graphic design 1
spring 05
John McVey, instructor
 

icon | symbol
series of 10 icons/symbols

Choose 10 objects, subjects, actions and through a progression of thumbnail sketches simplify them to their purest form. Conceptualize.

Start with sketches first, because you want to think through all ten ideas, without getting too deeply into any one. Hard to backtrack.

Think telegraphy : strong marks, that carry through static, hold up. Reduce the visual information -- translate an action into an abstract visual form. Be inventive. Use as few lines and details as possible.

Experiment with different angles, perspective, positive/negative space and abstractions until you discover a strong visual solution.

Use visual resources to research what an object looks like and/or how it might function. Work with tracing paper, draw your ideas. Scan in your sketches and refine in Illustrator.

Keep all 10 marks visually consistent. Do not focus on one for very long, work on more than one at the same time. Create the graphics as a family of images.

Look at magazines, text books, web sites or computer application toolboxes for examples of visual icons. Consider how or where your graphic marks might be used. Who is your audience?

Keep all of your sketches. Work systematically.

Using your strongest sketch/solution to create a final black and white graphic for each visual.

Consider the scale of the elements in your graphic and how they will be transformed if you reduced or enlarged it. Think uniformity.

Print the icons at 400% to see how the weight and balance of the image changes. How would it look on a giant billboard or banner?

Must be vector (Adobe Illustrator) files.

 
recipe
instruction set

one two-page spread, presenting a favorite recipe as if it were printed in a cookbook.

attend to hierarchy of information. what comes first, second? must include name of recipe, ingredients, quantities, method of preparation.
use grid.

 
cookbook
instruction set

Using your recipe layout from the last project, gather all of your classmates' recipes and create a cookbook. It is easier to collect the recipes as text files so prepare your own recipe as a text file to share with classmates.

You need not employ the same grid or typographic features you used for your recipe. Indeed, you will need to accommodate the different ways that others have structured similar data.

If you use images, use your own, do not use the previous designers' graphics. Begin by assembling all the information; recipes and images, and create a thumbnail roadmap of the entire book dummy.

You will need title frontcover/backcover (separate jacket optional); title page; table of contents contents (consider chapters or sections for different food types); recipe title; ingredients/instructions; folios/page numbers; credit page for origin of recipe (whose recipe is it?, but may be incorporated in table of contents)

Think
grid
simplicity and attention to white space
flow
clarity of information
continuity, consistency (typographic style sheets will help)
color
neatness

final presentation
book dummy will be presented as an accordion fold book or other form of bound book.
color or black and white.
 

letterpress exercise

Take the word another.

Find a phrase or short sentence that uses this word.
You might find it in a dictionary, a line of poetry, etc etc.
We typeset our respective expressions in lead, each in a different typeface.

Print.

The result is a broadside of
eight expressions
our names
place
date.

something like a poem.
 

self portrait
starting point : school ID
ending point : individual character
final 800 x 600 pixels, 72ppi, RGB (jpeg, no layers etc)

iconicism
exhibition poster

the work :
create poster(s) employing selections from our suites of symbols

language must include (but is not limited to) :
Iconicism, May 2-6, 2005, Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, Massachusetts

you need not work with your own symbols.
you may (and probably should) mix symbols.