george michael brower (603483460) desma 11a - …georgebrower/11hmidterm.pdf · pencil and not...

I really can’t remember what my first drawing was. I assume its buried

somewhere in my mom’s closet, in one of those gigantic blue Tupperware bins. I

think it’s also safe to assume that it depicts some sort of smiley outdoor scene with

a green stripe of grass, a stick figure, and a yellow circle in the top right corner, on

some monstrous piece of newsprint.

My mother, an ex-fashion designer and illustrator, has always saved that

sort of thing, and she’s really short on closet space because of it. I loved to draw

as a kid, absolutely loved it. It’s what I did all the time. I could spend days on

end meticulously recreating an image of something I’d found in a video game’s

instruction manual. I’d fill up entire scrolls of tracing paper with doodles of my

babysitter, cartoon characters, whatever I could think of. Mom taught me her sense

keen sense of motion, composition and repetition at an early age.

I still haven’t decided whether I’m bitter about getting my own computer as

a kid. I was maybe nine at the time, and it’s safe to say that ninety five percent

of my drawing activity halted immediately thereafter. I think had I never been

introduced to computers at such an early age I might have been studying to become

an illustrator right now. For a long period in time, I seldom drew anything. My

creative process became more abstract. Less and less was I concerned with the

details and execution of an illustration or drawing, and more and more was I

concerned with its composition, layout, movement and balance. That’s why I’m

studying to become a designer.

George Michael Brower (603483460)DESMA 11a - Midterm

Despite the fact that most of the work we’ve seen thus far is the product

of illustrators, fine artists and painters, I certainly see some strong visual and

conceptual similarities between work I’ve produced in the last few years, and work

we’ve seen during class. I was fascinated to recognize likeness in both process

and aesthetic to some of history’s most significant artists, and excited to draw

comparison between my work and theirs.

It was only a few years ago that I decided to reincorporate hand-drawn

images into my work. I feared it was losing its sense of life—that organic visual

quality you can only achieve through a hand-drawn line. I picked up a pencil in my

sophomore year of high school and was delighted to see that my hand still knew its

way around a sketchbook. I bought a scanner, a Wacom—anything I could to help

my hand interface with a computer the way it could best—wrapped tightly around a

pencil and not lying limply on a mouse.

A CD I designed for the band I was in during high school is probably the

earliest example of work I’m comfortable showing anyone. It might not be true in

a few years, but for now I still appreciate it. It certainly signified a major change

in my method. Somewhere around the time my band mates told me they’d like

me to design the album cover for our latest EP, I had started to create collages by

arranging images I’d drawn by hand on my computer screen.

I’d take a sheet of paper and fill it with different doodles, shapes, gestures, and

images centered around one theme, just as I had done as kid. Only then, I traced


them into my computer using a Wacom tablet and arranged them using digital

imaging software like Adobe Illustrator. I couldn’t help but think of this transition

when discussing the notion of “tools” during class. I can absolutely see a distinct

shift in the nature and feeling of my work once I decided to use new tools in order to

incorporate organic drawing into my compositions.

The most immediate comparison I can make from

this album cover to the work of an artist we’ve

touched upon in class is that of Aubrey

Beardsley. I was first impressed by

Beardsley’s work in that I felt he had

created some of the very few black

and white images that can be aptly

described as “vibrant.” Usually a

description reserved for work in color,

Beardsley compensated for his lack of hue

with stark line and dramatic black and white

shapes.

Take for example this border design by Aubrey Beardsley for Morte d’Arthur

(1893). A dense collection of vines and leaves twist and intermingle about a group

of nymphs. There’s but a single color in the design, which is surprising considering

the incredible amount of depth it suggests. As were that of most border designs


of the period, Beardsley’s ornamentation is

extremely thick and very dense. When one

squints their eyes, the decoration around the text

resolves to a very dark gray, perhaps even black,

which creates a very attractive juxtaposition

against the white area containing the type.

In creating the Seamless Cities cover I

aimed to express the personality of the album’s

eponymous title track. While I think words

are often used in vain while attempting to

communicate the nature of music, the song is

best described as sprightly, sprawling, majestic, perhaps even budding. The song

grows from its center to become much more than what it starts as, in the same way

that the simple juxtaposition of pure black and pure white can often suggest more

the sum of its parts. With this in mind I laid down a few images I thought best

express these qualities.


A number of hand-drawn “assets” used in the creation of the Seamless Cities design

Border design by Aubrey Beardsley from Morte d’Arthur (1893), with text ommitted.

With the exception of faint color accents behind the

band’s name, the image is purely two-tone. The nature of

vector graphics is similar to those present in Beardsley’s work,

and most other lithographic and printed work of the time, in

that they produce very crisp, high contrast edges.

In his border design for Morte d’Arthur, this very thick

ornamentation takes on the shape of its container, almost as if

it was a liquid. I’m fascinated by the way Beardsley can use

such organic forms and gestures to emphasize such a strictly

geometrical shape. The viewer’s eye is directed around the

edge of the page in a cyclical manner. In the same way that

Beardsley’s vines create a visual path by looping around the

center of the page, I aimed to compose the different elements

of the album cover in a way that would at once encourage

the viewer to circle their eyes around disc and acknowledge

their growth from its center. The “hole” in the center of the

CD itself can even be seen as roughly analogous to the area of text enveloped by

Beardsley’s ornamentation.

If I seemed infatuated with the process of illustration at the beginning of this

paper its because of Alphonse Mucha. His work is by far my favorite thing we’ve

been introduced to over the course of the last five weeks. There’s something to be


Similar border design from Morte d’Arthur

More like minded Beradsley work

said about the ability to imbue a static image with the feeling of motion, and it is by

far Mucha’s greatest asset (not to downplay his stunning use of color, gorgeously

expressive figures, and bold use of stroke).

I love the way that Mucha tends to indulge

the entirety of the space he’s given to work in.

He turns the most mundane design elements into

really lush, sprawling ornamentation, with such

incredible energy. I think he demonstrates Art

Nouveau’s “whiplash” momentum better than

any other artist associated with the movement.

Not that I really think anything I’ve ever

produced even belongs on the same page as the

work of Alphonse Mucha, but I think there’s a

striking similarity between the movement and

momentum in a lot of his illustrations and an

album cover (I’m big on those) I designed for another local band.

After seeing the work I had done on Seamless Cities, a band named “Atlantic

Victory” approached me to design a release of theirs in a similar manner. They

seemed to be impressed by the concurrence of strong black and white imagery

against the subtly graded color present in the Seamless Cities design, and requested

that some of these Beardsley-like elements be used in the design of their own album.


Mucha ad for “Job” cigarettes. I find this image to be most characteristic of Mucha’s style and aesthetic.

The format and packaging of this CD, entitled Before and After the Tragedy

certainly afforded me a lot more freedom in design. I wanted to depict the transition

from the “before” to the “after” using a fluid illustration that would seamlessly cross

from the front to the back cover. I wanted the viewer to be able to open the booklet

and see this transition from front to back, side by side. To best facilitate this sort of

design we decided upon the use of what’s known as a “digipak,” as opposed to the

traditional jewel-case. A digipak is made in its entirety (even its spine) from a sort

of cardboard like material, and can’t be taken apart the way a jewel-case can.

The composition of these two covers side by side can be reduced to a single

gesture, best represented by a swift curve that dips in the center. So many of these

gestures are present in Mucha’s works, and that’s what gives them such beautiful

sense of flowing energy.


Cover designs for Atlantic Victory’s Before and After the Tragedy. Atlantic Victory decided on a last minute album title change in favor of In a World Full of Liars ... We Coexist. They’re a very melodramatic bunch.

People, being the very visual creatures they are, tend to place imaginary objects

upon these curves. In our minds these objects are acted upon by gravity. Place an

object atop the curved gesture in Before and After the Tragedy, and it speeds down

the slope from right to left (or left to right), slowing in the middle, and picking

up speed as it exits. Every asset placed on the page is organized to compliment

this, smooth, accelerated line of motion, from the bustling group of images on the

far side of either end of each cover, to the more restrained nature of those images

situated around the spine.

In creating the assets to be used in this collage, I also wanted to make sure that

each individual element of the design possessed its own range of motion, from the

spinning petals of a hibiscus flower, to a flowing scroll of paper, and the looping

vignette of calligraphic cursive.

Similarly, most of the elements that comprise Mucha’s paintings follow one or


Illustration of the line of motion in Before and After the Tragedy

two of these overarching curved gestures, but

the smaller details of the image tend to follow

paths of their own, giving the image a much

more sophisticated sense of motion.

Take for example Alphonse Mucha’s

Dance (1898). The painting’s main path

of motion is created by the bit of fabric the

subject holds in her right hand, wrapping

around her legs, and leaving the image below

her feet. Mucha uses the natural contours of

the female body to emphasize this quality of

motion quite beautifully, in a manner that is

all at once delicate, seductive, and entirely

feminine.

While Mucha uses these qualities to establish the image’s most general range

of motion, smaller gestures created by finer details of the painting serve to give the

work an extraordinarily refined sense of momentum. Flecks of red and pink flutter

about the image in all directions, perhaps to suggest flower petals falling from the

model’s headdress. The bit of fabric draped around the model’s left arm has, in

itself, an infinite number of these flowing contour lines. Her hair flies from the

captivating expression on her face only to curl back towards it. Even the circular


Dance, Alphonse Mucha (1898)

ornament positioned behind the dancer emphasizes its

own gesture of motion using self-similarity.

I subconsciously attempted to imbue the cover

of Before and After the Tragedy with all these same

qualities of motion, both on a broad and small scale. If

it hasn’t become obvious yet, I’m something of a sucker

for repetition. The elements used most frequently in

the design (the flower, the star, the leaf-life shapes) are

varied in rotation to create a sort of “rolling” effect that

serves to accentuate this notion of “slope” or “falling.”

These same elements also hold a lot of variation in size, in order to create a sense

of depth, as well as a third dimension of motion: in and out of the page itself. Both

the typographic vignettes and the flowing strips of paper twirl about and branch

off of the design’s general path of momentum. Finally, architectural elements such

as the buildings present in the background of the cover serve to add more detail

of motion by attacking the overarching gesture with firm vertical lines. All these

elements come together in attempt to create a more polished dynamic that I find


Assets used in Before and After the Tragedy

Line of motion in Dance

very reminiscent of Mucha’s work as well as other artists associated with the Art

Nouveau movement.

So many of these qualities present in both my work, and that of Aubrey

Beardsley and Alphonse Mucha, are simply not within a machine’s scope of

capability. It’s certainly not to say that all artworks, designs or illustrations created

using a computer alone are lifeless, because it’s impossible to for a computer to

create such things without the aid of human imagination. However, I think many

modern designers, especially those among today’s youth, are losing touch with a

sense of “life” and craftsmanship that was certainly present in graphic design at the

turn of the 1900’s. By involving something as simple as drawing in one’s creative

process, this organicness is immediately restored.

Despite the fact that the title of “Graphic Designer” wouldn’t exist for more

than another half-century, the people we’ve studied in this class thus far were

forced to deal with the endeavor in a much more tangible way. Because of this

physical, hands-on interaction, designers much more often imbued their work with

life, motion, depth, and most importantly themselves as human beings. I think

that today’s design community places a waning importance on these qualities. By

looking to the past of design history I realize how truly powerful they are, and how

truly powerful they will continue to be.


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