Project Name: (Un)Common Objects
The Ask/The Challenge/Project Statement
- I was asked to use various common objects in my house in combination with black ink to create marks. From there tasked with manipulating these marks and integrating a word to create a design that reflected the tone of the word with the textural elements. Overall, I had to find the ability of images to express and enhance conceptual meaning.
Design Process
- My first phase was the easiest and most freeing part of the process. I simply found my objects I wanted to use to make impressions/marks, which ended up being a butterfly hair clip, a fork, a spoon, a marker cap, a lighter, a bobby pin, my lucky clay 3 legged pig, and a soda can. I filled a container with black india ink, and started to dip and stamp. I tried various techniques including dragging the objects, stamping them, and using them to splatter ink.
-After this phase, I observed the marks and tried to feel their energy to decide what word matched the style of the marks. After narrowing down my word selection to ‘tumultuous’ (for my spoon marks) and ‘cosmic’ (for my clay pig marks) I began to conceptualize different compositions with a pencil in my sketchbook that would encapsulate the marks and integrate the word smoothly.
-Finally, after being mostly settled on two compositions, I scanned all of my marks and brought them into Adobe Photoshop to digitally manipulate the marks. I pulled out the most interesting parts with the quick selection tool and used the brush tool to touch up anything that I did not like.
Design Solution
- I ended up using the dots from my clay pig to create a negative space that would spell out the word cosmic. Originally, I had used the dots the opposite way; I had them come closer and closer together until they spelled out the word cosmic horizontally in the center. After some critique, I inverted the image and put the word on a diagonal. I cleaned up the dots surrounding the word to make it look almost like a galaxy. For my spoon marks and the word ‘tumultuous’, I envisioned a tornado made out of the marks. I played with different ways the tornado could direct a viewer’s focus. Originally, I had the word starting at the top. After critiques and more sketches, I eventually ended on a layout that had the tornado (aka spoon marks) engulfing the word and pulling it from the bottom up, like a real storm would.
