Necessary Objects

This project asked us to take any "necessary object" and design a two-page spread featuring the object. When trying to decide which object to work with, my train of thought first lead me to thinking of everything in life that truly are necessary- food, water, air, etc. I knew I wasn't going to design based on this. So then I started thinking about how in advertising, even the most useless objects are depicted to seem necessary. Naturally, I resorted to SkyMall magazine- the mecca of seemingly necessary yet utterly useless objects. This is where I discovered the Marshmallow Shooter.

In designing a two-page spread for the Marshmallow Shooter, I immediately was drawn to the idea of following a comic-book kind of style-- i.e. benday dots, bright primary colors, word bubbles, action noises, gridded narrative/storyboard layout, etc. I looked to places like Roy Lichtenstein's work, comic book spreads online, and various design books for inspiration. (And got my hands on to an actual Marshmallow Shooter, of course!). 

I drew tons and tons of little thumbnail sketches for layout practice and seemed to narrow it down to a couple solid possibilities. Then, I got on a computer and began designing. I found a photo on the internet of a guy holding a Marshmallow Shooter angled a certain way towards the camera that I thought would be perfect. I live-traced it and began designing all based around this image. This was a mistake. I basically trapped myself in to basing my design around this certain photo that I thought was so perfect but in reality it was just forcing me to make bad aesthetic decisions. My body copy looked terrible too...I was having to basically plop it in as an afterthought and squeeze it in to empty areas versus really putting the thought in to incorporating it into the design. (It just took me a while to realize it).

Finally, after getting frustrated with feeling "stuck" and unhappy with the overall look of my layout, I decided it was time to start fresh. I didn't like how my design looked because by Adobe skills were not adequate enough to mimic traditional comic-strip aesthetic without looking pathetic and contrived. So it was time to resort back to what I do know, and that is: how to make things by hand. 

I went back to my original thumbnail sketches and started drawing from there. I hand-rendered by layouts using pens, markers, etc. and then scanned the images in and made adjustments on Illustrator. I further researched various comic book styles, straying a way from my original Liechtenstein idea a bit. I went to the bookstore on campus and went through a lot of different comic-book archive books and then went to a comic book store at Universal City Walk to get a better understanding of the culture I was trying to make look authentic. I found this to be pretty helpful. Even though elements like my body copy text and stuff still needed to be tightened up a bit, I think I learned a lot in this project, especially about how important it is to make things look authentic if you are referencing recognizable visual culture. When you are obviously trying to make something look like something recognizable and specific and you fall short, it looks awful. So I'm trying to avoid that and stick with what I know, but simultaneously I want to show some range in my abilities and to challenge myself as a designer.