Booklet

So this week we finished our drawings in Illustrator with our initials. At the end of the week, we compiled all of them to make a booklet. This was my cover:

As I was looking at it right before I turned it in, I realized I forgot to delete like 3 lines. >.> Oh well. After the cover were pages that I posted last week, but with alterations (not that many so I won't repost them). What I didn't show last week though, was my elevation of the Design building. So the next two images are of the south (front) and east (side) side. We needed to put our environmental letterforms on them.

Yup. I worked on the building lines with Amber and I did the front side (LOTS of lines). After this project, I definitely learned A LOT. I got the hang of Illustrator more and I know how to do masking now (!!!). When doing the obliques, it's critical to be selective (which was hard for me, especially with the curve of the p). Line weight was also super important since things that were closer to us, were suppose to be darker/thicker, and lines that we can't see are dashed. I think this whole project relied on the "less is more" phrase since you want the viewers to understand it without overdoing everything. Therefore, being as minimal and simple as you can be is great. Overall, I'm enjoyed this project but I'm so done with it. Next week, we are going to be building letterforms, which I'm worried about but I think it will be fun.

K's

So I decided to do K's (which Michael didn't seem too happy about >.>) and here are some of my words that I have chosen.

kangaroo

kite

kiss

kid

knight

king

kiwi

kickball

keyboard

knit

knife

key

koala

knee

knot

kidney

kennel

kaleidoscope (I'm totally going to do this one...I just have to find a pair with it)

kettle

kitchen

kitten

kit

knob

kanji

kelp

kiln

Yup. I really really really want to do kaleidoscope, so as for pairs, I'm thinking that with kite. Otherwise, knight and king works as well. Or kennel and kiln. This is still in the process of thinking. So more words and/or pairs might come later. Maybe even some images.

Obliques

So this last week we made obliques with out initials using the pen tool in Illustrator. So here's my initials:

After that we made orthographic views of the letters and then elevation obliques and plan obliques. The following pictures aren't correct (I'm still in the process of correcting these).

Yup. Next week we are going to make a booklet out of all these (which I think will be super cool) and then something else. At first, it was hard grasping where lines would go and connect the letters but it takes effort and I think I'm getting it slowly. We also drew out the Design Building, which was fun. I felt like I did too much work though. I will post the picture next weekend when I'm done with everything. Yup. I'm sort of done doing obliques and whatnot. It's fun but it's getting tiring. >.>

Final Statement

So the whole dot process was pretty stressful. I started off with the theme of "family" and I wanted to do something that defined what family is to different people. I use the term family loosely because I consider my closest friends as family, and I would like to believe that others think like this as well. From there, I chose 9 words to describe family, 5 good and 4 bad. I set up my book every other page, starting with a good, followed by a bad, etc. I felt like this way, the viewers can see that everything good comes with a bad, and vice versa. I chose to stick with colors and textures since these words were very open and there wasn't just one thing that can explain the meanings. So with the colors, I chose colors that went along with the feelings they convey. For example, I used red with fury because red conveys excitement and energy and yellow for neglect because it conveys betrayal and deceit. As for the textures, it was based on the word itself, like what is support. It could be anything really, from trees to metal to rocks and so forth. So that was how I approached textures and colors. In general, I think the book flows well. The last page is impenetrable, which I chose gray as the color. It seems like a really dull color since all the other were bright colors, but gray means security and reliability and I thought that was really deep for family and a good note to end with.

I definitely learned a lot during this whole project. I learned how to convey a word clearly using just dots. Which was hard, especially for "intact". You wouldn't think it was hard, but it was my toughest word probably. As for type, I really like having to print, cut, and paste each word/letter. It was way easier than if I was to do it in a program. And plus, I got to learn how to use the Konica. Craft wise, I could definitely improve. I got some circle cutters but for the circles that I had to cut by hand, they look so bad. And my pages aren't even. Yes. There's still a lot to learn and this was a good 1st project to start with.

Reading Response Transparency

The readings from Lupton's book along with the lecture was an eye opener. I have always realized that layering and transparency can help make a piece wonderful, but not in a sense that it can create new meanings. In our book project, we made different compositions out of dots for Vis Comm and then different compositions of type in Type. When put together, they enhance the meaning of the word exponentially. I feel like it's easier to understand the word and it gives it more meaning than the dictionary. At the same time, they might seem like they wouldn't work together at all but together, they convey the message well. Overall though, it makes the book cohesive and it flows from one page to another.