Review of achievements
I started this course with very little knowledge of Book Design or Graphic Design, and studied in parallel to courses on illustration and printmaking. All these courses have complemented each other and fed into each other as a very stimulating learning curve in which my tutor has been very instrumental in encouraging my experimentation. I have enjoyed a wide range of topics in the course, particularly:
- creating my own images and text and experimenting with different design and layout options. I enjoyed making the sketchbook for On the Road drawing while listening to the text. I also enjoy drawing, painting and photography as both illustration and fine art. I do not so much enjoy working with the images and text of others as a purely layout exercise. Though I did enjoy interpreting Jabberwocky in Project 2: Illustrating Text and my initial experiments on layout in grid types.
- exploration of different letterforms and calligraphy as in: Islamic Typography and my initial work on Western Typography in Project 3.1a Type Samples Sketchbook
- exploration of expressive type Project 3.1b Experimental Typography and some of the work of other typographers in Experimental Typography and Concrete Poetry
- physical manipulation and exploration of different types of paper and materials in Assignment 4 (forthcoming), including collage
- exploration of different types of drawing and painting tools and printmaking processes and how these interact with different types of paper as I have done in other courses: Illustration 2: Draw, draw and draw again and Hybrids: Mixing and Matching Tools, and experiments with Pencil drawing, Glue drawing, Mesh drawing and Charcoal drawing – some of which I use also in Assignment 4: The Greed Game.
- working digitally to either combine analogue images, or produce purely digital output as in my work for Illustration 2: Hybrids: mixing and matching tools. I have enjoyed going in depth and pushing the creative boundaries of InDesign and Illustrator in Project 3.1b Experimental Typography, Assignment 3 on Good and Bad Typography, Project 4.1 Anonymous , Assignment 4: The Greed Game and Assignment 5: A to Z from Armageddon
- Self-publishing as in Assignment 5: A to Z from Armageddon. I hope to do a lot more of this in future.
As a support to my own exploration I have enjoyed:
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- looking at the work of Modernist and experimental designers and typographers in the Western tradition, including designers like: Dan Eldon, Muller Brockman, Marinetti and the different uses of visual dynamics of line, shape and colour.
- looking at design in different cultures and the different uses of line, shape and colour as for example Islamic Design in Assignment 4: Saudi Art, Iranian Art: Geometric, Iranian Art: Miniatures, Iranian Art: Modern, Islamic Geometric Design. In other OCA courses I have also looked in detail at Japanese and African traditions, and this is something that is very much part of my scope of interest as I move forward to Visual Communications Level 2 courses.
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Things I would like to explore further going forward
- visual dynamics of design
- calligraphy and expressive type and visual dynamics of letterforms – following on from my work in Assignments 3 and 4
- using different papers and materials for printing and then seeing how to enhance the effects through further digital manipulation in Photoshop – drawing also on work for OCA Printmaking 1 and Illustration 2.
- commercial self-publishing options and process, including further work on Layout and Narrative.
See also my artist statement for my design work:
https://design.zemniimages.info/overview/artist-statement-design/
