Identity: Reflection

The design is “Self in Progress” and is meant to be made as a half page booklet made by me (Karley Schimpf). The medium of the design project to be a small booklet serving as a guideline to major words that mean a lot to me personally with abstract pictorial representations. The structure is the use of one recurring pattern piece with the left facing page primarily consisting of an image made using the pattern to depict the word on the right facing page.  The specific subject is the six words in use to give someone perspective into how I live my life and some of the beliefs I hold personally. The images are there to allow for a more freeform interpretation of the concert definitions given. What may have been my reasoning and the shapes that I made with the pattern may from someone else’s perspective seem to be something else due to their own personal interpretation of the word and image and their life experiences. The unifying principles in this work is the way in which each word is presented and the shapes used in the images for each word. Each word is treated in the same matter equal to each other and their definitions are treated in the same way. No one word is given more stress over the other words in the booklet. This gives no indication to weather one holds more meaning or contributes more than the others. The only time that a word is stressed more than the other is when I use an image in the largest shape on the last word to help better communicate the gravity and meaning behind that perspective/word at the end of the booklet. As if it is a remind each time after flipping through the booklet what that last perspective really means compared to the other words. Originally I wanted to do a large hand drawn mandala then burn it and show the creation and destruction of it in a meditative way. Again I got ahead of myself and did not think of the time allocation or my own personal motivation in the project, this is something I am working on and will have to continue working on when deadlines become more concrete in the working world. Because of this it leads me to this booklet I make lists quiet often and have a slight OCD where I need to have everything organized in such a way otherwise I can’t work. I am also forgetful and can lose where my point A was in relation to my point B and somehow end up at point C. So I felt it fitting to make a booklet, much like my lists that reminds me of some of the things I find important. I want the audience of this project to come away from it with a possible better understanding of my thought process and how I digest information, and maybe come away with their own interpretations of the words or find ways that they fit into their own life style.

Identity: Final Critique

Identity: Second Critique

DePaul Advertising: Reflection

The design is for the CDM advertising identity in GD200: Graphic Design II, created in Adobe Illustrator to be produced as a mural on the north facing wall of the CDM building.

The subject of the mural is a non-gender, non-ethnically identifiable Television head humanoid being holding a box with the DePaul logo on it. From within the box comes spilling out all the majors and visuals related to CDM majors taking up the majority of the rest of the mural. The work is all made in Adobe Illustrator using the pen tool to help create a unifying texture throughout the composition and avoid conflicting art styles. The overall piece is deconstructive because of the layering of different elements that relate to the different majors at CDM.

The works relates to me as the creator because I am a student that goes to CDM, I bring my experiences as a student at the college and my own personal knowledge of being in the college and seeing other students work to the mural, I want to show the energy, aspiration and imagination of those motivated people I have had the joy of meeting at DePaul in the CDM in the mural.  When compared to the others in class there was a clear divide between what I think of as “normal” advertising ones that could be displayed anywhere and would have the same effect and those that were site specific and would only make sense in that setting. My mural falls in the latter of the two categories while it may not be conventional I feel like both categories accomplish the task.

The effect I want this to have on my audience is for them to be energized and motivated to learn more about DePaul and the CDM majors.

DePaul Advertising: Critique Two

McBratney Final

Identity Analysis

My design for the Us vs. Them assignment was titled the Shades of Shoshanna. I used a photograph of myself, and tools in Illustrator to complete this on November 5^th, 2013. It was a digital version of six different artboards, each of an illustrated version of myself, with different coloring of my hair on each. The specific subject in this piece is the hair colors that I’ve done and the variety that I’ve dyed it. While I focused on that for the most part, I also had a secondary subject of qualities of myself that you can’t tell just by looking at me. I wanted to show that there are many different shades, or qualities, that I express.

I used elements of type, photo, illustration, and color to illustrate my piece. Over the complete design of the six artboards, they are integrative towards each other, each comparing a difference of myself with another difference of myself. Though, within each composition, I feel they are geometric with the type on the poster easy to read and making sense in its position. The portrait is centered for the most part and easy on the eyes, with only slight wavy coloring of different tints of gray in the background. The focus is clearly placed on my hair and the type that coordinates with that color

            This piece of mine has to do with my hair style, and how I feel it is a large part of my identify and what people know about me. I bring other people’s opinions and what my close friends and family have told me about myself in the text of the project, while bringing my experiences of dying my hair many, many colors to this piece. I feel most people, besides a few, had focused on their heritage or religion, but I think I had a different focus, similar to a classmate who’s focus was on facial hair in his family, which was on my individual self and appearance. I feel my work was very simple, which I am happy but not completely satisfied with. I think the critique about animating the faces in each more would make it appear different enough. I wanted a very simple and straightforward approach, with little distractions in my piece.

            I think the designer who used the most similar approach to my work was Andy Warhol. Both of us have used repeating portraits, posterized and colorized photos. The events through my life of dying my hair different colors had shaped the approach I took. I wanted to appear as the same girl, but with changing hair in each picture. I wanted people to see the qualities that are brought out with different hair colors, and that people may see me as a different type of girl during each time of my life, but ultimately I am the same. I feel the final was strong, but I agree with one of the classmates that maybe I could’ve combined them all into one image, although it would have to be quite large to be able to see all the type included. I was happy with the aesthetic and what my intent for the design was.