With any project, we always start with the ideas! The drafts! This part of the process is always fun and painful. It also a part of self discover too!
I’M INDONESIAN
For this, I immediately want to do something with batik motifs. What is batik you might ask? Batik is both an art and a craft, which is becoming more popular and well known in the West as a wonderfully creative medium. The art of decorating cloth in this way, using wax and dye, has been practised for centuries. In Java, Indonesia, batik is part of an ancient tradition, and some of the finest batik cloth in the world is still made there. The word batik originates from the Javanese tik and means to dot.
Different Batik form
To make a batik, selected areas of the cloth are blocked out by brushing or drawing hot wax over them, and the cloth is then dyed. The parts covered in wax resist the dye and remain the original colour. This process of waxing and dyeing can be repeated to create more elaborate and colourful designs. After the final dyeing the wax is removed and the cloth is ready for wearing or showing.
But which region of batik I’ll be using? That’s an interesting question to answer. Since Indonesia is a diverse country, we have different motifs of batik which are unique to each region.
Batik Ciamis
In the end I choose to use the Ciamis Batik. The reason why I used it because the motifs are very compact and will help me make the design that I envision, which I will elaborate in the next part of the Process.
I’M A TRANSLATOR
The initial though with this is the concept of using Google Translate to represent that I’m a translator. But I was concerned with the fact that may name end up very small in the composition, and Shirley also agreed. So she suggested blowing up my name. The way to do it was quite a challenge. And I ended up scraping my initial sketch and went with a bit of a not so straight forward approach.
I had the idea of using words and rearrange them in a way that will create the shape of the letters of my name. This was the first sketch of it. Shirley agreed that this was a much better representation and suggested to add a notepad background to tie the typography together.
I’M DILIGENT
My initial approach was using books inside the composition.
But I had reservations since I don’t really like books (haha).
My type of diligent shows when I’m doing my assignments and homework. Then one day whist struggling with this typography idea, I started staring at ants walking across my desk. They were heading toward the left over bread I had that I had forgotten to close the casing. It hit me. Why don’t use this ants to represent my diligent side? Ants are known being diligent creatures in the animal kingdom. The workers work long days and nights carrying tons of food which way more than their bodies to the ant colony.
Other than the ants, the other animal that popped up in my mind that represented diligent is the bees. I ended up using the bees and their honeycomb because they appeal more to me. And with suggestions from Shirley, my final design included one bee to represent myself doing a lot of work load.
I’M A NIGHT OWL
With the Night Owl, I went with a very straightforward concept. Along the way I came up with a couple designs:
One with my name engraved on the owls bellies
One with people sleeping and blowing nose with my name inside the balloon-ish snot. This was somewhat disgusting.
Another one I went back similar to the first design. I drew the surrounding tress and combined it with some owls.
However Shirley, our class instructor felt that just writing my name on the drawings would not be creative enough. She said to combine the things that represent the “Night Owl” and put them inside the letters itself. I can’t thank Shirley enough. The final result was amazing.
Next will be the Final post: Final Process and Outcome. Stay tuned!