vanaga

Minimal poster for The house that Jack built by Lars von Trier.

For this task I went through all of my design books searching for knowledge and inspiration on how to play with minimal shapes and work with an object- the object, for fast, clear and witty message. And Gestalt was my buddy. What I wanted for it is to at first glance look clear ‘’ah, it’s a minimal poster’’ but then adding wit ‘’ oh, I see what you did there’’. Did I fail or succeed, I don’t know. I am not objective and of course I see the thought I put into them. However, I hope some people will see it too.

Also, as one of the main, the it object, is the red van I couldn’t help myself but to reference the movie poster for Little miss sunshine. And I thought it’s funny as these two movies are so far from being similar, but it is one of the most known and the best movie posters made, and it’s minimal (yellow van and running people), which in this case is the red van pulling a body.

It’s weird cause I rarely do remember movies that I like not to mention movies that I didn’t. At first this movie fell in the bucket of- disturbing, I will not recommend it to anyone. But as time goes I sometimes catch myself thinking about it, and in a way that’s not sick I find it beautifully made and maybe even worth watching.

Shooting noir still life turned out to be a much harder task than I imagined. Some things I've learned for the future-  look at pictures at bigger size while still on set. Camera eye is very limited and most pictures look great when actually they are not. Think logical and make it look natural.I know It's pretty unreal when you are shooting something thats last century, but never the less objects should look natural in the frame. Such things as- is the person right handed and if yes, then how he puts down objects. Last- know your composition and hierarchy. Best if we had sketches before. It would have helped a lot. 

For pictogram task I chose 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and found Chinese hieroglyphs as my reference. However, at the end I decided to take off the hat and made them more common/official. 

I would never like street typography before this task when I understood that you can use it in your favour. 

The task I set for myself was not to repeat the lettering 1:1 but to understand and learn the charecteristics of each letter and all of them as a family. I am not completely happy with the results of typeface Teodor, although I really like the original work. When I get time I will return to this.

Plasticine. What physical properties has this material? DEFORMATION is what I decided to work with. I would cut out perfect letters and the deform/destroy them like a kid would when you play with plasticine with them. 

I love typography. I also love to make things with my two hands aka do it yourself. And when you get a task to make handmade experimental lettering- you go crazy. 

At first, ideas are very simple and you feel like you cannot come up with something new. But somewhere between the fifth and eight lettering, ideas come streaming at you and I can't manage to stop creating. 

Morale here- keep going, keep creating and something wonderful will come. Here I remember one experiment where a group of designers were divided in half, where one half for a month would work on one good poster, and the other half would create a poster a day. The results were- all of the very good posters came from the group that have made 30+ posters each. Also, many people from the “one poster” group did not finish in time. 

This leads me to another thought. If you devote a lot of time and energy to one work and it turns out to be just okey- it's annoying and frustrating. Either you devote a lot of time and the work is outstanding, or you do it in a few minutes and the work is whatever ( from outstanding to very bad). 

Composition. Oh, you and I have very tense relationship. Sometimes I get you, other can't wrap my mind around you. 

Things I learnt from this task:

lettering is a very straight and fast way of communication. Every single thing from your chosen material, colour, size, background, etc sends an associative message, therefore, it's crucial to know your instruments and use them wisely. 

hierarchy- don't forget about this one. Size matters and those who say it doesn’t, well they don’t know what they are talking about (of course, hierarchy is not only about the size). When doing whatever work, you cannot forget about whats the most important message you are delivering. Make sure the reader gets it first. 

don’t mix too many thoughts/ideas in one work. Two are fine, three- too many. 

Sagmeister part2. 

Type is so sufficient! It doesn't need anyone and anything to look good and complete. 

Some of the works I did for type deconstruction project were inspired by a play by Ivan Vyrypaev- Iran conference. I tried to make statements- I NEED and I WANT to show their negativity when used often. In other words, the more you need and want for yourself, the less you have empathy. We all want certain things to be the way we want them. “I want my tea to be the right temperature, I want the weather to be not too cold and not too warm, I want there to be no traffic” etc etc. We are very self-centred beings. And with all this energy we lose touch with whats really important. 

Next, I really enjoyed making pattern using font. All of them are made using one letter or number but different spacings and rotations. V pattern is my favourite one, however, the hardest to read. 

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito in a room” -Dalai Lama 

Piet Mondrian, Neoplasticism

Note: these works are my interpretation of Mondrian

I might start liking Mondrian and it happened overnight. 

I must confess I thought Mondrian is one of the most boring and overvalued artists. Also, I thought majority of people just like him because it makes them look sophisticated and educated. Yes, I just didn't understand what is there to like. Until now. So, what changed my mind?

The power of stroke size and horizontal/vertical lines. I might have not realised how thicken strokes make an object appear closer/ dimensional. It's pretty stunning when two white forms divided by a stroke look like they are in different dimensions (2d turning into a 3D). This also works with cold and warm colours. We know that cold colours appear further than warm, but stroke size can play with our minds and make them appear vice versa. Last, him not “ending” (putting a frame around) a painting but letting it continue endlessly and therefore your imagination. 

There is no way I can compete with Mondrian, however, I did come up with an idea how to freshen up his art. I found what I thought was the most contemporary and appropriate poster (work done by Droga5- absolutely stunning!!!) and used their composition rules to work with Mondrian. I thought it would be interesting to see Mondrian in a role of a contemporary poster artist. So I did.