#20

Finally I have printed my publication piece. I can’t believe I finally finished I would have to say that most of my working hours went into this project. I found a printer in my area and they were able to print the magazine in a few hours for me. Over all it was a pretty good print job. I believe more than anything that my strength was interpreting the essay and I believe that I made a readable magazine. I’m glad I used indesign for this project and hope to strengthen my skills in the platform more each day. Below are the front cover and back cover and the first two spreads.

#19

Below are the last four spreads of my project. I am happy with how it turned out. As you can see I had a hand model the piece to show that it is a small magazine. I tried to show the engaging part about the road to hell process. I was happy with how the last supper turned out and how the presidents famous lies printed out. If I could do anything again I would probably try to make more negative space like the ART IS SUBJECTIVE page. I like that page a lot despite it being so simple.

#18

Some of the very last design changes I made to this last page of mine were the presidents graphics. I felt I didn’t like that the presidents were on two separate pages so I moved them all to one page. Initially I wanted to sketch them but as soon as I started sketching them I knew it wasn’t the look I wanted to go for. So instead I went with a modern image with a blue gradient on each of the cut out faces of the presidents. I chose images where they looked naturally deceptive. Finally following a friend’s feedback that my original spread had a disjointed look of how I was displaying the president’s quotes I changed the quotes to my handwritten dialogue sequences that I’ve had going through out the whole essay.

#17

On to my fourth iteration! This is very very close to my final version. I was searching for a bold color to match my beige and was happy I finally found this navy. I changed all of the white text on top of the navy to a beige colored off white. I included my last supper drawing on the third spread. I reworked my road to hell page because I received feedback that the ballot page inspired look felt disjointed from the rest. I got rid of all pure white backgrounds on the magazine to give it a more polished look. And lastly I changed the typography of the “ART SHOULD BE SUBJECTIVE DESIGN SHOULD BE TRUTHFUL” to two fonts that make SUBJECTIVE look more unclear and TRUTHFUL to look more clear. I let this quote with all of the negative space really anchor my entire essay.

#16

Here is an image of my entire process and end result of drawing this Last Supper painting. Drawing a sketch based on a painting is much harder than drawing a sketch based on a sketch but I made it work. This drawing took about 8 hours. It’s fascinating how much you learn about a piece when you spend that much time reworking it. One of the things I was shocked by was the COUNTLESS amounts of hand gestures. Anyone who draws knows that hands are some of the hardest to draw so I was tediously coming across every one of these hands and realizing not a single hand gesture is the same. It really makes you think about how reactionary the entire dinner party is.

#15

In my last variation I used The Last Supper painting twice. I repeated the image and during a round of feedback one of my professors took pains to mention to the entire class if you are repeating an image to justify its being there otherwise it is unclear design-wise why you need them both. The professor recommended I draw the four windows of The Last Supper but I decided I would rather draw the second occurrence of the painting because that page lacked any real sort of artwork.

#14

This is a chart showing my three variations of dimensions. I went through three sizes before being confident with my final choice. Initially I put the spread over a A3 size of paper so the single page was 8.25 inches by 11.7 inches tall. Then when I decided to use the drawing as my front cover I thought that I would model my magazine inspired by the famous New Yorker magazine dimensions of 7.875 inches wide by 10.75 inches tall for a single page.

After this variation I printed out my essay for the first time and I learned SO much from doing so. I was not happy with the size at all. The text at 12 point was way, way too big. I wanted everything condensed. So I decided to reduce my entire page size to the size of the National Geographic magazine size which is 5.75 inches wide by 9 inches tall. I ended up being able to fit all the text on the same original pages by reducing it to 9pt over 12pt spacing. I printed out this fourth iteration and was much much happier with it.

#13

Following the third variation’s feedback where a professor said that my watercolors didn’t contribute any interpretation of the essay by displaying something I removed them all entirely. Truth be told, I was unsure about my inclusion of these watercolors the whole time. I more used them as placeholders for the images. I was hoping for feedback about them in my second iteration but it was glossed over. I was never confident about them and I knew deep down that they felt out of place so I ended up getting rid of them and am happy with my decision and the next result.

#12

On to the third iteration! This is where my work started to take shape. I ended up keeping many of these elements. Going on with the theme of a fine art essay I used my beige drawing pad background for a few of the text backgrounds. I reincorporated my cut-out last supper image on top of a watercolor and I ended up changing all of my watercolors to greyscale. I wanted to keep with all colors on the piece to be what could be found in fine art works, specifically all neutrals. Lastly, following a professors feedback I reincorporated my “road to hell” ballot graphic for that page’s section.

#11

My next iteration I wanted to incorporate more of what I interpreted from the essay. This is the final page where Milton talks about lying more extensively. I wanted to tie in my research about famous lies in American history so I came up with a piece showing three famous American presidents saying lies that we eventually all learned were not true. Bill Clinton famously denied that he had a sexual relationship with his White House intern and was impeached for his actions. George W. Bush famously lied or ‘revealed inaccurate intelligence’ that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq which he used purely to justify his invasion. Lastly, Lyndon B. Johnson was the president at the end of the US war with Vietnam. For decades American school children were taught to learn that we won the war in Vietnam but it became clear we by no means won.

#10

After I came up with the front cover I quickly thought of an idea for the back cover too. I found a sketch by Leonardo Da Vinci of a woman with a very ambiguous looking face and I recreated it by drawing it on my iPad. Since I made the front cover about the distortion of the truth I wanted the back cover to be about ambiguity. I wrote the phrase “MY FACE SAYS IT ALL” because her face gives nothing away. She could be mad or happy or sarcastic it’s all whatever the audience takes away from it. The drawing is ambiguity incarnated.

#9

I decided I wanted to carry on the theme of a fine art essay with a fine art front cover. This is a Renaissance drawing I recreated originally drawn by the artist Rafael. I chose this because Rafael was a contemporary of Leonardo Da Vinci, they were friends. I wanted to make sure the timelines of the pieces of art were the same.

I also wanted to carry on with my theme of writing speech onto the artwork. So I concepted two lines of dialogue to write over the faces. I wanted the front cover to be about the truth and how the truth could be distorted so I wrote the one character asking “ARE YOU TELLING THE TRUTH” and the other responding, “YOU ARE HEARING THE TRUTH I’VE DECIDED ON”. I was inspired by the saying “There are always three sides of the truth,” his version, her version and the reality that no one will ever know. I thought this dialogue was a good excerpt for explaining how the truth can be distorted hearing it through someone else.

#8

On to the next week’s iteration, this week I primarily wanted to sort the copy for the entire spread. I wanted to get all the text onto the document so I could check that off my list of things to do. I also tried out my idea of incorporating my favorite colors and my favorite design solutions of pastel water colors. I had seen so much black and neon in the class I really wanted to show something with a lighter pallet. Pretty much the only element I kept of this version is the new “MAKE IT CLEAR” ransom note graphic I made and the Last Supper in the four windows. With the “MAKE IT CLEAR” graphic I wanted it to be slightly unclear as to what it says because I believe that unclearness in design is a theme of the entire essay.

#7

This is the third spread I designed and the one I was most happy with. I felt I really achieved something in the graphic depiction of The Last Supper. I have looked at The Last Supper painting countless times and one of the things I had never noticed was something Milton Glaser pointed out. He mentioned that Christ is making a declaration and not everyone at the table is hearing him correctly. They are all having different reactions, the people closest to him are shocked to hear someone will betray him, the people at the end of the table have no idea what is going on. I wanted to section off the picture into four parts and I wanted to write out their thoughts with my apple pencil on my iPad.

#6

This is the second spread I designed. I wanted one of my spreads to include the road to hell section because that was a section I had the most design ideas for. I was inspired by the paperwork I used to make for my doctors office in that I wanted the road to hell to be designed in an interactive way. I wanted the reader to engage in yes or no options of whether or not they would be willing to compromise their morals for a design job. I also designed a graphic inspired by the Candyland board game. I wanted the road to hell to be visualized and thought about in a way that symbolizes a descent into madness. I didn’t initially intend for this spread to have the aesthetic of a political ballot but I was pleased that was the outcome.

#5

This is the first draft I ever made of my publication. I understood the homework directions to mean that I was meant to draft three different aesthetic concepts and choose the best between them. I included my working title that ART SHOULD BE SUBJECTIVE DESIGN SHOULD BE TRUTHFUL. I used a modern serif font. I wanted the text to be portrayed like a newspaper. I also wanted to include the last supper but since the essay only talks about the figures and not about the background at all I thought I would cut the figures out of the background both to save space and the emphasize the human aspect. I used my iPad to sketch a grey haze around the subjects of the painting to help blur the line that was pretty harsh without it. I designed this two page spread on an A3 paper folded in half.

#4

This is my first and major interpretation of the essay by Milton Glaser. It is sort of the working title I came up with. “ART SHOULD BE SUJECTIVE, DESIGN SHOULD BE TRUTHFUL.” That’s what I believe Milton is saying. This is also interesting to me because this is a concept I’ve really learned during my time at the University of Edniburgh. My undergraduate degree focused more on fine art and we were always taught the more subjective the better.

When I first got to this graphic design masters program I had trouble taking off my “fine-art-hat” and being less subjective in my designs. But Milton makes it clear in his example of the calorie design on the salad box that design should be truthful. Deceptive design is unethical. I absolutely agree, I just hope with this masters I will be able to have more opportunities in my career so that I can have the option to turn down deceptive design jobs going further.

#3

The section of the essay I researched in my own time was about the very last section of the essay, the part about how easily politicians and famous figures lie nowadays. This reminded me of two famous crimes in American history that lies played a huge factor in. The first was the trial of famous American football player OJ Simpson in a case where he was charged with murdering his wife and her friend. All of the forensic evidence is clear, OJ committed the murder, but his criminal defense lawyer lied so well and turned the incident into a race issue that a jury was led to believe that freeing him was the right thing to do.

The second major lie in American history has to do with our president John F Kennedy. He was assassinated in broad daylight, on camera in front of a crowd. Bullets came from three different sources. In my forensics class we learned the only people who could have made that shot were most likely the US military. However the government perpetuated a lie that Lee Harvey Oswald, a single shooter nowhere near the scene and without the skill to carry out the shooting was the murderer. Before he could go to trial he was stabbed by a member of the public, a known associate of the CIA. The government perpetuated the lie that Oswald was a shooter when it is clear there was a greater conspiracy at play. This is a secret that is so buried that we will probably never know the truth.

#2

As much as the part of the essay about The Last Supper stood out to me, the section containing the Road to Hell was very poignant to me. I have worked for five years now and had three years of graphic design jobs. I have seen corruption at every level. I’ve participated in what I consider to be unethical marketing to keep my job. At first I would pass the work off to other people and refuse to do it myself but at a certain point my bosses insisted. What people need to understand is, ideally, we would all say no to these unethical choices. However when people have only their one job as their only choice, getting a paycheck is all that matters, it’s the only way to survive. When you have no other job prospects it’s impossible to be choosey, or at least that is the American workplace sentiment I grew up with.

#1

As I first read Milton Glaser’s keynote speech called Truth & Ambiguity I reflected on the main part of the essay containing all of his thoughts about the famous painting, The Last Supper, by Leonardo Da Vinci. I interpreted him as saying that the painting was very ambiguous. I’ve always been interested in fine art and I find that almost all art is subjective, that is kind of the point. It’s to get the audience to think and draw their own conclusions, that’s the fun part about it. If an artist were to explain their thinking it would be too obvious and it would create a lot of disagreements.