Words and Images: Part 2 COMICS

Today, I was perusing through a copy of the California Aggie a newspaper produced by my school at the University of California, Davis. Where by chance I took a glance at the tiny comics section where I was met with a little two panel comic strip that illustrate perfectly how words and images need to be well balance in order for things like comics to work.

Comic strip, NAMES, found at xkcd.com

The comic is simplicity at its more basic form, line drawing. The characters are stick figures and the clothes on the characters are there to indicate status, position or gender.

The comic is actually a focus on the male character’s frame of thought as he stands as a groom next to his bride. In one panel is a close up of his dilemma, where he has forgotten his soon to be wife’s name. In the next scene, the comic book artist has zoomed out, giving the viewer the entire view of him at his wedding with his bride next to him and a preacher just about to announce his wife’s name. As soon as the preacher recites her name, a thought bubble stemming from his figure appears and exclaims “Aha! Rachel!” while this was not the most elegant comic, or even humorous, it does show that words and images have to work together to make some sense. If there were no words, the two-panel scene would be all together meaningless. If it were only words, we would not see too much humor, only a cruel joke. The comic together gives the joke a lighthearted experience not to be taken too lightly.

Read more comics here.

Words and Images: Brian Fies

Last week, Tuesday November 2, 2010, our design class had a wonderful guest lecturer by the name of Brain Fies, a comic book artist for renowned works like Mom’s Cancer and Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?

Book over to Mom's Cancer

He gave us a specific lecture on his creative process, or how he went about creating his two books, thus the color schemes, the layouts, the design, and most importantly the idea. The inspiration for his two books came from his life experiences and his interests. He heavily emphasized that he could have easily wrote a book about his experience especially when going through his family crisis with Mom’s Cancer, but he chose comics.

Why?

Because he had always loved comics, he felt fascinated how words and images worked well together to complete the idea. Words and images gave the story more impact, it made his story more profound, the images were sympathetic and it echoed in his story. One would not survive with out the other. It was an equal balance, the image called on the words to explain what images alone could have not and vice versa.

Excerpt from Mom's Cancer

I believe Brian Fies really showed us the beauty of comics, I have never found comics interesting until he explained his interest in it. Now that I look at it in a different light I can see the beauty in which image and words are juxtapose together create an existence of time. Comics brought life into his mom’s journey and battle with cancer. His comics beautifully stretch or condense time through panels, a skill I have come to admire in comics. In this one strip, Fies illustrate a passage of time through his mom’s struggle with lung cancer in which she makes a commentary on her addiction to cigarettes, while she goes through her chemotherapy treatments. Fies used selective quotes from his mom’s arguments with herself and images at each process to show exactly what his mother was thinking. If words had only been used, there would not have been much of an impact. Seeing the chemotherapy eat away at this woman, along with juxtaposing words made me feel sorrow, anger, and a multitude of emotions as she dealt with her chemotherapy and abstinence from cigarettes.

Brian Fies and his Family

Check out Brian Fies at his own Blogspot!

Arik Levy's Preliminaries: Dick, Pussy, and Ass Exhibition.

A friend on Facebook posted an interesting design article I came across this weekend, the article was about a design concept in which geometric shapes were symbolic shapes for sexual organs.

The controversial idea is a three-part collection of three cabinets called Dick, Pussy, and Ass by French Designer Arik Levy. The artist states that the stylized geometric furniture boxes can be rearranged to make statements about sexual organs.

Dick, Pussy and Ass by Arik Levy

Each cabinet is made of black-waxed MDF (medium-density fiberboard) and colored with different accents for each piece. For instance, Dick is accented with gray, Pussy with red accents and Ass with yellow accents.

The entire exhibition is called Preliminaries.

Levy comments that the controversy is that the symbolic images are considered inappropriate in society, but he wants to emphasize that these shapes are beautiful. These 3 part pieces can all communicate with each other through rearrangement. For instance, Pussy can be considered loose or tight by the distance for which it is placed. Dick can be considered erect or not based on whether it is up or down, while Ass can communicate with either piece by placing it by any of the sexual organs.

The fact that these sexual organs are reduced to geometric shapes, Levy says, is that it reduced the issue of "vulgarity and obscenity."

Personally, if I had not read the title of the article I would have merely thought these geometric shapes were just badly arranged and that the Ass piece looked a lot like a star, but you tell me!

Check out the whole exhibition!

Mass Produced Objects: Movies and CDs

One thing my Art History: Photography in History class has taught me so far is that photography is easily reproduced and if photography is so easily distributed then films are too. Movies are quite possibly the easiest to reproduce, distribute, in a variety of ways. They industrially massed produced with the same contents, a CD and a plastic boxed case that protects said contents, and a strip of paper that illustrates the front with the title of the product and the summary in the back.

In many ways FILM itself is mass-produced, it is made FOR the people, it is made with people in MIND. The storyline itself it is always targeted at a group of people and its function is easy enough: to be your entertainment. Movies are very much a part of design; the commercials are cut to capture the consumer’s attention and each scene sets out to deliver the product (plotline).

The CD the movie finds itself encoded on, the box that contains it, and the wrapping is the physical industrially mass produced product. The function of this package is universal so that everyone can enjoy it. The product function is the same no matter where you go. The shape of the CD and the Box is generally the same, built for easily storage, protection, and organization. The CD and box are formed from two of the most basic shapes in the world the circle and the square.

The circular shape of the CD allows the ease to transmit information and designers have kept this traditional shape due to the cheap cost. I believe that this is the reason since it is easier, safer and longer lasting to carry information on a USB drive but it is easier to store it on a CD still since much of technology still use the CD to transmit information.

The box, itself, is just as universal since its main function is to protect the CD from breaking or gaining scratches. Even the thinner paper casings are used in the same basic way and function.

Thus, the film industry itself is an industrially mass produced object. It is an easily distributed object that can be passed and utilized worldwide. So in fact the CD is generally a very modern function that will not seem to be outmoded anytime soon.

How Form and Content Interact in Objectified

Objectified is a 75-minute documentary film by Gary Hustwit in 2009. The documentary explains how form and content interact together within design. It emphasizes how the object’s function and design to complete that goal is important to the object. In fact, the aesthetics of an object comes almost near to last sometimes.

In fact, the only company that has ever satisfied all points of design is the Apple Company, according to the documentary. Their modern innovations are functional and aesthetically pleasing.

The film displays how designers try to answer the BIG questions of design such as what is design, who are the people of design and especially what is the role of design in our society? They showed interviews asking designers to explain their process to creating a product that is functional, easy to use and aesthetically pleasing. In order, for a design to be successful function has to be above form. If the design just looks good but fails to convey its function then the product has failed to achieve success.

Designers MUST obsess over the goal to fit people’s needs and desires. They must improve the product or create something FOR the consumer.

The film follows the three phases of modern design, which demonstrates the relationship between form and content.

First, the formal relationship or formal logic that gives form to a traditionally accepted object. Form should easily show the object’s function.

Second is the symbolism of the content is which the form is influenced by society and culture. Third is the design-contextualized sense of technology that seeks to satisfy the relationship between human and object. This last step seeks to find a way in which the designers must seek to answer the big questions such as a away to make the product easily recyclable.

Objectified demonstrates how form and content should always work together to create an easily accessible product. To quote a line from the documentary, “Good design is aesthetic, innovative, honest, unobtrusive, consistent, long-lived, useful, in detail, environmentally friendly, and have as little design as possible.”

LOGORAMA!

OH MY GOD. I apologize I could not contain my excitement but this is quite possibly the most epic short film ever made and quite possibly every single graphic designer's dream world to be living in. OKAY. Okay... you got me I must be exaggerating but truly this is one entertaining short film! So give me a chance to explain myself here.

Well first off, what film am I talking about? LOGORAMA! A short 16 minute film directed and created by a French collective called H5 that was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009, they opened for the Sundance Film Festival in 2010 and also won Best Short Animated Film. H5 is a small graphics and animation company in France.

The short animation depicts a story that takes place in Los Angeles utilizing over 2,500 logos and mascots to tell its story (Can you even imagine the amount of time they had to spend JUST to avoid violating patents on these Logos and Mascots?) The film makes comments on how deeply logos are embedded into our culture and it presents a commercialized universal that is both real and fantastical.

The first few seconds into the film is already awesome, the scene spans a shot over Los Angeles using logos to set as buildings. People as Aim icons, birds from the Bentley logo and butterflies from Microsoft. The story revolves around Michelin Man Cops in a cruiser, a Pringle man propositioning s Esso Girl waitress and some kids on a zoo tour lead around by a flamboyant Mr. Clean. The Cops soon are called on a chase for a loose criminal which turns out to be Ronald McDonald. A thrilling gun battle ensues and then…

Alright well I told you enough, now if seeing Ronald McDonald as the villain doesn’t interest you I don’t know what will. Enjoy it.

Check out the full 16 minute film, Logorama!

Comparison and Contrast

Lately, I’ve been comparing the processes of silk screening and graphic design due to the fact that I am currently taking both Design 1 and Chicano 73 (the silk screening class). Having these two classes juxtaposed back to back against each other, I have begun to see their correlating factors and values.

To me, the outcome or the product is the same. As a silkscreen artist and someone aspiring to be a graphic designer, we must first plan our layout. The placement of information such as graphics and text are all equally important in silk screening and graphic design. We both convey the same information but how we get to finish makes us different.

Milton Glaser, Psychedelic, 1983

Both the silkscreen artist and the graphic designer must finish design a plan. A layout for their product, then they must split the design into layers. Each layer is basically another plan, a layout of a specific color. However, while the graphic design can design their layout on a computer program and sort them out accordingly. The silk screener must design their layouts manually using exacto knives, ink pens, acetate, ruby lift, and other expensive products.

Malaquias Montoya, Vietnam Aztlan, 1973

I believe that learning two of the processes is equally important. One teaches the basics and importance of traditionally done work, it demonstrates the time, effort, and patience the silk screener must work to create a semi-limited print. While the other is a new-age technology that is generally quicker but applies the same basic principles of silk screening.

These two classes illustrate my reasoning in picking my two majors art studio and design because I believe in the importance of learning both traditional and modernistic ways of producing art.