Process Book

A Business Major Dabbling in the World of Design Introduction to Design St. Norbert College Spring 2015

By Ashley Zahn

This Introduction to Design course was originally taken as a jump-start of my graphic design minor. I have always loved art and was very excited for the class. This course was meant to be challenging, and with that it greatly succeeded. Throughout the semester I was continually pushed to work my hardest and my work benefited from it immensely.

Table of Contents Page 4: D*School Crash Course.................................................

Page 5: Dot/Line...........................................................................

Page 8: Expressive Text...............................................................

Page 11: Object Iteration.............................................................

Page 14: Children’s Book.............................................................

D*School Crash Course The first assignment of the semester was only lasted for one class period. I was paired with another student and given a problem with the assignment to design a solution. Engaging and testing my design with a real person made me work a lot harder at my prototype and care more about what it would look like in the end, as opposed to if I was just making it for myself. Since the assignment had a time constraint I did not get a chance to finish.

It felt somewhat unsettling to show unfinished work to another person. But at the same time, knowing that everyone else’s work was in a similar unfinished state helped a bit. I found it helpful that we went from talking about something, to making a rough sketch, to actually making something tangible. We went through the whole process and in just one class period. This assignment really set the tone for the entire class. I knew I would have to work hard and not be able to just throw something together last minute.

Dot/ Line

The very first project of the year was dot/ line. Hearing it explained at first made it seem fairly simple. I just had to choose four words from a list of many different emotions to express using only dots and lines. The difficult part came when I began to actually make sketches and lay things out. There were requirements as to the amount of dots and lines that could be used; all dots, all lines, one dot and line, one dot and two lines, one line with two dots, or two dots with two lines.

I also had to encompass the elements of Gestalt into my presentation of the emotions. I learned that Gestalt refers to several different things including similarities and differences within a piece, scale, shape, and space; negative space particularly.

The biggest challenge with this project was to get the specific meaning of the word to translate visually but without making a picture or story with the dots and lines.

However, it could also not just look like a bunch of shapes dropped onto a page.

I found this project to be rather tedious when it came to cutting and gluing the shapes. I’m usually one to want to get things done fast but I quickly learned that mindset would not work for this class if I wanted to be successful and create something that was a well-crafted object.

Stab

ility

Rejection

dom

Exhaustion

Free

It was hard to get excited about the project in the beginning but once it started coming together my attitude toward it changed. The final critique with this project really helped me see what I could improve on. After working on and looking at my work so long it was difficult for me to see where I may need to change something. Critique helped solve that problem. Overall I am satisfied how my finals turned out.

Expressive Text

The next project of the year was expressive text. The object of the project was to work with text by hand and get away from the usual digital styles. Again there was a list of words to choose from, and the one I chose was dive. The objective was to illustrate the meaning of the word dive using form and context.

I first started out working with only pen,pencil, and sharpie. Then I realized that doing something three dimensional or out of the ordinary may communicate the word better that something on a flat piece of paper.

When I started doing that it also inspired me to consider the different definitions of dive. I decided to try using a cardboard cutout, which I then held up in front of water, food, and even experimented a bit with light and shadows.

I ended up much more satisfied with them all much more than my original ideas.

With this project I learned that hand lettering is much more difficult than I thought. It works well though because everything can be changed; from letter spacing and size, to orientation. I also learned that type itself can express a lot without having to say it out right. Sometimes the simpler things were more effective at communicating my word than the more complex things. The final thing I learned was to always consider the size of my pieces. The images I printed were rather small and could have benefited from a larger space.

Object Iteration

The object iteration project was one of my favorite of the semester. First I had to choose either an object or specific animal to focus on. I chose to work with a Siberian Husky. The objective was to then find ways to express my animal that don’t conform with the typical cliche. It was also required that I work with several different forms of media including collage, typographical collage, continuous line drawing, master artist illustrations, and a geometric illustration.

My favorite iterations to work with were the master artist iterations.

I chose the artists, Olly Moss and Yayoi Kasuma.

My task was to then illustrate a Siberian Husky in their style.

The style of Moss had a lot to do with a picture within a picture while Kasuma worked frequently with dots.

Olly Moss

Yayoi Kasuma

I found the collage iteration to be the most challenging for me. I’m unsure if it was just because it was difficult for me to make the collage look like a Husky and not just a dog or because I just didn’t seem to be able to envision the final product while I was cutting the paper.

In the end I learned that my object is much more than just an animal. Depending on which iteration I was doing it was sometimes hard to get across that it was a Husky and not just a dog. I had to focus a lot on just the specific features like the curly tail and distinct black and white markings. especially on the face. If I would have had more time to work with this project I wish I would have tried more three dimensional things. The last iteration I did was origami, and the only three dimensional one in my final. I wish I would have experimented with it in the beginning to give the final product more depth and dimension.

Children’s Book

The final project of the year was the children’s book. It was really a collaboration throughout the semester on which our Intro to Design class paired up with a Social Inequalities class. My partners supplied the text for the books while it was by job to illustrate the story and choose a layout that flowed well with the text. I ended up with two partners, each of whom wrote their own stories. I found it quite easy to work with both of them. One even told me that whatever changes I needed to make would be fine with her and she was open to however I wanted to illustrate it. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to collaborate with someone I don’t know.

The first step I took in creating my books was to make thumbnail sketches of each page in order to get a feel for the layout and to figure out what I had to draw, and what I could do digitally using Photoshop. Both of my authors wrote stories that were relatively easy to pair with illustrations and separate into pages. Once I had a solid idea for each I presented the ideas to my authors, both of which really liked them and agreed they were a good fit for the stories. That is when I started my final sketches.

For “The Family of Badgers” I scanned the images into Photoshop so I could color them digitally and manipulate them each to fit on the correct pages. For “The Butterfly Who Saw it All” I sketched and outlined everything, then painted it all by hand using watercolor paints.

The most challenging part was figuring out the layout of each page and then drawing the outlines for the images and getting them to look how I had pictured them in my head. Once I got to the point where I could work digitally it became much easier for me.

For “The Butterfly Who Saw it All� my main source of inspiration was a poster I have in my room. The poster has what looks like watercolor planets and I really liked the way the paint flowed together and gave the planets a sort of gaseous look. For The Family of Badgers I got my inspiration from my author who told me that her book was based on a video game. I referenced to that game as a major starting point for my illustrations and throughout my design process.

In the end I was very pleased with how both of my children’s books turned out.

The success of the books was due to a combination of possessing a knowledge of Photoshop, font style, and the style of the illustrations that I worked with. Critique was very helpful with this project. It helped me notice all of the small things I had missed and needed to change like spacing, font size, and color in order to really perfect my books.

The following pages are some of my favorites from the two books.

This process book was created for Introduction to Design at St. Norbert College in the Spring semester of 2015. The fonts used were Rockwell Condensed, Elephant, and Helvetica Light. It was digitally printed by the college print center. All text and images were produced by Ashley Zahn