sometimes i get myself up on a blogging roll & this is just one of those times i guess.
sorry. maybe i'll try writing some of these in advance & saving them for later. patience is not my strongest virtue.
i may have mentioned this here before, but ever since i was small, i have been known to 'overcomplicate the diorama'. it should be clear what this means & also in what period of my life it was coined. i like to make big problems for myself & then think they need to be far more detailed & complicated than they do & then i like to have these big panic attacks right before the thing is due because it isn't good enough & then i get through the panic attack & do it & it generally works out one way or another.
you'd think after so many years of this i'd break the cycle but you'd be wrong.
but so i know that this thesis thing is going to be Kind Of A Big Deal. [unnecessary capitalization for emphasis!] & i know that if i don't get together a framework or a set of rules & guidelines for the project i will be miserable all year + however long it takes me to finish the thesis. & i don't want to do that, & i don't want to put my friends & family & other beloved ones through that.
i'd been thinking about this a lot, especially since i also know that the thesis is not just a sole project but kind of a whole of parts comprised of work from other courses. or, that my topic will help define my work in every way for the next year. & knowing that i am basically just starting out in design, this is a terrifying thing. how can i create a subject for myself that is limiting enough to create some sort of capstone piece that i can also use as proof that i am productive [& potentially employable] as a designer but also open enough that i continue learning & growing as a designer & as a person?
i have already defined what i do not want this project to be, & doing that was a step towards creating this framework. while talking about something with sasha earlier, i think i've come up with another piece, & that's what i'm interested in.
in my post about jeunet's film micmacs [below, possibly still on this page], i wrote about details & how rewarding they can be. this is a thing i keep coming back to. i absolutely love when you can tell attention was paid to details, when little parts can subvert a form, or when they add a whole new layer of meaning to the thing. sometimes it's about expecting your audience not to pay attention to your details, evoking a feeling of deja vu, which is also lovely. in book land, this sort of subversion is done fairly often in text, but it also happens in design. some of my recent favorites that do this are jesse ball's [& his wife's] book vera & linus [in which the numbering system is another layer of meaning] & jonathan messinger's hiding out [in which the whole book is full of secrets, or 'decoys', like a short story hiding in the copyright page].
last semester, i took type 2, in which we created a series of pieces that all played by the rules of one visual identity system. what i had wanted to do was something like this: a subversion of form, a way to encourage the user to pay attention to detail. what i ended up with was something like its opposite: a new form in itself that has its own rules, unconventional as they might be.
so here's the framework that i've been toying with: learn how to make beautiful, elegant, fully-functional things. then go back & find all the places where details & surprises & secrets can hide & plant them there to grow. acknowledge that your audience may not be sharp enough always to catch the details, & make your work accessible to them, too; but give your patient & thoughtful audience something rewarding.
this seems simple but to me deceptively so. first of all it requires me to be able to prove my competence as a designer by merely creating beautiful functional things—this is probably going to be the hardest part for me, but something i want to push myself more to do. i need to get myself to learn some boundaries & ways of creating 'real' design. & then i need to be able to go back & make it interesting, make it fun.
this has something to do also with the expository essay i wrote for class last week, which set up four groups into which design falls: good effective, good ineffective, bad ineffective, and bad effective. the first part of each term is completely subjective & usually more aesthetic; the second is objective & has everything to do with consideration of problem & solution. i of course want to strive for good effective design; lately i've been feeling like a lot of my work could really easily be sorted as good ineffective or bad effective [which i might place as having higher value than good ineffective], & having the form or the group specified here for all of my thesis work might help me work out how to bring my work to that level.
so, now for this week's homework, which is to write a potential thesis statement. here goes:
It is not a coincidence that the idioms 'God is in the details' and 'the devil is in the details' can have the same meaning: anything important manifests in the details. This thesis strives to emphasize the power of details in print design. Through careful planning and design of the whole, combined with minute attention to detail, it is possible to create a single work that speaks on multiple levels, depending entirely on the user's own attention to detail. In a world where much design is focused on a 'big picture' and not on details, where subtlety is forgotten entirely in pursuit of loud, abrasive communication, this thesis will prove that there is still value in designing with and for the details.
or something like that. something i have just learned while writing the above: i had better come up with another way to say 'detail' or 'details' if i am going to keep with this topic because otherwise it is going to get very repetitive very quickly.
sorry. maybe i'll try writing some of these in advance & saving them for later. patience is not my strongest virtue.
i may have mentioned this here before, but ever since i was small, i have been known to 'overcomplicate the diorama'. it should be clear what this means & also in what period of my life it was coined. i like to make big problems for myself & then think they need to be far more detailed & complicated than they do & then i like to have these big panic attacks right before the thing is due because it isn't good enough & then i get through the panic attack & do it & it generally works out one way or another.
you'd think after so many years of this i'd break the cycle but you'd be wrong.
but so i know that this thesis thing is going to be Kind Of A Big Deal. [unnecessary capitalization for emphasis!] & i know that if i don't get together a framework or a set of rules & guidelines for the project i will be miserable all year + however long it takes me to finish the thesis. & i don't want to do that, & i don't want to put my friends & family & other beloved ones through that.
i'd been thinking about this a lot, especially since i also know that the thesis is not just a sole project but kind of a whole of parts comprised of work from other courses. or, that my topic will help define my work in every way for the next year. & knowing that i am basically just starting out in design, this is a terrifying thing. how can i create a subject for myself that is limiting enough to create some sort of capstone piece that i can also use as proof that i am productive [& potentially employable] as a designer but also open enough that i continue learning & growing as a designer & as a person?
i have already defined what i do not want this project to be, & doing that was a step towards creating this framework. while talking about something with sasha earlier, i think i've come up with another piece, & that's what i'm interested in.
in my post about jeunet's film micmacs [below, possibly still on this page], i wrote about details & how rewarding they can be. this is a thing i keep coming back to. i absolutely love when you can tell attention was paid to details, when little parts can subvert a form, or when they add a whole new layer of meaning to the thing. sometimes it's about expecting your audience not to pay attention to your details, evoking a feeling of deja vu, which is also lovely. in book land, this sort of subversion is done fairly often in text, but it also happens in design. some of my recent favorites that do this are jesse ball's [& his wife's] book vera & linus [in which the numbering system is another layer of meaning] & jonathan messinger's hiding out [in which the whole book is full of secrets, or 'decoys', like a short story hiding in the copyright page].
last semester, i took type 2, in which we created a series of pieces that all played by the rules of one visual identity system. what i had wanted to do was something like this: a subversion of form, a way to encourage the user to pay attention to detail. what i ended up with was something like its opposite: a new form in itself that has its own rules, unconventional as they might be.
so here's the framework that i've been toying with: learn how to make beautiful, elegant, fully-functional things. then go back & find all the places where details & surprises & secrets can hide & plant them there to grow. acknowledge that your audience may not be sharp enough always to catch the details, & make your work accessible to them, too; but give your patient & thoughtful audience something rewarding.
this seems simple but to me deceptively so. first of all it requires me to be able to prove my competence as a designer by merely creating beautiful functional things—this is probably going to be the hardest part for me, but something i want to push myself more to do. i need to get myself to learn some boundaries & ways of creating 'real' design. & then i need to be able to go back & make it interesting, make it fun.
this has something to do also with the expository essay i wrote for class last week, which set up four groups into which design falls: good effective, good ineffective, bad ineffective, and bad effective. the first part of each term is completely subjective & usually more aesthetic; the second is objective & has everything to do with consideration of problem & solution. i of course want to strive for good effective design; lately i've been feeling like a lot of my work could really easily be sorted as good ineffective or bad effective [which i might place as having higher value than good ineffective], & having the form or the group specified here for all of my thesis work might help me work out how to bring my work to that level.
so, now for this week's homework, which is to write a potential thesis statement. here goes:
It is not a coincidence that the idioms 'God is in the details' and 'the devil is in the details' can have the same meaning: anything important manifests in the details. This thesis strives to emphasize the power of details in print design. Through careful planning and design of the whole, combined with minute attention to detail, it is possible to create a single work that speaks on multiple levels, depending entirely on the user's own attention to detail. In a world where much design is focused on a 'big picture' and not on details, where subtlety is forgotten entirely in pursuit of loud, abrasive communication, this thesis will prove that there is still value in designing with and for the details.
or something like that. something i have just learned while writing the above: i had better come up with another way to say 'detail' or 'details' if i am going to keep with this topic because otherwise it is going to get very repetitive very quickly.
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