dvd cover research

inconvenient truth is an example of doing a really awesome combination of images, a swap that makes sense and builds a very clear new meaning about how industry relates to climate change.

don't laugh. the jaws poster/cover has a spectacular use of threat and dramatic irony, with the happy little person completely oblivious to their imminent peril. the tension here is terrific, and a good metaphor for how ignorantly we're just prancing through the world despite our rapidly approaching doom.

this life dvd does a really lovely job of compositing imagery. we understand that these things would never, could never be this close together, but the manipulation is clean and attractive and allows us to suspend our disbelief to accept how diverse the planet's life is.

bbc's planet earth itself, all 11 dvd covers of it. (is this all of them?) i think this is a nice example of how a treatment can be used to unify a lot of very different imagery. by curving the horizon against the darkness of space, we have a really intense push/pull between close photography and the idea of the planet itself, and regardless of the content of the photos, they look like they belong together.

step one of dj magazine spreads!

at this point, i wasn't sure what article i was going to use (i'd found some six or seven, word-counted and politely waiting in my text edit windows). i chose a bio/interview with afrika bambaataa, the guy who made hip-hop happen, and made three spreads with that article, and then very suddenly it dawned on me that that text really didn't allow for very many of my infographics (one, i think, worked well... that was all) and if i used one of my other options, a beginner's how-to for getting started to dj, i could incorporate several.

thusly, for the first day's critique, i had this stuff:

this look lent itself to a rehash with the other article, so i kept up with that. 

and this is, incidentally, what i've been refining as i move forward, largely by giving it some space to breathe just in every direction. (roomier margins, less colorbar, implementation of a lower hangline... you'll see in the next blog post!)

a good country people's life you save is hard to find your own.

flannery o'connor's ebooks are winding down. here are mine in their final, ipad-ready incarnations:

i'm going to immortalize my presentation here on my blog in addition to my transient delivery of it during class. so here's that (beware of title-caps. see, i do use them sometimes!)

Flannery O'Connor writes stories about people. She writes about decent people, flawed and naïve and trusting, but not malicious, and she also writes about malevolent psychopathic people who betray that trust in sickening, unexpected ways. 

These betrayals of trust and expectation are where her work sets itself apart, and it is on that idea that I have  focused my designs: people acting inhumanly. This presents an opportunity for a unique kind of symbolism, and a juxtaposition between literal textual objects and abstract but pointed and relevant associations.

Each cover contains an object representative of the perceived neutrality, if not benevolence, of the story's traitor. These objects will be iconic and recognizable to people who are familiar with the story, and allow for an a-ha moment for first time readers when they appear in the narrative. These covers also contain an animal to symbolically represent the particular inhumanity of each antagonist, a fox for the trickery of Manly Pointer, the bible salseman, a snake for the viciousness of the Misfit, the murderer, and a vulture for the scavenging of Mr. Shiftlet. 

Because these animals never appear literally in the story, readers will be encouraged to consider the narratives analytically, and think more deeply about what they've read and what Flannery O'Connor is implying about human nature, nurturing a kind of careful thinking that I'm sure she intends with her writing.

The hand-rendered quality of the imagery and the gentle colors make for a quaint and appropriate cover, mimicking the tone of O'Connor's writing style without misleading the reader about the time period or the humanistic, emotional quality of the works. 

These covers are polite. They do not scream. They will stand out simply because they use an unexpected combination of literal and metaphorical imagery in a way that provokes curiosity about the ebook's contents, and they have an aspect of delayed gratification in that they keep engaging the reader throughout: not just before they read, but during the reading itself, and even after they're done.

in there, i touched on the idea of working with symbolism in uncommon ways, something i was really pretty excited about. i enjoyed the process of trying to pull imagery from a text that went beyond the default "pictures of things that happened" set of instincts. that, i think, was the most potent of my experiences. the beginning of this assignment was terrifying: trying to imagine different ways to illustrate each of these stories but as a related set was difficult, but as it progressed, the more i got into it. i also got to play with watercolor, which is certainly off my beaten path of vectors and double-clicks.

hopefully our presentations go well, and as always, onward/upward!

last ditch image process!

one last little bit of process (and for what it's worth, the covers i ended up with were unanimously chosen in a quick-opinion-survey of my studiomates)

exhibitstorming

later, i'll be posting some choice image/image or image/text combos to explain where these concepts came from, but for now, these are some concepts i'm thinking about for my exhibit campaign.

pop star®: music for the masses.
dealing with the fake, contrived nature of the popular music industry as well as the insidious ways its consumption becomes inevitable. think a slightly paranoid, cynical public service announcement.

from analog to digital: a history of music technology.
looking at the tools people have used throughout history to record, play and interact with sound, up through today's convenient digital culture. think an education about historical and modern artifacts through both science and culture.

underground kings: a dj family tree.
acknowledging the people who really got the ball rolling on the modern idea of dj, starting with hip-hop and looking at the state of the culture today in terms of the mashup. think a slightly reverent set of biographies (and oh man probably wax figures?).

remix pirates: sailing the copyright seas in the digital age.
putting into perspective the legal aspects of music production and consumption including where the money actually goes when you buy something and how copyright works in terms of remix. think the kind of education one seeks when they're inhabiting in a legally grey area: practical and without judgement.

fused metaphors vs. scenes

the adamsmorioka blog post differentiates between two methods for communicating ideas. one of these methods is the idea of scenes, the default understanding for how we consume culture and observe the world around us. scenes include a setting, characters or objects, potential action, sights/sounds/smells/tastes/etc. to present an idea in this manner falls comfortably into our natural understanding and thus, challenges nothing. it has a time and a place and it's static. another option for expression is through the "fused metaphor," the taking of things and juxtaposing them as pure idea, pure concept, and demanding that the viewers step up to the plate and interpret it themselves, because nobody is going to be feeding them the answer. this has the potential to be much more dynamic, much more powerful and meaningful, as well as formally and conceptually stronger, and the removal of the flat, earthly context lends the imagery a sort of universal or theoretical aspect that heightens its importance in a way that, buried in the real world, can't be done.