Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

So my idea for “Project 2: Poster Comics” came from the “Writing The Unthinkable” excersises and I guess arose from my idea that Im deriving random thoughts and words through these so I might as well just tell a meaningless story.  Not that it wont intend to be intriguing but the concept is it to be a meaningless interaction I wouldn’t expand on otherwise.  Like me walking home from class I get home and my roommates out smoking a cig, then we talk about average unimportant things (squiggly line in speech bubble) I walk inside sit down and fall asleep in chair.  I believe this style of an idea will fit the poster comic format well.  Im still up in the air on the exact layout / hierarchy of it but will be more sure once I scan my items and get working on Thursday.   I will also be looking into today how I will be incorporating texture and layering into my work, one of my items I plan on scanning is a shoelace so that should help add to this as well as my other items!  Drawing storyboard idea today then will upload photo of plan after class!

I think the story I want to tell in my poster will be somewhat non-linear, creating more of a feeling or theme rather than a straight narrative.  When writing my Unthinkable exercises, I usually wrote about fragments of memories or feelings I had when remembering things of the past, which initially inspired this project. Creating a poster that reflects the past and the feelings associated, I think, will be interesting and more informal than a poster thats selling an ad or trying to tell a story step-by-step. I plan on using different receipts or stubs from events I’ve been too, pictures of myself and friends, and different magazine cutouts that I feel I relate to to create my poster. I also intend on finding different patterns (whether fabrics, doodles, or photos) to give more depth and interest visually to the poster, along with text that will probably include single adjectives or nouns strewn across the page to give some type of context to the poster. In terms of hierarchy, texture, and layering, I have plans for all three elements. I think the use of texture, such as the patterns or the ticket stubs, will give more of a made at home look. I noted in my poster sketch that it will resemble that old punk rock poster look, where the page is ripped or there is tape covering the edges of paper. I think this will be interesting visually, and create unique uses of texture. The layering will be important to my poster as well.  I plan on definitely crossing images on top of one another, my scanned items, the text used, and the patterns, to again create a collage-like effect on my poster. The layering and texture in my poster will help create the punk poster look I am going for, taking inspiration from older designs of the punk era and from this newer age of graphic design such as the use of transparent text. These two elements along with alignment, organization, text style, and experimentation with levels will help create my poster’s hierarchy. Dictating the emphasis and movement of one’s eye will be important in how the poster’s subjects and elements are interpreted. Strong visuals such as the images I plan on using will probably have hierarchical priority over the text and patterns, serving somewhat as centerpieces to my poster. Though text will likely be placed over images, I plan to use a more transparent look for the text so that it interacts with other visual elements without diverting to much attention to what I feel like are the more important elements within the poster.

Page 30 from Lynda Barry’s graphic novel, What It Is

In the book Graphic Design: The New Basics, Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips describe hierarchy as the “order of importance” in a design and that it “employs clear marks of separation to signal a change from one level to another” (129). Hierarchy can be seen all throughout Lynda Barry’s graphic novel, What It Is. For example, the image on the left from page 30 shows layers that are overlapping one another in order of their importance. I will be attempting to do something similar to this for my own project that will include layering and texture. I will be layering different objects over one another, such as text and images. By placing them over each other, I will be creating some sort of hierarchy. Textures will also be an important factor in my poster comic as I will be using different colors and textures across the page to create more variety. My plan for the poster is to show what I do practically every day of my life. From waking up to going to bed, I do almost the same thing every day and that includes going to school, learning more about my major, taking care of fraternity business, playing baseball, and worshiping God. I will display this on my poster using cutouts, images, and text. I plan to create separation between each of the different tasks that I mentioned above by overlapping text and images in order of their importance to my daily life.

pg 124 Graphic Design the New Basics

After doing the Writing the Unthinkable exercises from the book What it is by Lynda Barry, I had several ideas as to where I could take the direction of my second abstract comic. The most appealing idea that I had while doing these exercises was to make a comic about my day as a graphic designer. I put a lot of personal effort into the designs that I make and sometimes the customers can be real characters, so I thought that this could be a fun story to tell through my own eyes.

I plan on using Hierarchy in the comic by using my images to draw the reader’s eye down the page, causing them to read in ways that may not be completely normal to the human brain. I will also use hierarchy to establish importance of some of the elements, in areas such as placing one image on top of others on a page in order to help me tell the story of the page, and then inserting text around it.

I plan on using texture and layering hand in hand to create a comprehensive page that does than just serves as something pretty to look at. I want my textures for my background page to accentuate the emotion that I want the reader to have coming into the page and I will use the laying of pictures and sections of text over the top of it to add to this effect. For example if I wanted the reader to experience the chaotic experience of making a logo for someone who doesn’t think they know what they want but in reality have an exact image in their head that they expect you to produce, I would use a crumpled t-shirt or a piece of paper or really anything crumpled up to give the page a hectic look and I can top that off by layering fields of text and images over each other that kind of obscure the page and make it look like you’re looking for something in the page that isn’t there because it got covered.

I really liked this image on page 124 of Graphic Design the New Basics as an illustration of how powerful using these elements together can be. Specifically I really like how they have layered textures on top of each other in such a way that it appears as if all the elements are stacked on top of each other and are each actually an entire layer of the pattern they show. This adds this incredible sense of depth that makes you feel like you can dive right into the picture and its something that I want to try and emulate in my own comic.

For my comic poster project I will be telling the story of my summer memories of the time I spent at my friend’s cabin in Minocqua, Wisconsin. The story behind this cabin goes much deeper than just being in the “Northwood’s” – what this area is known to those that live in Illinois and Wisconsin.  It’s about a bunch of my friends that developed a really strong friendship there. While studying What It Is, by Lynda Barry and thinking about her questions: “What is the Past?” (18) and “What Is The Past Made Of?” (19), often had me thinking about my Wisconsin memories and gave me inspiration for the comic poster. My friend whose parent’s owned the cabin is one of 4 boys and right across the street is another family of 4 boys and I lived 3 doors down. As you can imagine, I spent a great deal of time with all the guys down the street but at the cabin, where many of us went it seemed that those times were twice as fun. When I came home for some reason just before school started, I felt just a little bit older. Now that most of these friends are in college spread all over the country, I don’t get a chance to see them very often but Lynda Barry’s book brought back all the great memories I have.

Therefore, I thought I would use a photo of the cabin as a visual hierarchy, possibly centered in the middle of the poster. I feel how I scale this photo will give it more value as the lake house is the reason for telling my story. Because this area is called the Northwood’s I will probably use a photo of the signs containing the words “Northwood’s” or Minocqua (because they are seen everywhere) to express placement of the area and use them with layering. Additionally, because of the dense woods I am thinking of using an image of tree spaced away from the cabin to give it it’s own sense of visual hierarchy. The tree can also represent the seasons I spent up North because a tree grows over time. To give the comic texture I would like to use contrasting images of nature such as bark, logs, acorns, pinecones, which contain rough surfaces alongside and layered manmade images such as fishing lures and skis, which are smooth hard surfaces. I do not have a design yet for my comic however, because Lynda Barry inspired my idea about past memories, I am posting page 18 from What It Is?, which also on this page Barry uses hierarchy as the centered image on the left visually stands out with smaller boxed images on the right.