thesis draft

There is much emphasis on designers to be engaged in society. This is because everything designers create have a specific function, practicality, and sensibility. Being engaged in society means keeping up with all of the internet communication and socialization websites which have quickly become an addicting trend. In this new age of social networking, individuals are accustomed to making information about themselves public. But while the information is highly specific to us and our friends, its form often isn’t: Facebook’s interface while highly customizable to a degree is still standard in terms of its aesthetic.

I am really interested in how internet communication/socialization websites can be represented in a pre-internet fashion and are specific to each individual. Facebook has become an autobiography of any given person. Individuals fill out their basic biographical information, as well as filling out more comprehensive information regarding their lifestyles.

I am taking five different people from Facebook, and creating an autobiography/biography of each of them. The autobiography is going to be in the form of print, and specifically book layouts. All of the information presented in these books will be taken directly from what the person wrote on his or her Facebook page. Technically, the books would be considered autobiographies because the information presented is written by that specific person. However, since the form the Facebooks will be taking are determined by how I view t/interpret that person’s information, the books in a sense then become biographies. This will be an exploration of how to visually and specifically represent the web based information of a person using pre-internet methods.

The format of the books are abstract and do not encompass all of the elements of Facebook. As the designer, I chose what elements of the individuals’ Facebook page that would best conceptually describe the individual. However, each book cover has some similarity because they all have two of the same elements, one being the display name of the person and two is each individual’s “about me” quotation which appears under their profile photo on the Facebook interface. Another thing they all have in common, is that they are based on typography.

The first book is for display name Skook Bear. This individual would like to keep her identity anonymous, which is why her display name does not use her real name. Many of the comments left on her page from other people are asking where she has been and why hasn’t she called anybody back. Skook Bear is always on the run, and never has time to use Facebook. People do not comment her page unless they are asking where she is. I designed Skook Bear’s book cover to represent a person who is “on the run” as many of her friends would say. The title of her book runs off the front of the cover and finishes on the back cover. The same idea is mirrored on the spine. The book contains about 216 pages (back and front), many of which are blank, which will be perfectly bound. The pages that are not blank are the first page which contains her basic information and also personal information, both of which she has provided on her page, and about 30 pages that are the text from comments that people left her. The purpose of there being so many blank pages is to portray that she rarely uses her Facebook, and when she does use it, she only looks at what people comment her and never gets back to them.

The colors and typeface where carefully chose to represent the individual. The cover is a dark grey with white text. The dark gray was chosen because Skook Bear is very interested in the new trend of vampire movies, (ex: The Twilight saga) and best fits her online persona of being quite mysterious and unreachable. The white text is set in Futura heavy and light. I was struggling to decide on whether to use a serif, or sans serif. A serif would refer to Skook Bear as being more traditional which is why she doesn’t use Facebook much. However, I decided against that whole idea of tradition and go with a sans serif because Facebook is a new age concept, and she did give in to creating a one. So although she may not go on it much, she does still have one which makes her part of the new age computer generation. Therefore, a sans serif font (especially Futura) would imply that she is encompassed in this generation of Facebookers. Futura is sleek, legible, and holds together quite strongly.

The second book is display name Nicole Ferreira. This individual is very self-centered and what most would call “a party girl.” I designed her book to portray just that. Her book contains 120 pages, however only 60 of them are printed on because I am only printing on one side of the page. The text that appears on her pages is status updates, and like Twitter, you can update your status as many times as you want in a day. Nicole updates her status constantly and has set her user preferences so that people can only see her status updates and not what other people comment on her “Wall.” I decided to take
this idea and print her book on bright pink vellum paper, which describes her online persona.

The bright pink is flashy and center of attention, while the nature of the paper is see through, which conveys to the viewer a superficial quality. I have decided to only print on one side of the paper for two reasons, one because it is see through, and two because I want the viewer to get the sense of the text being stacked on top of each other but still being able to read the text from the other pages underneath the page they are viewing. I did this because all information on Facebook is accessible, even wall posts and status updates from months/years ago. So although you may be looking at the most recent post, you can still scroll down and see previous posts. There are even six or seven posts in optical view at any time when looking at someone’s Facebook. The vellum paper will portray just this. Although you are looking at one post and in this case status updates, you can still see the last couple updates underneath which are older.

The typeface again was chosen to highly represent this person. I chose to use Monotype Corsiva and Edwardian Script ITC, both of which are fancy/feminine typefaces. There is one status update per page and is randomly placed on the page, this way when all are stacked together there is a sense of spontaneity and unpredictability. Nicole exudes both characteristics. The cover is also set in the above typefaces and the colors chosen accordingly to Nicole’. The book itself will be perfectly bound.

The third book is for display name Dan Strommen. This individual keeps a record of everything on Facebook. All of his information is very detailed and personal to him. It is as if his Facebook is a journal or diary. To convey the personal quality of Dan’s Facebook, I designed the cover as though one is looking at a log in screen for Windows. There is a space in one of the rectangular boxes that displays his name, and the one underneath where the password usually goes is his “about me” quotation. There is an arrow next to the two boxes which mimics the arrow one would press to continue onto the computer desktop. This will give the viewer that idea that the information contained inside of the book is personal to the individual, and he is allowing us access to see it.

The colors chosen for the cover are earth tones because as you will read in his personal information section, he is an avid environmentalist. He enjoys nature and outdoor activities. The inside of the cover is designed like a folder, with places to store paper. In these places will be strips of recycled paper with handwritten information taken from his Facebook. Dan Strommen himself will be writing on the slips of paper. Also, his basic and personal information will be handwritten instead of using a computer typeface so that the reader gets the sense that the information is personal and must be treated that way. The point of making his cover a folder is due to the fact that Dan saves everything. He feels that everything has personal value and must be kept in a safe place.

The final two books are still in the process of being made, and are still in the first stages of development. I do want to point out a designer who I am closely looking at for influence. This would be Daniella Spinat from Yale. I am very interested in the way she handles text and typography. I was inspired by her work from the invitations and tickets for the New York Film Festival 09-2005. The combination of very large text in contrast with smaller text is handled perfectly and I am mirroring some of her typographic decisions in my own work.

Also, her color choices are interesting and work well for print. She uses a simple white background color with black text in an aesthetic way that is perfect for print in books, posters, or in this case invitations and tickets.

I am not really aware of any designers who take internet based material and display it in print. However, I did get my inspiration from my design teachers Neil Donnelly who happens to be a friend of Daniella Spinat and also Andrew Shurtz. They has us do a project where we took someone’s Twitter page and turn them into flyers. They all had to use the same template, and they had to be able to be recreated by someone else. The point was to make a serious of 20 flyers that had 20 separate Tweets (1 per page) that were descriptive of the person we chose to represent. I am pushing this idea further into designing books, which are a tad tougher than flyers.

FACEBOOK BOOKS!

below are my book cover ideas. sorry about the poor quality.

CRITIQUE

Two weeks ago I had a critique but I forgot to post something on here. Wups. Anyway, the critique went well I guess. Not many people had anything to say. It also went very quickly. I presented my idea and the response from Paul was that what I wanted to do may be too ambitious, he also suggested that I make my piece something interactive to draw the attention of the viewer. After the critique and listening to everybody's ideas, I realized that what I originally wanted to do isn't something I am totally interested or invested in. I was listening to Kerry talk about her stained glass project last Friday and she is so excited and invested in her work that I was a little bit disappointed and jealous that I did not feel the same way about my own work. I decided to go in a different direction in my work and I'm going to present the idea this Friday. I hope all goes well and people like the idea. I did tell a couple of people my idea already and many seemed to like it. So we'll see!

I'm going to post my new idea right now and then I'll post a response to it next on Friday, so here it is: I did a project in Design II this semester that was really interesting to me. We had to pick a person and follow them on Twitter. We had to create a template to display the person's "Tweets" as flyers. The template had to be a system that could be recreated by anybody if given the instructions. We then had to install the flyers where we thought was necessary to reflect the type of person we chose to represent. I am really interested in how internet communication/socialization websites can be represented in a pre-internet fashion. Even Facebook for example. Facebook is pretty much an autobiography of a person. They write down their likes/dislikes, and everything else imaginable. I was thinking of taking 4-5 different people and creating an autobiography of each of them by copying exactly what they have written on their Facebook pages, but creating a separate book for each of them. I would design 5 different books for 5 different people and would display them on a bookshelf with other autobiography books (borrowed from the library) to display in the gallery. So it would be an exploration of how to visually represent something on paper that is strictly internet based.

If anybody wants to comment on my idea on here, then go ahead!

Annotated Bibliography

Gall, John. “The Nabokov Collection.” Design Observer. November 9, 2009.
This is a brief article articulating the structure of a project that was given to designer John Gall. His project was to redesign Vladimir Nabokov’s twenty one book covers. Each cover that was created consisted of a photograph of a specimen box that was filled with paper, ephemera, and insect pins. Each photograph was created to evoke the content of each book. This article and the slideshow images that are incorporated in the article are an example of how design can be suggestive of a book’s content rather than a forthright depiction of a book’s content.

Baldessari, John. “Systems John Baldessari.” Art 21. This is an excerpt from an Art 21 book that describes and discusses the work of John Baldessari. The article is a discussion of Baldessari’s process of design,and how he creates his work. This article relates to my research of how intentionally omitted information in a design can activate a viewer. Baldessari eliminates much of the information in his paintings or photos, forcing the viewer to fill in the purposefully incomplete story.

Lawrence, Rinder. “Felix Gonzalez-Torres.” Queer Cultural Center. This article describes the work in the MATRIX exhibition of the late Felix Gonzalez-Torres. More specifically, this article discusses his photograph turned public work, called “Untitled 1991.” The photograph of an empty but slept in bed was made into a billboard for all to experience. This article relates to my research because it helps portray how suggestive and metaphorical design differs from straightforward design concepts. This is an example of how simple icon, index, and symbol do not activate the viewer as much as other design concepts can.

Mau, Bruce. “Panama Museum of Biodiversity.” Bruce Mau Design. This is a brief excerpt from Bruce Mau’s design website. It is a description of creating the world’s first museum of biodiversity and what kind of conceptual model was used for the design. The article communicates why the museum was built the way it was, and what affect the design has on the visitor. This article relates to my thesis research because it describes how Mau intentionally omitted certain aspects of the museum that traditional museums usually uphold to activate the visitor’s experience.

REVISED THESIS PROPOSAL

Gossip has always been such an interesting social concept. An individual tells someone else’s story to another person, and usually intentionally leaves out portions of the story to activate the listener to feel a certain way. The storyteller may include specific but minor details to help keep the story interesting. The listener than makes his or her own conceptual leaps on why they feel the subject in the story said what she said, or did what she did. Similarly to gossip, I am interested in the ways in which visual work can activate the viewer to fill what is intentionally omitted, by drawing the viewer’s attention to minor details, or absences in the design. By providing a purposefully incomplete story to the viewer, it is interesting to see the conceptual bounds they endure to fill in the information that is not provided.

The work of John Baldessari is a good example because “he upends the commonly held expectations of how an image is supposed to function (Baldessari, 8).” In many of Baldessari’s works, he eliminates much of the information in the painting or photo, forcing the viewer to fill in what is missing. In some instances he places colorful dots over the faces of his subjects or he will completely remove a portion of the subject (a leg or arm) and replace it with a flat color but still maintaining the structure of the segment he removed. This ambiguous space that he creates forces the viewer to fill in what he or she thinks is missing. A lot of the time Baldessari will combine the subject with the background and foreground so it is difficult to distinguish one from the other.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres created a public work using his photograph of a bed that was slept in, with two indentations in the pillows where the head of a person would have been laying. The photograph, called Untitled 1991, was reproduced as a billboard for all the public to see. Designer Daniella Spinat writes about this work, “Anybody would probably recognize the image on this billboard as familiar. It shows hopefulness and sadness, presence and absence, at once. The potential simultaneity of the two opposites, the intimacy and emptiness, private and public, is self-reflexive. Like a giant mirror, the image suggests that each viewer fill in the space with their own bodies.” What is so great about Torres’ work is that it is suggestive in a way that the viewer can make up his or her own story to the image. Due to the absence in the photograph, we are able to fill in the space with our own perception of what should be laying in that bed. The image provokes many emotions in the viewer, but more importantly from a design standpoint it asks the simple question of, “What should be in that space?” This question activates the viewer in a way that straight forward design concepts cannot. Straightforward design concepts may consist of icon, symbol, or index; however this is only one way of categorizing how signs communicate, and much more can be done to activate the viewer.

The work of Paul Sahre is metaphorical and suggestive to the viewer. For example, Sahre designed the cover for the Ernest Hemingway novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” The image on the cover is of pine needles and pine cones. The limited amount of information provided to the viewer forces him or her to fill in what is missing. For those who have read the novel, the book begins and ends with the same scene. At the end of the novel, character Robert Jordan is lying in wait on the forest floor to die in glory. A quote from the novel, “He was waiting until the officer reached the sunlit place where the first trees of the pine forest joined the green slope of the meadow. He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest. (43.402)” In this case, the subject Robert Jordan is missing leaving the pine needles as the only indicative piece of information. This image references the viewpoint and experience of the character, rather than depicting the actions of the story.

Bruce Mau designed the Panama Museum of Biodiversity. His design is suggestive in the way that “Instead of pushing information, the museum allows visitors to be pulled into understanding as they follow a thematic path (Mau).” By purposefully designing the museum to be abstract, this gives the visitor an inverted experience. The museum design intentionally omits things that other more traditionally designed museums do not, such as mere illustrations in the exhibits, so that the viewer has a more activated experience.

Designer John Gall was presented with a project to redesign all twenty one of Vladimir Nabokov’s book covers. Gall states, “Nabokov was a passionate butterfly collector, a theme that has cropped up on some of his past covers. My idea was also a play on this concept. Each cover consists of a photograph of a specimen box, the kind used by collectors like Nabokov to display insects. Each box would be filled with paper, ephemera, and insect pins, selected to somehow evoke the book's content (Gall, 2009).” Gall chose a number of talented designers to each create each of the boxes. Invitation to a Beheading designed by Helen Yentus and Jason Booher has a little chair in front of the invite which is hauntingly suggestive to the book’s content. In contrast, the Penguins Classics book cover is an image of a large knife on a wooden chopping block which depicts the forthright actions of the story rather than the experience of the character, making the design direct rather than metaphorical or suggestive.

As an approach, I could create a series of visual works, (taking multiple forms) that intentionally and purposefully provides an incomplete story to the viewer so that he or she has to pay attention to the minor details and absences in the work and then may fill in the information about what they think is going on in the story. I could then have each person write down what they think the content of the story is, and how they would tell it to another person. The series would then become an example of gossip.

Kara Walker Exhibit (Oh, and Mark Bradford)

I chose to see the Mark Bradford and Kara Walker Exhibit at the Sikkema Jenkins & Co. gallery. Kara Walker has such a distinct form of art that the MINUTE I walked into the gallery and saw the paper cut out sculpture, I knew it was her work. I guess I am a little biased when it comes to Walker’s work because I have always enjoyed it and have done many projects at Mason Gross that were influenced by her work. The history and violence that her work embodies gets me to react and invest in her art more so than Bradford’s. I didn’t pay much attention to Bradford’s work because I was so entranced by Walker. I have seen an interview with Kara Walker where she talks about how she creates her work and the process in which she goes through. The knowledge I have about her work makes me appreciate it even more. Although her work seems to be political and racial (which it is) it also includes humor. The wood paper cut outs were great because they were a refreshing step away from her usual black silhouettes. I do however feel that they offer the viewer the same thing that the silhouettes do. Her work is like a chilling childhood storybook. She is original and inspiring. The video was also interesting because I have never seen Kara Walker produce a video, so the experience while watching it was of pure wonderment.