ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR READING RESPONSE – ART 119

Over the weekend I had a chance to sit down and read over the first two chapters of Adobe Illustrator guide. I think I may have just confused myself. One of the key challenges is the fact that I have very little experience with Adobe’s Creative Suite. It’s like a whole new language. Furthermore, I do not have this software at home, and thus cannot easily relate to these new sets of terms. It is hard to apply knowledge when everything about it is purely theoretical. Last but not least: this was just a ton of new information.

At least there were pictures.

Clear as mud, but at least you can see it. Page 33 (Artboard printing)

llustrator is a massive heap of skeuomorphisms, and this only makes sense for those who began their careers in print making prior to the advent of computers in Graphics Design. This can be a huge challenge for newcomers, but this challenge is hardly unique to Illustrator. True story: a seventeen-year-old in one of my freshmen courses once described the save button in MS Word as a “purple truck”.

Beep! Beep! I’m a truck!

See, the thing was, she’d never even seen a floppy disk before. This graphic held no contextual meaning for her. She never experienced the joy of inserting a 3.5-inch piece of plastic into a clunky (yet essential) device to save her document. By the time she was old enough for K-12, the iMac was standard, and those computers (controversially) never shipped with a floppy drive.

“No floppy, no problem! You’ve got the World-Wide Web, son!” source:betanews.com

she accepted the function (saving her document was important, after all), but couldn’t make the connection between function and form. I’m not telling this story because it is funny (I still laugh when I think about her), but because I can now relate to her better after reading about Adobe Illustrator’s Tool Bar and Control Panel. Some of the symbols are easy to recognize, despite the fact that I’ve never actually used them in real life:

Page 3 – The tearoff toolbar

I’ve never used a fountain pen. I’ve had a classmate spatter ink on me accidentally with one, but that’s really about it. Generally speaking, I “get” pens. I’m fond of needlepoint over ballpoint, but that’s not the graphic here. What if I’d never seen a fountain pen before? How’d I ever hope to recognize the function?

I’m sure I’ll catch up, and with enough practice become proficient with this tool set. I just wonder how many “purple truck” moments I’ll have along the way.

PROJECT 1: TYPOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT

Our first project in Digital Media / Time Design is a “Typographic Portrait.” What is a typographic portrait? It’s a combination of visual communication through stylization, combining graphical and textual elements. Here is the professor’s example:

Image by Carl Diehl, art119.wordpress.com

As you can see from the above example, the name represents visual elements implying both “land” and “water”. The earth-tone brown is combined with wavy aquamarine/teal. Since amphibians are able to live both underwater and on dry land, this graphical representation is appropriate.

Our first step is to select from six options and perform a similar stylization on our own name:

Hello my name is Matt … I’m a magician

I’m accident-prone

I’m losing my temper

I’m visiting Portland

I’m afraid of the dark

Hello my name is _________ (fill in the blank)

Each image has some advantage. I tend to think that it is better to make work that is provocative than safe. The “ransom note” lettering is fun, but includes a dark humor component, the “magician” is playful but a bit on the nose, the “marksman” is very literal, but exists within the context of America’s gun violence epidemic (a controversial subject, to say the least), and the “Portland” is a bit more esoteric, and depends on a person’s familiarity with the sketch comedy of Portlandia‘s “Put a bird on it”. We’ll see what the professor has to say during today’s lab.

OPEN HOUSE EVENT – ART119

Wednesday night there was an Open House event at Portland State University. After leaving my Digital Media studio class, I walked down to the art building to check out the work in the MFA studios. I spent last quarter in this building and the TA was kind enough to show us the studio space back in January. What was particularly nice was the before-and-after perspective of in-studio work. In some cases it was due to refinement (painting studio space) of earlier work, in others it was in the form of additional iterations (animation and film). Finally, it was time to visit my former TA, Emily.

Her graphic novel was printed up (half of it, anyway), and the level of detail was stunning. The subject matter was particularly dark (child abuse, unwanted children, alcohol, isolation, etc.) and this was complimented by the heavy use of black filling in the positive space of each and every frame. The ink budget would be substantial on a mass-volume production. In addition to the printed work, there was also a running stop-motion animation, and a diorama of a future installation, as well as full-scale production materials.

As I consider my own future, it is good to see people in the process of developing their professional skills and realizing their own dreams. This work space is being put to good use and every MFA student seems genuinely proud of their work. There was a fair amount of discussion about the costs of education, and some of this may be reflective of the relatively higher tuition costs of grad school and the fact that we are in an election year, but overall it was a cheerful environment.

On my way out there were two elderly women who shared some of their print work with Emily and me. Clearly for some, art is a lifelong passion. I hope this is true for me as well.