Critical and Creative Thinking 2021
Eva Mullen
★ ★ ★
Formal Shape Posters
For this assignment, we were to make posters using shapes and adhering to the Gestalt principles.
I initially drew 20 shapes and used those to make several rudimentary black and white poster designs that I could choose from. Once I had chosen three designs that resonated with me, I added color.
I had a very structured process for modifying the colors in these pieces. I picked three colors I liked to create a palette for the initial posters.
Then, I went through each poster and chose one color to keep: orange for the first, red for the second, and magenta for the third. For each poster, I changed the remaining colors to one complimentary to that which I had chosen to keep; blue, blue-green, and yellow-green.
My next step was to work with that complimentary color and use various shades and tints to turn each poster into a monochromatic piece.
The final step was to superimpose my designs over different surfaces across campus, creating mockups of a campus installation.
★ ★ ★
Icons
The goal of this assignment was to create icons representing three different verbs.
I started with 100 sketches – 10 verbs with 10 sketches each. I narrowed it down and ultimately chose part, draw, and discover as the verbs I wanted to finalize.
Working with my sketches, I created digital rough drafts for each verb.
Part – I wanted to create lines with the suggestion that they are moving apart
Draw – I attempted to depict the tip of a pencil in the action of drawing a line
Discover – I tried to incorporate well-understood images such as a question mark and a magnifying glass to portray the concept of discovery
I created an inverted version for each rough draft as well.
The final versions were more abstracted versions of the rough drafts.
Part – It was suggested during critique that the lines seemed to move more towards each other rather than apart. By turning it horizontal, it naturally reads left to right.
Draw – This one remained similar to the rough draft. It was mostly a matter of simplification.
Discover – The imagery of the magnifying glass and the question mark became pretty abstracted. Remnants of the original idea are still there, but they’re simplified almost beyond recognition, creating a symbol.
The final piece of this project was to create physical versions of each icon.
★ ★ ★
Product Packaging
For this project, I created a luxury perfume. The assignment was to research an artist and then emulate their work in packaging design for a product.
The artist I chose to research is Annie Atkins. She is a graphic designer for film, meaning she creates the graphic elements that bring films to life. Her most notable work is seen in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. L’Air de Panache is a perfume that plays an important role in the film, and it inspired me to create my own perfume.
Rather than trying to mimic Atkins’ specific style, I attempted to emulate the process by which she creates her graphics. Most of her work is for films set in the past, so she must research the style and techniques of the period in order to create believable designs. I decided to choose a movie set in the past, research that era, and then design packaging that looks as though it might be found on the movie’s set.
The film I chose was Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which takes place in 1986. My first step was to watch the movie to reflect on its imagery and general aesthetics. I then compiled an image board of styles and colors that I wanted to work with before switching to focus on the perfume itself.
The name Gior comes from translating “day” (as in Day Off) into Italian, and the extended form of Aria de Gior (air of day) came later. I wanted the fragrance itself and the packaging to feel cohesive, so I knew I needed to create a scent profile. To determine what would best represent a perfume from 1986, I researched the most popular perfumes of the 1980s to determine which scents were most commonly included, and picked those that I felt would be compatible with one another.
I felt that my luxury perfume needed to be a part of a luxury brand. To name that brand, I took my own first name, but my last name seemed too Irish to be on the bottle of an Italian perfume. My brother’s first name is Leo, so I tweaked that slightly and came up with Eva Leoné.
After compiling numerous sketches and design ideas, I drew a dieline before creating some rough draft design.
The design went through many iterations, but I ultimately chose a peach color scheme with a combination of hand-drawn script and sans serif font.
Because I wanted to keep the external packing simplistic and elegant, I needed some other way to present information about the fragrance. I decided to include a pamphlet, inspired somewhat by the pamphlets included with Apple products. The pamphlet folds and sits on top of the product in the box.
Although I do have a 0.1oz sample of Gior that I ordered from a custom fragrance company, the perfume bottle used for the actual product was purchased at an antique store in the Lincoln Haymarket.
★ ★ ★
Experimental Type and Current Issue Poster
The idea behind this assignment was to research a current issue and, using experimental forms of typography, create a poster about the issue. I chose to research consumerism and its relationship to child labor.
In my sketches, I wanted to depict the deadly nature of child labor and the role played specifically by American consumers. I played with the irony of having words like “sale” and “only” and “buy” written in blood, as I felt it portrayed the two very separate experiences of production and consumption. I then made fake blood from flour, corn syrup, and food coloring, and experimented a bit with its viscosity and appearance as blood.
To create the physical elements of my poster, I bought a white t-shirt and hung it on my wall. I used my finger to paint the words in the fake blood, and then created a backdrop by collaging together all my saved receipts.
The final piece ended up looking somewhat like the cover of a magazine or editorial, which is once again ironic in its expression of anti-consumerist ideologies via consumer product.
★ ★ ★
