STYLE DOES NOT EQUAL FART

These are the final prints I made in my Experimental Printmaking Processes class this week. I chose to address the importance of style in contemporary graphic design in discussion with the Modernist/ International style. I fixated on Sagmeister's statement that Style=Fart and decided to change that expression into one that celebrates style instead.

I experimented with screen printing with different types of stencils and letting the ink flow where it may without any stencils. I also layered in some spray paint to add some bright color and texture. I burned all the typographic elements on a screen and printed them so that they had a hard edge and were more graphic than the other elements on the page. Interesting results, however I think I was successful in expressing my ideas about style.

LSD BRANDING animated GIF

DISPLAY

I stumbled upon a site with a rich selection of graphic design history featuring great book and poster designs. The site is called DISPLAY. Here are a few I found especially intriguing:

DECONSTRUCT // RECONSTRUCT : PACKAGE PROJECT

For this project, we were asked to take a package of your choice and then deconstruct it to reconstruct it into a new packaging design or branding. Using only the visual and typographic elements from the packaging, I decided to take Kleenex brand tissue packaging into a branding of LSD. It was a quick image making project (2 hours) to rearrange existing elements to mean something new. Here are the results:

AIGA RECRUITMENT POSTER

A collaborative project with Robyn Baker. The poster is a recruitment poster for the AIGA student chapter at Otis.

SCREEN PRINTING TRIALS

YAAAAYY!!! I'm still working on these, but on they're way to completion. For this project I'm trying to talk about style, and how things can "be pretty and be smart too". I challenge Stefan Sagmeister's claim that Style=Fart. My motive has no intention of downplaying a great and influential designer, but to simply question the statement as it stands on its own. Is style important? Should we care about style? Why do we associate pleasure with evil? Can't we learn and receive information and be visually satisfied at the same time? I still need to add a few more stencils and eventually type, which makes the statement: Style does not equal Fart. Will be posting the final results soon.

SAN FRANCISCO TRIP

I was in San Francisco labor day weekend and was able to catch the SFMOMA's 75th anniversary show. Lots of cool stuff, here are some images.

DRESS MAKEOVER

This was a quick project completed during my Advanced Image Making class this week. We were given very out of date dresses and were told to make them "modern". The project arose out of discussion about Modernism and modernity, and what the distinctions between the two are.


Amy, Yongmin, and I transformed the dress by taking off length, adding functionality to the dress with pockets and a feature that allowed you to change the length of the dress on the sides. We also added some new fabric, and spray painted over the original color and pattern of the dress which was absolutely hideous. I wish I had a picture of the original dress, didn't come to mind while it was all happening.

FINDINGS

Here are a bunch of things I've piled into my "i like" folder on my desktop. They are the things that I see while surfing this ever expanding web. They are things that make me excited about design.

SOMETHING COOL HAPPENED

Yesterday a class that I really wanted to take got canceled. At first I was upset because I had wanted to take this class for quite some time. Turns out, however, that there was miraculously some spots in a silkscreening class. I've been wanting to take a silkscreening class for what seems like FOREVER!! Just goes to show that good news can come out of some not so good news.


This is the first print I made today in class in the demo. Haha, silly I know, but my room mate and I who was in the same boat could not help but be super excited!