Fall 2010 Graphic Design Senior Exhibition

“We can’t make a toaster anymore, a VCR, or even a decent faucet, but we can create desire,” says David Hickey in 1997 in his book Air Guitar.  To create desire will be the mission of the graduating graphic designers in this age of highly competitive commercialism. It is about finding the colors, fonts and graphics that attracts the most eyes in the human pool and being the illusionist who plays trick with our minds not letting that desire to go.

The Senior Exhibition opened on December 10, and will be on display for 11 days in the Cora Miller Gallery of the York College Galleries. Before the opening of the show, the five graduating students showed examples of their work in a slide presentation. During their presentation the large audience not only learned about their work but also got a glimpse into their personal lives and interests woven into their final project. While the two award winners, Billy Ford and Bridget Palmer, were able to create mature, marketable pieces, the others stayed behind by showing their young personalities seep through their project

Bridget Palmer was the recipient of the Best in Show Award. Her work connects personal content with functionality and good design. Bridget created a logo, tags, reusable bags, egg boxes, stickers and pins for her farm that she hopes to build into a profitable business in the future. Research transformed her work from conformist farm qualities into a distinct color palette and packaging design.  Willow Hill, the name of her project, has a vintage feel but with modern colors and timely ideas of organic farming.  Her egg boxes reach back to the 1920s for their design and are dressed up in contemporary colors to cater to the taste of the 21^st century. The logo consists of a simple, easy-to-ready typeface concluded with an outline of a rooster under the falling branches of willow, inspired by Pecker the cocky rooster of the farm. The text framed with gentle curving lines is carried through the different pieces of the work. Careful planning and execution provided cohesiveness between boxes, tags, bags and the other pieces by repeating the design elements and bright colors of green, blue, cyclamen and purple and carrying the used materials from one to another. Bridget is interested in typography, color theory and the communicative quality of simple, elegant forms and shapes. She hopes to expand her horizon as a graphic designer and become an art director one day.

Billy Ford, the 2^nd place winner, created Applied Automotive Knowledge, an information package of auto repair and maintenance for the everyday dilettantes. This work includes a company logo, print advertisement, carry along vehicle maintenance guide, and a website. The idea of AAK comes from Billy’s lifelong relationship with cars and racing. Using only two colors, black and red on white background, he created a strong identity for his fictional company that very well could become reality. Simple but communicative and direct graphics are the strength of Billy’s project.  He used design elements, easy to read typeface, repetition, contrast and proximity, in a neat organized fashion to provide a clean and user-friendly website that gives simple instructions on how to repair and maintain your car, instead of paying hundreds of dollars for someone for a job most of us could do on our own.  The resourceful idea of the project and the successful design could easily stand the competitive race of graphic design and hoped to be a live website and helpful guide in car maintenance for car owners in the near future.

Billy would like to continue screen printing and expand his career as a freelance graphic designer taking his talent to the northern part of California.

Genevieve Shaner’s project caters to pet lovers. She made a binder, called PetNotes, to help pet owners organize information, like vaccination, illnesses and health records and also to record fun stories of their lives.  She chose the contrasting colors of blue and orange and used circular forms to encase paw prints in a repeated pattern on the outside of the binder. The inside repeats the hues but replaces the circles with simple horizontal lines. The repetition keeps the personality of the piece and the simple lines and dimmed colors let the inside content, notepad, DVD holders, jump drive holder, pen and record keeping pages, be effective. Genevieve is planning to pursue her carrier as a graphic designer and take more concentrated classes to further develop her skills in the field.

Vincent Sparacino features Brain Taffy: A Collection of Ramblings, an entirely hand written and illustrated collection of his poems. The black and white colors and the comic book style drawings take the viewer into the mind of Vincent as he lays his stream of consciousness on paper. The work has an “imperfect personal quality,” Vincent remarked, and is  intended to show his colorful palette of talents and interests not only in design, but music, lyrics, literature and philosophy. Vincent is looking for an opportunity to incorporate his diverse interest of the humanities into a profession where he can express his ideas, perhaps as an author/illustrator.

Ethan Gallardo’s Pixel Bliss sentimentally recalls the heyday of game arcades and invites the visitors to play. The project was inspired by Ethan’s love of video games and science fiction. The graphics consist of hand drawn components blended with digital collage that work with 3D glasses. Ethan’s design embraces the manipulation of letters through the experiment with typography, the guiding qualities of colors and the communicative properties of collage. Ethan is open to try different things perhaps in a position at a silkscreen company or graphic design firm.

The semester is quickly approaching its end lifting the weight of tests and paper deadlines off the graduating students’ shoulders and freeing them into the sometimes intimidating world of job search and competition. This exciting new stage in the lives of future alumnae will probe and challenge them as aspiring professionals, but will also round and enrich their character.  Good luck and farewell Graduates!

A Masterpiece in Pennsylvania: Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater

At first glance Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece in Bear Run, Pennsylvania, had an overpowering presence of aesthetically unpleasant concrete. Before I saw the house, I had wondered how well this man made material would blend with nature. Concrete, for me, belongs to the city and construction of tall buildings and parking garages. I found Wright’s choice to use this material in his organic architecture very peculiar. My expectation for the behavior of cement that loosens up overtime and falls in patches was met as well. Falling Water showed its structural weaknesses right after the Kaufmann family moved into it, and since then it had been under constant repair and strengthening. Then what makes this house one of the architectural masterpieces of the 20^th century?

The design and its experimental innovations are responsible for the success of this building that incorporated nature and the understanding of human spirit into it. The knowledge of how space effects human reaction guides the visitor through the house. From the outside the concrete terraces’ multiple layers of horizontal lines are balanced with the strong vertical of the center mass, made of local stone, ensuring the flow between nature and the house. This vertical line guides our sights up to the trees and further up into the sky. The curiously low railings of the terraces are careful not to come between nature and the inhabitants of the house.  Wright did not want people to view nature, with his designs he wanted them to blend with it.

 

Today when visiting Fallingwater it is very hard to look at it as a family house.  Through the years it assumed the feel of a museum with a visitor center, docents and guiding histories. Just like the Hermitage in St. Petersburg or the Louvre in Paris, Fallingwater was transformed from once being a dwelling of a family into rooms that showcase something extraordinary that once was the personal object of the Kauffmann’s and today is called art. like in museums, at Fallingwater the rooms are embellished with precious objects. Two Picassos, two Diego Riveras, six Japanese prints, gift of Frank Lloyd Wright to the Kaufmann family, Buddhist and Hindi sculptures and built in furniture complements the rooms, without crowding the space. A portrait painting of the owner, Edgar G. Kaufman, and few family photos attempt to take the visitor back in time to picture the lively atmosphere of the house filled with distinguished guests like Einstein, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Still, the group tour ruins the real experience of the house that graciously flows into a waterfall. 

As you enter the house stone becomes the dominant material, conveying strength and sturdiness.  The bare, uneven stone walls make you feel like you are in a temple, fort or an old sacred place. The narrow corridors involuntarily hurry you up to get from one room to the other, which was exactly what Wright intended. The ceilings of the rooms are strangely low, especially in the private rooms; they almost make the visitor feel claustrophobic. By keeping the ceiling low and using the same stone for the inside and outside floors, Wright wanted to direct the eyes to nature, his favorite subject, and invite the people of the house out to the balconies.  He designed his and her room with separate bathrooms but with very similar features.  All rooms have fire places, simple modernly streamlined furniture and shelving that veneered with dark walnut throughout the house. The repetition of design elements and materials Wright used throughout the three floors of the main building, the guest house and also the servants’ quarter provide a flow from room to room, floor to floor, building to building, tying them meticulously together.

Wright not only designed the house but also the tables, the cabinets, the settees, the lamps and thus created an architectural fluency between the house and its fixtures. The wrap around windows, open space of the living room and dining room with its colorful, ocher, cream and orange Japanese like seating arrangement (most likely influenced by Wright’s long stay in Japan while building the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo) and clean cut desks, tables and cabinets are strikingly futuristic to be made in the late 1930s. Fallingwater could easily be a residency of a 21^st century family who would appreciate a stroll amongst the rhododendrons and the sounds of falling water while having a drink on the terraces as much as the Kaufmanns did 70 years ago.                                                            

Something for the Holidays

Festival of Wreaths at the Susquehanna Museum

Waltz into the holiday spirit by dancing through the “Festival of Wreaths” at the Susquehanna Art Museum in Harrisburg where local talents and artists donated their works to be showcased and auctioned during the holiday season.  The silent auction opened last week and invites you to join the festivities by visiting, voting and bidding on the wreath of your choice. Your donation will not only benefit the Museum but may also bring home a holiday gift or a wreath that will set the colors of your celebration.

Different cultures use wreaths for different reasons; but where does the American custom of decorating with wreaths for holidays come from? The history of wreaths reaches back to the Greco-Roman times where live-plant wreaths were placed on the head of prestigious people to show rank, status and achievement. Later the Greeks, taking a myth of Apollo and Daphne in which Daphne turned into a laurel tree winning her battle with Apollo, awarded their athletes with laurel wreaths to show their accomplishments on the Olympics. Julius Caesar wore gilded leaves woven into a circular form as the symbol of the supreme ruler.  This headdress later became the crown.

In the 16^th century the Lutherans in Germany used wheels, evergreens and candles to teach the children about the coming of Christ. The round form of the wheel symbolized God, the evergreens the everlasting life and the candles the light that would arrive with the birth of Jesus.  They lit one candle each Sunday of Advent, the four Sundays before Christmas.  This practice later became the part of the Christian Church and is still a very popular disposition of faith and part of the Christmas decoration in Europe.

However, garlands are not only for Christians or those who celebrate Christmas. The pieces in the Susquehanna Art Museum belie the traditional notion of wreaths and let the artistic spirit soar free. In the “Festival of Wreath” a wreath does not have to be round, or made of evergreens; it can be square made of mosaic tiles or can be on canvas or can even be a long strip of knives and axes made of colorful fabrics. There are plenty of traditional wreaths as well, but all have something out of ordinary in their design. In Christmas Cheer the center forms a pine tree made of wine corks ornamented with colorful vintage buttons. Another traditional one has penguins, made of light bulbs, shuffling around. Youthful Christmas is made of paper maché and cardboard with a touch of Pollockian freehand paint splashes of cream, red, green and glittery gold.  There is a wreath for jewelry lovers made of gleaming old jewelries, called Sparkle; there is a wreath for grandpa made of golf clubs and grapevine, titled The Doctor Loved Golf; there is a wreath of silver lushes with blue butterflies with moving wings for grandma, called Blue Ice Wings; and there is also a wreath for the bachelor assembled of cool ties and buttons. There is a wreath made of a shiny burgundy plate with country stars for the country house, a wreath of disheveled curly willow for the nature lover, a wreath of twigs with embellishing felt flowers, titled Heartfelt Holidays, for the lover of botany and for the technical geeks, there is iWreath made of plastic “googly” eyes. Got the pun?

The “Festival of Wreaths” shows that a wreath can be made of anything: paper, fabric, cork, jewelry, wood, plastic, flowers, shells and more. You can look at them, bid on them and follow the bidding by email. The winners’ reception will be held on December 16 at 6pm, and you could be the one who walks away with a favorite wreath to make a very special holiday season.