vitoria, no c

Different Perspectives and Street Photography

How to Have Great Ideas – Take Notice

Today, in Graphic Design Theory, we experimented with some different creative methods to expand our creative minds.

We followed some prompts from the book How to Have Great Ideas and went out and about Downtown Ames to take pictures and find objects that could have different meanings or characteristics.

Here are some of my results:

Could this be a fancy nail polish?

Windows were made for storage

How helpful, a coat hanger in the middle of the street.

from above, so above

Have an awesome week.

[WO]MAN UP! – AIGA Iowa Conference

I can’t even believe that this happened.

Friday night, as I was watching TV and browsing Instagram, I saw that Jessica Walsh had posted a “stories” of her flying to Des Moines for the [WO]MAN UP! Conference. And I wondered: “How is she coming to Des Moines?” and “Why did I not know about this?”

For those wondering, I am a HUUUUGE fan of hers, since 40 Days of Dating launched and I was just starting undergrad without knowledge of where it was going to take me. So, it was only fair that after seeing her Instagram post at 9:30pm I ran to my computer and found out that it was a whole event that was going to take place on Saturday, September 16 in Des Moines. I didn’t even think twice and purchased a ticket last minute and prepared myself mentally that I had a little driving to do the next day.

Saturday came, I had to do some work in the morning so I was only able to go down to Des Moines at around noon, but getting there I met a woman named Michelle who works at a publishing company. It was great meeting people from different backgrounds and that we were all there united with the same purpose – learning and sharing knowledge about design.

I took a workshop in Lettering and after that I watched inspiring women share how graphic design has helped them and their communities through non-profit work. They also shared how other artists and designers can use their skills to help out in their own communities.

I also met a woman from Kansas City who works at a PR firm. It was great sharing the different life experiences we had and what is like to be a designer working in a corporate environment.

This event also brought Jessica Walsh to speak to us. I was over the moon. Her talk was entertaining, quick, and to the point. She shared some of her client work as well as her personal work. This inspired me to pursue my personal endeavors as well as my career in academia, which can be challenging, but if I have time to browse on Instagram I have to develop my personal work too. The best thing of having there was being able to thank her personally for inspiring me so much and also taking a picture (which I look like a psychopath, because I was too nervous to understand what was going on LOL).

It was a great afternoon and I am very thankful for AIGA Iowa for putting on this amazing event. It was a great opportunity, that even though I heard about last minute, has had a big impact my life.

Now off to start another week of hard work and design!

What are you resisting? (ArtGr 511)

CONSUMERIST | RESIST v.2 from Vitória Folletto Faccin on Vimeo.

For this project, we followed the AIGA Iowa – ALLCAPS Call For Submission as our prompt. Therefore, we needed to create something (it’s always a non-specific something) with type exemplifying what we resist on a daily basis.

I had a hard time thinking about a specific word I wanted to work with, but after going over some of the last works I’ve done, specifically my BFA Exhibition and my Project 1 for 511, where both talk about money and consumption, I decided to use the word CONSUMERIST to answer the prompt. (FUN FACT -lol- since my BFA show I’ve been having a hard time buying clothes so consumption is something I’m resisting.)

After this insight, I started to develop this idea.
But now the question was “what am I gonna do?”
I really liked the Project 1 feel of alien abduction/old tv signal/psychedelic imagery and I wanted to explore that a little more.

To start getting some ideas flowing I went to some websites of fast fashion retailers (H&M and Forever 21) and bigger online stores as well (Dolls Kill and Nasty Gal), where I noticed the use of Blackletter as a design element in many of the pieces. I first noticed this trend on Taylor Swift’s new album cover and after going through some clothing websites I could see that this is a current trend.

Moodboard (Photo Credit: Billboard, Forever XXI, DollsKill)

After deciding that I wanted to work with a Gothic typeface, how could I make it relate to consumerism? For this to happen I started to think about the dollar bills and one of the things that sparked my interest was the 100 dollar bill because it has a strong cultural connection to Americans (people know who is in it – Ben Franklin – and are able to recognize it even if small pieces of it are shown).

old 100 dollar bill

So I decided to merge the gothic typeface Old English Text MT with the striking eyes of “Ben” to give the word Consumerist a judgemental stare.

After some troubleshooting and messing with different positioning of the image inside the letters I decided to select the most striking features of the bill and distribute it through the word.

After creating the type I started working on cropping the image. At this point, I went on to brainstorm ways to take it out of the computer in an interesting way. Since one of the parameters of the prompt was that it couldn’t only be “ink on paper” I decided to transfer the design to a t-shirt.

Process of transferring

The learning curve was steep, as I burned a t-shirt on the first try (oops) but I was able to test it out a couple times and came up with a good final result. (Tip #1 – always test out new techniques and materials before going for the final piece)

However, just the t-shirt wasn’t enough for me. I needed to push it further. This is where the alien abduction/psychedelic imagery comes to play. I decided that my final piece would be an unsettling psychedelic video merging still images, lettering, video, and music together.

I chose the song “Cold Step,” available on YouTube’s creator studio as well as recorded sounds of my voice and noises created by shopping bags, paper, packaging, and receipts.

For video and images, I went to a store with my GoPro propped on the edge of my purse so that I could manipulate the merchandise as I went. I also took pictures of myself wearing the T-shirt and used textures from receipts and crinkled paper I scanned to create the different overlays in the video.

To edit it, I used PremierePro. I wanted to explore the different combinations of effects and how to achieve certain looks. Tutorials were of great help.

I believe I achieve the objective to create a disturbing ensemble that showcases the work I did with the word consumerism as well as exemplifies it in an obvious and exaggerated way.

Version 1

FINAL

CONSUMERIST | RESIST v.2 from Vitória Folletto Faccin on Vimeo.