Category: unit 1 and 4

For the next step in my project, I decided to research artists. This was a useful task as it allowed me to get a lot of secondary experience and inspiration for my designs. Since the artists that I researched all had reputation and fame from their work, it was a good starting point to base my project off.

Stefan Stagmeister

Stefan Stagmeister is an Austrian graphic designer who has been recognised for his unorthodox and strange designs, often making good use of typography in his designs, acting as social commentary and questioning society as a whole in his work. This was a big inspiration for my work as I like to use a lot of typography in my designs, focusing on it specifically more than vector design or colour schemes. By looking at Stefan in particular, it allowed me to get a lot of typography knowledge and further boost my ability in this one area.

Saul Bass

Saul Bass was an American graphic designer who was known primarily for his movie posters and logo design, working with renowned directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick. The film posters specifically stood out to me due to the ways they use shape and colour. A lot of the poster designs use a lot of negative space in their work. This was a good inspiration for me, and I want to attempt to use negative space in my designs, through interesting vectors, allowing my work to have multiple meanings.

Lester Beall

Lester Beall was an American graphic designer, who made a lot of interesting posters, most well known for the Rural Electrification Administration. These designs stood out to me as they seem to be an early case of graphic design keeping designs extremely simplistic, limiting colours and having a total lack of any gradients or shading whatsoever, making everything stand out. As well as this, he used photography a lot to complement the designs, keeping a fine line between realistic design and simplistic vector design. This inspired me and made me think about the ways I can use photography alongside vector designs to get a good balance in my work.

For the first part of my project, I decided to focus on the different materials I could use to make my work. This included a range of mediums, involving practical work, such as paints and textures, and digital work, including vector graphics and photography. With these in mind, I was able to get a lot of ideas for things to use and ways to experiment with them.

Branching off each of the forms of media and materials, I looked at the possibilities of using the specific materials, as well as ways they make link together. For example, through pens I looked into calligraphy which lead me to typography as a whole. This allowed me to link with computer graphics, more specifically typography of logos and branding. With these branches and connections in mind, it made me think about ways of mixing and matching medias so that they worked together to create a piece of art that involved various materials while also keeping it organised and structured.

After looking at the materials, I decided to focus on the processes. This allowed me to take a deeper look into the different ways that I could use the materials, which gave me inspiration for different ways to look at using them. For example, for pencil, I thoroughly covered tone and shading, and the different methods I could use for them. This was useful and it gave me a method to link my designs with the overall prompt of my unit.