42), which I thought was fitting because the themes I’ve been exploring throughout a lot of my projects can be considered as art activism I thought it was fitting, and it was designed by a female. I also looked into the typeface dead history typeface (Fig 39-40), which Richard suggested would be worth trying out, which is a typeface that combines serif and sans serif attributes in each letter form which could be interesting as well when the pieces can be pieces together differently. The two saying are from The New York Times article There’s a Stress Gap Between Men and Women. Here’s Why It’s Important. This puzzle project came to a halt once COVID-19 hit which was upsetting, but it is definitely a project I plan to see through once I finally have more time on my hands and resources become available to, in order to successfully complete it.
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BLACK THUMB PRESS
QUARANTINE EXPERIMENTS
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FIG 43
When it came time to start thinking about my third project, I was stoked about the idea of the interchangeable puzzle pieces but while researching content for the puzzle project I came across ‘Bici Hendricks’ 1966 “Punctuation Poems”,Fig 45 and felt inspired. Bici Hendricks (now Nye Ffarrabas), Punctuation Poems, New York: Black Thumb Press, 1966, 14 x 8.5 cm is an envelope with a white label containing 20 printed cards, each consisting of a single typewriter character. (Source). MoMA. Hendricks, later known as Nye Ffarabas, was one of the most accomplished women concrete poets of the 1960s - I tried (Fig 43 & 44) to create letter forms with “pressing my thumb” into ink and paint and then on the paper. I wanted to play on the idea of “black thumb press” and create that into a process itself to create letter forms. This project didn’t really go anywhere because once you put the letter froms together in because very illegible, but it was worth a try and the marking turned out interesting looking as forms.
FIG 44
FIG 45
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BOOKS QUARANTINE EXPERIMENTS
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In the words of Ali Qadeer my projects needed some “sprinkles” added to them to make them feel a bit more complete. During my midterm critique, it was encouraged that I create a small zine like booklet to go along with my invisible labour that could house the information that inspired the piece giving it some context. On the right you’ll see the cover for the invisible layer zine and on the right is the cover for my women in typography book.
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BOOKS QUARANTINE EXPERIMENTS
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The zine contains the article that inspired the project, the working for wages campaign, and my process creating the final piece.
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BOOKS QUARANTINE EXPERIMENTS
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Another small quarantine project I had been working on is a small booklet that contains women in typography and typefaces they had created, I included a typeface starting with each letter of the alphabet. This booklet is simple and my idea is to have the right hand pages printed on a linen paper, to add some aspect of materiality and fabric to the book.
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BOOKS QUARANTINE EXPERIMENTS
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In order to show my process of my embroidery project, since having a wall plastered with my process wall paper I created isn’t always accessible in terms of recreating with limited space given (for example when think about gradex) I compiled all of my process photos in a small, dense flip book. The book is 71 pages, and allows the viewers to take a quick glance at what my process looked like.
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FINAL TOUCH UPS
INVISIBLE LABOUR
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FIG 46
FIG 47
FIG 48
Some improvements I had made to the garment while finalizing the project was A. Making the word HARDER seem as if it was the hardest to stitch and in turn becomes the hardest to read & B. stitch X’s over my accidental repeated word only, similar to the way when typing on a typewriter and would make a mistake you would type an X over each letter since you weren’t able to go back and delete the mess up. Fig 46 is the before image of the garment, as you can see the word harder looks as if its the word that too the least time to stitch which wasn’t making sense and only only is just left as a repeated mess up. Fig 47 is the results after I fixed the stitching on the word harder. It definitely turned out to be the most dense looking word also the hardest one to make out because it took so much thread to create it. Fig 48 is how the repeated word with the X’s running through each letter turned out. If the viewer isn’t as up close to the dress as this photo, its hard to make out what I was trying to do here, but once you’re up close its visible, so I feel these changes add another layer of perspective when it comes to different viewing point to appreciate this piece.
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FINAL INVISIBLE LABOUR
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FIG 49
Invisible Labour- Final Piece 70 yards (2520 in) of black thread and 17 hours of labour, and this project was finally complete. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy with the out come of a project like this before. The fact that it is a huge part of my workshop project for my final year of my undergraduate degree makes it that much more worth all of the hand cramps endured during the process of this project.
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FINAL INVISIBLE LABOUR
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FIG 50
FIG 51
FIG 52
The Ah-ha Moment This piece can be seen as very chaotic when you first look at it but once you flip it inside out and see the cleaner stitching that you would typically find on the outside of embroidered pieces, it almost takes you back and allows you to appreciate the process that much more which I always thought was an integral part of this project.
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DONE SO LONG OCAD
Final Thoughts At the beginning of this eight month project, my vision was unclear and I didn’t know exactly what would come of it. Fast forward eight months, and I have created lettering and typographic explorations that have allowed me to construct a creative process for myself that has become my personal practice which will continue way beyond this thesis project. I’m grateful for the support I had a long the way and am looking forward to finishing up many of my explorations from the last month once COVID-19 is behind us! Smell ya later OCAD
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“Hammer.” Hammer, hammer.to/.
“Elisabeth Friedländer.” Myfonts, www.myfonts.com/person/ Elizabeth_Friedlander/.
Jana, Rosalind. “Mark My Words: The Subversive History of Women Using Thread as Ink.” Vice, 4 Mar. 2016, www.vice.com/en_us/ article/8qwpzb/mark-my-wordsthe-subversive-history-of-women-.
“Emily Conners.” Myfonts, www. myfonts.com/person/Emily_Conners/. Ffarrabas, Nye, et al. “Nye Ffarrabas (Formerly Bici Forbes and Bici Forbes Hendricks). Punctuation Poems. 1966: MoMA.” The Museum of Modern Art, www.moma.org/collection/ works/135445. “Frankenfont.” Fathom Information Design, fathom.info/frankenfont/. “Gayaneh Bagdasaryan.” Myfonts, www.myfonts.com/person/Gayaneh_ Bagdasaryan/. “Guisela Mendoza.” Myfonts, www. myfonts.com/person/Guisela_Mendoza/.
“Info.” Christienmeindertsma, christienmeindertsma.com/Info.
“Jessica Hische - Home.” Jessica Hische - Home, jessicahische. is/. Kim, E. Tammy. “The Feminist Power of Embroidery.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 29 Dec. 2018, www.nytimes. com/2018/12/29/opinion/sunday/ feminist-embroidery-korea.html. “LiebeFonts · Hand-Made Fonts With Lots of Love.” LiebeFonts · Hand-Made Fonts With Lots of Love, liebefonts.com/. “Manushi Parikh.” Indian Type Foundry, www.indiantypefoundry. com/designers/manushi-parikh. Maria Doreuli.” Typotheque, www.
typotheque.com/authors/maria_doreuli. “Mariya V. Pigoulevskaya.” Myfonts, www.myfonts.com/person/ Mariya_V_Pigoulevskaya/. “Nina Stössinger.” Nina Stössinger, www.ninastoessinger. com/. Orwig, Sarah Forbes. “Maria Ramos.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 18 Feb. 2020, www.britannica. com/biography/Maria-Ramos. PeoplePill. “Sara Soskolne: Canadian Typographer - Biography and Life.” PeoplePill, peoplepill.com/people/sarasoskolne/. Primary Information, www.primaryinformation.org/product/womens-work/. Riechers, Angela. “The Eye on Design Guide To Women-Designed Contemporary Type.” Eye on Design, 6 Mar. 2019, eyeondesign. aiga.org/that-type-of-women/. “Ruxandra Duru.” Ruxandra Duru, www.ruxandra-duru.com/. “Sandrine Nugue.” Sandrine Nu
gue, www.sandrinenugue.com/. “Sketchbooks - Evelin Kasikov – Art Direction & Graphic Design – London.” Evelin Kasikov â Art Direction & Graphic Design â London, evelinkasikov.com/ Sketchbooks. “Sofie Beier.” Myfonts, www.myfonts.com/person/Sofie_Beier/. “Stories in the Cloth: Art Therapy and Narrative Textiles.” Taylor & Francis, www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0742 1656.2016.1164004?scroll=top& needAccess=true&. “Tracy Ma.” Tracy Ma, tracyma. com/. “Victoria Rushton.” Victoria Rushton, www.victoriarushton. com/index.html. Wong, Kristin. “There’s a Stress Gap Between Men and Women. Here’s Why It’s Important.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 14 Nov. 2018, www. nytimes.com/2018/11/14/smarter-living/stress-gap-women-men. html. Check your citations Make sure you didn’t forget a source or cite incorrectly Paste your paper