process book 2

process book.
1

table of contents.
inspiration.
4
experimental research.
10
the big idea.
12
project statement.
14
development.
16
final deliverables.
34
reflections.
38

3

inspir a tions.
personal work.
At the beginning of the Fall 2017 semester, I created a mind map to
document the past projects I’ve enjoyed since freshman year, things
that I’m passionate about, personal milestones, inspirations, and
how I view myself as a designer. The section of how I view myself as
a designer is blank; I was extremely unsure what direction to take
my thesis in. The initial mind map boiled down to design vomit to
get the creative thoughts flowing.
When examining my past work, the
common mediums that I enjoyed were
linocuts, oil stick, digital painting, and
vector graphics. The common themes I
explored were communication, emotions,
the human body, and female empowerment.

Stefan Sagmeister.
Sagmeister appealed to me through his
experimental typography and ability to
talk about emotions in a way that is
aesthetically interesting and vulnerable.
5

Jessica Walsh.
Currently, Jessica Walsh is partner with Stefan Sagmesiter working as Sagmesiter
& Walsh. When comparing their two styles, it is important to acknowledge
their great feats together but also the differences that they both bring to
the table. Walsh’s strong typography mirrors that of Sagmeister’s and creates
beautiful dynamic pieces. However, the inspiration I draw from Walsh that
is not as present in Sagmeister’s work is the use of color. Her application of
color to the human body as well as bold color blocks in graphics creates an eye
catching compositions and builds the environment around her pieces.

David Carson.
As a typographer, David Carson broke all
the rules but it worked. He has a toolbox
of manipulation that he uses to create both
legible and illegible works that confuse and
excite the viewer. Carson’s ability to experiment
with digital type showed me all the
possibilities of evoking specific emotions
through seemingly chaotic typography.
7
inspir a tions.

Katherine McCoy.
Katherine McCoy continues to push the boundaries of
postmodern typography similar to Carson’s work. Her
use of color and direct distortion of digital letterforms
stood out from Carson’s and showed another avenue of
experimentation with digital type.

9
inspir a tions.

experim e ntal research.
The first avenue of experimental research
that I pursed revolved around how personal
connections to objects and words can affect
how the viewer understand a piece. In this
case, the handling of the typography affects
how you understand the relationship
between the hands and feet, either softly
caressing or tense and retreating.
This second comparison works with the physical materials
of brown sugar and honey mustard. I paired these
experiments with a piece done by a fellow student at
Emmanuel College. “Growth” causes the viewer to understand
the linear forms to be growing and extending
out of the box where as “confinement” feels sticky and
heavy as if it is retreating within the box.

This third experimentation continued to explore
tactile typography but pushed the idea of emotions a
little bit more. I knew I wanted to explore black poster
board and cotton ball texture but I didn’t know what
word(s) I wanted to produce. The phrases “comfortably
alone” and “serenity” came from asking students what
their emotions associations were with cotton balls and
black poster board. Reflecting on the final product,
getting the input from outside sources showed the
importance of other individuals associations.
After realizing the importance of outside
input and outside associations, I conducted
a final experiment. I discussed different
emotions with students to try and get key
phrases or quotes that would embody the
emotion and materials that would further
emulate it. The quote chosen for ecstasy
was “crazy fucking good”. The conversation
that spurred this quote revolved around
the energy you feel when you’ve reached
that level of happiness and how euphoric
you feel. From this, I created “crazy fucking
good” out of christmas lights and black
foam board. This experimentation made
my internal ideas physical and I began to
understand how I loved the combination
of experimental typography and emotional
communication.
11
experim e ntal research.

he
big idea
Everyone feels things differently, I am only an expert
on my own emotions but I can try and get you to start
thinking about yours through design.

13

roj
ct
tate
ent

A visual exploration in the communication of
emotional experiences through common materials
and experimental typography.
15

dev elopment.
narratives.
After all of the experimentation, I decided to focus
on nine emotions trying to draw from a variety of
positive, negative, and neutral emotions: grief, ecstasy,
tension, present, rage, satisfaction, longing, comfort,
and silence. I also picked some common materials that
would have interesting emotional connotations from
person to person: eggs, ice, crumpled bed sheets, embroidery,
subtractive cut outs of paper, velvet, christmas
lights, cotton balls, sugar, flour. After I narrowed
my focus, I conducted 15 interviews asking questions
regarding the emotions and materials.
• Do you view this material as positive or negative?
• What emotions do you associate with this material?
• What other materials do you associate with this material?
• When was the last time you felt this emotion?
• If it is negative, what did you do to overcome this emotion?
• What symbols or objects do you associate with this emotion?
• What other emotions do you associate with this emotion?
Initially, I wanted to conduct these interviews individually so that they would be completely
honest and open with their emotional conversation. However, I ended up getting
interupted during my first interview, improvised, and made it a paired interview. This was
a major breakthrough as the two interviewees built off one another and contributed very
honest experiences.
During the interview, I did my best to type exactly what the interviewees were saying to
stay honest to their stories. Afterwards, I went through and highlighted points that were
essential to their individual stories as well as the emotion as a whole. The goal was to use
the quotes and my own experiences to create a narrative that embodied the emotion. From
this narrative I was going to connect the reader with the quotes but also with the experimental
type I chose to explore. After conducting all of the interviews, I realized that the
number of emotions I had chosen to explore might be impossible to achieve with the timeline
of one semester. So I narrowed the nine emotions down to five based on the quality
of the interviews, the quality of the narrative, and if the emotion was positive or negative:
grief, ecstasy, tension, rage, and comfort. I still hoped to achieve a balance of positive,
neutral, and negative emotions.
The last step was to determine which phrases would be expressed using experimental typography.
I went through the narrative and bolded the words I would express experimentally
based on it’s relavence to the emotion and where it was placed in the narrative. The
final narratives are as follows.

Grief
It’s in your stomach and in your throat.
Tension
I’m antsy, scatter brained, and sweaty.
The numbness that’s linked to tragedy, it’s all internal.
I associate it with the death of relative but that’s too
easy, grief is more complex than that.
It’s about losing a part of yourself.
It’s buried in my chest and a knot in my throat. My
hands are shaky, my face gets hot.
There’s a battle to stop being tense and relax and not
let the pressure control your mind
That tension can pull you apart.
Ecstasy
It’s like being on another planet,
It just feels crazy fucking good.
You can feel the energy through and around your body,
you feel the entire world all at once
in a euphoric way.
It usually only lasts for a few minutes or seconds but
that’s all you need to really feel ecstasy.
Comfort
It’s that “I’ve been through it” moment, or the “I
haven’t been through it but I care for you” moment.
Comfort is all about reciprocation,
getting that equal amount of response during a time of
confusion or sadness or anger
reminds you that you’re not alone.
Rage
That big record scratch you have during a normal day.
It’s the pinnacle of your anger when the feeling hits its
peak and you’re about to react.
It’s red, I feel fearless and reckless
I don’t care what other people view of what I’m saying
or how I’m acting. The lights are bright and my heart’s
pounding.
After generating the narratives and selecting the
phrases which I would be expressing experimentally,
I had to jump in and start creating all of the pieces.
Through the process of creating the pieces, I had to be
cognicient of how not only the final product was emulating
the emotion but also how the creation process
reflected the emotion.
That peak of anger, that’s rage.
17

Rage.
This piece focuses on the sudden yet lasting effects of rage. The
aggressive act of throwing the paint at the canvas captures the moment
in time that this rage hits the wall. When removing the tape,
the lasting effect of rage is created.
The goal for this piece was to create a sharp toxic
environment with the nails. I drew the letter forms on
the back of a piece of masonite and then proceeded to
hammer nails around the outline of the letters. This
project proved to be a bit more time consuming and
difficult than expected. It used a lot of physical power
as I had to actually break through the surface of the
masonite. The videos taken during this process show
the destructive nature of the nails and the emotion rage
as a whole.

This piece was extremely more time consuming
than expected. I did some research
on match art to see how other artists were
able to assemble the matches in such a
stable form. I decided that I would drill
holes into the piece of wood and glue the
matches in place because it would provide
a very durable base and the process of drilling
that many holes would embody the idea
of destructive rage.
When igniting the piece, I was surprised at
how beautiful and striking the flames were.
At times, they reached heights of three
feet! The piece in the end was completely
scorched. This mirrors the idea of rage
being completely destructive and irreversible
anger. The flames are beautiful but
completely dangerous. This piece may have
been the most exciting to create because
I didn’t really have any idea how it would
turn out and, in the end, it seemed to
completely embody the emotion.
19
dev elopment.

Ecstasy.
This piece was a second try at my experimentation during the first semester of thesis. After mid
year critiques, the black foam of the letters ripped apart because of the weight of the christmas
lights. Instead of black foam board, I created the letter forms out of wood using a laser cutter.
After drilling the holes, I connected the letters vertically with fishing line so that the weight was
being placed on the fishing line instead of the letters themselves. These small changes made the
world of a difference and this piece is now one of the stronger, transportable pieces.
An important aspect of this piece was the photography. I wanted to get a legible shot of the
phrase itself but I was also interested in seeing how the photos can embody the emotion themselves.
The second photo was a happy, unfocused, accident that proves how the photography can
govern the emotion as well.
I really struggled with this piece. The first two pieces for ecstasy
came easliy, it was my ability to explore the idea of light communicating
an emotion. But for the last piece I wanted to create
something that touched upon other aspects of ecstasy.
These letter boxes are created using red plastic folders and hung
with fishing line from a piece of word to embody floating in a void.
The letter themselves attempt to contain that little void that is
ecstasy.
These letter forms are very succesful in person, you can physically
see the light and air more in and around the letters and the planes
of the boxes interacting. However, photographing the letters was
quite difficult. The photo shows experimenting with putting my
hand slightly over the flash to create small bursts of light around
the composition. These pockets of light are uncontrolable and
create that same void that ecstasy hopes to emulate.

This piece builds off “crazy fucking good” and explores the idea of light. I had
this idea before I thought it was plausibile. I didn’t know how I would rig
the light blubs so that they would light up. However, Amazon prevailed once
again. These eight bulb sockets connect to a horizontal piece of wood to hold
all of the light builds at the same height.
Similar to other pieces, the process of creating is just as important in emulating
the emotion than the final product is. In this piece, it is not just the
process of creating but also the process of turning the light bulbs on and off.
When off, the light bulbs look dull and bland. In a moment, the explode and
assert themselves into your vision. You suddenly feel and see the light everywhere.
21
dev elopment.

Grief.
I wanted to show grief as a sort of product of something else. These shadows build off the
cut letters and create the letter forms on the environment around them. However, I really
am not well versed in shadow art so once it was time to take pictures I had really no idea
what to expect which is both exciting and daunting.
After fiddling with spot lights, natural light, and regular lamps, I settled on a shadow that
was legible but not too aggressive. Grief is blurry and encompasses your entire body, it is
not sharp and hard. With each of the photo shoots, I try to push the environment in which
I place my piece. I decided to put the shadows on the human body because grief is such a
personal, intimate experience.
When exploring the idea of grief, I looked towards loss and emptiness. One of
my biggest associations with funerals is flowers. However, during funerals, the
flowers are used in attempt to bring life to this extremely sad and very unlively
time.
This piece played off that association but used dead carnations and dead roses
to show the loss of life that is worked so hard to ignore. I messily ripped and
broke the stems and petals to spell out grief in 25 degree weather to feel the
coldness that is created by grief.
Before standing out in the cold, my idea was to place it on top of
cracked cement to show the fragility of something so strong and
how overwhelming grief can be. After execution, it is clear that the
green on top of the dark gray is extremely illegibile and not in an
appropriate way.

This piece flowed from the idea of loss. How can I make something that not
only feels like loss but is loss? That’s how I thought of ice. An essential portion
of this piece is that I video tapped the ice melting to understand and
docoument the entire process of loss.
I decided to put the letters (created using a silicon alphabet tray) on a bright
blue plate to create a contrast between the sad cold letters and the familar
bright colored background. Grief isn’t something that is noticeable, it takes
over your entire life, even the happy aspects. This pop of color was inspired
by Jessica Walsh and her use of bright colors to create juxtapositions between
content and design.
23
dev elopment.

Tension.
This piece is not as legible as I had hoped however, I’m
not entirely unhappy with how the viewer has to work
to figure it out. Trimming the excess rope of the letters
and burning it with a lighter really cleaned up the letter
forms but I think they are still kind of illegible. If
I were to do it again, I would ad a little bit more space
between the words of the top row so that they acted a
little bit more as different words.
When photographing the piece, the shadows cast by
the ropes were extremely problematic. I struggled to
find poses that were remotely legible. However, in the
end, the introduction of hands and actual tension pulling
apart the wooden rods made the piece a lot more
legible and the photographs more interesting.
This piece went very smoothly! I was very
maticulous with the planning of it which
paid off. I measured out how much space
each letter should get, counted the number
of nails and rubber bands I needed,
sketched out the letters, and then easily
made the piece. At first, I was going to just
do one rubber band from nail to nail but I
ended up adding more to create more texture
which I think was very successful.

This piece focused on the energy and force of tension. During the interviews,
tension was usually focusing on stress and the invisible energy that tension
creates within your brain and the people around you.
The photographs posed themselves to be much more difficult than anticipated.
The imprints were not as dark as expected and I didn’t want to injure
the subject. The adaptaions I made to account for these difficulties were by
breaking the word along two lines to let us apply more pressure in one spot on
the skin in attempts to create more legible imprints. I also decided to edit the
photo and manually draw some of the letters and use blending modes to create
the imprint feel. I think that these edits were successful and necessary to the
legibility of the piece.
25
dev elopment.

Comfort.
The construction of the wire letters was as difficult as
expected, with the use of pilers and force I was able to
create the curves I wanted to. However, wrapping the
yarn was much more complex than anticipated. I had
to, at times, contort my body and the letters to ensure
that I would be wrapping the correct part of the wire
with yarn. After it’s creation, it was very strong and I
was able to photograph and transport it to different
environments.
I had difficulties photographing this piece. The first
photograph against the white wall is not ineteresting
at all, it does not feel like comfort. The environment
makes the project feel much less successful. After
making these realizations, I had to curate the environment
to also embody the emotion. Going off of tactile
comfort, I decided to photograph it against the blue
blanket for the pop of color and sense of softness.
When creating this piece, I cut each of the letters
by hand and used a sugar cookie recipe that said it
would hold it shape, which was true for the most part!
Unfortunately, when I attempted to take the cookies
off of the tray, more than half of them broke because I
did not use parchment paper which wasn’t extremely
comforting...
After sadly staring at the broken cookies for about two
weeks, I decided to super glue them together. Conceptually,
this alludes to the idea of comfort that isn’t
perfect. You may be broken but “you’re not alone”. As
you can see from the picture, the super glue worked. I
decided to put them on top of the sweater to reference
physical comfort similar to the other comfort pieces.

When I made this sketch, I messily scribbled thinking that I wouldn’t be able
to draw the sheets and towels as I envisioned them. But looking at the final
piece, I knew exactly what it was going to look like! This piece makes me
extremely happy because it went so smoothly and was actually comforting to
make, I successfully emulated the emotion in the process.
I initially brought many different colored blankets and sheets and towels to
form the letters. However, I didn’t htink that would look aesthetically pleasing
at all and it may be illegible as the letters are not connected by a single color.
So I chose to create all of the letter forms using white towels. I also decided
to place the mint sheet down underneath the towels to try and continue to
curate the environment of comfort for the whole photo.
After I had photographed the whole thing, I took pictures of me laying within
the letters to really add to the idea of comfort. This was one of the first pieces
I made and was a real break through when it came to curating the environment
and the photographs to also emulate the emotion.
27
dev elopment.

Booklets.
I use Cormorant Garamond, and the family of bold and italics, for every emotion’s booklet.
The use a singular font for every emotion was intentional in attempts to relate to the
idea of emotional experiences within humans. These emotions, no matter how meek or
destructive, are what make us innately human. Cormorant Garamond creates this singular
voice to relate to each reader and allow them to view these booklets as cohesive aspects of
a single person rather than exclusive concepts.
When I began making the spreads, I was
extremely fixated on making the narrative
legible and giving each piece the attention it
deserved. The top spread on the right shows
one of my first drafts. While aesthetically
pleasing and compelling, it doesn’t make you
feel anything. To grow from these, I looked
back towards David Carson and Katherine
McCoy to see how I could use my photographs
and text together to create a beautiful
experience.
The final spread for that block of text now
looks how it appears on the right. When I
began manipulating text, I weirdly got very
anxious. It pushed me out of my comfort zone
as an artist and a reader. I had to work to
understand what the spread was saying and I
wasn’t even quite sure if it looked good. In the
end, it didn’t matter if anyone else thought it
looked good, it matter if I thought it embodied
rage. Each of these booklets continued
the experimentation I felt during the pieces
except now it was digital.

Spreads.
It’s like being on
another planet
It just feels
you feel
the ener
gy throu
gh and a
round yo
ur body
you feel the entire world at once
in a
way
It only lasts for a few minutes or
seconds but that’s all you really need to feel
29
dev elopment.

31
dev elopment.

Gallery Book.
When introducing text and photo-manipulation into the booklets, I was
hesitant because I wanted to give my experimental typography the attention it
deserved. When incorporating text, it took away from the pieces but made the
narrative more legible. In compromise, I created a gallery book to showcase
each piece and the photography that went into their documentation.
This book has very minimal text and focuses on letting the photos explain the
pieces. I tried to emphasis white space as well as full bleed imagery. Examples
of spreads can be seen on the right.
With every book, you need a cover. The covers of the booklets are full bleed texture images
that relate to the emotion. I did not know how I would use a texture that related to all
emotions at once. Instead of trying to encompass all emotions, I tried to focus on the idea
of a singular voice. In the booklets, I used one font for all emotions to create this one human
thread weaving all of these emotions together; we all experience these emotions and
that’s what makes us innately human. You are not different when you’re enraged than when
you’re grieving. From this, I decided to make the cover of the gallery book a full bleed
image of my skin with “introspection” written in my handwritting on the cover. The skin
texture is challenging, almost gross, but encourages you to hold it in your hands and experience
every one of these materials. This choice was a huge risk when printing the book but
it created the feeling of humanity and flesh that is essential to the emotional experiences.

33
dev elopment.

final deliverables
gallery book.

narrative booklets.
35

Process Video.

A large part of these pieces was to create the desired emotion
in the final legible product but also embody the emotion in the
process of the piece. Because of this, I video taped the creation
of every piece to create a time lapse of the entire process. This 4
minute video captures each of the emotions together to show their
creation from a single voice.
37
final deliverables

reflections.
This project has tested my artistic ability, my emotional capacity, and my passion for design. Through this
project, I found the aspects of design that really appeal to me: how design has the ability to compell the
viewer to feel certain ways, the act of taking an image in your mind and creating it physically, and, most
importantly, how it feels to hold your designs that you’ve been starring at through the computer in your
hands and feel your vision come alive.
In the fall 2017 semester, I delved into extreme self reflection about who I am as a designer and what
actually makes me happy. It took three months to come to this project pathway and I couldn’t be more
passionate about it. These pieces and the narrative booklets pushed my ideas of what designs supposed to
be to what I want design to be for me. The typography made me uncomfortable, anxious, and unsure of
it’s success. This period of uncomfort spurred artist revelations, more than I could understand.
I learned what design means to me, I learned about who I want to be as a designer, and I learned what
truly makes me happy and that is creating.
thank you,
Thank you to my professors for bearing with me and my many frazzeled, sweaty
moments running around the art floor when I had the semblence of an idea. Thank you to the other senior
graphic design majors - for listening to my design vomit and constantly supporting and challenging
my wild ideas.
To my family, thank you for supporting me and my creativity even if that means changing my major
junior year.
To my roommates, thank you for dealing with random art supplies through our apartment for the last six
months. For not throwing things out because you “didn’t know if it was art or not” and for letting me use
various pieces of furniture when randomly necessary.
To my friends who have constantly listened to me talk about this project for the last six months. The
biggest of thank yous goes out to you. Thank you for bringing me pencils when I was too busy working
to leave the couch, thank you for all the hugs when my pieces went terribly and the hugs when the pieces
went amazingly. Thank you for letting me use your bodies as canvases and for being as excited about this
project as I am. The constant, unwavering support, love, critique, and empathy have shaped this project
to what it is today, and I couldn’t be happier.
I wouldn’t have been able to do this without any of you.

39