Field Journal - Module 3

What I really enjoyed about this week's reading was the history of relief printing in Europe because I was able to learn a bit of the process of this style first hand in my printmaking class.  What I would like to talk about this week is the process of making my prints and the materials I used.

The first thing I did was created an image using pencil on paper.

Original Art

From there, I transferred the image by filling in the back of my design with a soft leaded pencil and tracing over my design onto a block of linoleum.

Linoleum

From there I used a Speedball Lino Cutter to scrape away the linoleum around my design.

Lino Cutter

Here is the final block inked for printing.

From there I placed the printing block on the bed of a printing press which presses down the paper onto the inked block.

Not the one I used but similar in design

And here is the final product.

After learning this process, i really can see what the draw must have been to early print makers.  Just the simple ability to reproduce an image that is an exact duplicate of the original in a fraction of the time it takes to make an image by hand must have been such a refreshing change of pace.

Field Journal - Module 2

What really grabbed my attention in this week's reading was the evolution of pictographs

petroglyphs

and ideographs.

into writing.

My understanding of the reading is that prehistorical humans used their early form of visual communication primarily as a tool to help survive in a hunter-gatherer society. As society evolved from the Paleolithic Period to the agricultural societies of the Neolithic Period, visual communication evolved in two ways. One, pictures became more detailed to become an early artform with the purpose of being a visual record of events and two, that of a simpler pictorial form that represented the spoken word.

By the time the Bronze Age rolled around, visual communication had evolved from a survival tool of the Paleolithic humans to a means for an agricultural society to keep records. What I really took away from this reading was that the more complex society became visual communication evolved as a means to keep the forward momentum of society going by having a stronger record of humanities' past.

Field Journal - Module 1

The first impression I got from looking at the pictures throughout the book is how much abstract imagery has been important in the history of graphic design.  From the cave paintings early humans to pictographs, hieroglyphs and letterforms that represent words to photography and illustrations.  Each instance is an abstract image that invokes an emotional and intellectual response in the viewer.

The second impression I had was that typography is very important in a lion's share of the images.  A powerful image can be lifted to new heights with as little as a single word and a bold typeface where as the same image can be made irrelevant with the same word but with a typeface.  A great example of this is Shepard Fairey's Obama Poster.

Now imagine the word HOPE in comic sans...

All in all, I found myself wanting to read more about the images that are in the book and I am really looking forward to learning about the different techniques and the histories behind these images.