Experimental Design

Don’t Just Block Them

“Don’t Just Block Them” was an illustration project focused on creating a poster completely “hands-off”. This meant no marking the page through any conventional means. No markers, no paint, no pencils, just raw materials composed properly for a photo. I chose to do the poster on suicide awareness and cyberbullying. I went through this project with just pills, keyboard keys, a flashlight, and a cooking pan. I filled the pan with pills and then shot a flashlight through the underside for lighting.

Project Category-Illustration

Client/Class-ART 344-Illustration

Date Produced-Spring 2024

The Collective Works of Robert Frost

The Collective Works of Robert Frost was my take on designing a piece using only wet media. This project tasked me with selecting a poet and designing the cover of their poetry book and one poetry spread. There were two main restrictions for this project. First, it could only be created with physical wet media. Second, it could not be representational in any way. I chose Robert Frost as a way to take the opportunity to learn more about his poetry and what defined his work. In this research, the key characteristic of Robert Frost’s work is a deep connection to nature. This observation led me to take the simple approach of using layers of green watercolor to invoke feelings of the outdoors. The final design is extremely simple, with the entire piece just being manipulations of one color. That said, this was what created the lesson of this project, that design can be simple but effective. I spent so much of the timespan of this project trying to create elaborate compositions only to be told to simply make the book shades of green.