Shana Moulton: Whispering Pines.

Shana Moulton’s Whispering Pines is probably one of my most favorite contemporary video artists. Her videos are somewhat goofy, but beautiful in the same aspect. I love the fact that she incorporates qualities of dancing because I love to dance. I tend to make little dance videos with one of my best friends. I always find myself dancing along with Moulton when I watch her work.

“Shana Moulton creates evocatively oblique narratives in her video and performance works. Combining an unsettling, wry humor with a low-tech, Pop sensibility, Moulton plays a character whose interactions with the everyday world are both mundane and surreal, in a domestic sphere just slightly askew. As her protagonist navigates the enigmatic and possibly magical properties of her home decor, Moulton initiates relationships with objects and consumer products that are at once banal and uncanny.”1

1. http://www.eai.org/eai/artistBio.htm?id=10320

Exercise with Speak.

This is just an exercise for one of my design classes…not an actual speak spread.

Taking the article “Fabulous Us” by Natalia Ilyin and including it in a class exercise to design spreads for Speak Magazine, I had to find imagery that would fit with the context of what Speak is all about. Communication and restrictions are just a couple of segments that the article covers. I felt that applying imagery of locks and doors would fit these spreads appropriately. This was an exercise for me to surpass my normal design ability and to just have fun. This was a class project.

This is definitely the wild side of my design. I’m typically more conservative.

“Speak was a magazine, the old-fashioned kind, with paper and ink and a really expensive print bill. It published long-form interviews, fiction, essays and features on a variety of topics.

It debuted in 1995, and after several inauspicious issues, found its niche as an “uncommercial” glossy. Unlike most titles, its editorial was designed not for advertisers or a narrow demographic, but for people who fancied a thoughtful and provocative read. The magazine ceased publication in 2001.”1

1. http://www.speakmag.com/mainframe_ab.html

Speak Magazine: Spread 1

Speak Magazine: Spread 2

Speak Magazine: Spread 1

Faculty Concert Series: Patten Performances

Designed for a contest.

Creating a typographic hierarchy and a clear sound to a classical performance, aesthetics such as unity, suitability and universal application was used.  The project, in the end, would consist of three separate posters, each to a different faculty performance (series), with a postcard for each, and a cd case, along with an insert page.

I decided to use the chosen image for it’s sound look. Although classical music is structured, music itself and its soundwaves are organic. I created this image in response to that. The type treatment holds a heirarchy that also references back to the structured compostition that classical music makes.

Faculty Concert Series Package

Type Specimen Akzidenz Grotesk & Mosh.

Two type specimen posters were assigned to demonstrate the personality, as well as emphasizing the formal qualities of the typeface.

For the first poster, the typeface had to be selected from Typographic Specimens: The Great Typefaces, written by Meggs and Carter. The body copy that went along with the typeface had to be set twice within the poster, each being three font point sizes apart. My classic typeface is called Akzidenz Grotesk.

The second poster’s typeface had to be a web based font. The body copy had to be selected from a fictional or outside text that related to the chosen font, also being set twice and being three point sizes apart. My web-based font is called Mosh from Misprinted Type. My passage chosen is a song called Dance Inside by The All-American Rejects.

Both posters included mainly the same restrictions, such as: one complete alpha-numeric set, including punctuation, for each subset of the face, the name of the typeface, and also as stated earlier, the body copy.

-Akzidenz Grotesk is primarily based on a grid and the font was created to have short ascenders and descenders. The letters are mostly flat with very rigid endings. Taking all this into consideration, I chose a couple letter to scale rather large to demonstrate all these characteristics. My composition is also based on the grid, just as the font, and all the type is justified left to right to reference the rigid and very flat letters of Akzindenz Grotesk.

-Mosh is a very intricate, but also organic type of script typeface that has lots of extended lines that swoop and twine on the capital letters. The song chosen, is based on all the different types of emotions one deals with by being engaged in a relationship, primarily a sexual one. There are very provocative and intimate moments that take place in this song. The colors chosen, which are pink and brown, are basically referencing chocolate and love. With all the organic lines that the typeface creates, they are mimicked to demonstrate the thoughts that occur in all different directions throughout one’s mind when worrying about what is going on in his or her life when it comes to an intimate relationship.

 

 

Akzidenz Grotesk

 

 

Mosh

Cindy Li Comes to Chattanooga.

Last Thursday, April 9, Cindy Li was nice enough to come to Chattanooga to speak to the community about networking. Networking really is something to take advantage of because of the friends or opportunities that can take place. Li told of how she met people through other friends and by doing this she was able recieve job opportunities out of it. At first I didn’t really care about networking and didn’t understand why it was so important, but listening to what Li had to say really knocked the reasons into my head. I’m so thankful that Leslie Jensen-Inman arranged for all of this to take place within the Chattanooga community. The whole experience was amazing. Not only did I get to attend two of Li’s talks, but Jensen-Inman also arranged for Li to come and meet with our senior design class. We were able to talk to her one on one while we reviewed our portfolios together. It really was a great opportunity to say the least. Cindy Li is such a wonderful and helpful person. I retrieved so many helpful comments to put forth into my portfolio and my life as a designer. Thank you so much Cindy and Leslie for making this happen for the UTC students and Chattanooga community!

Untitled: Self Portrait.

Pop culture trends, when examined closely, often reveal a subtle distortion of reality. Reality confession cams and Benetton clothing advertisements, while representing opposite ends of a spectrum of intent and form, magnify and amplify the relationship between the viewer and subject. I am interested in wedding the emotional drama that typifies many video confessionals and the often stark visual drama used in fashion advertising; both, in their own way, simultaneously personal and impersonal. Why people tend to feel comfortable when placed alone with a camera and how they express themselves without feeling judged.

As a self-portrait that reflects pop culture trends and a distortion of reality, I am exploring the relationship between my thoughts and actions. Through this video, I am confronting my own deep insecurities and my inability to verbalize everyday thoughts. It is an attempt to embrace and give voice to my own constant fear.

*These are still images taken from the actual video.

Photo Credit: Jessica Taylor

Photo Credit: Jessica Taylor

Sitting left to right: Stephen Bush, Alyssa Fryar, Nick Lamkin, Shaina Dobosh, Michelle Oliver, Julie Burney, Tenley Mayfield

Check out more of show one at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jessi_taylor/

Gabriel Shalom: Beardbox.

With my background of loving to dance, I find myself watching this all the time because I want to dance to the beat Gabriel Shalom makes in his Beardbox video. As he makes his sounds, he is also in this process of shaving. He calls it a videomusical self-portrait. I really don’t have a whole lot to say about this video other than the fact that it’s pretty fantastic. This is something that has been an overall influence of my video that I placed in the University of TN at Chattanooga’s senior show.

http://www.gabrielshalom.com/

you can view Beardbox at http://vimeo.com/2790928

Senior Thesis for ‘09 Exhibition.

Fear. Self-conscious. Confession. Religion.

These are all things I have a hard time opening up to people about. As a soon to be graphic design graduate of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga I plan to video installation as my senior thesis. I’ve always had a hard time expressing myself with others around me and this gives me a chance to inform others in a creative way. I guess you could say that I have a tendency to be socially awkward at times.

What’s so strange is that I’m not shy when it comes to meeting people, but only when it comes to expressing my opinion about something. Shyness is universal which a lot of people don’t know. I’m forcing myself to step out of my little comfort zone and express to the world my anxieties and fears. This is a rough of a soon to be completed project. Video is a beautiful thing. It’s along the same lines of photography but it’s just a step up; it creates motion and it captures a clearer story.

Video stills.

Travel Sketch by Gleb Solntsev.

So I found this illustrator on Behance named Gleb Solntsev. His work is absolutely amazing. From what I can gather from him, he works in illustration, fashion, and drawing. This one particular drawing(s) is from Travel Sketch. He doesn’t really mention what it’s about, but all these sketches (18) are drawn in a journal. Each sketch is handled with a different manner, but you can tell they all belong together by the way the artist handles the lines.

I used to sketch like this all the time when I was in high school. I loved beachy scenes and still do. They are typically cliche, but I think the way this artist chooses to handle his images ends up being more new and fresh, rather than something one has seen everyday of their life.

These drawings have definitely inspired me to start sketching again. I love the idea of sketching them in a journal, rather than just some old ordinary sketchbook.

Travel Sketch by Gleb Solntsev

Senior Exhibition Potential Designs.

As a graphic design student at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, my class was put together in groups to compete over the senior exhibition promotional designs that will take place on two different dates. The first show will start on March 31 and will continue until April 9. The second show will start April 14 and end April 24. As these designs are made we all have to keep in mind that the designers are not the only ones in the show. Painters and sculptors will also be exhibiting so in making these designs, we need to keep in mind that there is a range of people that we need to keep in mind, and not design solely on just ourselves.

With these following designs, poster and mailer, we have chosen to keep a numerous amount of whitespace in order to show an overall clean and elegant exhibition. These colors are located within the text “senior show.” They are based on cmyk, but placed in an gradient to show overlapping and depth. This is something that all of us as fine art majors deal with. We all have to think conceptually deep and no matter what major we are in, whether design in or sculpting, we all go back to the beginning foundations of the art department courses. Liquid Lines is the chosen typeface and it sends off a very bright message, along with the color that it is stationed with. It’s bold, flashy and contemporary. We need to have something bold and eyecatching for this exhibit.

*Note: Not final design, just a candidate.

Senior Show, Poster, 2009

Senior Show, Mailer, 2009