[P] Week Eight O[p]us

The first time I really considered periphery limits was when we began our Pathways, Edges and Boundaries project.

We each had areal boundaries and limited materials.  Our periphery was distinguished by a curb; a literal boundary.  We worked with and within the confinement to better it as part of a whole: the whole being the entire parking lot and walkway area.  This gave us five distinct areas to work with and to tie together.  When the new semester began we added another area which came with a whole new understanding of periphery; a crosswalk area.  This area was not distinguished by a curb or edge but by the natural pathway that students and faculty habitually create. 

This link will take you to many of my process pictures of Pathway, Edges and Boundaries.  The process of a design or a concept is key.

In our recent Portal project we worked within the literal periphery boundaries of the given doorway.  Our design could not protrude anymore than eighteen inches into the hallway and we had to work with our neighboring portal group to establish a fair boundary for the common wall space.

These are two process pictures from my portal project.  You can see the final product here.

    

Earlier in the semester while working with vignettes we had a periphery that was less literal than the edge of the paper; more like the borders and boundaries we work within in our more abstracted designs.  The periphery was an underlying edge in which we faded our drawings into the canvas.

This blog is a way for me to present and capture the process of my work as a developing designer.  It is a blogfolio- an online portfolio.  I also keep a physical portfolio.  My portfolio is composed of models, photographs, drafting, drawing in and out of my sketchbook as well on digital files.  A portfolio showcases your work as a professional much like a resume.

Already, just throughout my first year in the Iarc program my portfolios allow me to look back at my processes and progress as a designer. 

Recently in class we have been discussing the similarities and differences between the design process and the writing process.  Both of these expressive medias stem from an inspiration into a developed and well executed concept that communicate in a clear and effective way. “Clarity [is] the main prize, along with simplicity.” (Zinsser)  We will put these ties into action when we further develop our precedent analysis in history class.

These are two illustrations I did to show a different kind of process.  The first shows you how to do something step-by-step.  The second shows you the process of me drawing a pen and the layers added to each step.  

We are presenting out building presentation boards tomorrow.  We wrapped up the previous week with our portal project PowerPoint presentation.  In our powerpoint presentations we explained how we developed our portal concept. This process was very important because our portal concept was derived from previous projects.  Early in the semester we started out by reading a grim in which we made an artifact for.  From our artifact we developed our wall designed to celebrate our artifact as well as explain the process of building an exterior or interior wooden-frame wall.

We then read another story- a creation story- and on through abstracted vignettes we portrayed our wall, our artifact and our creation story. From this assignment we designed passageways that reflected the journey throughout our stories.  After that we some design words into the mix and from there created three new passageways that reflected three specific design words.  We later picked one passageway to further develop as a scale model.  Our portal project was a combination of each group member’s final passageway along with a historical site. Each of these inspiration pieces weaved into upcoming projects and into our final presentation.  

                                                       

                                                          

The building presentation was also a long process.  We were first assigned a building on UNCG’s campus to draw the floor plan from observations.  We later did diagrams of these and then drew ‘moments’ within the building stemming from other artists’ styles as inspiration.  Of course we refined these drawings and from them produced a thumbnail of a detail of the building.  All of these have important spots on our presentation board

The craft of our work is very important in our portfolio work and with anything we do because it reflects our professionalism.  This week we learned  neat trick from Suzanne about lettering for presentation boards, and for anything really.  Tricks and trades like this are the details that make or break a presentation.  If everything in your presentation looks good and then there is wonky, sloping and sloppy lettering or applications that are falling off and bubbling off the presentation board the bad craft will overpower the good.  Good craft is key to professionalism and successful work.  This is why many times we redo assignments that are put in our portfolio.

These are my three images that appear on the presentation board above for our building assignment.  They are an example of something I redid.

In both drawing and drafting we have studying perspective and put it to use many time on paper.  In history and in studio we have put our studies to use in a more hands-on approach.

“In any rectilinear object, as a cube, each of the three principal sets of parallel lines has its own vanishing point.  Based on these three major sets of lines, there are three types of linear perspective: 1-, 2-, and 3-point perspectives.  What distinguishes each type is simply the spectator’s angle of view relative to the subject.  The subject does not change, just our view of it and how the sets of parallel lines will appear to converge in linear perspective.” (Ching 225)  

I drew the picture below depicts a profile view of two people.