The final cover of this thesis book is the result of a shift in the intended design, a strange mistake that happened during the first print run, one in which the spine moved to the center of the cover, leaving the original cover design partially cut from the surface.
Embracing Serendipitous outcomes is an important part of this thesis investigation; therefore, I chose to welcome it!
This thesis book would not have come to fruition without the valuable insights and guidance of Kristen Coogan; Christopher Sleboda, and Claire Bula, who helped clarify the title of this body of work by paying close attention; Brockett Horne, who asked incredibly good questions leading me into reflection; Nicholas Rock for inspiring me to view design as opportunities instead of problems; Bella Bennett and Adie Fein for their valuable feedback to the whole; Ryan Diaz for preliminary conversations regarding potential directions, and James Grady for the insightful comments and for pointing out the value in the misprint of the cover.
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100x100 IMAGE BOOK / Kaleidoscope — Fall 2022
Based on the In The Light of Stillness photography series
Shown partially 6”W x 9”H
Carolina Eva Izsák
a toast to the Venezuelan, the Hungarian and the United States of America EXPERIENCES
I carry a piece of all three within me, they are part and parcel of my whole!
my deepest gratitude to my fellow students, my peers who have been my companions through this amazing journey, through thick and thin, and for the countless chats that forever enriched my thoughts and soul.
my professors from whom I learned valuable lessons. I am leaving with a bag filled with new knowledge, and great memories of sharing the joys of design.
the College of Fine Arts admissions staff for the opportunity given!
dedicated to my children who are my best creations, my best design by far, and whom I LOVE profoundly. They have made me grow in ways I never imagined possible, and it is them who have taught me the meaning of UNCONDITIONAL LOVE.
my husband for the LOVE shared throughout 29 years, the ups and downs of life, as well as the opportunities given to each other.
my parents Mami és Papi who are in heaven, and who left this world far too soon. I knew I had your UNCONDITIONAL LOVES and carry that with me. What a gift!
my beloved maternal grandparents Nagymama és Nagypapa who LOVED me just because, and who taught me that adversities can be turned into futures worth living.
At 52, the list of acknowledgments is both long and notoriously short, for by now, we know who has had our backs.
You all know who you are.
life is a shared journey!
in memory of
Those lost during the Pandemic of 2020. My heart goes out to those who lost loved ones, such difficult situations, some unimaginable...
The COVID–19 Pandemic of 2020 was a transformative moment in our lives. It prompted me to look at life differently, and to be grateful that my family and I could further imagine individual and shared futures.
My journey at Boston University pursuing both a Graduate Certificate and an MFA in Graphic Design was the first step.
an impressive display or range of a particular type of thing. there is a vast array of literature on the topic 2.
an ordered series or arrangement. several arrays of solar panels will help provide power
Definition: Oxford Languages and Google Dictionary
1. an essential or integral component. stress was part and parcel of the job
Used since the 15th century as a legal term, with part meaning a portion and parcel something integral with a whole, this idiom began to be used more loosely from about 1800. Although both nouns have the same basic meaning, the redundancy lends emphasis.
Definition: Merriam–Webster Dictionary Context: Dictionary.com
Array–parts and parcels , is an invitation to be curious with fury, to exercise creative inquiry with a broad vision, to dabble in all things design, and to experiment widely in search of connections between the parts and pieces that together make up the wide world of design.
Drawing from functional necessities and the human experience stemming from diverse influences like architecture, folk art, and graphic design, Array–parts and parcels tests the creative potential of a single design concept in generating an ordered series of design projects that while exploring a variety of mediums maintain their unifying conceptual and methodological thread.
The thesis exploration, CMY no K(ey), encompasses all interests and ideas developed while working on a series of prelude design opportunities experimenting with the push and pull between Structure + Emotions, Constraints + Freedom, Tridimensional + Bidimensional, as well as interests in the experience of Color, Play as the engine of creative thinking, Serendipity, along with visual systems and experience design.
The initial installation proved that when the audience is presented with an aesthetically pleasing and playful opportunity for engagement, it serves as a powerful invitation for discovery and an experience to imagine freely without necessarily having a specific agenda in mind, therefore leading to unexpected and serendipitous outcomes. The audience’s creations also rendered bountiful content for the designer to create further, generating exciting opportunities in which the designer and the audience feed off each other’s inventive potential. This true symbiosis promises endless cycles of creative making.
The result is an ordered series of design projects that relate to each other as much as they stand alone in their distinct individualities. It is an array in which each piece is part and parcel to the existence of the whole.
A thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design at Boston University,Brookline, Massachusetts.
thesis essay
I was born and raised in the beautiful tropical country of Venezuela and carry with me a strong cultural influence from my Hungarian family heritage. Being both Venezuelan and Hungarian has made me a mixture of both cultures, intertwined and inseparable.
I am no stranger to navigating and negotiating two seemingly different cultures, issues, or ways of living and seeing life, always decoding my own ordered series , picking and choosing from both while creating my own whole, an Array of parts and parcels!
The office of my maternal grandparents, a land surveying and road design firm where I spent many days growing up, was my playground Playing under the drafting tables, or with the rolled–up blueprints was the norm, and paper and pencil soon became my favorite tools. Drafting and drawing for play stayed with me for years to come.
This is the lens through which I experience life, and it is also through this lens , that I see my contribution to the world.
Designing has always been about the journey for me, one in which I am constantly Learning to See new details of design. Therefore, I live on an invariably wonderous wandering path that often offers serendipitous surprises that teach me yet one more lesson about something I hadn´t seen before!
Array – parts and parcels , is an invitation to be curious with fury, to exercise creative inquiry with a broad vision, to dabble in all things design, and to experiment widely in search of connections between the parts and pieces that together make up the wide world of design. An array of parts and parcels that come together to become an expression of my design practice, as this is my coherent whole.
What I find relevant in the meaning of the word array are the ideas of range and ordered series . These two are essential to the way I operate as a designer and, therefore, the way I move in life as well, or perhaps vice versa? I believe that who we are as individuals, is intricately connected to how we express ourselves as designers, a constant of curious evolution and simultaneous individual and professional transformation, a true symbiosis.
A life of dualities or multiplicities and range in points of view has always been my environment; it is how I approach the world based on a multicultural background (Venezuelan Hungarian), one that inevitably brings upon the constant negotiation of differences, and with it simultaneously, the recognition of similarities. In my experience, cultural differences both enrich our knowledge of the world and widen our perspective on life. The same applies to design, as noticing differences with empathy, aids us in seeking similarities and in finding connections. It allows one to bring parts and pieces together to form the concept of a particular whole, a sort of umbrella idea, where components become integral and essential to each other, making them the part and parcel of the whole.
I see design as a process of decoding the nature and essence of the opportunity at hand. It’s a methodology aiming to ask the essential questions first, or as Seth Goldenberg, author of Radical Curiosity would convey, The more fundamental the question, the more fertile the ground for imagining, further stating, that the combination of inquiry and invention is the culture of curiosity…1 I aim to learn to ask better and more relevant questions, inquire, unearth the roots of things, and understand. Or, as a fortune cookie reminded me not long ago: Do not seek so much to find the answer as much as to understand the question first.
Defining design exercises as opportunities rather than problems is a shift in attitude that I take from Professor Nicholas Rock’s Experience Design class. Viewing design as an opportunity focuses our attention on the important premise of understanding the nature of the issue at hand, or as written by Massimo Vignelli …to understand the subject in all its aspects. 2
Vignelli himself was inspired by Architect Mies van der Rohe’s principle of Less is more. 3 I also follow this principle, not as a minimalistic mandate when using elements but as a methodology of constant questioning to clarify concepts, find the essence of what is needed for them to function, and understand what makes a creative response clear within its context. The same is true for architect Louis Sullivan’s premise that Form follows function. 4 Understanding the inherent structure of design opportunities constructs a scaffolding from which to launch a creative response, it becomes a framework to create within; more importantly, it allows for the breaking of this framework with intention, therefore creating space for the unexpected to happen within our designs.
One of my Pandemic readings, David Epstein’s Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World sparked the urge to seek a conscious and expansive view of design. I walked away with the affirmation that seeking range and the pursuit of widening our views and knowledge, enrich our perspectives as individuals and, therefore, as professionals. The wider the curiosity and acquired knowledge, the broader the pool of experiences we unconsciously and consciously pull from when seeking to understand the world around us, and while preparing to respond creatively to an opportunity through design. As Epstein argues, generalists tend to be more effective at making connections between fields and ideas and tend to be more innovative due in part to their range. 5 This sparked my curiosity and affirmed that the cacophony of interests that I carry as an individual and as a designer was worth exploring and experimenting with; experiences worth connecting in a conscious manner.
Previously trained as an architect, I am profoundly influenced by the structured and systematic discipline that underpins architectural design. Functionality, a multitude of systems that coexist, or a sort of kit of parts, even a kit of dis-
ciplines that work together, are important components of the practice, as is, its central goal of creating physical environments inhabited by human needs and emotions. I define this as Functionality + Spatial Poetry.
The use of articulating forms, scale, hierarchies, rhythms, repetition, light, and textures, among many other tools an architect uses, helps bridge these two important roles. A particularly beautiful space that I admire is the MIT Chapel, designed by Eero Saarinen, located in Cambridge, MA. The most ingenious feature is how exterior light is introduced into the building from below, reflecting it off a water pool. The light bathes the interior with a soft glow that highlights the texture of the walls and occasionally casts the shimmer of the light on the surface of the water onto the inside. It is truly a magical experience within a space that fulfills its function as a chapel while simultaneously filling the human soul.
The variety of arts and crafts stemming from my practice related to Hungarian folk art as the granddaughter of Hungarian immigrants to Venezuela and defined in similar terms to my experience in architecture, I view as a combination of Functionality + Belonging. Through my own experience, I have come to believe that the arts and crafts created by the peoples of the world stem from functional necessities, necessities that in turn, are fulfilled by creating within a particular and meaningful style, hence their cohesive aesthetics pertaining to a particular group. More importantly, it enables a sense of belonging, a kinship of sorts within a certain group of people; whether the Inuits in Canada, the Hmong’s in Thailand, the Goajiro’s in Venezuela, or the Hungarian people of Kalotaszeg in today’s Romania; quilts, textiles, pottery, tiles, and traditional garments, among others, are all intricate and colorful examples of this idea; highly functional objects, that require a wide range of skills, while being visually pleasing and rendering a coherent aesthetic recognizable to a particular group of people. Additionally, a factor that brings a sense of belonging so strongly into play when defining the importance of folk art practices, is the cyclical nature of happenings and celebrations within a community. These moments bring people together and follow certain procedures and rhythms for which functional and creative pieces are specially created, often working in groups
2. Vignelli, M. (2012). The Vignelli Canon. Lars Müller Publishers.
3. Vignelli, M. (2012). The Vignelli Canon. Lars Müller Publishers.
4. Form follows function. The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation.
5. Epstein, D. J. (2021). Range: Why generalists triumph in a Specialized World. Riverhead Books.
to fulfill the essential human need of belonging. This cycle of repetition is also present in many of the arts and crafts that define their aesthetics. Embroidery, beading, weaving, and knitting, all quasi–meditative practices rooted in the repetition and iteration of a single gesture, part and parcel to a whole, are methodologies essential to the creation of patterns. They have certainly influenced the way I approach design opportunities in my use of repetition as a way of creating underpinning structures and textures, rhythms, and patterns, further using permutations to generate parallel ideas and iterations under the umbrella of a single theme. Repetition + Permutation
With this background, I came to Boston University’s Graduate Certificate and MFA in Graphic Design programs to explore and expand my views on design and a quest for creative range. It is of no surprise that a combination of Functionality + Connection, has emerged as a point of view on the discipline, one in which reaching out to the audience and engaging it through experiences, interactive projects, or creations that enable the audience to further create with, have become central to the journey, and therefore to the body of work presented in the thesis exploration projects and the prelude design opportunities. A true array of parts and parcels
It is worth noting that the point of view of all three creative disciplines mentioned above is a combination of function and the human soul, Functionality + Human Experience. These are the roots of my unique point of view on design, which inevitably lives in multiplicities and seeks range, as all three design experiences mix and match in the way I approach design opportunities.
Functionality is a very tangible experience; it affects human beings in their daily lives. It aids or does not; it either works or does not, always relating to a particular context. Perhaps this is a very dry and calculated fact or point of view, but the human experience becomes seamless when design functions. That is why I believe functionality is scaffolding, or the underpinning structure needed to launch creatively. However, since it affects humans, design is also a highly emotional discipline; it aims to connect with the human soul through spatial experiences, objects, images, or moments that render a sense of belonging or spark human connections. Finding a balanced approach to the combination of Structure + Emotion has become a conscious curiosity.
An idea I started exploring early on, is the act of Play and its influence on my design approach. It began with a data visualization project I based on my own Lego 6 set from the 1970s with which I came to understand that play is the medium that allows me to convert the rational and raw concepts of order, grids, families of shapes, and systems comprised of a variety of elements (functionalities), into pieces of design that reach out to the human by adding emotion, inviting participation, encouraging interaction, or prompting to create further (poetry/belonging/connection).
I have come to recognize that tinkering and playing without an end goal in mind functions as a catalyst that helps bring jazz into my work; it aids me in breaking a mold, adding a half note to the melody, or making space for connection. It’s keeping a playful attitude7 that prompts me to use colored masking tape instead of the computer to add color to a project; it’s a freeing state of mind that allows me to tear tape instead of cutting it with scissors, helping me recognize the emotional gesture and therefore the beauty in what is perhaps not perfectly cut. I have also come to believe that play promotes the Serendipitous finds that bring joy and unexpected outcomes into the process, that, which has not been sought out purposefully but belongs to or betters one’s initial ideas.
Being creative is not an idle activity; it needs to breathe, move, and be exercised to flex and strengthen. 8 These words by graphic designer Marina Willer in her Harnessing Creativity course, are an invitation to play without an end goal in mind and closely relate to artist Carlos Cruz–Diez’s words on creativity: More often than not, ideas arise from previous intentions. 9 These thoughts make me believe that ideas are experiential outcomes that slowly build in the back of our minds, stored and perhaps waiting for the right moment to surface, for a connection to be made. Cruz–Diez goes even further by suggesting that an artist is a person capable of seeing details, of noticing, and not only of looking at the world, perhaps a direct connection to the suggestion that serendipitous finds happen more often to those who keep an open–minded attitude, have broad curiosity, are aware and observant, and carry an intentional way of seeing.10 Chance plays a big part, but you also need knowledge. It is the combination of chance and knowledge that has produced humanity’s great discoveries.11
6. Lego™ toy set of building block elements.
7. Sicart, M. (2014). Play matters. MIT Press.
8. Willer, Marina (n.d.). Creative Brand Identities - How ideas find a home.
9. Cruz–Diez Foundation. (2017, March 8). The path of color — Carlos Cruz–Diez. YouTube. 10.Kennedy, P. (2016, January 2). How to cultivate the art of Serendipity. The New York Times. 11. Cruz–Diez Foundation. (2019, March 29). What is a chromatic induction? — Carlos Cruz–Diez. YouTube.
Mitchel Resnick, author of Lifelong Kindergarten, expresses in his book that play is not just fun and games but rather a way of engaging with the world and understanding its ways, making connections, and finding solutions through experiential processes in which a person is encouraged to take risks and try new things.12 Creative thinking grows out of creative tinkering, or as architect and multidisciplinary designer Charles Eames stated, Toys are really not as innocent as they look. Toys and games are the preludes to serious ideas ;13 toys promote an intuitive understanding of the world around us.14
During our interview, Venezuelan artist Patricia Van Dalen reminded me while talking about her latest work, one that is profoundly marked by bureaucratic circumstances, that every constraint is an opportunity to create differently. Having a set of designed or not–designed constraints not only defines the boundaries of a design concept but, in turn, unleashes a new set of creative possibilities that would not exist without its limitations. Therefore, constraints promote creativity, another intriguing concept Constraints + Creative Freedom that I have become conscious of through a diversity of projects. Whether playing with what is at hand, a constraint in itself, or with Legos, a pre–established set of parts and pieces; constraints seem to be central to unleashing creative thinking and the allowance of creative freedoms.
In parallel, exploring Color has been central to my work at Boston University. Highly influenced by the colorful surroundings of life in a tropical country, Venezuela’s large–scale and brigh–colored nature and intensity of light are forever printed in my soul. Encountering Josef Albers’s Interaction of Color freed me from thinking that color options are only to be understood from the physics–related theories on color. Instead, it launched me on an experiential investigation and approach to my choices. In very simplified words, I understood Albers’s method as an invitation to become conscious of our perception of color through observation and iteration.15 For example, the size, shape, and hue of a colored surface we perceive differently depending on its context and what is placed next to it; it influences our perception of depth and scale and how we read a particular color. I have taken a playful but intentional approach to it, seeking to understand colors’ spatial implications, the outcomes of their superimpositions through transparencies, overlay printing, or the
creation of new colors from weaving together a pre–established set of colored threads. Oftentimes, I have been surprised by the serendipitous outcomes of these explorations.
The thesis exploration projects presented in this book, part of the CMY no K(ey) umbrella concept, are an array of works, part, and parcel to each other and to their whole. They have come to embody the ideas explored through past works (Prelude Opportunities) and presented in this essay: Functionality + Human Experience, Play as Catalyst, the push and pull between Structure + Emotions or Constraints + Creative Freedom, Repetition + Permutations, the Bidimensional + the Tridimensional, Color as Experience, and the ever–elusive definition of Serendipitous Outcomes and Chance.
These projects also reflect the intention of consciously seeking creative range by aiming to translate a single design concept into various mediums and outputs using a variety of skills to bring them to fruition. They have brought together my interests stemming from all my design curiosities so far, whether architectural, folk art related arts and crafts, or the newly discovered wide realm of graphic design; a mix and match of influences, of old and new knowledge as well as old and new skills. They have all come to embody the title of this book: Array—parts and parcels , where each part of the exploration is essential to the existence of the other, to the genesis of the whole, an x–ray of this point in time into my thoughts and trajectory as a designer.
I truly believe that designing is an expansive journey. One in which designers are constantly learning to see new details of design and, therefore, live on an invariably wonderous wandering path that often offers serendipitous surprises that teach them yet one more lesson about something they hadn’t seen before! A beautiful feeling of enrichment that comes from experiencing new discoveries or new ways of doing the same thing better than before.16
12. Resnick, M. (2018). Lifelong kindergarten: Cultivating creativity through projects, passion, peers, and play. The MIT Press.
13. Demetrios, E. (2013). Eames: beautiful details. AMMO Books LLC.
14. Grawe, S. (2023). What Game Shall We Play Today. In Artifacts from the Eames Collection: Toys and Play (pp. 10–14). essay, Eames Institute.
15. Albers, J. (2013). Interaction of color. Yale University Press.
16. Vignelli, M. (2012). The Vignelli Canon. Lars Müller Publishers.
Even when not explicitly present, primary geometric shapes are recurrent in my work. They are a way of understanding and decoding the design opportunity at hand, a way of reduction in search of essence and clarity, as well as a place of departure to launch forward to create further. Whether they directly aid the design’s form or shape or are used as a thinking metaphor, the primary geometric shapes often serve as the genesis of my methodology.
thesis inquiry presentation / fall 2023
thesis / spring 2024
PROCESS — transformation of thoughts regarding my ideas on the thesis process and my design practice. A vision that lives in permanent permutation as every new piece of knowledge widens our views on the world and makes us better at understanding, seeking essence, and making connections between ideas, skills, and issues, enhancing our abilities to foresee design details!
Thesis Inquiry Presentation Pattern 01 / Fall 2023 Array’s deep red Array’s light red
Repetition is essential to the creation of rhythms and patterns as it is a generator of underpinning structures and textures.
Thesis Inquiry Presentation Pattern 01 — Fall 2023
Permutation is an invitation to create multiple arrangements from a set group of elements; it is a way of widening the possibilities and potential outcomes, while seeking range.
Thesis Odyssey Trailer Pattern — Theory 02, Fall 2023
Tridimentional variation on Thesis Inquiry Presentation Pattern 01
A push and pull between the tridimensional and the bidimensional realms are present in my design practice, a way of permutation that allows me to imagine a single concept in a range of mediums, a direct result of a life of multiplicities and the pursuit of creative range.
thesis essay
Izeri_dot letterform was created specifically for the x–treme scale project in Fall 2023 — Fonódalok (weaving songs in Hungarian). The concept I pursued as my interpretation of what x–treme scale means is the idea that many small together make a greater whole, making the repetition of elements and of ordered series central to the project. Both, the recurrence of the horizontal wooden pieces, as well as the laser–cut holes generated on a grid for the construction of the letters of the alphabet, respond to this originating concept. Typesetting three songs in a series further reinforces the fact that the repetition of a single element in an ordered way creates cohesiveness and coherence within the greater whole.
As I was investigating how the practice of folk art has potentially influenced my making process, and weaving is traditionally a skill used by many peoples around the world to create their textiles, typesetting the lyrics to three Hungarian folk songs relating to weaving, felt befitting while adding to it a pattern made with an abstraction of the wheat flower, so present in the Hungarian fields, to serve as header and pause between songs.
The discovery that determined the form of the project was a newly acquired piece of knowledge regarding the methodology behind the Jacquard Loom, a French invention of the 1800s by Joseph Marie Jacquardin. This machine uses a series of linked wooden cards punched with holes to determine the sequence of motifs in which a fabric will be woven.
Izeri_brick letterform was created as part of a re–branding exercise within a Branding class and serves as the logotype for Brick Fan Fest, the largest Lego™ fan event in the southern United States. This convention offers a weekend of opportunities for master builders to showcase their creations, as well as a place for Lego enthusiasts to gather and experience everything Lego, while immersing themselves in the creative possibilities that the famous kit of pre–set building elements offers.
The unique typeface was created based on the original Lego grid, using the shape and proportions of the basic flat pieces traditionally found in a Lego set as inspiration and guidance. The word Brick in capital letters as a logotype, accompanied by a logomark inspired by the single dot element, serve as the event’s new name and central image. A second set of this typeface was generated by linking together the pieces of the original set, to ensure legibility for smaller–scale uses.
Choosing to rebrand a Lego–based event was a further exploration of the notion that a multitude of pieces presented together under a cohesive concept create a new whole; an exploration regarding the importance of play in the generation of creativity and creative thinking, while exploring the thoughts on design constraints that unleash creative freedom, a push and pull between seemingly opposite forces. These ideas have been present since the creation of the 2940 Elements of Joy poster; a data visualization of my own Lego set.
RE–BRANDING/ Brick Fan Fest — Fall 2023 (proposal shown partially)
Izeri_primo letterform was created as pure experimentation and playful curiosity, perhaps an unconscious design extension of my thoughts and reflections regarding my visual diet growing up in Venezuela. This quest to understand what influences my approach to design while seeking out a certain consciousness regarding it, reminded me that I was surrounded by modernist design growing up in Venezuela, notably in architecture and art, but also in institutional visual identities.
The artworks of renowned Venezuelan artists Carlos Cruz–Diez and Jesús Rafael Soto in which the structured repetition of lines is so predominant always caught my attention. Many of their artworks were large–scale pieces embedded in the urban setting and belonged to the visuals of our daily commutes.
The iconic mosaic floor of the International Simón Bolívar Airport, Additive Color Environment —1974, by Carlos Cruz–Diez is a striking example of art and architecture joined together to offer an aesthetic experience to the commuter while transforming a place of transit into a place of permanence. The typeface cre ated for the Sofía Imber Museum of Contemporary Art by Nedo Mion Ferrario and the logo of my alma mater, Simón Bolívar University by Gerd Leufert, are also examples of modernist thinking and the use of the line as an aesthetic generator.
But perhaps what most inspired the works presented together with this letterform, even if unconsciously, is the iconic stage curtain of the Teresa Carreño Theater, Curtain with Writing , an artwork created specifically for this use by Kinetic artist Jesús Rafael Soto; a piece that I saw open and close countless times while sitting in the audience, watching mesmerized its kinetic effect as this functional piece of art vibrated in front of our eyes even when still. Another example of art and architecture fused to offer a beautiful experience to our senses.
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Ballerina images taken from the internet
Top two ballerina images: costume design by Karl Lagerfeld for Paris Opera Ballet
Bottom ballerina image: unknown izeri_primo — Typography 01 / Fall 2022
CMY no K(ey) is the final project undertaken during the Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design, which also serves as the main thesis exploration. It encompasses all interests and ideas that developed while reading about and experimenting with the push and pulls between Structure + Emotions, Constraints + Creative Freedoms, the Tridimensional + the Bidimensional, interests in Color, Play, and Serendipity, as well as visual systems, and experience design.
A project befitting to the thesis title Array–parts and parcels , CMY no K(ey) is a set of parts and pieces, part of a greater whole, an ordered series sharing an underpinning rationale by associations and similarities. Paired with a newfound freedom of aiming to understand color through experiences and play as an engine of creative thinking and serendipitous outcomes, the initial form presented on the 4th floor of the Fuller Building at Boston University during the 2024 Spring semester served as a visually attractive and playful way of engaging the audience in shape and color creation.
The title, CMY no K(ey), is a play on words in the four–color printing process. Not only is K(black) purposefully left out of the mix, but by doing so, the audience is denied its key (printing plate with most information or guide), freeing it from a prefixed image to which the colors CMY (cyan, magenta, and yellow) would have to align or register to.
The outcomes of the audience’s shape and color combinations further generated the basis for the subsequent projects that would be undertaken, inviting serendipity into play and crowdsourcing the surprising content that would inform and become central to the pieces that followed.
The subsequent permutations aimed for creative range, to explore through the expansion of a single unifying concept translated onto a variety of mediums. Using the interactive installation as a launching board, I translated the color mixing concept through the layering of translucent acrylic pieces onto Risograph prints, typographic laser prints, and woven textiles, in which mixing the three existing colors, CMY, is a true methodological match, as each color is layered on top of, or placed next to each other to create new ones. An added fourth extension is a set of printed fabrics; though not a methodological match, the pieces are once again meant for the audience to create further; a cyclical happening of design opportunities in which the designer and audience feed off each other’s creative potential, a true symbiosis.
The public installation consists of two wooden boards: the main (4 x 8)ft piece with 34 pegs placed on a grid and a supplemental (1 x 8)ft board with 9 pegs intended to store the colored acrylic pieces in its initial setup. Both serve as a backdrop or scaffolding to the color–mixing and shape-generating experience.
The colorful shapes were created with scissors using paper as a template and without a particular agenda in mind other than inviting serendipitous outcomes. The process rendered in part an unconscious admiration of the organic and abstract shapes found in artist Alexander Calder’s work and the cutouts by artist Henri Matisse , an outcome contrasting the stern grid of the supporting board, a search for balance between structure and emotion. Using a laser cutter, these shapes were transferred to translucent 1/8” acrylic sheets in the CMY colors. A total of twenty–seven were created each laser cut in all three CMY colors. Eighty–one acrylic pieces to interact and experiment with, which were randomly given a small hole for them to hang on the pegs, adding gravity into play as an added constraint.
The addition of a vinyl title wall completed the installation, inviting the audience to read and engage.
The audience interacted with the board through endless permutations for shape and color mixing possibilities. The board was reset to its starting point several times by placing all the acrylic pieces by color, on the bottom holding section.
These shapes were created with scissors and without a particular agenda in mind other than inviting serendipitous outcomes while cutting the material used as a template, later transferred to translucent acrylic sheets, aided by a laser cutter; the outcome rendered my unconscious liking of the organic shapes generated by Alexander Calder and the cutouts by Henri Matisse, quite a contrast to the stern grid of the supporting board.
Key to the project, is the possibility of mixing the process printing colors of CMY (cyan, magenta, yellow), due to the transparent nature of the acrylic pieces while simultaneously serving as a learning color mixing experience.
constraints + creative fredom
set of parts + further create
play + creative thinking
color + experience
playful shapes
color possibilities
is there a serendipitous image hidden here?
pebbles perhaps? Shape
endless permutations
The Risograph’s printing process was chosen as the first extension of this project as it is a methodological match to the initial concept of mixing colors by superimposition. The semi–transparent ink, when layered on top of each other, renders new colors other than the ones used, similarly to the transparency of the acrylic pieces.
Electing the three shapes that mostly reminded me of artist Henri Matisse’s cutouts, pieces that reference natural vegetation, was an intentional choice. Using the negative form, leaving the shapes themselves without color, and printing their surrounding spaces was an iterative opportunity. With them, I created three masters, one per shape, and superimposed their prints using Risograph inks fluorescent pink as magenta, cornflower as cyan, and yellow as yellow, rendering an image that resembles vegetation while creating new colors such as purple, green, and orange.
Using the idea of permutations to explore further and test the limits of the set’s possibilities, three shapes (A,B,C) in three colors (1,2,3) were created, a series of nine prints using only two shapes and two colors at the time. The series rendered a cohesive aesthetic and a clear belonging to a family of shapes and colors. They are also cohesive in their generating concepts and methodologies to the interactive installation board.
The Risograph is a printing system that combines photocopying and offset printing. It uses digital printing and a rotating drum mechanism to transfer ink from a master onto paper with low resolution and a limited set of colors.
A permutation is an arrangement of objects or elements in a particular order. In mathematics, specifically in combinatorics, permutations refer to rearrangements of a set of distinct items where the order matters. Each permutation represents a unique ordering of the objects. (ChatGPT: What are permutations?)
The typographic exploration stems from the same three shapes used for the Risograph print series and is a close relative to the original print in which all three shapes and colors are superimposed. For this iteration, the negative space was filled using capital letters C (cyan), M (magenta), and Y(yellow), once again leaving the original inspiring shapes without color. I chose to print each letter master on top of each other in their own colors with a laser printer, which rendered a cross–stitch–like texture while successfully generating new colors, this time not through the physical mixture of the ink but, more interestingly, through visual perception.
Permutations also came into play by interchanging the order in which the master layers were printed (CMY, MYC, and YCM), surprisingly rendering different toned outcomes: blueish, purplish, or yellowish, depending on which master layer was on top.
Daring to bring K (black) back, not as key to the printing process or to alter the hue of the colors CMY, but instead as its background, is one last form of variation, an iteration to this set. In this case, one could argue that black is a mixture of all three colors, as overprinting cyan, magenta, and yellow renders black. The overprinted background, perceived as black, added an impactful effect, helping the small typographic cross–stitching effect stand out.
Iterating by way of permutations is an exploration, a form of curiosity that at times renders surprising outcomes. Depending on which color layer sits on top of these arrangements, the combination renders different outputs.
Weaving is a medium, a textile manufacturing methodology that suits the concept of creating new colors by interlacing existing ones, making it a direct methodological match to the initial installation concept. A textile woven on a loom is created by mixing vertical (warp) and horizontal threads (weft), therefore, the design is intricately related to the form of construction of the textile. This time, b lue, red, and yellow threads were used to mix the new colors on a white warp (background), a reference to the CMY colors and the white background of the installation. If one looks closer, one notices that yellow and red threads woven next to each other are perceived as orange by the eye; the same happens with red and blue for purple and yellow and blue for green.
I chose to use my favorite shape and color combination created by the audience, the Blob, and used repetition to create a pattern with it, emulating the essence of a woven textile, which is routed in the repetition of the weaving gesture. Further developing this textile on a black background to generate a different effect while still weaving the same pattern with blue, red, and yellow threads was an iterative exploration under the premise that cyan, magenta, and yellow render black when mixed together and as an experiential curiosity on how colors affect each other in our perceptions; an idea I take from the teachings of Josef Albers’s Interaction of Color.
The weaving of the throws on a Jacquard loom was outsourced to a professional.
CMY no K(ey) — jacquard loom woven throw on a white warp, primary color wefts
CMY no K(ey) — jacquard loom woven throw on a black warp, primary color wefts
Even though the production methodology might not be entirely coherent with the original generating concept of superimposing CMY colors to create the new, as the colors are directly overlayed on top of the fabric, the set of four fabric prints designed is an ordered series that incorporates the shapes and color combinations created by the audience. Adding meaning to a series of abstract shapes, I chose to interpret two as pebbles, and another two I placed in the realm of vegetation, exploring scale, repetition, and permutation in the way patterns were established.
The original idea of designing a set of elements, a kit of parts and pieces to create further, comes full circle with the set of printed fabrics, as the audience is presented back with a designed element for it to, once again, create further. This cyclical state of transformation could turn these jolly and bright sets of graphic prints into garments, pillows, sheets, tablecloths, tote bags, curtains, or anything the user desires to make with it, filling their environment with a bold splash of color.
The projects presented in this section were created during my time at the MFA in Graphic Design; a selection from the design opportunities, whether from core subjects or electives of my choice, that were intentionally wide in their range of explorations and experimentation, a prelude to the interests discovered along the way and further explored through the main thesis exploration projects presented in this book.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, every design gesture taken in this wonderous wandering path has informed and enriched the next design opportunity at hand, making them all necessary to the process of discovery and of Learning to See new details of design, a true array in which each step is part and parcel to the whole.
01
Refrigerator Systems — Proportionality Study
Visual Systems, Spring 2023
Belgian Linen fabric, 54”W x 72”H
06
The French Dispatch—Musée Portatif Grad Studio 01, Spring 2023
Suitcase with contents
14”W x 6”H x 11”D
02
Autobiography — Form, Color, Rhythm, Mood, Grad Studio 01, Fall 2022
Accordion book, (4.30”W x 9.20”H) x 23
07
The French Dispatch—Musée Portatif Grad Studio 01, Spring 2023
Assorted contents
03
50 Iterations — Worshippers Experience
Grad Studio 01, Fall 2022
Postcards set of four, 4”W x 6”H each
Architectural Space, 41’W x 41’H x 41’D
08
50 Questions — 10 Patterns
Grad Studio 02, Fall 2023
50 (2”x2”) Wooden blocks Wooden box, 10.5”W x 20.75”D x 2.5”H
04
2940 Elements of Joy
Grad Studio 01, Spring 2023
Poster, 34”W x 52”H
05
2940 Elements of Joy
Grad Studio 01, Spring 2023
Risograph prints, (11”W x 17”H) x 9
09
50 Questions — 10 Patterns
Grad Studio 02, Fall 2023
50 (2”x2”) Wooden blocks Wooden box, 10.5”W x 20.75”D x 2.5”H
10
Redirect — Individual Paths Experience Design, Fall 2023
Wooden Labyrinth and ball in Acrylic Box Laser engraving, 6.25”W x 6.25”H
Artist book — Gerd Leufert
Editorial Design, Spring 2022
Hardcover book, 8”W x 8.75”H
12
Multilingual — László Moholy–Nagy
Typography 02, Spring 2023
Booklet, 7”W x 9”W
13
Essay — What´s Crystal Goblet in Korean
Typography 02, Spring 2023
Booklet, 5”W x 7”H
14
Survey of Books — Survey
Typography 02, Spring 2023
Spiral bound booklet, 11”W x 9”H
15
Book of Poetry — Crows, Foxes, and Roses
Typography 02, Spring 2023
Booklet, 5.4”W x 9”H
16
Catalogue — Graphic Design
Typography 01, Fall 2022
Booklet, 5.5”W x 7”H 17
Event Posters — Speaker Series
Typography 01–02, Fall 2022 / Spring 2023
Theory 02, Fall 2023
Posters, 18”W x 24”H
18
Liminality — In The Light of Stillnes / short film
Grad Studio 01, Spring 2023
Smartphone B/W footage
Music: Liminal Space Dreams
1920 x 1080 px, duration 2:45 mins
19
Remix— Morph / claymation short film
Grad Studio 02, Fall 2023
Smartphone images / 385 frames
Music: An American in Paris (Gershwin)
1920 x 1080 px, duration 1:36:02 mins
20
Trailer — Thesis Odyssey
Theory 02, Fall 2023
After Effects
Music: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (R. Strauss)
1920 x 1080 px, duration 1:56:20 mins
Eleonor Hallström is an award winning graphic designer and Creative/Art Director with 39 years of experience in the corporate, retail and healthcare worlds, currently based in Miami, FL. With expertise in a vast array of areas as conceptualization, art and creative direction, positioning, and marketing guidance; as well as graphic design and final production and printing supervision for branding, retail packaging and healthcare advertising (Rx and OTC products), Eleonor’s experience encompasses major international and local (Venezuelan) industries.
Her practice as a designer expands into embroidery, knitting and sewing, skills that were introduced to her by her Farmor, paternal grandmother in Swedish, while filling her life with countless pieces developed with all kinds of techniques, nurturing in her the desire to further explore.
In 2004 her textiles evolved to the next level, when she started creating extra–large format embroideries using all kinds of threads. She is currently working with textile elements as threads and fabrics, as well as wood, acrylic and gouache, creating pieces that fit together and blend all techniques in one.
Fashion design has also been part of her professional life, as in 2004 she created an Haute Couture brand and line of dog apparel. Since 2007 she has also dedicated herself to the development of a children’s apparel collection that merges the use of traditional handmade embroidery and knitting techniques, with a more contemporary look for the dresses that she creates.
Carolina Izsák: Thank you very much Eleonor for giving me the opportunity to interview you, it is quite a privilege, thank you. We have in common having grown up in Venezuela, but we both carry the influence of a foreign family, in your case the influence is Swedish, and I have wondered a lot if you as a designer, are influenced by Scandinavian design.
Eleonor Hallström: Hello, good evening to you, and it is a great pleasure to be able to do this interview together. Maybe not consciously, but yes, I am influenced by Scandinavian culture, and I also appreciate it very much. I can notice it in my work, both in design and in any of the other areas in which I develop myself creatively. The influence on aspects such as the minimalist, very simple compositions, the use of colors with a tendency towards natural tones, which does, without realizing it, which perhaps, in a non–direct way, does evoke a Scandinavian style.
CI: Interesting, you also mention the idea of the few elements, and I wonder if there is also a modernist influence. Venezuela is a country that received an important influx of designers and artists who emigrated in the 50s and 60s, with a European modernist design school in their background, and I wonder if that also adds to that great mix of influences that you have.
EH: I could answer yes, since I studied at a design institute founded following the guidelines of the Bauhaus, and where most of the professors had a modernist influence, or had come from European countries in the 50s, in the 60s, even the 70s. This line of training and the Scandinavian influence that I already brought from the family culture, came together coherently during my instruction years in graphic design. The case was different when I studied architecture, since at that time there was a tendency towards postmodernism, and which was completely contrary to all my intuitive and practical training that I had developed since childhood. When entering to study graphic design, in a school based on the Bauhaus, the design process fit with the cultural structure I brought.
Interview conducted in Spanish via Zoom on March 24, 2024. Translated from Spanish to English using Google translate Transcript edited by both interviewer and interviewed.
CI: Honestly, I hadn’t thought about that detail, that when you studied architecture, Postmodernism came with force, as a source contrary to minimalism and universalism proposed by modernism. Going back to your career as a designer, did you first study architecture and then graphic design?
EH: Yes indeed, at the level of higher education, first it was architecture. My path until the moment I entered university to study architecture, was mainly to learn to work in the textile area using sewing, embroidery, batik, and weaving, therefore, the natural thing would have been to have studied any career related to textile design, which didn’t exist in Venezuela, so it wasn’t even something I could have considered. Since there was no academic career that was suitable, the only thing that could be a little more similar was architecture. Architecture enriched my training, but I did not develop it since my work had always been more two–dimensional than three–dimensional, and it was that tendency that made me decide to change my career when I discovered that there was the possibility of studying graphic design in Venezuela as a profession.
CI: Where did you study graphic design?
EH: At the Neumann Institute of Design. Neumann was a Czechoslovakian chemist who arrived in Venezuela fleeing the WWII and set up a company based on paintings and graphic arts. In the 60’s he thought that Venezuela needed a source of formal training in graphic and industrial design and managed to bring together a group of designers and artists with significant careers to create this Institute.
CI: Going back to the influence of the textile world on you, tell us how the manual experience of knitting, sewing, and working with textile arts influenced your current process as a graphic designer.
EH: There are two separate trajectories, that of graphic design and that of the rest of the disciplines in which I work. Both probably have aspects in common such as the management of textures, colors, and shapes. My primary professional development has been graphic design in the area of mass consumption, specializing in packaging design and the promotion of medicines
where connection with specific audiences is necessary, and which implies a process marked by very specific guidelines for each project. It is limited by the characteristics that define a certain audience in order to ensure that the product you have created is valued and chosen as a purchase option. On the other hand, in my career in the textile world, I have been able to express myself without or with few limitations. Conceptually both processes are completely different, except for the few times when I have had to work on poster designs for institutions or, for example, the participation of an artist in an art biennial in Brazil, where I could see that the result was closer to what I do in my textile career.
CI: Of your work experiences, which do you feel has been the most important?
EH: Definitely the design of packaging and the creation of brands and products, since it’s the closest that graphic design comes to the individuals in society, as they keep the products in their refrigerators, they drink from the bottles, they paint their houses with the can of paint. The design you create is constantly lived, therefore having been able to develop my career with top leading brands within the country is where I feel that it has impacted my professional career the most.
CI: Yoplait yogurts and Carabobo juices, are products that when I lived in Venezuela existed in our refrigerator, and I think it’s spectacular to get to know you, to learn the background of the person who designed these packages that were truly packages that we all had in our homes.
EH: Exactly, that is what I said before, they are the brands with which generations of Venezuelans have grown up, for example the Carabobo brand which existed long before I started working with it, it’s the milk with which we all grew up. The design of the original packaging was not done by me, but starting in the early 90s, the development of new products was very large, and I participated in the development of the design of their new products as their new California brand, which was the one that introduced the half–gallon presentation for the first time in Venezuela. Having participated in these projects has been one of the most enriching steps I have taken during my career. Regarding your
to Yoplait ; Yoplait is a French brand produced and distributed in Venezuela by the company that owns the Carabobo and California brands. The products that were developed incorporating European designs and were adapted to the needs of the Venezuelan market. I participated in the entire process including the launch of products that did not exist in Europe, products created solely for the local market. Examples are certain types of yogurts with cereals and jello.
CI: You received the Anda award, 1 what product and what design earned it?
EH: I received the Anda award for a product from the Knorr brand, it was an innovative product in the entire world, as it was the dehydrated presentation, catering to the Venezuelan market, of a product called Sofrito Criollo . In Venezuela you make a cooking base with tomato, onion, garlic and spices when you are preparing a stew for any meal: a sofrito.
CI: Yes, actually, we make that cooking base for the shredded meat at home, same for the black beans.
EH: Exactly, Knorr Venezuela decided to develop the dehydrated formula of an authentic criollo (local) sofrito (cooking base), and that was the packaging that I designed and with which I won the Anda award, which is awarded every year to the best advertising campaigns, illustrations, catalogues, books, packaging, in general categories related to advertising and graphic arts.
CI: There is another question that I would like to ask you, it is something that has been on my mind a lot given that Venezuela had this large group of European design professionals, immigrants in the 50s and 60s and who brought with them the academic design training with modernist roots; I was wondering if you feel that in Venezuela, the native, the local mixed with modernism, resulting in a hybrid that perhaps has become more of a tropical modernism? What do you think, what comes to your mind?
EH: I think so, yes, it did happen, the influence of modernism in Venezuela was as in all parts of the world: very marked. Venezuelan culture has a very colorful graphic representation and I believe that this fusion was a natural process that simply occurred, it is the way a Venezuelan interprets modernism.
CI: The modernist current in Venezuela was not only in design, but also greatly in architecture, sculpture…, in general in all artistic endeavors and design areas.
EH: If there is a hallmark, which as you say is not European modernism, it is Venezuelan modernism, just as it happened in other countries. In Venezuela, logo design is where I could recognize a more direct reference to modernism. An example is the logo of Juan Sebastián Bar, it belongs to a very high–level Latin music venue, the logo is from the 70s, tropicalized modernism!
CI: I just looked it up on the internet, yes yes yes! I love how it develops elements such as the curls of the person. I also remember that on some occasion when we met, you told me that in Venezuela designers specialized in one of two professional trends, one with a more institutional nuance and the other more commercial. Do you think this is very defined?
EH: Our academic training at the Neumann Institute of Design was towards the cultural and artistic institutional part, in my case I developed the commercial side, and I can completely differentiate those two trends. The designers who work in the commercial area for the industry, where we needed to create and promote products that are sold, and then the designers that remain in the institutional area, such as museums, foundations, government and oil institutions, in general the cultural production that was done in Venezuela, especially in the 80s, 70s and 90s, was considerable. There, a designer could express himself and create his own style as an artist would do; these are the designers who won international awards in everything around the world, an example is Santiago Pol. One of the great designers especially of posters, as his posters are recognizable, they have a completely personal style. In the area of commercial design, as is my case, the designer is seen much less, since you design for the market, for a very particular audience depending on each project.
CI: Changing gears completely, we leave graphic design and go to your crafts, your embroidery, knitting, sewing, etc., there is something that caught my attention, I think you had an interesting adventure a couple of years ago, of creating a Haute Couture line for dogs. Every time I see the website I am always impressed by how you have managed to create designs that truly look on a dog
1. ANDA Awards (National Association of Advertisers—Venezuela) The awards objective is to reward all commercial or institutional communication that responds to the values of creativity, technical quality and content innovation.
as if Christian Dior had designed it. They have elegance, proportion, and materials that I could well see and can imagine, each one of those dresses, made for a person, how was that adventure?
EH: Thank you, thank you for the comparison! In this adventure, there is a direct relationship between my entire personal life and professional career. Since I started with crafts at the age of 4 and then with graphic design, both have greatly influenced this project. My career in textiles allowed me to combine embroidery and weaving techniques from all over the world, that I have learned constantly, and from my career as a graphic designer resulted in that there is my own style. It is a project where two worlds came together, my cultural world and my textile development, came together with my knowledge and experience of graphic design. This project was born due to the lack of good design that existed at that time in dog costumes, so why not combine what I already knew with how to create Haute Couture clothing? It was innovative, we were even able to participate in the first Pet Fashion Week that there was in New York city. We were able to be sponsored by Swarovski to create pieces with the same quality design of a collection from any designer for women. This project had an impact on my subsequent artistic work, from that moment on I completely changed the way of visualizing and expressing my textile development, I changed format, size, images, and the use of materials.
CI: One last question, though I feel you might have answered it a bit already, if you had to describe your design methodology, what would it be?
EH: EH: In my commercial design work, the methodology is the methodology that any communicator who is working with brands would follow. It is a very formal methodology: know your audience, define what are the differentiating aspects that your product has in its category and design a unique product to achieve connection with that audience, the final goal is for them to buy and consume the designed product for that company to grow. With design you have to be able to express that unique characteristic that the product has, and that makes it chosen within an ocean of other products on the market. On the other hand, when I work on my textile projects, I look for personal authenticity, to express something that
is unique and that represents me, there is no audience that determines what I am going to do. The methodology is the same, what changes is the audience, which in this last case is me.
CI: Well, thank you very much for the opportunity to talk with you about your professional career. This has been amazing! Thank you again.
EH: Thanks to you.
Patricia Van Dalen (Maracaibo, Venezuela, 1955) is a visual artist and educator based in Miami, United States, with a career spanning four decades. In 1977, she graduated in graphic design from the Institute of Design, Neumann FoundationINCE in Caracas, Venezuela. From 1980 to 1986, she trained and collaborated with artist Yaacov Agam in a visual education program in Paris, France.
Van Dalen’s artwork has been the subject of several solo exhibitions such as Pinturas y dibujos , Galería Minotauro, Caracas, 1985; Patricia Van Dalen, Sala RG, Casa de Rómulo Gallegos, Caracas, 1991; Primavera , Sala Mendoza, Caracas, 1993; Casa/Jardín/Ventanas , Universidad Simón Bolívar, Caracas, 1998; Del cosmos al jardín, Museo de los Niños, Caracas, 1999; Luminous Gardens , Fairchild Tropical Garden, Miami, 2003; Color Fragmentado , Sala TAC, Caracas, 2008; Colección primavera-verano 2010 , Galería La Cuadra, Caracas, 2010; El Color como Estructura: Ámbitos Expandidos at La Caja Centro Cultural Chacao and El Color como Estructura: Contingencias Modulares at Galería GBG Arts, both in Caracas, in 2012; and, more recently, High Voltage in 2013, and Ride the Rail in 2017, both at ArtMedia Gallery in Miami.
As an abstract artist, Van Dalen explores the poetics of structures in her work through the fragmentation that affects form, line, surface, space, and color.
Hello, it’s an honor to interview you; thank you very much for this opportunity. I would love to know what led you to study graphic design and how you transitioned from graphic designer to visual artist, but moreover, a visual artist who, from my perspective, is very structured, colorful, and uses abstraction. I am curious to know how one thing informs the other if it does in any way.
Patricia Van Dalen
You know that every time one reviews the past, depending on how many additional experiences one has had, one reads differently all the events that happened up to the present moment. So, what I say today, I may hear myself in five years and say that it is not entirely true. What I can comment on today is that the things that I am probably experiencing in the present determine the choice of words I will use. There is no way around it: I don’t like having a formula; some people have a very well–crafted speech and will say it identically, no matter who interviews them. I don’t feel comfortable with that because we are not one–dimensional; I prefer to answer a little about how I feel today about the question you asked me and how I read that fact today. Not to mention, leaving things up in the air is vague, as everything, in the end, is vague because this interview also has a limited time.
What led me to study at the Neumann (Neumann Design Institute) has several versions, just that fact alone can also have several versions. One is that I could draw, and I researched what professions were available; another could be the vocational test in high school, which already indicates a little about your strengths or direction. There, it noted that I had a high spatial abstraction and suggested professions like architecture in the first place, graphic design, etc.
Architecture was not an option because I didn’t feel comfortable studying structured subjects like mathematics; I wonder if physics was also part of it. But I didn’t want the traditional concept of studying, which is studying content and taking exams, where it’s evaluated whether one assimilated the content. Of course, architecture also has the design part and not just the theory, but that was not enough for me. When I investigated graphic design a bit more and saw that it didn’t have any subjects, any subjects that resembled those science
Interview conducted in Spanish via Zoom on April 10, 2024. Translated from Spanish to English using ChatGPT Transcript edited by both interviewer and interviewed.
ones, I felt this was my path. It’s not that I wasn’t capable, because in the end, I had good grades in high school, but I wasn’t interested in that, although I wasn’t very clear either. It was more by process of elimination, what not to do. So, what not to do is sometimes easier than what to do. The admissions exam, which was two weeks long, had very interesting exercises, and right there, I felt, well, this was very interesting… How can you prevent a mayonnaise glass jar from breaking when thrown or dropped from a height of two meters? What packaging would one design so that it doesn’t break? Or, for example, how can we design efficient packaging to store five tennis balls? I found it almost like playing, so I was happy at the Neumann. I had my preferences, which were the subjects where I could use photography or add color. The class with Alirio Palacios sparked my interest in the use of color. I didn’t take a formal color class at the Neumann; if the subject existed, I didn’t take it. The courses with Luisa Richter, which were structure and drawing (we had a living model), while developing a sensitivity to the use of the pencil or to the contact of the brush with ink on paper, that use of materials was important.
Once I graduated, I aimed to be a children’s book illustrator. That was the terminology; nowadays, it’s referred to as illustrated books because who says it’s only for children? Those illustrations traditionally were called children’s illustrations. I applied to schools outside the country while trying to find an opportunity to take me out of the country that would be funded. I knew there were the Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho scholarships, but they didn’t consider professions like the Neumann’s, like graphic design. I don’t think so, but maybe yes. But in any case, I was chosen for a very particular, very sui generis project, which was just being born, and it was a project within a very particular Ministry called the Ministry for the Development of Intelligence. I went there as a designer, although I was interested in graphic design only as a discipline that others do well. I appreciate graphic design but do not apply it myself, not to designing myself. For my stationery, I hired designer friends. Well, shoemaker to his shoe. I wouldn’t say I like designing and don’t enjoy practicing graphic design, but I have the judgment to evaluate a good design from a bad one. This experience, which was the visual education project with the Israeli painter or visual artist Yaacov Agam, was an artist interested in education. He created art pieces for a synagogue in Caracas, and the person who brought him to Venezuela
introduced him to the Minister for the Development of Intelligence, Dr. Luis Alberto Machado. They became good friends, and there was total empathy in their passion for new pedagogical methodologies. Dr. Machado decided to provide the funds for the team that would translate Agam’s ideas into didactic materials. A team comprised of a graphic designer, a psychologist, and an educator was assembled for this purpose, which was funded by Corpozulia, at least for the first few years.
CI: And were you the graphic designer on this team?
PVD: Yes, but I didn’t do graphic design, I didn’t do graphic design. What I did were very schematic illustrations of each activity that the teacher would carry out to introduce the structure of a language with shapes, colors, directions, and dimensions, that is, the visual alphabet structured in manuals that would allow the preschool teacher to carry out those activities as a subject, as any other subject. And I mean not relegating it to painting or art, but like teaching a language, reading, and writing verbally.
CI: I see, structured, and with intention.
PVD: …and with everything that a manual for the teacher entails. There were 36 manuals, each with specific objectives and descriptions of the activities accompanied by a list of necessary materials. These manuals came accompanied by my illustrations.
It was tested in a few preschools in the cities of Caracas and Barquisimeto through the Ministry of Education. It was very interesting because it allowed me to connect with education, which stayed with me forever as part of my vocation—having been in Paris from 1980 until the beginning of 1983 or December 1982, which was three full years; after all, I arrived in early 1980. And then returning in 1985 and again in 1986 allowed me to relate to art in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to in Venezuela. However, I already had artist friends, classmates from the Neumann, and the surrounding environment. The art world caught my attention, but I had this idea that art had to be shown since childhood, that one knows how to draw and paint since childhood, that one
knows how to draw and paint since childhood. I hadn’t understood, lack of information perhaps, and the Neumann didn’t prepare you for that because its function was not to train artists, though many artists emerged from it… I say it’s like a factory defect simply because it was based on the Bauhaus, and most of the Bauhaus had artists as professors. At the Neumann, as in the Bauhaus, most of the faculty were artists, so it was impossible not to be contaminated. Somehow, ProDiseño (ProDiseño Design Institute) cured that factory defect and became a design school exclusively, but then other things were missing. At the Neumann, we read Proust with Hanni Ossott, and we read Mallarmé, and we read Rilke and Heidegger. So, the part of general culture that goes through the written word, not just through the visual training, or the skills in using tools, or understanding what composition is, and things like that…, that was what allowed us to have additional dimensions, which also depends on the time, maybe the 80s were more global in terms of culture, and ProDiseño is already another generation. They are very technically oriented and excellent designers, but I feel those from the Neumann have a different imprint.
In any case, having been in Paris immersed, submerged in art with my Venezuelan and non–Venezuelan artist friends, as well as Latin Americans, in an environment one hundred percent dedicated to art, and with cultural institutions alongside an impressive Minister of Culture that France had at that time, all that, made me start drawing when I returned to Venezuela in early 1983. And again, whether I realized it myself or others knew it before I did depends on the moment I am narrating this as nothing would have happened, even if others told me so, if I didn’t have had the abilities, that is, if I wouldn’t have had a vocation to be an artist, even if I turned out to be the last to know. Other people saw value in what I was doing, so I listened. I am someone who seeks advice; I consult people I admire… (phone call). Then, it was a bit like seeking guidance from people with clear experience in the field of art and understanding that what I was doing was valuable and good. They were people in the field, recognized artists of decades, or museum directors and curators. I understood that I had to leave everything else, leave design forever, and leave teaching. I resigned from the Ministry of Education; I believe I was close to thirty years old then; I had already or perhaps a little before… I think I had my first solo exhibition at thirty years old at the Minotauro Gallery of Cecilia Ayala .
It wasn’t because of studies that I became an artist; it was more because of the environment in which I moved, because of friendships, because, well, it could be viewed as positive phototropism, it could be that I was looking for it precisely because I had all the potential. I can say that I don’t comply with it, and it’s difficult to classify what I do because it’s very varied. I’ve dabbled in almost all fields and work by projects; this stayed with me from a designer’s training, that I approach everything as a project.
CI: It’s expansive, you’re not afraid to experiment with different mediums, and you have the rugs, the ceramics, tiles, and mosaics; I love your work with staples! Honestly, aesthetically, your artwork with staples caught my attention right away, but a few days ago, I read a small manifesto you have on your website. I hadn’t grasped the part about the migrant’s narrative and all the administrative processes required, and it gave it quite an interesting dimension because I, too..., well, my grandparents were immigrants. They have an interesting story, but I am also an immigrant, and my whole family is migrating. Everybody is rebuilding academic formations that are at times not valid in other countries or require validation, etc.; many Venezuelans are in that process, so I liked the symbolism of the staple as an administrative element and also the part about the pieces, the fragmentation, it seems very appropriate for the immigrant theme because one kind of gathers everything one can and creates a new coherence.
PVD: It all started from this (the artist shows a small stapler in the form of a chicken). My daughter gifted me this miniature stapler at some point, which I had while still living in Caracas, and in January 2016, I decided to try making collages without glue, so the stapler came in handy.
CI: (also shows her small stapler) Mine is very boring. Yours is very beautiful!
PVD: No, yours is also very nice! Muji sells the tiny staples in case you can’t find them; Staples has everything, too (shows the bag of small staples). But that’s a later reflection; it’s not like I said I would do a migration project with the automatic gesture of stapling. After the trauma of Cadivi1…, the trauma of Cadivi and documents to obtain foreign currency. It’s not the first country or the last; administrative processes all require those stapling gestures.
1. CADIVI (Comisión de Administración de Divisas) was a Venezuelan government agency responsible for administering foreign exchange controls. It was established in 2003 as part of currency exchange controls implemented by the Venezuelan government and tasked with regulating the distribution of foreign currency to individuals and businesses at the official exchange rate.
In what sense..., that besides all the vicissitudes of life, we had to fill many folders and documents to obtain foreign currency. It’s not the first country or the last; administrative processes all require those stapling gestures.
CI: Also, there is the famous stamping, where the paper is not valid if it doesn’t have the correct stamp.
PVD: Exactly, the stamping! That was a later reflection: what can this mean? In my case, it’s always a later reflection. Rarely do I say…, I’m very curious, very curious, I need to know, all the time, I want to know. I drive accountants crazy, and they let me go after 2–3 years; they tell me to find another one because I want to see, I want to know what line 28 is, which comes from cell C, etc., etc. I need to understand, and the thing is that many times, I forget, and then I have to ask again. But what I’m getting at with this is, that the recent work that I haven’t shown publicly, not even on social media, has been accumulating for three years, about 500 pieces, a lot! I haven’t exhibited it; very few people have seen it in my studio. It has to do with bureaucratic processes as well. Simply put, when I rented this studio here in Coral Gables, the certificate of use…, the city, the big city, because there are two cities, there’s Miami Dade County. Then there’s Coral Gables, a city within a larger city. I needed a certificate of use from both. Coral Gables doesn’t care much about what one does, as long as it’s business, but Miami Dade County did care about what I would do here, and when I said I was an artist, they blocked me and prevented me from painting.
CI: Oh wow!
PVD: Yes, the certificate of use says, dry use only, no painting, no painting, no painting, no painting. Besides that, the certificate would not allow me to have or
CI: That’s a difference with Venezuela. I imagine that in Venezuela, there was freedom to make decisions up to a certain level. These are culture shocks one experiences when leaving the country.
PVD: Yes, regulations also exist in Venezuela, but no one complies with or monitors them because of other more precarious issues. So, what happened
is that I asked myself, what do I do? I chose to make a substantial change of medium and said, well, okay, I’ll paint without paint! I’m making collages with fabrics, so it’s sewn work.
But it’s not that sewing represents the migrant, or a bureaucratic process in this case, but what drove the change of medium was indeed a bureaucratic fact to a person who likes to abide by the law because 99% of the artists who are in Miami, perhaps they don´t even know about it. I didn’t want to expose myself to fines or anything like that. Again, everything goes by project, and every complication is an opportunity to develop something different. That’s why it’s difficult to classify me because I don’t have a single purpose as an artist; I don’t have it, not even to keep exploring color to its ultimate consequences. No, because it’s not just color; it’s also the materials, the matrix, and the structure. For me, the phenomenon of artists generating images with the same elements always seems to be of the highest ingenuity of the human being. That I can, and that all artists can take the same elements and make them into entirely different things, repeatedly… This is great, and it is more than enough for me to keep doing this whether it sells or not!
CI: I find it… I love what you’re saying because it’s..., perhaps what fascinates me about design… (the artist holds up one of her new pieces to show on screen)
PVD: This piece is part of what I’m doing and is emotionally related to my childhood in Maracaibo, but it also has a very strong connection with Paris. These are later reflections because I’m simply doing and doing. Then I make several within the same line, and then I look back and ask myself, what’s happening here? I make a later reflection.
CI: A Brazilian graphic designer 2 talks about how she’s influenced…; she works in London in a large graphic design firms, but she has a course on Domestika. I don’t know if you know of the online platform…,
PVD: Yes.
CI: She talks about the importance of doing, trying, and playing without necessarily having a clear objective, because those gestures and all those intentions one has recorded, as they are all experiences, that eventually return to us as formed ideas. At Boston University, we have often talked about retro–engineering, which is a bit what you’re saying. Sometimes, once something has taken shape, it’s when one begins to understand where it came from, what drove it, and what influenced it to a certain extent.
I want to go back to the topic of color because it’s a curiosity I’ve been exploring myself, and I want to ask if for you color is the theory or is it more an experience; one of my favorite readings, truthfully, that opened me up to the use of color were those of Josef Albers , which has to do with, let’s experiment with it and let’s understand how colors next to each other vibrate and interact with each other.
This spoke to me directly. Every time I saw a book on color theory that started with the physics of light, it never entirely caught my attention, and reading Albers’ book was like an opening, in a way, an invitation to experiment.
PVD: (showing her copy of Albers’s book , Interaction of Color) This determined my teaching approach and how I would teach color at Neumann, where I was a color professor for several years. Then, I taught endless Color Workshops, sometimes called The Dynamics of Visual Language or The Dynamics of Color, which are different iterations of more or less the same ideas. The exercises were, I’m speaking in the past because it’s been a long time since I’ve done the color course or workshop for other people. I have been teaching many other topics within the visual realm, but for many years, it was only color for which the experience with Agam was decisive. It was basically what sparked the desire to work in color, probably at an unconscious level. In Agam’s workshop, to create his work, which has hundreds of nuances in a single piece, there are many little pots of paint; he has people and assistants who prepare all the colors, so seeing that generosity of nuances in a space was indeed a significant stimulus in my life. Since childhood, I can say that color was an intuitive matter that caught my attention powerfully. The marbles, that paste that one puts on a small thin straw, and then one makes a colorful bubble, but a bubble that doesn’t explode, instead it closes. It had a very particular smell; maybe it was... poisonous!
CI: It came in a small toothpaste–like tube; yes, wow, what a memory...
PVD: I long for that, maybe it was poisonous; perhaps it’s forbidden nowadays.
CI: That’s what I was going to say, that it had a very particular chemical smell...
PVD: And one would chew on it once it burst, one would eat it…, worse than yellow number 5!
CI: I don’t want to take too much of your time, but I would love to ask another question. A part that I think is quite notable in your work…, and you show it in various pieces, for example, with the repetition of colored circles or the installations with multitudes of small flags; you create fragmentation, you showcase many parts and pieces that are always coherent to a whole. Where does that idea come from, or that way of working? Can you explain it? Or is it an instinct?
PVD: So, thinking about it now, that could come from a book called The Open Work by Umberto Eco, which has to do a bit with the second law of thermodynamics. The book The Open Work talks about this law, which states that everything goes towards disorder. It’s a physical law, and that on a beach, in the sand, in that vast expanse of sand, which I see as ordered, as it’s a repetition of elements; everything that’s a repetition of elements to me seems like order, Umberto Eco turns it around. Order is if I step on the sand and leave a footprint; at that moment, there’s order. This idea always caught my attention, and it was a great stimulus for philosophical thought or simply for concepts. That the moment of order isn’t necessarily what I understood as order gave me great freedom to handle multiple elements.
That’s why individual artworks, often, especially in recent decades, always belong to a series. Although the elements within the work itself are not necessarily repeated in a structured way within a grid or a reticulum, they certainly belong, in turn, to a macro where there are several of its kind, which can be 9, 12, 14, 18, 75, or 100.
CI: So, you create a global concept, and there’s a series in order under this umbrella idea…
PVD: There’s a family of forms or materials but a family of shapes. One of Agam’s visual education manuals, Repetition of Forms, was decisive in this. So Agam is like the inception, his educational method which I didn´t apply to myself or with my children; there wasn’t time to be so structured or to treat my children as students… I lived, and they grew up within that world; both parents were artists, and Harry Abend was their father. Rest in peace…, that desire to make a series´ or installations that have a hundred thousand little flags, for example, like the one at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden (2003); but also, there are two organizations, these little flags are within bands, so they have edges that, I don’t remember right now what that’s called. Still, it prevents the last atom of this (shows a small red book) from merging with the atom of my finger. Why doesn’t it merge? That’s one of the laws of Higgs Boson; it’s a Nobel prize given a few years ago. What’s the name of that law that prevents objects from disintegrating so they stay together? However, if you go to a micro, micro, micro, micro level, you’ll see that they’re pure atoms, individual things. What prevents this hand from falling apart? That’s a law in physics…, so the little flags were placed in 14 long bands, 75 meters long and about 2.5 wide each, to create a large square that I felt was the opposite shape to the placement of that piece in an organic environment. The grass, the bushes, the natural surroundings, and then recreate something natural with artificial elements.
I’ve always been interested in paradoxes, and those paradoxes also have a birth date: a significant exhibition that took place in 1985 at the Pompidou Center in Paris, on the sixth floor, called Les Immatériaux (The Inmaterials), curated by none other than the philosopher Jean Françoise Lyotard and design theorist Thierry Chaput.
I have moments where I can pinpoint precisely when changes occurred, sometimes after reading something like The Open Work . Still, it can also be specifically from an important exhibition such as that one, which many say was the birth of Postmodernity, that particular event.
CI: I’ll look it up because I didn’t know about it. In fact, this morning, as I was refreshing some ideas about your work, I saw an article in which you talked about this exhibition. I will research it further.
PVD : (showing a book on screen) This is the logo, but the original catalog, I lent it and never got it back, I lost it. The catalog came in a silver plastic envelope in 1985, it was a big deal at the time, with several sections inside. This one only contains the texts of around thirty authors that Jean Françoise Lyotard invited to discuss important topics. Everything was recorded.
But your questions are great because I’m talking about things I’ve never talked about, haven’t spoken about these things, all woven into something that keeps shaping up, where it comes from, or what led to it. What drives an artist…? You have your moments and know exactly where they come from, but we’ll keep discovering new clues because this has no end. Some things may have happened when you were five years old, and one day, someone tells you that you did this and that at five years old, and it turns out that somehow it impacted the rest of your time.
CI: It’s a sum of events. One of the things that has been very hard for me is to explain the roots of what I do and where it comes from.
PVD: Let’s see, why is it hard for you?
CI: Because it comes naturally to me, some things just come to me. I see them, and they seem obvious or the appropriate color and shape. Many times, I find it challenging to explain the influences. At Boston University, for example, in History of Graphic Design and Theory class, every week there were several readings related to a particular topic, to which we had to respond with a written piece using our point of view, seeking to understand what caught our attention the most, and how it resonates with our interests and vision, our work. It has been a process of clarifying and understanding where things come from and where our perspective comes from. You will laugh because not long ago when I wasn´t very clear on what I would focus my writings on…, what happens to me is that I am interested in everything, everything design; I see design everywhere…
PVD: Exactly, I hear you; I hear you!
CI: I don’t separate them, and I’ve been blessed that at Boston University, I’ve been able to be very free in that sense because it’s not exclusively aimed at commercial graphic design. I have been encouraged to explore what interests me… Going back to the thesis, when I was expressing my thoughts about it and what projects I would include, one of my professors pointed out that everything I make is made of parts and pieces…
PVD: Of yourself, or what?
CI: No, of myself, and everything I have designed is composed of parts and pieces. I create repetition, but I’m interested in…, for example, one of my most revealing projects was about my collection of Lego elements. I took out my box of Legos from the ‘70s, which I still have because it was one of my favorite toys; my children played with them too! I designed a data visualization project, a photographic classification of the pieces by shape, size, and color, absolute madness…, almost 3000 elements that I arranged on a large format poster. That project was perhaps the first time I signaled a formal interest in creating order by sorting families of shapes.
This morning, I read an article about you, and it made me smile. You said, I am interested in a family of forms and in the fragmentation of abstract elements. My latest project...
PVD: Where does that come from?
CI: I found it on your website under Intervening Public Places
PVD: Oh, wow, is that on my website? And it’s all me! I mean, and then comes the domestic, cleaning the house, cleaning my studio, everything!
CI: And the baggage one carries! When I read a bit of your biography, I was also struck by your Dutch–Venezuelan background and experience. At some point, I wrote about the multiplicity that happens in these dualities
of life, in these combination of cultures I carry, as I am convinced that it is what makes me take little parts and pieces of what I like and what I don´t like, to create a coherent order.
PVD: Of course, of course.
CI: And that’s my unique whole !
PVD: Certainly, because people who have had relatives in Venezuela for 200 years and have large families have entirely different experiences in how they process things, people who carry that cultural shock are enriched by it. Of course, it’s not that one is better than the other, but they carry the ingredient of adaptability because generally, we come from isolated households, we don’t have great–grandparents in the country, so we can’t say that in the year 1800 or 1700, the great–great–great–grandfather had an estate... no!
CI: It’s like negotiating all the time because they often have opposing views. Sometimes, what would raise an eyebrow for my grandparents was the most normal thing in the world in Venezuela, and vice versa. Or rigid views ... so it’s like a constant negotiation between the parties, a negotiation of bits and pieces. I’ve also been in the United States for 22 years now, where there are things I love and others that I don’t like; there are elements that resonate with what I brought with me and others that don’t. So, it’s like a collection of bits and pieces in which I find myself…, a unique whole, within that trio of experiences that I have chosen to live and negotiate.
PVD: That’s right.
CI: Often, I have wondered through this journey at Boston University, where I have had to reflect and explain my vision if that experience of various cultural settings is reflected in the way I design. Of course, adding my background in architecture, a discipline like an IKEA piece of furniture, a kit of parts, a kit of disciplines that work together to create a building. You must consider and understand the structural, functional, aesthetic, plumbing and electrical installations, materials, and most importantly, the human experience... It has
been interesting to me as I hadn’t noticed that in my work before, and upon researching, I realized that I often create parts and pieces that together are coherent; I dare say they are coherent!
PVD: You create coherence afterward, the way you construct the sentence with those letters, you do it in such a way that it has meaning. If you put words together and they are not articulated, they are just words, but when you articulate them in one way or another, you create meaning, and it’s understood; another person can understand what is there.
What I can say is that I have a facility…, for me, color is innate. I didn’t have to study color theory to see color; I’ve seen color all my life. I have a tremendous facility, and I know the proportions they must have innately, coupled with the experience of encountering people like Josef Albers and Yaacov Agam, with their methods: You see, both artists with educational methods that explain. Not artists who use color; no, they were not my teachers. My teachers have been those who have put how color is learned into words.
When I taught color at Neumann, I focused on Agam’s activities, transformed by Josef Albers’ Interaction of Color, which is the experiential part. I rarely taught color theory. Some people feel very distressed if they don’t have a theory, and I reassured them that it wasn’t necessary.
What’s the use of knowing that the retina is compensating..., that what one sees (taking a small red book in hand) is not red, but red is the only color that this molecular composition surface rejected, and that’s why it reached my retina because it bounced off and mixed in my brain? The composition of this book gives out everything except red. So, this is not a red notebook. I always found it philosophically coherent, stimulating, and paradoxical because, in reality, we’ve been naming things for what we perceive them and not for what they are. So, you can extrapolate that fact to so many things …
So yes, color is…; for me, color comes before form, color takes shape, and then it has texture and has this and has that, but it is natural for me to write things well with color, that is, to make a piece and balance it, and say, here’s
a little yellow missing, I’m going to put some orange behind it. I don’t know how to apply color to interior decoration, and I don’t know how to use color in habitable spaces. I can create a work for a habitable space that will be well resolved in its edges, like a chromatically balanced or unbalanced piece, but with a coherent proposal.
CI: I’m delighted with the conversation. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to interview you and an hour and a half of your time!
PVD: An hour because we spent half an hour struggling with the system!
I write to think I think when I write...
I sketch to see I see when I sketch...
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The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation. (n.d.). Form follows function. https://www.guggenheim.org/teaching-materials/the-architecture-of-the-solomon-r-guggenheim-museum/ form-follows-function
Vignelli, M. (2012). The Vignelli Canon. Lars Müller Publishers.
Willen, B. (2019, September 5). In Defense of Inconvenience. Design Observer. https://designobserver.com/feature/in-defense-of-inconvenience/40056
Willer, Marina (n.d.). Creative Brand Identities - How ideas find a home. https://www.domestika.org/en/courses/3239-creative-brand-identity-how-ideas-find-a-home/ units/11889-feeding-creativity
...adversities are a gift that I can keep, not digging my own grave cuz I´ve reaped resiliency!
Digging My Own Grave Rêverie, 2024
Card received on my 40th birthday celebration, such a wise lesson that I have kept on my desk ever since!
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Produced in Graduate Graphic Design II (CFA AR 884) under the guidance of faculty advisors
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