Rylee Heil
Bierut Interview Reflection
I
find it very interesting that Bierut discovered his
passion for design at such a young age. I didn’t really take it into consideration as a career until my freshman year in college. I also think that the way he describes the beginning of his post-college career is so interesting and inspiring for me personally. Combining his own style with what he learned from his mentor, Massimo, is something that I am so excited to do. The way that you pick up new skills from others and put your own spin on them has always been one of my favorite parts of learning about the arts.think it is impressive that he was so lucky to only have two jobs after graduating from college. To make it as far as he has with his weakness, a short attention span, is impressive, as you need to be able to devote hours and hours of time to your work in design. I’ve always thought of writing and design as related in a way, so it was very surprising to see that they asked him something about that. Bierut’s feelings about the question were similar to mine. The idea that he portrays of doing a project for someone and getting to see it out in the world, whether it’s a poster for a school play or a design for a city wide bike-share program, is extremely appealing. I’ve always loved the idea of my art existing outside of my own realm, so to speak. To have it seen and appreciated by others frequently would be so gratifying. I appreciate being able to see a well-known designer’s perspective of the line of work that I wish to go into. It was overall a pretty cool experience.
W
hen I started my snippets project, I barely had any good snippets.
No one on campus says anything interesting (except the guy that said he was “going monkey mode.” When we critiqued, I was told to make my idea into a verb, not a noun (which makes more sense than it seems it would). Therefore, I chose some song lyrics and drew the situations that they sparked in my head.
Project 1: Snippets “Clinging to not getting sentimental.” This comes from an Arctic Monkeys song about life getting more dull as you get older. This line in particular made me think of a one night stand. The morning after, rushing out of the room without grabbing all of your stuff because you’re in such a hurry to avoid an awkward encounter.
“Fake it if you don’t belong.” This one’s from a Seether song. I thought cutting out some magazine images made the picture look very uniform and together. That’s when I added a cutout of a chair, and drew a dark figure sitting in it. I crudely taped this project together in an attempt to put emphasis on the feeling of not belonging. This was fun to do since I haven’t done a magazine cutout project in nearly a decade.
Finally, my favorite: “Firefighter by Chance, Lover by Choice.” This one was quite literally the most random inspiration I’ve ever gotten. I was watching a funny TikTok about some dude having a forbidden love with the firefighter from Paw Patrol and the caption said “Firefighter by Chance, Lover by Choice.” I immediately thought of a firefighter, pole dancing on a fireman’s pole. It was such a funny thought that I had to include it in my project.
F
or the poster project, I originally was going to do a drawing. I chose two quotes but decided on one by Thomas Edison because it was easier for me to be creative and original with. I started with two very rough sketches.
Project 2: Great Ideas Poster Next, I met with the professor and he critiqued it a bit. He suggested that I get out of my comfort zone and try to use a photograph instead of a drawing, so I got to work on that. I took a photo with my phone camera and put it through Photoshop and InDesign and came out with my first rough draft for Project 2.
After another critique, I was told to make a bunch of changes, from changing the camera angle and saturation to taking another photo in which I wore a less distracting shirt. My idea for the poster was to portray a man who has tried “10,000” ways to do some kind of project on paper, but refuses to give up. As wads of paper begin to overflow from his trash, they begin to take the form of a lightbulb – representing an idea coming together from the numerous “failed” attempts.
Aaron Draplin Video Response T
his video was really interesting to me. It was cool to be able to see a master of the craft doing their thing. It also gave a sense of attainability. He showed how simple it really is to make a creative, unique logo with everything you’ve got. It inspired me to completely rework my Matilda logo for the Character Logo’s project. I took to heart his talk of context and not being afraid to rework and go back to where you started. As I watched the video, I brainstormed ideas for my Matilda logo and that’s how I ended up getting my final logo for the project. In my opinion, taking his advice to heart made my logo ten times better than it was. He also made it a little easier for me to understand what I should put in my concept statement for the project. I would also like to say that he made me think of our professor. The way that he spoke about his process and spoke of his art as if it were alive and almost helping him create it seemed very familiar to me.
Sagmeister Interview Reflection T
his reading was an interesting one. Stephan has got a lot of different projects that I’ve actually seen before, despite not being able to name where I have seen them. He definitely seems like a peculiar guy, and he has a very interesting approach to art. He’s obviously very creative, which you can tell from both his work and the way he speaks about it. You can also tell how seriously he takes his work and art in general. He’s very adventurous and even daring when it comes to art. It’s almost as though he does some type of art that no one else does. His bold works, including a promotion of himself naked, are apparently very widely known solely because they’re so daring and brave. One thing that I found interesting while reading his interview was the way that he keeps himself from becoming burnt out on his career. It’s peculiar in itself. Most people, obviously, get bored of their jobs. It’s bound to happen when you do the same stuff everyday for your whole life. Sagmeister, though, has his own solution. He takes a one year sabbatical every 7 years. He just leaves the studio to go do other things and work on his own personal projects. It seems like it wouldn’t be beneficial, considering he’d be out of a job for a whole year. However, in the interview he stated that the work that he can produce when he has no specific deadline ends up being better quality, and helps his studio greatly.
This project was extremely fun for me. I’ve always been interested in symbols
and logos, so this project was great for me to engage myself in. The two characters that I chose were Beetlejuice and Matilda. They were both characters I knew well, so I chose to make logos based on symbolism of their characters. I started with some sketches, and that’s where I got my main ideas.
Project 3: Character Logos After sketching, we had to choose a couple of our ideas that we liked and make them in Illustrator. I took one from my Matilda sketches of her signature hair bow, and I roughly drew it out in Illustrator. It looked pretty good, so I decided that I would be using it for the final logo no matter what.
I meshed two of my Beetlejuice sketches together — a silhouette of his head and a silhouette of his suit — and made some marks in Illustrator. I decided to drop the head from the design, as it wouldn’t have scaled well in a small version. Then I made a few logos with the suit before the next class.
That was when we had the first critique. I was told the suit logo looked too much like an M, so I got rid of the problem by adding implementing a capital B for the background. My Matilda logo was too plain, so I added color and type. They were really starting to look like logos after I made some of those changes.
H
owever, between the last critique and the deadline for the project, I still had a good few changes that I needed to make. For my Beetlejuice logo, I had to make the B look more jagged to match Beetlejuice’s vibe more, I had to get rid of the gradient because it wasn’t within the parameters for the project, and I had to make the font look as if it were thrown into the logo haphazardly. The Matilda logo, I decided, needed to be totally reworked. That was okay, though. Sometimes it’s better to start over from scratch than keep trying to make a dying idea work.
I took some advice from the last critique and made the bow sit atop one of the letters. This combined with the change in font made a huge difference, and I was happy with how my logos had turned out. In the end, I felt like this project turned out really well. I really loved watching my little sketches develop into real logos, and I liked going through the creative process to make it happen. It was definitely the most fun project we’ve had to do so far and I look forward to more projects like this one in the future so that I can fine-tune my design skills and artistic process. I feel like this project helped to hone skills that I plan to use in my career path, and it just felt right to do.
Fox Interview Reflection M
ark Fox, “The Mark Maker”, is a talented logo designer. He has made hundreds, maybe even thousands of logos over the years. This interview showed his very insightful feelings towards logos, trademarks, and type in general. It was very interesting to see how such a well-known designer felt about his own works, as well as how he felt about logos in general. My favorite thing about his interview was the part when he described a finished logo. In this part, he says that a finished logo, to him, is one that grabs your attention, conveys the meaning that it’s meant to, and overall, one that you just like to look at. He said that he seeks to make trademarks that “reward repeated viewings.” I thought it was very interesting that he prefers trademarks that have little to no type. He said that he prefers to use images because they can convey more than letters, they can take up less space, and they can be understood by anyone, no matter their language. I also think that it’s very interesting that he teaches his classes as from-scratch designing. You can’t pull images from the internet to help with your designs in his class, because he prefers an authentic, completely unique design from his students. To me, that seems like it could be very helpful, albeit frustrating, for the students. For my Beetlejuice and Matilda marks, I also designed from scratch, and I love how they turned out.