Final Visual Argument Reflections #11
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Throughout this project my main idea — bringing light to the many services offered by public libraries besides books — has stayed pretty central. I wanted that argument to be pretty clear with bold text and without too much sensory overload, so I knew I wanted a rather minimalist approach to the visuals (like the simple vector art style that Duolingo uses). I also have a bit of experience with digital art (although not much), so I knew I wanted to do my own illustrations and take my own photos. I planned to have a picture of a library with drawings / photos of people who are doing things in the library besides reading books. I walked to the Carnegie Library and took a photo of the outside of the library (which isn’t pictured here, as I didn’t end up using it at all) and then some pictures inside the stacks. This would serve to be the main background of my argument. I decided I would then color over it to get the blocky, minimalist aesthetic I wanted. Later, I would put my drawings of people between the shelves, and then text on the brown top and bottom bars of the image (see below). However, I pretty quickly abandoned this train of thought because it seemed too much and too distracting. I moved on and considered what color palette I'd want to use, then decided on the black and white image of the library with colorful illustrations of people, to illustrate that while books are always in the background and essential to the library, they aren't everything. Thus, the colorful drawings would suggest that we should more vividly focus (in a literal and figurative sense) on the other services of the library and the people who use them, and how they exist in close relation to each other (hence how they're all next to each other in the shelves even though that would probably not happen in real life). So I played around with some of the GIMP greyscale and saturation effects until I was satisfied with the exposure and saturation of the new B&W image. I also started drawing the illustrations of the people on Photoshop, since I have a bunch of drawing brushes on there that I bought a while ago. For the most part it's the same as GIMP though. I started on a blank transparent layer, then merged it with the different layers I used to outline / color in the drawings, then exported them as PNGs. This resulted in semi-transparent images that I would then open all as separate layers into GIMP and move around.
At this point, I decided to crop and rescale the background library image so the shelves would appear wider and I could fit more drawings in between them. I then planned for the text to go in a larger bottom section, so I added an extra white background gradient and extended it. I looked online for some bold, bookish-looking display fonts that would convey my message clearly, and a more lowkey font to accompany it that could list the library services. So I settled on Yeseva One and Lato, which I'd arrange into different text layers. (See below for the whole greyscale image so far with the keyboard player, which is the first one I drew.) After putting the text in, I finished drawing the rest of the illustrations and moved them around. I also figured out that I could play around with the HSV filters/sliders to adjust the hue and saturation of the images, which I didn't know you could do before but was actually pretty helpful so I could get the exact tone I wanted. On the left side of the bookshelf divider, I put the illustrations with warm colors(the people who are doing the "less traditional" activities in the library), and more cooler-toned ones on the right (more "traditional" educational based activities). My reasoning may not be immediately obvious since I don't mention it anywhere in the argument, but I think it subliminally gets the message across since the eye is first drawn to the bright red person sitting with the computer. At this point I had finished my rough draft and was pretty happy with it, although I was worried what people would think of the big block of text I had on the left. Most of my feedback confirmed that, saying that I shouldn't try to "say everything out" and that the message was too explicit.
I was really attached to the extra white space and the text block in the first place because they brought a lot of balance and sense of visual hierarchy to the piece, so I restored it (although I cropped it a little) and moved the big block of text (and lightened the font so it would kind of fade out on the pole. I kept the Lato font though, I liked how it was more of a "background" font). I liked the kind of square shape that the previous layout had established, so I was trying to replicate that but with less (and bigger) text, but with the same Yeseva One font. The main text (Support your local library) I changed to left-align and moved to the left, and I also enlarged it and changed the spacing a little bit. The subtext at that point (It's not just for books) proved not to align that well even when I changed it to right-align setting. I played around with spacing for a while, and the alignment, but nothing seemed to work, and I still liked the look of the font but didn't want to change it too drastically. Nonetheless, I did find a new font for the subtext - Playfair Display - which is almost the same thing but less heavy, and it definitely seemed to look better while still conveying a sense of importance (but not utmost importance). Still, I was having trouble making it line up the way I wanted (should it go in a corner? In the middle? Or be lined up like with the words on the left side? No matter what I seemed to do, there was an awkward chunk of white space). After a lot of messing around with the alignment, I gave up on the "It's not just for books" slogan and eventually came up with another slogan, "Venture beyond the books" which is almost the same, and decided to align each of the words with the left side. Overall I really enjoyed this project, I learned a lot about manipulating color and text digitally and how to put visual rhythm into practice! |
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For my project, “G.O.A.T”, I simply created a bracket of the greatest players of all time from the 4 major sports (basketball, football, hockey, and baseball) pitting them against each other. Tom Brady takes on Barry Bonds while Michael Jordan squares off against Wayne Gretzky. I really liked the idea of creating a bracket for them as it is something generally associated with sports and competition. I liked the idea of throwing actual goats into the image as it just gives the image a tough tone almost. I have more than one word as, “Greatest Of All Time” is flashed across the middle for the “champion” of the bracket. The font I chose was more used to be flashy and sporty, something similar to the way an ESPN Instagram post uses a font in its graphic design. It’s this really simple font yet it’s dynamic in a way. I really enjoy its aesthetic. The point, or “message” is really its juxtaposition. We place these 4 all time athletes against each other, and its up to the viewer to decide who the “G.O.A.T” really is; it’s what sports is all about; debate. The message and point of this is to compare these amazing athletes and decide who the best of the best actually is in the case of these four. It’s not up to the artist, it is up to the viewer to debate and show this to their friends and compare the athletes who are wildly successful. That’s the message. The brackets also produce a bit of juxtaposition as it literally compares 2 athletes head to head and then again in the championship round. There are at least 4 layers in the piece. We have the black background, the literal goats, and then the bracket of G.O.A.Ts. Now for the tools I used in this project (besides select/move/text)! One of the most common tools I used was the scale tool. I would upload the images of the G.O.A.Ts and then I would have measure them down to a point where they would look comparable. A size differential would lead to the audience being biased towards one G.O.A.T over another. Another tool I commonly used was the paintbrush. Originally, there was a line down the middle of the goats as it was a border from the original picture. This would be changed by using the dropper then using the acquired color in the paintbrush. This got the stripe down the middle gone. I also used the bucket tool. |
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When choosing a topic for my visual argument, I tried to think about arguments that I would realistically like to make. I had the idea for a poster recruiting players for
I knew that I wanted to use juxtaposition using a pile of dice at the bottom with fantasy images at the top. For the dice I found a picture of a full set of RPG dice,
As I put my poster together, my plan for the arrangement was for the dice to be the most eye-catching because of their bright colors and the cluttered pile which
For my final product, I feel that I met all of the baseline goals. I strategically used the color and visual rhythm of the dice to focus and catch the viewer's For aspirational goals which I met, I used secondary and tertiary levels of hierarchy in several ways. I have levels of hierarchy between the dice and fantasy divisions |
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It was difficult for me to decide what I wanted to make my visual argument about. I had a few ideas, but I didn’t feel very strongly about any of them. I realized, though, that at the root of all my ideas was a simple argument: “be kind.” I wanted to create a project with this general idea, but I wanted to leave it more open to the viewer’s interpretation. In my experience, I found that the most effective visual arguments make the viewer dig deeper and think more complexly about the argument and what it means to them. An argument that just read “be kind,” or another form of “do this” or “think this way” would not be nearly as effective. The approach I took was drawn from a book by Kurt Vonnegut called Bluebeard. The main character Rabo Karabekian has an interesting way of looking at people. To put it simply, he says he imagines the "soul" and the "meat" of a person as separate, and he imagines a person's soul as a flexible neon tube inside of them. The soul, he says, has no control over what the meat does, so when someone does something bad, in his mind he "fleses" them, strips away all the meat, so that he sees nothing but their soul, and then he forgives them. It's a rather strange way of looking at people, and maybe it's not necessarily how we should be viewing the actions of others, but I still think it's a very interesting way to see things. His analogy has always translated to me that the soul contains all the "goodness" inside of people and that, no matter what we look like or what we do with our lives, we're all the same on the inside. I’ve always wondered what this analogy would look like, so I made the first version of my project into what I imagine Rabo sees when he looks at people. I didn’t really intend for this to be my project, I just wanted to try it out and get the ball rolling.
When creating this image, I made the conscious decision to set the people against a dark grey background to really make the glow and color of the tubes pop. I didn’t know what color Rabo imagined the tubes inside of people to be, but I wanted to make them colorful so as not to completely strip all individuality from the people I was representing with the silhouettes. I really liked how the picture looked, but I knew I didn’t have a full argument yet. I decided to try to develop it more, so I tried out some new things in a separate gimp file. I was having trouble figuring out how to change the settings of the brush tool, but Ben finally figured it out for me. Once I knew how to change the size and hardness of the drawing tool, I messed around with drawing orbs of light instead of tubes.
I really liked how this turned out, and I figured the metaphor of balls of light would be more easily understood by viewers who have not read Bluebeard. I then decided to create yet another gimp file to flesh out this idea of orbs of light instead of tubes. This file eventually became my final project. With my visual argument, I wanted to visually represent the question “What if all you could see were the lights of people’s souls?” I attempted this by laying out rows of people, with each row fading more and more into the background while the lights remain just as bright. I also wanted to illustrate the idea that, if this was how we really saw each other, the brightness of a person’s light would represent the goodness of their soul. Because I wanted to emphasize this idea, I decided to make the lights white since the colors ended up being a bit distracting and having just white lights made the fact that they were varying intensities stand out. After our peer review, I didn’t get much advice for revision besides naming my layers. Again, I forgot that this was something I could do. I reused a few of the same silhouettes for my people, so I gave each of the unique silhouettes a name (e.g. Peter, Christine, etc.) which really helped me to recognize and find layers that I needed to work on.
Ben then suggested that we make layer groups, so I grouped each row of people and their lights, and then I had an extra group of all the background lights and another of the text. This made my entire project much more organized and a lot easier to look at/work with.
I think my visual argument very easily meets the baseline criteria, and even meets a lot of the aspirational criteria as well. I used hierarchy with the people and lights which creates a smooth flow and allows the eye to move easily from the bottom to the text at the top, or from the text down to the bottom. I used negative space and careful arrangement of space and size to create depth and rhythm in the picture (baseline and aspirational). For my text, I decided on a question: "How bright will you let your light shine?" to leave the viewer thinking about what the argument means to them, while sort of guiding them towards the idea that they control how bright their light shines. I chose a very basic font for the majority of my text to make the “Bright” and “Light” really stand out, which meets the aspirational criteria of multiple fonts. I used juxtaposition with the people and lights, and I used (way) more than 3 layers. I used the Drawing tool (which was actually pretty tricky) to create the lights, the Blur tool to blend out the lights, the Hue-Chroma tool in the Colors category to experiment with color and intensity of the lights, and A LOT of the Scale Layer tool. I’m new to GIMP, so all the tools were new to me, but the Layer Groups were especially tricky for me to figure out. GitHub is also still pretty tricky for me, but I think I finally got the hang of it with this project. I also stated this earlier in my reflection, but I specifically chose a grayscale color scheme to bring the focus to the lights, which are the biggest part of my argument. Overall, I liked this project a lot. I’ve always enjoyed graphic design, so being able to use GIMP to create my own project was a lot of fun. |
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For my "Herd Immunity Saves Lives" visual argument, I changed my ideas quite a bit but stayed with the same focus of displaying the importance of herd immunity. I started out with my idea of having a herd of sheep surrounding children, representing herd immunity. Then, I wanted to have a mob or group of angry protestors representing the anti-vaxxers. After my preview, I realized that it was too difficult to find a picture of a group of angry protestors that would fit into the field background I chose. I finally started from scratch again with no specific plan in mind of what I wanted to do other than making it look more atheistically pleasing. I wanted to keep the same central theme of a herd protecting children and a group of anti-vaxxers coming to destroy the herd. I decided to use a background that resembled viruses/bacteria and separated the children by a dark circle, showing that they are protected from this chaotic looking background. I surrounded this circle by elephants who also travel in herds so I believe this depicted herd immunity just as well. I used a silhouette image of protestors to depict the anti-vaxxers and surrounded them with little drawings of bacteria. My text had originally said "Vaccines Save Lives", but after getting feedback from my classmates I realized the herd immunity argument needed to be clearer so I changed it to "Herd Immunity Saves Lives". I also added a website link for information on why vaccines are so important so that it is even clearer for the audience to understand what my argument is about. I believe I met all of the baseline criteria and a few aspirational goals as well. My argument that herd immunity is important and anti-vaxxers are destroying it is clear. The juxtaposition of the colorful background against the isolated group of children creates a contrasting effect which emphasizes my depiction of herd immunity. I specifically used negative space and color to create a sense of visual rhythm and hierarchy. When I first look at my image my eyes go to the circle of elephants and children in the black circle because of the negative space but also because of the contrasting colors. Then my eyes are drawn to the the protestors due to the negative space. Finally I would move to the text because it is at the bottom and the size is the smallest out of the three main parts of the image. This visual rhythm and hierarchy goes along with how I would want someone to understand the image. The protected, isolated children surrounded by a herd are being charged at by a group of anti-vaxxers, and bringing it all together with "Herd Immunity Saves Lives". Thus, I would say I utilized secondary and tertiary levels of hierarchy. The tools I used the most other than select, move, and text were the lasso tool to cut images, the arbitrary rotation tool in order to position the elephants around the circle, and the paintbrush which I used to color in the sign that the protestors are holding. I included more than 3 layers, and found layer groups useful with the elephants, children, and bacteria drawings because there were so many of them. I also used more than one font. I have never used GIMP before and found it really frustrating to use but I'm happy with how my final image turned out. I definitely struggled with this more than the soundscape project and it took me multiple tries to come up with an image that looked well put together. However, I learned a lot and can successfully say that I improved from beginning to end of this unit. |
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When coming up with a visual argument idea, I wanted to do something that illustrates new technologies slowly fading out older items. I wanted to do this by having the newer technology items destroying the more traditional items in some way. I got this inspiration from an example Ben showed us in class at the beginning of the unit. The example image was a mouse acting as a wrecking ball smashing into newspaper dispensers. I thought this was a cool idea and wanted to try something along the same lines. My original idea was to have boot stepping on the older, more traditional items. Inside the boot, I wanted to have the names of newer pieces of technology. After working on this idea for a brief amount of time, I came up with the following start.
The idea came off as pretty bland to me. I didn't want to use an actual boot, as I thought it would be too busy to read the words on it. So I tried using an outline of a boot, but that seemed too boring for me. I did however, come up with the idea to highlight certain letters of each word to spell out another word. I decided to scrap the idea and try something similar, but different. I thought of the idea of having the words of the newer technology in individual meteors crashing down on the older items. I thought this would fix my boring problem as I would be able to give it a colorful background and meteors themselves are rarely described as boring. I started on the project and came up with this image as a start.
Even without a background, I was much happier with this route I was taking as apposed to the original idea I tried. I kept moving with this idea and added in the background and ground items and had a preview image that looked like the following.
Again, I was happy with my image, but I thought the ground items needed spiced up a little more, as they were only books and newspapers. For my draft, I added in some activities that maybe seeing less attention as technology progresses such as basketball, soccer, and playgrounds.
Based off this draft, I received feedback that mostly had to do with my font and the hidden word "tech" inside the various words.
I agree with the feedback that the blue in my words that spelled out "tech" was a bit hard to read with a blueish background. I tried out a few different colors before I settled on green as having enough contrast with the background. I also made the letters a little bigger per Brittany's feedback (it was on the back of the note card and I didn't get a picture). Finally, I decided to give all the words their own fonts that try to match what they are describing. I gave "video games" an arcadey themed font while giving phones, computers, and tablets more roboty themed fonts. I feel like this may these words feel a little less bland then they were before. My final image came out as followed.
I feel as though I met all the baseline criteria. My arrangement draws the viewers eyes down the page, as if they are following the meteors as they fall. This is backed up by my feedback. I have four words with four carefully chosen fonts as explained above. I think the message of new technology taking over is clear. This is also backed up by my feedback. My image juxtaposes newer technology with older technology and I used a lot more than 3 layers. I use the horizontal translate tool to flip my meteors and I also used the rotate tool. Finally, I gave an explanation for almost every decision I made throughout the project in this post. As for the aspirational criteria, I feel as though I met some of them as well. I would argue meteors containing new forms of technology crashing down on more traditional items would classify as surprising or unexpected. I think the highlighting of several letters to form the word "tech" creates a hierarchy to the argument. I used four fonts for my four words and I used layered groups to group the meteors with their accompanying word. Overall, I enjoyed this project. The hardest part for me was finding images that matched by eye-level perspective. Other than that I would say I found this project to be easier and more fun to work with than the soundscape project. |
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I couldn't think of any creative argument to make, so I ended up deciding on trying to visualize a word (like the "RUIN" example from one of the readings). I ended up deciding on using "AMERICA" for my word thinking it would be easy to create a visual image of a polarized voting base. Turns out it was more annoying to create than I originally thought.
I got to about here above image before I decided what I was aiming for would look like a terribly stitched together abomination. I considered hand-drawing the idea to blend together the textures, colors, and general style of a fluid creation between a whole word and individual parts, but I also tossed that idea.
I decided to take the easy path and only add a couple images to the word, the divided party-line message would still get across. Sadly, my image was too simple. Coloring, transforming, scaling, scaling, and moving seemed to hardly meet the baseline criteria, so I decided to add to the background.
I wanted to incorporate what it's like being an American in 2019. What its like trying to follow the chaotic news that's at the tip of your fingertips but is a pain in the arse to properly follow every day or week. Partially, what its like to live in a boring dystopia. To do this I added 2019 (and some 2016+) headlines all over the background of the outline of the USA. I gave republican related headlines a red color, democratic blue, and neutral news gray in order for the viewer to quickly recognize party affiliation and to keep the juxtaposition of red vs. blue apparent in the centerpiece word. There are more republican (red) headlines than democratic (blue) to convey the hold that republicans have had on the nation over the past couple of years. The grey headlines are actually even smaller than the red and blue headlines because I wanted them to be harder to read, just like its harder to dig and find news about them. So, I wanted my image to work on three levels: "AMERICA" large and centered with the most commonly spouted ideological and talking point differences highlighted, then the next level consists of background news headlines in red and blue that further juxtapose the two parties and colors but at a more in-depth level of what the two parties are doing rather than at the "you can't take my guns" vs. "guns are bad" top level, and finally the last hierarchy of gray news headlines that are even more difficult to remember or find and that show both parties actually suck and corporate America is a sell out that doesn't have any consistent values despite what either party claims. All in all, the image isn't supposed to look fancy. It's meant to be rather boring and annoying, like reading or listening to the news. It's not meant to be simple to read, like actually keeping up with the massive amount of information and finding (or remembering) quietly covered up, non-spotlighted, or forgotten news.
Most of my critical feedback concerned the background text of the image (too small or too much). I honestly didn't know what to do since the difficulty of reading the text was meant to be a part of the image. After some deliberation I decided to keep the text as is. So, I didn't really end up changing anything from the rough final draft to the finished final draft. |
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Since my reflection ended up being super long, I decided to make it a file in my repo and share it here. https://github.com/fathimashabnam/visual-argument-2019fall/blob/master/Reflection.md |
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This visual argument project turned out to be very enjoyable for me. Because I took this course in hopes of using applications like Photoshop, GIMP is very similar in the ability to transform image(s), which I liked. In the process of learning to use GIMP and understanding its gadgets, I ran into a few bumps in the road. My first step in completing my vision for my visual argument project, I needed to paste an image of a plastic bag into the mouth of a fix in the ocean. Put into words, this sounds like an easy task, but turned out to be time-consuming for me.
I had trouble mostly figuring out how to take away the background of the plastic bag (essentially “erasing”), rather than coloring on this black (or sometimes white) stroke instead. I ended up watching a tutorial online, which proved helpful for many gadgets throughout this unit. To add this image of the plastic bag, but remove its background, I had to go under the “Layer” tab, hover over “Transparency” to see those options, and finally select “Add Alpha Channel” (see below).
This allowed me to complete my photo idea on the left. My image on the right was easier to manage because I was not attempting to paste something on top of it. Although, when I got to placing the images side by side, this was when it got tricky.
As you can see above, I had both of my images ready to go (look in the top left corned), but couldn’t figure out how to place them next to one another. Below you can see my first attempt, where I had the other image placed in the GIMP app, but due to the size, could not see my other photo (look at the yellow dotted outline). I hadn’t realized this was the problem until Ben helped me.
Once Ben informed me that changing the size of the canvas could help (this was definitely easier than performing the act through layers), I was making progress. To fix my problem, I simply had to go to the top and click the “Image” tab, press “Canvas Size” and change my dimensions, as seen below.
And once I had this figured out, I realized I could be finished with my visual argument, but I wanted to do more. I had met all of the baseline criteria already. I used “arrangement, size, color, visual rhythm, and/or contrast to focus viewers' attention” in the placement of my images and words, by coordinating these images sizes (I had to play with this, as I mentioned above) and using contrasting colors for visual effect. Obviously, I used at least one word; I actually used 8 in order to get my point across, but not use too many words to take away from the visual aspect. My words are simple, yet effective, and I chose the color white to contrast the darker backgrounds on both images. In addition, I used Helvetica Neue Bold to keep the font simple so that it was visible and legible, yet not too eye-catching so that it did not take away from the image itself. My message is quite clear: What goes into the ocean, goes into you. So, with this, by polluting our waters, not only are we hurting these animals, but we hurt ourselves as well. Essentially, STOP POLLUTING. And with this, my juxtaposition is quite clear as well, visually you see the two contrasting images side by side, and on a deeper level, contrasting the lives of these fish with our own when we consume them. I indeed used more than three layers in my project, and in terms of tools, I used “Paths Tool”, “Scale Tool”, and “Eraser Tool”, in addition to select, move, and text, just to name a few. We had studio time in class to work on our project, and I knew this was a perfect opportunity to attempt to go into the “Aspirational Inspiration” targets. With this, I knew I didn’t want to change my font into “more than one font” because that would take away from the image visually—I wanted to keep my words and their font simple to allow the viewer to focus on the actual images at hand, as I have mentioned above. Instead, I decided to change the color of the bucket in the right image in my project to “Use a consistent / considered color palette”. For this, I also had to watch a GIMP tutorial online, and found many ways to do this. The easiest, from what I could see, was to: Use the “Paths Tool” to create and highlight the area in which I wanted to change the color, then in the top bar I clicked Select, then clicked “From Path”, which would then highlight the path I have created, then I pressed Edit in the top toolbar, “Fill Path”, and I chose the color based on the left image to tie the two images together better. I then had to repeat this step eight times to highlight eat visible part of the bucket separately and carefully. This proved to be time-consuming, but made my visual argument more appealing and allowed me to understand more tools in the GIMP app. In terms of other Aspirational Inspiration” targets, I used my negative space actively by placing my few words in the empty space. I also do believe I included something “surprising or unexpected in the elements you bring together” by using two images that might catch the viewer by surprise. When we think about polluting the water (which people, in general, do not think about enough), we don’t normally relate it back to ourselves; as humans we are quite selfish, and I think if we did think of polluting in terms of ourselves more often, we might be less likely to do it. Finally, in terms of feedback I have received from my peers, I altered the font/size of my words.
When we did this peer review, my font was not Helvetica Neue Bold (I can’t remember exactly what it was, maybe the basic/automatic font when adding words), and to make the font clearer and simpler, I changed the font to something bold for visibility, in addition to enlarging it and moving it around so that it appears in sync on both sides. A thank you to my peer for this, because the words on my visual argument are important and I want them to appear so. Overall, I really enjoyed this project and think my skills improved greatly over the last month. |
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Initially, when we were given this assignment I had no idea what I wanted to argue for. However, in one of my classes we were having a discussion about the subjectivity of definitions, using the Supreme Court case regarding Mapplethorpe’s art and obscenity. As I was previously a museum studies minor, I figured it would be fun to use some of the art history knowledge I have and pose my argument as more of an open ended one that I hope would spark thought in my viewer, bringing me to my final argument: What is art? I knew from the start that I wanted to produce a very chaotic image — layering controversial artworks over one another but emphasizing specific ones by the way I piece the images together. I wanted to take this chaos to the next level by incorporating negative quotes about some of the artworks present in my piece, while finally layering my question ‘What is Art?’ over the whole image. My entire process of composing my image was a lot of trial and error. Before I could incorporate the quotes, I had to have the collage set in stone. I started out by compiling all the images I wanted to use, and then importing the images by most to least important — playing around with their placement and size until I was happy with where they were. My image is planned chaos, which is a lot harder to achieve than expected, as it took a fair amount of patience and time to get my images to overlap in the right place or have a specific one emphasized more than another. In my first draft (shown below) you can see some empty gaps as well as an image that I didn’t end up including (the skull). However, you can see that the majority of my piece remained the same — but I was still in this trial and error process.
Coming into our workshop class, my next draft shows a near completed image, now with my collage complete, the saturation of the colored images decreased, and my quotes incorporated. However, I knew I needed to change something to make the quotes more readable — I just didn’t know what.
It’s reaffirming to hear that something that you’re unsure about in your piece is what was also what everyone else was unsure of as well. Before coming into workshop that day, I knew that my text was blending into the background and hard to see — as my classmates also confirmed on the notecards — but I didn’t know what would be best to fix the issue. I didn’t want the quotes to be center of attention, but I needed them to be readable.
After talking with Ben, he recommended implementing drop shadows — and that was a huge game-changer in my piece. It gave the text the perfect effect: it made it readable, more aesthetically pleasing, and also made it stand out more. I decided to even try a drop shadow on my main argument “What is Art?” because I felt the text didn’t pop as much as I wanted it to — and the drop shadow was effective in solving that issue. It made the text appear bolder and more visible, juxtaposed over the collage of images.
Therefore, I feel I met the baseline criteria in my visual argument. My message is extremely clear and straightforward, expressed in 3 words and with a more aesthetically pleasing font, as I wanted it to differ and stand out more than the quotes, which is why I chose a more normal and basic font for them. I used arrangement, size, color, visual rhythm and contrast to focus viewers’ attention in my piece — each image is placed in a particular spot to demonstrate a hierarchy of importance among the images, as well as carefully sized to make one emphasized as opposed to another, like the Jackson Pollock piece, which is essentially used to fill the space. My images are all contrasting one another as some are in color and some are in back and white, and the visual rhythm of the images draws your eyes first to The Fountain — which is the most important image in this piece — and then to the rest of the artworks. In addition, due to the chaotic nature and composition of my piece, every image and quote is juxtaposed over another, as I used multiple layers to create this juxtaposition. I used a few GIMP tools for my piece: scale to change my image sizes, paint, saturation to decrease the saturation in the colored images, and drop shadows. I also feel I met a good amount of the aspirational criteria. Because my piece is showcasing known controversial artworks, there was no way for me to include a photo of my own. I argue that my entire piece is surprising and unexpected, because all the artworks included are controversial, surprising, and unexpected: Mapplethorpe posing with a huge gun in front of a pentagram, a photo of a man in an all black leather suit, a urinal, a crucifix submerged in urine, etc. — all in my opinion add a surprising element to my piece. Although all of the images are not black and white like I expected, I purposefully decreased the saturation of the colored ones to help them blend in with the collage, maintaining a toned down and somewhat monotone color or overall feel. Because everything was not black and white, choosing what color to make my text was a bit difficult, as no specific color could be seen completely or worked completely for the quotes. I felt that red would most likely be the most readable color, choosing to place “What is Art?” in red, and then later using red in the drop shadows to make the white quotes stand out and become readable. As I mentioned previously, I used two different fonts to differentiate the main argument from the quotes. Lastly, negative space was purposefully avoided in my piece, as I instead used the lack of negative space to generate chaos in the image. |
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When we started discussing this project in class, I had a plethora of ideas in my mind. I developed a myriad of different arguments, images, and tag lines, but I did not know how to put them together. After a lot of brainstorming, doodling, and scrapping, I was able to finalize my argument. Here is another screenshot of my project in progress. I have placed a few more objects on the right side. As per the aspirational inspirations, I have used more than one font. I wanted the 'is' in the middle to look different from the rest of the text to stress the fact that the damage "is" happening in the present time. As most of my objects are gathered in the center of the image, there is a lot of negative space which is making the things in center prominent. My color palette is consistent throuout the image. I have mostly used blue and orange hues. Blue for the normal side, orange for the damaged side.
I also used GIMP filters like fog to create a smokey effect at the right. My project has levels of hierarchy that add layers to the argument. The general argument is to save the planet and it is evident as you look at the visual. The underlying layers of argument can be seen when you zoom into the right side of the Earth and pay attention to the plastic bottles in the place of land and polluted water in the place of oceans. Another layer to my argument can be seen in the torn out paper effect. I don't know how successful I am in giving that impression but I used this torn out paper effect not just as a partition between the two sides. I also used it metaphorically to imply that we need to tear the image of the earth we have in mind(The left healthy earth) and look at the actual picture (the right side of the earth). This may also be seen as something surprising which is bringing other elements in my image together. Below is an older version of my visual argument. After having feedback from fellow classmates which are pasted below, I made significant changes to it. Overall, I really enjoyed exploring GIMP and putting together different ideas. I am happy with how my project turned out in the end. Here is the final look of my project:
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For this visual rhetoric project I created the piece “Media the Voyeur”. This piece explored how the modern media encourages us to constantly “perform” a version of ourselves for an audience, even when no one is watching. I wanted to give the effect of feeling compelled to behave this way in our modern society, which is why I chose the image of a woman seemingly floating in a void. The way she is reaching out gave me a feeling like she is longing for something she can never reach, much like how we are longing for a sense of validation from online sources that can never deliver on what we crave. I chose to include water as the background on the TVs because social media can sometimes be suffocating, like you are drowning in the “victories” of others even though its all fake and constructed to be their best selves. I feel that I met the baseline criteria with my piece because I used arrangement, size, and color to contrast the large, dark, and multiple screens against the soft, light, and smaller woman. This gives a sense of loneliness, but that is juxtaposed with a feeling of being smothered by the large screens. The screens and the images and text on them provide a sense of visual rhythm and flow, going from the numerous women floating in an open expanse of water to the words “Exhibition is Existence” flowing across the screen. Another way I met the baseline criteria was by using different layer modes and clipping masks.
As you can see from the picture above, the image is completely hiding the TV screens below it. I could painstakingly erase the image on top until is matched with the screens, but this would not look realistic, and would give me a hard time if I wanted to move and tweak placement of the image below.
A clipping mask merges any image grouped under it to it and only it. First I created a new layer and used the brush tool to trace over all the TV screens in white. I then grouped the image of the woman in the water and the text under its own folder. I then selected the white spaces that I had drawn and right clicked to select “Create selection mask”. This allowed all the images that were grouped under this clipping mask to adhere to, and only to, the white space of the television screen. In order to make this look more realistic I wanted to preserve the shadows and highlights found on the images of the TV screen. This was accomplished by setting the clipping layer from “Normal” to “Overlay”, which made the colors meld with what was already under them. In addition to clipping masks, I used the skew tool in order to morph the TV screens so that it looked like they were surrounding the girl. It created a fish bowl effect, further punctuating the “spectacle” of existence. In order to go above and beyond, I animated my assignment! The animation depicts a screen fuzzing out in static until the girl take a picture of herself and then images of her pop up on screen as the words “Exhibition is Existence” flash in order.
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I emailed my reflection! |
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For my visual argument, I wanted to tell the story of what will happen if we don't take action against pollution on beaches and in the ocean. I have always seen pictures of polluted beaches, but I know beaches I vacation at are always clean. I feel that this is something that happens to everyone, and because of this the problem feels very distant. I wanted to show people on vacation but sitting in the pollution. I wanted the people to look normal despite being in an unpleasant situation. My goal was to convey a sense of normalcy since this is definitely something that could become possible in the future. I started by finding a picture of people on the beach and adding trash to it. To do this, I had to use the scissor tool and crop different images. I kept adding trash until I felt there was enough there for it to stand out. I wanted to add more people and more trash, but I felt that that created a lack of negative space and that there was too much going on. I removed the extra people I added in but kept some of the trash. Because of where the water was located in the image, it was difficult to try to edit trash into the water. The angles weren't lining up and it made the image look too photoshopped. I thought that there needed to be something indicating that the water was also polluted so I put a danger sign in there. I used the coloring tool to color over the words on the sign so that way I could put my own text over top of it. This is the image I brought in for workshops. After workshops, I was told by two people that I should make the size of the Coke can smaller. I was also told that I should change the color of the text on the danger sign. I agreed with both of these suggestions and adjusted them. Here is my image after following the feedback. I scaled the Coke can down, and I also changed the text color from bright white to a more neutral grey. I believe I hit all baseline criteria because I used arrangement, size, color, visual rhythm to focus viewer's attention. I followed a color scheme and arrangement to make the images stand out. I used font on the danger sign. I picked the font I did because it was large letters that stood out. I felt they looked appropriate for the nature of the sign. I have a clear message against pollution. I also use juxtaposition with the danger sign. It is larger than the people it is next to, giving it the illusion that it is closer. I have more than 3 layers. I also used the scissors tool and the marker tool. With aspirational goals, I think my picture brings together unexpected elements of a happy vacation being surrounded by garbage. I use a consistent color palette to make the image look more realistic. I also used negative space to allow the image to not become overwhelming. |
This is a space where you'll be able to post your final-for-now thoughts on your visual unit projects, your rhetorical collages. We've talked in class about what that should include, but the main goals are to give a sense of what you've learned from doing this project, the work you put into it, and whether it accomplishes what you wanted it to.
At a minimum, please include:
NB: After using the formatting buttons and drag/drop tools to add images here in the Issue queue, you can optionally copy the source code and paste it into a new reflections.md file in your repository: it should then have the same formatting there!
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