final bantjes poster & postcards

marty was pretty pleased with out class's work, all up on the wall, which is awesome, and always a good feeling. she said it was "sophistocated for our level," i think. or something similarly humbleflattering (can i coin that word? it has a nice sound to it.) we unanimously need to work on our secondary information, myself very much included. type is a thing where, i think, the simpler something is, the harder it is to actually succeed at. big names and titles and looks are one thing, but the harmonious typesetting of a few lines of backup info, things that need to be said supplementarily but not noisily, is so so so delicately, precisely difficult! earlier in the project, i would've said that that was just me, but after critique, it appears (to at least some degree) to be everybody. it's like the quote patrick used in his campaign: "everything in typography is a subtlety." and how.

my poster design came pretty far this time. i always knew i was interested in the 'by-hand' aspect in marian's work, and i'm glad i got to use a refined version of that idea in my final. i learned in my critique that i could stand to have the pattern in my corners still even smaller, that it turns into a nice gold texture the smaller it gets, and that the beads are nicer as a surprising up-close reveal. (changes for portfolio, ofcourse)

in class we spent some time talking about "the moral of the story," or "what we learned at school today." (sometimes i think we can get some pretty meaningful things out of charmingly childish sounding exercises like storytime and talking about what we learned. i wish more people realized that.) as a response to erica's heightened understanding of simplicity, i added that sometimes, you just don't want simplicity. and at that point, you have to step up to the designerplate, and wrangle some complexity.

ornament is never problematic if it's controlled. something can be visually busy in places and still clear and legible and clean, provided that the wildness and complexity are reined in with a well devised ruleset.

i also described the realization that i'm continually having that this isn't just school anymore. this is it. the real deal. the thing school has been preparing me for. now is the chance to finally do the things i care about doing in the way i want to do them. i get to mold the things that i love and the aesthetic i want to work within into my work to solve the problems my professors set out for me.

marian bantjes is a good person to learn this lesson from. she dropped out from school, and from the mainstream working world, to make the things that she wanted to make, and in doing that with as much passion as she did, she succeeded in getting noticed by people who wanted her obsessive dedication in their work. she does what she wants, and people appreciate it. so they hire her to do it more. this, it seems, is the way to go about it.

thanks marian! i'm kind of sad she's not coming on the 27th.