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Final Reflection

Concluding this academic year I feel like I’ve learned a great deal. Not only within the classroom but outside as well. This semester in particular was by far the most challenging I’ve had in college. Taking this class during such a challenging period was both a blessing and a curse. Part of me wishes I had less going on so I could have devoted more of myself to my work. The other part of me, however, recognizes that this experience has better prepared me moving forward. As an aspiring designer there will come a day where I will have to balance not only my design work but life as well. This semester has definitely been a trial run of this. My hope is to learn as much as I can from my time here in college for my future. Despite challenges I encountered this semester I am proud of the work I’ve done and the skills I’ve learned in this class. I am excited and ready to take on what lies ahead!

[sspinelliarts246-01]

This week concluded our work on the Type Hike poster project. I feel like this project itself went fairly smoothly. I really enjoyed the challenge of trying something new and pushing myself out of my comfort zone! The most challenging aspect of this project was something I wasn't expecting and that was printing. Unfortunately there was an issue with the printing lab in McMaster and I had to find a solution off campus. This was certainly a challenge for me as I don't have a car and had to find a location I could walk to. The first two CVS's I sent my order to both accepted my order then after a couple of hours informed me that they couldn't full fill the order request due to their being an issue with their printers as well. I then went to Fed Ex which costed more but thankfully accepted my order. Although due to the time I lost waiting on the CVS orders, the earliest Fed Ex could have my order finished was at 4pm the day the project was due. I was able to submit my project, but just not on time. This experience, however stressful, taught me a lot. In the future I will probably go to Fed Ex first if there's ever an issue with the school printer. I also will call ahead before placing an order to make sure they're able to do it. As disappointed as I am that I wasn't able to hit the deadline I am determined to use this an opportunity to prevent this from happening again.

This week's reading touched on typographic education. This chapter was demonstrated different typography projects given to design students. I thought it was really cool to see projects that we have worked on through the program included. It also served as a reflection on all the different things I've learned in design.

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Mar. 29th

This week I worked outside of comfort zone and as a result learned some new things in Photoshop! Typically I like to establish a clear idea at the start of a project and work to full fill that vision with very little deviation. This process however was very unfamiliar as I only had a loose idea of what the final product would look like. This was highly experimental and dealt with areas of Photoshop I had never really messed with like blending, adjustment layers, and masking techniques I hadn't used before. This process was uncomfortable at times but more often than not, rewarding when an unexpected outcome would result. The only part of this process that I find really difficult is deciding when it is finished. I've spent a lot of hours playing around and have roughly 7 different versions of the poster. After a while I landed on this version and have begun animating my type specimen through a photoshop animation plug in. Due to time I believe I'll keep it simple, but I'm excited to play around with that aspect too!

This week's reading was made up of several case studies of individual designers and design institutions. I really enjoyed reading the break down of each designer's approach. Of course, as it pertains to our current project, I found the case study of the National Parks Unigrid system very interesting. In contrast to our design problem, the National Parks foundation needed a design solution that could deliver information consistently. Our project differs as it requires a more abstract and feelings based solution, but this was nonetheless a interesting thing to read.

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Mar. 22nd

This week we continued progress on our Type hike posters, and I worked specifically on which direction I hoped to take this project. The two main directions I landed on related to the mountains in the park or the waterfalls. The solution I came up with for the mountains was a comfortable solution for me whereas the latter was a bit less comfortable. I think in order to grow as an artist I need to more often take the path that feels the least comfortable. So moving forward I'm going to explore possible solutions that put an emphasis on the type as well as capturing the feeling of the waterfall through distortion.

This week's reading was perfect for going into next week's work in terms of the type specimen. The AR aspect of this project is especially exciting for me because of the possibilities it provides for movement. This reading provided some interesting possibilities to consider as I move into this stage of the project.

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Mar. 15th

This week began official progress into our poster project. I decided to focus on the North Cascades National Park due to the striking visuals I saw online and its numerous features. Researching this park has been a lot of fun as I've been able to find some good resources online to reference. In particular, I found an hour long video tour of the park that explored its history, natural sights, and fun facts. I found that watching this while sketching my preliminary thumbnails was really relaxing and inspiring. Moving forward through this process I want to explore as many solutions as possible, because at the moment I feel like all that I've produced has been pretty predictable/generic. I'm excited to see where this project takes me.

This week's reading was really interesting to me as it covered topics I have/am currently learning about in other classes. Reading about typography as it applies to screens in some aspects was familiar to what I've learned in my programming classes but there were a couple things I learned through this chapter I didn't know about before. Antialiasing was something I could identify seeing before but had never known it had a name or was intentional. Seeing it in digital media I assumed it was an error but after reading about it I was able to see why its utilized! It was definitely neat to see overlap between my classes.

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Mar. 1st

This week we worked to complete our zine project. The biggest change I made was including a background of the subway map. This addition I hoped would connect the entire composition of the zine unfolded. I also adjusted the values to make sure everything still remained legible. It's been really fun exploring this designer and learning from his designs!

This week's reading explored the history of printed type. Reading about these technologies not only was interesting but made me further appreciate the technology we have access to today. Due to technological advances, the printing process is cheaper and more accessible. I hope in the future to learn more about these machines as they really interest me.

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Feb. 23rd

For my zine project I decided to research Massimo Vignelli. I was most drawn to research this designer not only because I find his work so pleasing but due to his quotes. He was an extremely influential designer that affected so much of American design as we know it today but he was born in Italy. His use of Helvetica made it the font we know and love today. I had a lot of fun looking at his work to influence my work on this.

This week's reading heavily related to our project. After reading chapter 6 I realized just how effective Vignelli's use of type really is. His work, to me embodies the typographic message designers look to achieve in their work.

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Feb. 16th

This week concluded our Logo Mark project. I think overall I like how it came together. The most challenging aspect for me was the envelope, and in the end that was my favorite element. I took some risks conceptually, like adding sauce stains to the letter head, that I hope furthers the work rather than distracts from it. I really enjoyed this project and I'm looking forward to the next one!

This week's reading concentrated on how syntax informs communication. The portion of the chapter that I connected the most with this project was the structure of letterforms. While designing my logo the portion that took the longest was certainly communicating the brand through the type. The idea was to switch the typical representations of the words 'shockingly' and 'hot' and have each one visually communicate the others meaning. The word 'shocking' is typically described with large bold letters and 'hot' is usually described with fire. My idea to more seamlessly tether the two words to one another visually was to flip the visuals for each word. The word 'shockingly' was the fiery one while 'hot' was the bolded one.

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Feb. 9th

This week we continued progress on our logo designs and started considering the stationary they would go on. I brought my primary logo for shockingly hot into illustrator to play around with the weights of the lettering. I still feel like it could use a little more tweaking especially in the 'k' 'i' 'n' and 'g' area. Along with these revisions I will also begin the process of developing my stationary this weekend. After Thursday's class I started to generate much more idea than I had prior, I am excited to see how my design translates in physical form.

This week's reading addressed the typographic grid and best practices and why some work better than others. I feel that this reading especially relates to the letterhead we will be designing as the placement of type and various elements will be important. I believe that even though this project is primarily focused on logo and brand development, proper type formatting is crucial to create a coherent brand image.

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Feb. 2nd

This week we began work on our logo project. The words I drew from the cups were "Wide-eyed" and "highway" from that I derived trucker speed and Shockingly Hot sauce from my word map. I started to develop both ideas and in the beginning I thought that my design for truck speed was the better of the two. Although after critique it was made clear that my design for Shockingly Hot Sauce was more successful. I'm really grateful I got outside input at this stage of development because I will easily be able to pivot now into the other design.

This week's chapter was on the topic of legibility in design. This chapter definitely related to the progress I made this week and areas I need to improve by design. As discussed during our critique, the way I extended the letterforms into the bars above and below the text hindered the legibility of my design. I will make sure to take lessons from this week's reading into account as I progress through this project.

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Jan.26

In concluding this project I've learned that there are innumerable ways to achieve a goal visually. What I found really interesting was that in critique, even though people did the same story, they all took a very different and unique approach. I enjoyed this project even though it was pretty straight forward. It was a good practice of visual hierarchy and composition.

In this week's reading, the book covered letterforms and their anatomy. I really liked the quote at the beginning of the chapter that referenced what letters have been called, "frozen sounds." It was a unique and fun way to think about text and throughout the chapter I thought about how each typeface and font sounded in comparison to each other.

[sspinelliarts246-01]

Before watching 99u's speaker Ian Spalter's speech on how designers should think and act more like comedians I was skeptical to see how those two professions could overlap. Although after completing the video I saw what the speaker meant and have since found ways in which to alter my work flow to be more like comedians. The speakers point was that, like designers, comedians must trouble shoot their material against their audience. For designers the desired result is of course successful design and for comedians a laughing crowd. The speaker said that to be a better designer we too must test our material again again with our audience to get it right much like how comedians put together sets to preform and test at comedy clubs. I love comedy and comedians so hearing this was really interesting and fun to think about. More often than not designers don't test their designs enough, this can result in a disconnect between the designer and the audience. Comedians are put into the unique position of constantly tweaking and improving their sets every time they go out on stage. However because designers don't always have this stage in their workflow, they must seek out and test their product with their audience more often.

This week's assignment was to adjust type with errors in placement and kerning. I really enjoyed this assignment even though it was tedious because it made me closer examine the type. I was able to greater appreciate the design that went into creating these letterforms.

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Final thoughts:

I feel like I have grown from this class with my use of typography. Before taking this course I feel like I was not entirely confident around type, I still don’t feel very confident but I believe I have been provided a platform to grow from. I am looking forward to taking the second class next semester and learning more. I enjoyed all of the projects but the college brand redesign was absolutely my favorite. Although it was the most work I really engaged with it and enjoyed every aspect. After that experience I now know that I could possibly do that in my career and that idea is very exciting. I leave this class thankful for the knowledge I now possess and excited for classes to come!

[sspinelliarts246-01]

This week’s reading covered how history and technology developed how designers layout their design. It was interesting to read about how post World War Two Switzerland influenced and essentially created the grid(raster) and then subsequently vector based imaging. For me it was interesting to read about how web pages formed and influenced design over time because I am learning how to develop web pages in my programming classes. Understanding the basics of html and CSS it was neat to see in the text how designers overcame challenges provided by the program and invented flash. Overall I believe this section was about primarily user friendly and accessible design and how the ideas were generated for that throughout history.

For this week’s progress I turned in the final version of project 4 and we began our new project of logo design and rebranding. Leaving project 4 I learned a great deal and I’m excited to apply it to this project. For our final project I chose to rebrand the Wichita State Shockers and I’m excited to see what comes of it!

[sspinelliarts246-01]

This weeks reading went into user experience and how design plays into it. A quote that I feel heavily relates to our current project in the book was, “Typography is an interface to the alphabet.” This reading put into perspective the role design plays into user interface. For myself, its tempting to focus on just the aesthetic values of a project rather than the function it will later serve. This, especially within graphic design, can be troublesome as it contradicts the very reason for its existence. Although it would be nice for every user to appreciate the subtleties in typeface and other visual components to a project it isn’t realistic. Again an excellent summary of this was in the book and it explained that user theory suggests that the more straight forward approach oftentimes is the most successful one.

This weeks progress on our 27th letter project has gone well. I feel that after our critique I was able to apply what was said not only about my project but other projects as well to improving the layout of my design. Originally I had very large lettering and an extremely centered composition with little visual hierarchy. With this updated version I aimed to work on clarity through whitespace and visual organization. I took time to rework the layouts of each page and worked on creating a color system that would be echoed throughout. Thus far I am happy with how it is developing.

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This week’s reading explored the rich history of the development of how modern type is organized and measured. Much like any other artistic medium, typefaces are our tools and with these tools there are limitless possibilities. The reading explained the rules and conventions of the medium and explained why when these rules are broken the result can look awkward. This reminded me of my other classes, and how while being taught the rules of a certain practice like grammar, it has often been repeated that in order to break rules you must know them first. The exploration of typefaces within this weeks reading reminded me of this saying greatly.

This week’s progress on the 27th letter project has so far been going well. After choosing my serif and sans serif letters and beginning my spreads I am starting to build a solid exploration of what these letters might represent. The spread above depicts my serif letter by the name ‘Arp’. My thought for this letter was that it’s use would replace the need for the commas within the grammatical appositive. My thought was that rather than surround the added portion in commas the user instead would add an ‘arp’ to symbolize the same meaning. So far I am really enjoying this project and putting myself into the shoes of those who design typefaces.

[sspinelliarts246-01]

This week’s reading reiterated the points discussed in class for our upcoming project. My main take away from the reading was that these organization conventions for text are what allow readers to easily take away meaning from what they see on the page. In other words, typography is a vessel for text. Although not noticed by many people, typefaces, fonts, alignment,spacing etc. are all crucial for the reader’s ability to navigate text. Although it is at times visually pleasing, the organization and formatting of type is imperative and deeply rooted in tradition so that readers can intuitively decipher meaning from the words presented. In this new project I’ve developed a greater appreciation of typefaces and the designers who make them. Putting together my ‘Frankenstein’s Monster’ of Helvetica and Bodini forced me to consider line weight and proportions. Unlike traditional art, the viewing of these designs are not meant to be viewed for long or considered for its visual quality their objective is legibility. Something I found to be a factor into my own designs as some felt off due to their spacing and proportions.