If your life was a movie, what would the poster look like?

The Holy Spirit and I got to answer that question together with my final Survey of Media & Design project. Rather than say much, I’ll let you peruse. Click on the pieces to see the details!

(back of DVD case)

Project | Themed Playing Cards
Class | Survey of Media and Design
Instructor | Chris Williams

This has absolutely been one of my favorite projects this quarter. The assignment challenged me in illustration, an area where I don’t usually feel very confident.

The theme that I choose to give our beloved deck is the four main personality types. I first learned them by the acronymn DISC; hence, the design for the back of the cards. Basically, the four types come from combinations of two variants: pace and priority. People can be fast-paced or slow-paced, people-oriented or task-oriented. I assigned a personality type to each suit and tried to show how that personality would create the card. In other words, the meaning is in the medium.

♣ King of Clubs = fast-paced, task-oriented. The “D.” Thanks to a rubber stamp, his job is done, and he’s happy about it. Efficient and authoritative = a perfect solution. Plus, he really got a thrill from that swift sensation of ‘making his mark.’

♦ Jack of Diamonds = fast-paced, people-oriented. The “I.” Magazine decoupage reflects enthusiastic, fun-loving nature. He went for this breezy, organic solution and didn’t worry about tying up loose ends (psst: he can’t see them)!

♥ Queen of Hearts = slow-paced, people-oriented. The “S.” This person pulled out her shoebox of art supplies and took all the time necessary to create a gentle and sympathetic portrait of the queen. She may not have stayed perfectly inside the lines, but her concern for people always delivers portrayals full of merry honesty.

♠ Ace of Spades = slow-paced, task-oriented. The “C.” There was no question in her mind about the correct way to make a card; she knew instinctively that the math would make all the details add up right. The only problem was lack of time. If the others had been more patient, they would have been privileged to look upon perfection.

The Joker card required these four to actually collaborate… and you can probably see remnants of the tension. Someone’s gridlines were disregarded, someone else got bored with his assignment and left the scene. And does one size really fit all? …It’s a good thing the peacemaker was there, doing her best to tie it all together!

———————

Behind all this drama, of course, was just one person and one medium: myself and a handful of Adobe products. This project confirms to me the potential for mimicry through digital illustration. Personally, I can’t get enough.

As much as I tried to step out of myself and disguise it, you can probably tell that I am an analytical “C” of the highest order. Perhaps that’s why I love studying personality so much – in the confusing world of social interaction, systems like this provide me with a plumbline!

Survey of Media & Design, Week 1:
Our instructor, Chris Williams, gives us surveys to find out
about our individual tastes, experiences, and interests.

Survey of Media & Design, Week 2:
The aforementioned instructor gives us individual assignments with
subject matter intended to be the polar opposite of our natural bents.

This is why I spent two weeks designing book jackets for Commodified Evil’s Wayward Children: Black Metal and Death Metal as Purveyors of an Alternative Form of Modern Escapism.

Was he challenging my values or poking fun at my innocence? I kind of wondered.

This is what I had at the beginning of the third week of class. We were supposed to continue working while Chris came around and gave us input.

I thought I was being pretty clever to use the humble rectangle to symbolize doors (“escapism”), mass production (“commodified”), menacing blackness, and EQ forms for the audio part. His input: It means so much that it means nothing.	I like typography and I thought the contrast and positioning was quite “knifey” and appropriate. His input: It’s totally clean Swiss design. Grunge it up.

Hm.

I was relieved to discover that he was just as interested in a smart and tasteful solution as I was, but a little wary of the advice, simply because it countered my typical design thought process.

I went with it, though. These two covers ended up thus:

On the white one, I narrowed down the message and ended up with a stronger image. And oh, how I love faux 3D – maybe even more than I love ambiguous minimalism. lol.

The black one was really where the breakthrough took place. You see, I had been in somewhat of a design funk prior to this assignment. Developing my critical eye had brought me to the belief that 99% of design choices are wrong, and that I was always aiming for a microscopic target called “Good Design.” I felt paralyzed, unable to experiment without immediately criticizing in my head.

As I toppled and twisted the lines of types, I could feel the little white picket fences falling away. I could breathe; I was having fun! (I had actually forgotten that design was supposed to be fun.)

The problem with being told to ‘break rules’ is that there are many, many variables to affect (size, spacing, weight, positioning, angle, etc.) I had nothing to govern my choices anymore, so I felt lost. When I explained this to Chris, his advice was, “find a visual relationship that looks wrongly right, and then make that happen elsewhere again… and again… and again.”

Wow!  A principle of grunge that I could run with. So you see my result above. It isn’t wrongly perfect, but for a first attempt in this style, I was quite excited.

Education really should be a form of tough love. I feel like I have gone to school for two years without having been challenged through feedback. To be fair, many assignments must be completed within one week, so there is little opportunity for teachers to influence my work in progress. But this quarter, I have really seen the value of uncannily individualized advice. I also want to be able to give it in my areas of teaching!

Check out the PDF to see the whole project completed.