#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.