#vis com

[tomisgar]

Catalog Press

is questioning what a book can be // Written by: Lucy Bourton // 19.08.19

“Each of these books live under the umbrella of Catalog Press, a small publishing house created by Ben Denzer. A graphic designer originally from Kansas, Ben initially studied architecture and visual arts at Princeton, before going on to work as a book cover designer within the Penguin Art Group. He is also the curator and visual genius behind the Instagram account Ice Cream Books, amazingly praised by Bella Hadid (!?) as “the most important Instagram out there today”. We’d say this project is even better.”

Before researching into Ben Denzer’s work I created a design that is of a similar layout to the ‘200 Fortunes’ design, a very thin zine presenting my idea. I really like a lot of these designs for their unconventional sizes and layouts, making me want to experiment more with this theme.

[emmanewlandsmcintyrefad-blog]

Hansjörg Mayer -  alphabet square 1967

Alphabet square is a colour monoprint on paper by the poet, painter and typographer Hansjörg Mayer. It is comprised of a square grid of overlapping lower case letters printed in yellow, pink and blue. The four rows of blue letters form the sides of the square and overlap in the corners. The four rows of pink letters are arranged into two pairs of parallel lines, one pair vertical and the other pair horizontal. The four rows of yellow letters are arranged in pairs of two lines flush together, one pair running down the centre of the square vertically, the other across the centre of the square horizontally. The overall image created by the arrangement of the rows presents a central yellow square framed by a pink square, which is in turn framed by a blue square. - Tate

I find this piece of work by Mayer very aesthetically pleasing, there's something about the way the colours overlap one another that goes so well. This reminded me of using photoshop as for a lot of my zine I had to scan work in and layer it in photoshop. This reminds me of Mayer’s work as every letter is still slightly transparent so you can get the letter underneath it still even if it is in the same colour. In photoshop I would use the tool ‘multily’ on each letter and it would have a very similar effect. Mayer has used lowercase letters for the majority of the piece which I find adds a certain softness, if the letters were uppercase i find that it would clash with the colours used and they would be fighting each other. 

[hippiesilver]

My half of the bedroom has officially been taken over by projects and obsessive list making

[76m17]

Thoughts on Vis Com (Su17)

So apparently before you learn how to draw, you gotta learn....how to draw. 

For real though, this class kicked my butt. For some reason, I had the hardest time finishing homework for this class after I started working :/ I wish I’d done better, but I can be proud I made it and at least did SOMETHING each week. I said the same thing with my other classes, but...overall I’m really glad I took this class and I think everyone should take it if they want to do art for a living.

I’ve learned, like with story, underlying structure is the most important thing because everything builds on it. If you draw boxes with inaccurate perspective, the tanks you draw inside will also be wrong. If the proportions of your circles is off, so will your beetle. I think my instructor intentionally put less focus on rendering for our class. The end result is that we might not have as many “pretty” drawings to stick in our portfolio, but the ones we do have will be better constructed. Personally, I really like construction for geometric objects (trains, planes, insects). I guess it just makes more sense to me! But that means I need to work on organic shapes and secondary forms as I move forward. Oh, and drawing ellipses. Because how the fuck.

I have a lot of notes for this class I still need to scan in, so I’ll put that in its own post. Meanwhile enjoy this final comp I made for the last day of class: 

[andrewnorthcote]

battle royale poster

copyright © andrew northcote. all rights reserved.

[tomisgar]

Tutorial

18.03.20

> Maybe create a concertina style book? > More conceptual  > Narrative - argument > Think about the physical form > Illustrations - Graphic novel style > Typographic style > Possible idea - a book that you couldn’t open to represent the flatness of the Earth > Think about the format of the book > Create one book or a series of books? 

[emmanewlandsmcintyrefad-blog]

Visual Communications Evaluation

If I had another week on the zine project, I would develop more ideas related to the museum visits especially on the animals that I included in my final zine. I would add more pages to my zine as it is relatively short. I would include more of my own drawings and scan them into photoshop and develop them more. I would say the most successful thing from my project would be my final zine pages. I worked on them for a lot of time and developed my ideas, I experimented with colours and patterns to try and create the overall image I wanted. An aspect of my project which has been less successful would be the lack of drawing that I have in my zine. I would have liked to have drawn more of the animals I saw at the museum and included them in my zine as line drawings. Aspects of my creative process which has worked well would be the research I have done in my sketchbook. By making mindmaps it allowed me to spread my ideas over two pages and include small drawings to see how my ideas would look. Aspects of my creative process which did not work so well would be my final zine. Although I do like my final zine I believe it could have a lot more in it like drawings or something that makes it more unique to me. I don't believe I have any work outstanding from the brief as I have researched six artists, have done sketchbook work and have created my final zine. The one thing that I have noticed from all four rotations is that it is so important to experiment with your ideas because sometimes the experiments work out better than your original thought. I'm thankful we learned how to use the basics of Photoshop as I find that it could come in helpful for the next 4 week rotations. 

[76m17]

July 30 2017

Kinda don’t even want to post this, because this is all I have for the last 2 weeks in Vis Com :/ it’s been rough getting homework done. Part of it is due to a new job (messed up my schedule), but also just feeling immediately unhappy with my work as soon as I get started. I know I need to just push through (quantity>quality) so I’m making some changes: I’m gonna go the library after work and try to do just 20 min of VC/day. I got this!