Contemporary Constructivism

In History of Graphic Design we are learning about contemporary constructivism. Here are a few interesting examples :)

Neighbor to Neighbor

This is a fun "chalkboard" design I made for the nonprofit organization which is conveniently located in Raleigh, N.C. This is my first opportunity to work and meet with a real client. I wanted to come up with something fun and exciting. This piece is warm and light-hearted. My goal was to make viewers feel at home with this design as if they can interact and relate to the organization. On the back I have designed a football play composed of n2n's main focuses like hope, justice, and compassion. Due to the fact that the organization has a holistic approach where kids can learn and have fun lead me to force the viewer to see that n2n reaches out to people in a number of ways and a big part of that is that YOU can take part and make a difference in the community. I hope n2n finds this successful and I hope it appeals to young adults to come out and make the community a better place. :)

Timeline: Power of the Poster

Here are my first 5 posters/magazine covers that I have chosen for my project. I plan to organize them from least powerful to most powerful. All of the posters have a large impact on me and this is MY order but the viewer will be able to see whichever ones they want and juxtapose whichever ones they want which will be a neat experience. The other 5 that I will use will be older and maybe 2 more that are more recent events in history that have a big impact on the

HURRICANE POSTER PROJECT, a collaboration of artists and designers from around the world to help raise money for the victims. Over 180 different limited-edition series of posters were produced, raising about $50,000. Many of the posters won major design awards, and the effort was profiled in numerous publications. Exhibitions of the show appeared around the country and in Europe. Additionally, many of the posters are now in permanent collections of several major museums, including the Library of Congress and the Louvre. The haiti poster contest was launched three days after the January 12th, 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The project is a collaborative effort by the design community to help effect change through our work. Signed and numbered, limited edition posters have been donated by designers and artists from around the world. All money raised will be donated to Doctors Without Borders.

In response to Hurricane Katrina, Walker created "After the Deluge," since the hurricane had devastated many poor and black areas of New Orleans. Walker was bombarded with news images of "black corporeality," including fatalities from the hurricane reduced to bodies and nothing more. She likened these casualties to African slaves piled onto ships for the Middle Passage, the Atlantic crossing to America.

1. New Yorker Covers Editor Fran? Mouly repositioned Art Spiegelman’s silhouettes, inspired by Ad Reinhardt’s black-on-black paintings, so that the north tower’s antenna breaks the “W” of the magazine’s logo. Spiegelman wanted to see the emptiness, and find the awful/awe-filled image of all that disappeared the on 9/11. The silhouetted Twin Towers were printed in a fifth, black ink, on a field of black made up of the standard four color printing inks. An overprinted clear varnish helps create the ghost images that linger, insisting on their presence through the blackness.

2. Migrant Mother

For many, this picture of Florence Owens Thompson (age 32) represents the Great Depression. She was the mother of 7 and she struggled to survive with her kids catching birds and picking fruits. Dorothea Lange took the picture after Florence sold her tent to buy food for her children. She made the first page of major newspapers all over the country and changed people’s conception about migrants.

1. History of the Civil WarIn this series of prints the artist Kara Walker has appropriated illustrations from the publication Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War and added her own silhoeutte figures as a means to altering the story being told. Walker is known for her silhouette figures which depict stereotypical images of African-Americans and people implicated in slavery in the United States. Her cast of characters is most often located in the antebellum south and engaged in gruesome and imagined vignettes.

+Power of the Poster

My timeline's central focus is to demonstrate how the posters and magazine covers of major/traumatic events in history is/are recorded and how the display of these events through posters has changed over time. Each poster/magazine cover has a different meaning. The relationship between all of the pieces I chose is interesting, especially when they are juxtaposed. I chose a Chronologial order of events to arrange my information.

Here is my prototype for what my project is going to look like aesthetically. I wanted something clean and concise to allow viewers to interpret the information cleanly. My goal in the visual aspect was to make the viewer interact and respond to the display of information in an interested manner. I have also included an image of how the timeline "works", an image sequence of how the information folds out.

Project 3_Interface design

Take a look at a few of my latest page layout designs. I am not fully satisfied with the "Plants" pages. I tried to abandon the idea and I couldn't because there was something I enjoyed about the page design. There is a flaw or two that needs correcting. The pages all feel like they are part of the same family which works for me. There is some tweaking that needs to be done but I plan to correct this in DreamWeaver. Let me know what you think!

Here is my updated Garden Hut homepage and some secondary level pages...check them out and let me know what you think!

This is a first draft of a homepage design for my new Interface project. I am constructing a website for a flower and gardening business called The Garden Hut. The goal of this website is to provide experienced gardeners new and fun ideas for their gardens and also to help them deal with things such as insects. This website will also appeal to amateur gardeners that need to know the basics. I want this website to hold the viewers attention and keep them interested in exploring more of the site and hopefully they will leave with more knowledge than when the entered.