Final Product

My Final Project

Paper Chandelier

Start of My Lantern...

Paper experiments for the paper lantern Light-Lite Project.

These experiments are made from a mixture of varrying weights of bristol board and printer paper.

I am trying to develop new textures, shapes, and structures.

Giant Letter Photos

PROCESS

FINAL PHOTOS

THE CREW

Word Construction

Constructing these words was quite a chore, especially considering our lack of manpower. We approached these letters be creating the sides of the letters and then creating one face for each. Each of these letter facings were divided into trusses and cut out with a box knife. This effect mimics the structure of the crane.

Each letter was constructed from cardboard and held together by masking tape. One large problem we encountered was getting the letters to stand up straight and on their own. The “C” and the “G” were the biggest problems because of their rounded bottoms. The “G” also sagged considerably from the weight of the top half. In order to counteract this I added extra cardboard supports inside the “G”, hidden behind the trusses on the face. These extra supports helped the “G” stand up straight and unintentionally balanced out the whole letter so that it stood on its own. The “C” on the other hand was very unbalanced and the solution we came up with was to attach a wedge to the bottom of the letter that created a more stable base for the letter to stand on.

After these structural difficulties were dealt with we moved on to tackle the covering. We decided to use spray paint to coat the letters. We chose blue to match the crane. This decision was both good and bad. The spray paint was expensive and didn’t go nearly as far as we expected. By the end of the project we ended up using a total of 14 cans of spray paint. Although it was expensive it created a very nice even coating that was glossy, like the metal of the crane, and slightly water resistant (which came in handy on the critique day).

Reflection on Photography Reading

Reflection on Photography Reading

Although this article was not explicitly relevant to this project some of the points made in the first section were insightful and a good thing to keep in mind while “documenting” our cardboard letters.

The history of photography was interesting and educational. Hearing all the different uses and mentalities of the medium gave me a new perspective on the range of photography. It makes sense to me that photography started out as a much more objective discipline and slowly became more objective over time, starting with propaganda and documentation and slowly progressing to an art form.

This balance between the photograph as a document and the photograph as art is an interesting concept that could and should be applied to this project. As we photograph our letters we must keep in mind the information that we need to capture as well as the formal elements that can be consciously implemented in order to create a piece of photographic art.  

Project Brief

For this project I was asked to pick a word from the word list and to use typography to illustrate the meaning of this word. We were asked to cut and paste these words to make compositions from paper. After generating some ideas through this process we moved to the computer. Using Illustrator we began generating newer, more refined designs. We were then asked to introduce color and space while continuing to refine and develop our typographical compositions. We then settled on 9 final designs.

Project Reflection

This project was a bit more difficult for me than the previous projects. I am not a big fan of graphic design; it is simply not my forte. Although I was a little frustrated at first this project improved greatly for me after we made the switch to Illustrator.

I like using the computer as a tool and I have improved my Illustrator skills significantly during his project. I used to find this programing extremely frustrating and unyielding, especially during the poster projects. This project has helped me discover new ways of approaching things and cool new tricks and tips that have improved my skill and efficiency.

I liked the straightforward set up for this project. The requirements for each day and for the process notebook were simple and forthright. Although a little confusion surrounded certain numbers some days because of the convoluted nature of the blackboard directions, it went relatively well.

When we introduced color into the designs I struggled a little. I’ve never been great with color, but color theory was interesting and helpful. I had issues incorporating color into my designs but I believe it did end up working out pretty well. 

The mounting process was a little frustrating in the end. The matte board was expensive and hard to cut. The most annoying part was the printing of the nine compositions. The colors and print quality was really nice but the ink scraped off extremely easily and several of my designs were damaged. This was disappointing considering how much it cost to print. 

Jayhawk Progression

Fall Colors and changing leaves

Changing Classes.

More changing leaves

Change: Construction

Designs Reflection

I believe my final nine designs turned out pretty well. The ones in this process notebook are my preliminary prints so they are not the final versions that have been printed on matte. I really ended up liking the color schemes I chose. Originally I was leaning towards darker warm colors but I began to realize that saturated light colors popped a lot better and really evoked the meaning of ‘Intense.’

Following the instruction of my professor I tried an overlapping transparency technique with the exclamation point design. I found this to be a successful effect. This seemed to create unity among the letters “INTENS” and better created the shape of the exclamation point.

Little change was made to my cascading design. I moved the exclamation point so it took the place of the “I” at the beginning of the word. This seemed to better connect the concept of the exclamation point with the word itself and by extension its meaning.

The third design incorporates the same idea. Originally this design featured two contrasting panels one containing the ‘I’ exclamation point, the other, the letters “NTENSE.” I thought the original design was bland and uninteresting. I decided to spice it up a bit and add a bit of noise. I overlapped hundreds of little “INTENSE”s to create the left panel. This effect was quite successful in the end.

I believe my cascading green design and blue contrasting panel designs are the two most successful. I really like the base designs of these two compositions for the reasons listed above but I believe these two versions of their respective designs were most successful. The color schemes chosen for these two seemed to be more striking and “intense.”

The use of striking color, the high contrast, use of exclamation points, and movement combined to make these designs successful as a group and individually. Overall I am pleased with these designs. I am however disappointed with how dark some of the colors printed out. The dark colors appear almost black on the print out even though they were supposed to be dark versions of brown, blue, and green.