Que Sera Sera 3

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I made use of a brick wall image to ‘spray’ my name over it. I applied a stroke with another color to made it look as though it’s layered with multiple colors. I added some inner shadow and outer glow to give it some depth. It seem pretty plain to me but I received multiple feedback during the ‘work-in-progress’ session from both Mimi and my peers that it had too much going on in the background. Also, there was some issue with the letter ‘E’ as it wasn’t as legible as the other letters. However, to create depth, I had to forgo the functionality in this case the legibility in exchange for the aesthetics of this typography portrait. I eventually came to terms to let this piece go and proceeded on others.

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With similar methods applied with the Graffiti piece, I managed to come up with this CSI piece which looked really decent to me as well. Similarly, I received the same feedback for this just like the Graffiti one which led me to work on other pieces which were eventually my final 4. I probably would not have settled for this piece anyway as I would have liked to explore on more methods digitally.

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This piece was one of my favorite but due to the ambiguity of it’s identity as I was told that it could represent either Architect or Interior Designer or even a Landscape Architect(which was what it was meant to be) was really worrisome. I finally came to terms with it after a long struggle as I convinced myself that this is a module whereby I learn to communicate to the audience visually… but it was really hard.

 

Next Post : The final 4 
Architect
Game Designer
Soldier
Chinese Calligrapher

Que Sera Sera 2

PROJECT BRIEF
So creating typographic portraits by using my whole name, nickname or initials to describe my future job was the task at hand whereby each solution must consider the following factors: choice of typeface, style, size, weight, use of upper and lower case characters as well as space in between the letters.

And so the first job was to brainstorm about the jobs that I would be interested to work on, and there I was doodling on some of the ideas such as

  1. Architect
  2. Dentist
  3. Plastic Surgeon
  4. Chef
  5. Milkman
  6. Photographer
  7. Chinese Calligrapher
  8. F1 Driver
  9. Photographer
  10. Interior Designer
  11. Product Designer
  12. DJ
  13. Crime Scene Investigator
  14. Graffiti Artist
  15. Pastry Chef
  16. Product Designer
  17. Tattoo Artist

Okay wow, that’s actually a lot of jobs now that I listed them all out. Some of them I’ve tried initially by sketching out but did not further pursue the idea which I’ll point out or some that I just totally abort the idea because it was just beyond my current capabilities. Generally the jobs that I’ve listed are all things that I really like or careers I’ve thought of pursuing when I was younger.

Okay, enough of blabbering, let’s check out my processes on my initial ideas before we move on to how I have eventually come up with my final designs.

Architect

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So this was done on the very first lesson and I thought of working in somewhat similar manners for one of my final board and then I found this,ikea-create-small-27643
So there I was thinking I’m a genius for thinking of such a method to bring out my fonts for my Architect portrait but it had already been done by IKEA. Nevertheless, I proceeded on to work on my first composition.

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These are just some sketching as to how I’m going form up my name with the walls and rooms on a floor plan. Also, it shows my doodles on idea as to how to create other jobs such as the Dentist and Tattoo Artist.

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Eventually, I proceeded to digitally created a floor plan which depicts my nickname ‘Benji’.

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I used a background of a table top with timber finishing and lay over all my past technical drawing works in polytechnic as some sort of hints of the job related to this portrait.

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I finished it off by using a first person view of drawing up a floor plan by placing a person’s hand drawing on the paper with a ruler and a marker.

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Alternatively, I attempted to create fonts from a 3D software which didn’t turn out the way I envisioned it to be as it would probably take a really long time for me to render it. Nevertheless, as shown below is my poor attempt.

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However, this setback did not refrain me from trying to create something that looks 3D as I sought after different methods to produce something that seem somewhat 3 dimensional.

Chef

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I happened to see this imagery and thought it was a really cool application of using real life items to create fonts. However, I thought since it was a 2D Module, I should use this opportunity to practice on my Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator skills, hence deciding against to create something physically and taking a good photo of it.

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This was the final composition of this piece of ‘Chef’ and I was really disappointed as it was a really cheap way of creating one of my typography portrait and thought that I wasn’t really creating a font myself which led me on to the next typography portrait to solely focus on creating my very own type font and then proceeding to working on the aesthetics.

Milkman

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So in ‘Milkman’, I created the Font by using Shapes and then removing certain areas to give hints of my nickname Benji. A white color was used with a tint of grey to create a somewhat milky color. Black was used as background to thoroughly bring out the Milky color.

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This is the final layout as I used milk splashes on some of the fonts to create some sort of innuendo to what my job scope is. Straws coming out from a packet milk in the letter ‘N’ was one of the other one that I thought worked really well. The Bull’s horn didn’t really work for Mimi and I can see why she mentioned that because it is a Bull which i mistakenly took for as a cow.

F1 Racer

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For this piece, I first placed the chosen type font randomly and proceeded using pen tool to map out the roads.

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Thereafter, I filled the area with a road texture and used multiple effects in Photoshop

  • Bevel & Emboss
  • Stroke
  • Pattern Overlay
  • Drop Shadow

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This was the final piece after I added in a background. I really didn’t like how the roads turned out to be and decided to abort this piece as I couldn’t really relate to this job anyway.

Pastry Chef

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After my initial disappointment with my ‘Chef’ piece, I decided to work on another, but this time using a type font and try to create the honey glaze over a pancake instead of using imagery directly found online.

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After multiple try outs with the various blending options in Photoshop such as

  • Pattern Overlay
  • Bevel & Emboss
  • Inner Shadow
  • Inner Glow
  • Drop Shadow

I was able to create the effect of honey over the top of a pancake depicting my nickname once ‘Benji‘.

After consultation with Mimi, she suggested me to make the font a bit more liquefied as it seems like it’s splat onto the pancake which didn’t come across as very natural but artificial. Thereafter I decided to scrap this piece and start working on other pieces.

Product Designer/Interior Designer (?)

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In this piece, I tried to use furniture imagery found online to create my font and added feint background in my attempt for a 3 dimensional piece which I think I kind of failed miserably once again.

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Halfway through this, I thought I was really trying to force it out and something just didn’t feel right. Perhaps it was the distracting background which kind of steals the attention away from the products which are supposed to depict my nickname.

 

Interior Designer

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I came across this interior design of a cupboard/shelf which gave me some sort of inspiration for the upcoming piece.

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In this piece, I attempted to use shape and drop shadows to create some kind of a shelf design as referenced from the Instagram image.

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Select a type font that I like in this case is ETH Black.

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By adjusting the brush setting and select directly onto the font, I was able to create the brush effect around the font. The settings I tweak with were

  • Brush Tip Shape
  • Scattering
  • Smoothing

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The final outcome of the brush wasn’t what I intended as I intended for the brush effect which seem somewhat like bokeh – the visual quality of the out-of-focus areas of a photographic image, especially as rendered by a particular lens.

The intended outcome was to have it in multiple colors with a larger brush tip but I decided to move on to trying other alternatives as I’ve achieved my objective of exploring the different effects Photoshop offers albeit not mastering it altogether.

DJ

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This effect was created by Stylize > Wind. It created the effect of something like a soundwave which was to represent the music that I’ll be playing as a DJ.

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I added a gradient of multiple colors to further bring out the sound waves.

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I created a rounded rectangle and created it as a pattern and applied gradient over it to created the image of the volume on the sound system.

In all honesty, this piece was quite embarrassing as it look really tacky but it was fun trying out.

 

Conclusion
After doing all these exploration, I realized that I have done something that was somewhat similar to what Mimi made us do on the very first lesson, which was to churn out as many ideas as possible on the A3 paper with 30 circles.

Despite not having any final pieces, I managed to explore multiple ways of application on different methods which were detrimental in creating my next few pieces.

Sneak Peek
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Things to note
‘The aim of this project is to use typography as an end in itself, minimizing supporting imagery. Conceptually driven solutions and letter forms are combined with literal or abstract images to express your future job. The outcomes address either materials, the process or a result of using specific media and technique.’

After revising the brief and consultation with Mimi, I realized that my applications were somewhat narrative very much towards process and result and less of using literal or abstract images in my expressions for the fonts which I attempt to rectify. 

Que Sera Sera 1

Dada was an artistic and literary movement that began in Zürich, Switzerland. It arose as a reaction to World War I and the nationalism that many thought had led to the war. Influenced by other avant-garde movements – Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and Expressionism – its output was wildly diverse, ranging from performance art to poetry, photography, sculpture, painting, and collage. Dada’s aesthetic, marked by its mockery of materialistic and nationalistic attitudes, proved a powerful influence on artists in many cities, including Berlin, Hanover, Paris, New York, and Cologne, all of which generated their own groups. The movement dissipated with the establishment of Surrealism, but the ideas it gave rise to have become the cornerstones of various categories of modern and contemporary art.

It was the first conceptual art movement where the focus of the artists was not on crafting aesthetically pleasing objects but on making works that often upended bourgeois sensibilities and that generated difficult questions about society, the role of the artist, and the purpose of art.
Dada. [Internet]. 2017. TheArtStory.org website. Available from:
http://www.theartstory.org/movement-dada.htm [Accessed 01 Feb 2017]

MOST IMPORTANT ART OF THIS ART MOVEMENT

“R. Mutt’, however, was an unusual name, with comic overtones, and this might have given people a clue as to its falseness. Later in life, when asked whether ‘R. Mutt’ was a pun on the German word Armut meaning poverty, Duchamp was quoted as explaining:

Marcel Duchamp, 'Fountain' 1917, replica 1964

Marcel Duchamp, ‘Fountain’ 1917, replica 1964

Mutt comes from Mott Works, the name of a large sanitary equipment manufacturer. But Mott was too close so I altered it to Mutt, after the daily cartoon strip “Mutt and Jeff” which appeared at the time, and with which everyone was familiar. Thus, from the start, there was an interplay of Mutt: a fat little funny man, and Jeff: a tall thin man … I wanted any old name. And I added Richard [French slang for money-bags]. That’s not a bad name for a pissotière. Get it? The opposite of poverty. But not even that much, just R. MUTT.
(Camfield 1989, p.23.)” 
Howarth, Sophie. (April 2000) revised by Mundy, Jennifer. (August 2015) “Fountain.” http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573 (1 February 2017).

“Duchamp was the first artist to use a readymade and his choice of a urinal was guaranteed to challenge and offend even his fellow artists. There is little manipulation of the urinal by the artist other than to turn it upside-down and to sign it with a fictitious name. By removing the urinal from its everyday environment and placing it in an art context, Duchamp was questioning basic definitions of art as well as the role of the artist in creating it. With the title, Fountain, Duchamp made a tongue in cheek reference to both the purpose of the urinal as well to famous fountains designed by Renaissance and Baroque artists. In its path-breaking boldness the work has become iconic of the irreverence of the Dada movement towards both traditional artistic values and production techniques. Its influence on later twentieth century artists such as Jeff Koons, Robert Rauschenberg, Damien Hirst, and others is incalculable.”
Dada. [Internet]. 2017. TheArtStory.org website. Available from:
http://www.theartstory.org/movement-dada.htm [Accessed 01 Feb 2017]

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

  • Duchamp created a new way of looking at an object at it’s literal value – what we call conceptual art
  • Dada artists are known for their use of readymade objects – everyday objects that could be bought and presented as art with little manipulation by the artist.
  • The introduction of chance was a way for Dadaists to challenge artistic norms and to question the role of the artist in the artistic process. – Many artist were exponent on Hans Arp’s law of chance whereby he incorporate the chance factor into his creation of works of art which went against all norms of traidtional art production in which preparations were meticulously planned and thought for before the execution of completing the artwork.
  • Dada artists are known for their use of readymade objects – everyday objects that could be bought and presented as art with little manipulation by the artist. The use of the readymade forced questions about artistic creativity and the very definition of art and its purpose in society.


HANNAH HOCH

  • The only woman in the absurdist Dada art movement of the 1910s, German artist Hannah Hoch pioneered an edgy style of photomontage that’s showcased in a major new exhibition.
  • One of the originators of Photomontage
Das schöne Mädchen [The Beautiful Girl]
In terms of composition, the artwork by Hannah Hoch (image on the left above) was one that I really like among the others. Somehow the composition shows me a large head of a lady and a small body and with the recurring patterns, it really caught my eye. Well, she is one of the originators of Photomontage, right? I’m sure her composition skills would be second to none considering that she’s such a famous artist during the DADA art movement. 
Personally, I thought the artworks of Hannah Hoch’s were pretty minimal(image on the right above) and not what I usually try to produce. Then again, my works from Semester 1 was previously thought of as ‘too much’  as I tend to fill up way too much of a canvas when there are room to be lesser. So I thought Hannah Hoch’s work would be a good reference for me as to how to keep things minimal.
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However, one artist that Mimi introduced to us in class got me so amazed with his works. He’s none other than the legendary, Stefan Sagmeister.
The thing about Sagmeister’s artworks for me is that it works really well despite looking so minimal and clean.
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Well, I guess the time is now for me to talk less and do more by start working on my A4 canvases for Que Sera Sera. 🙂