Jul 29
Student illustrators and graphic designers working together
2008 at 08.00 am posted by Veerle Pieters
Today I would like to share an interesting video (of 4 episodes) about 8 student illustrators and 8 student graphic designers (from the Art Center of Pasadena, California) who designed the magazine spreads in the theme of “Serious Play” for the Wrap Magazine. The interesting part in these 4 movies is the collaboration between individuals that have a different perception of each other’s job but managed to work together intensely. It’s such a valuable lesson because working together is like a red line throughout a career. This got me thinking about my student days and how different things were back then…
Serious Play
In these 4 episodes you'll see how these talented students combine their varying skill sets to work together on this joint project. They talk about their design process and their experiences in this intense collaboration and you get to see their wonderful work. Very inspiring to watch.
Episode 1
In this first episode eight student illustrators and eight student graphic designers combine their varying skill sets for a common goal. This collaboration sparks innovative concepts and intense connections.
Episode 2
In the second episode students Enrique Barrios and Owen Freeman showcase their depictions of hope and humanity in the face of war. They also discuss the relationship between graphic designer and illustrator, how they successfully tackled a sensitive subject, and what "play" looks like in a war torn city.
Episode 3
In the third episode student illustrator Kerry Hyatt and student graphic designer Paula Hansanugrum join together to create a project using iconic American imagery such as tv dinners, comic books, and the vintage game Operation. By choosing a main character who is a hypochondriac obsessed with advertised medications, their final piece holds a mirror up to modern life in America.
Episode 4
In the last episode students Saejean Oh and Kathryn McFarlane explain how they chose Benjamin Franklin as the subject of their Serious Play project. Rather than focus on his political work, they consider the curiosity and sense of humor which aided Franklin in all his endeavors. The illustrator and graphic designer create a visually arresting piece, the look of which they stumble upon accidentally - not unlike many of the greatest inventors.
Way back in the late eighties
When I was a graphic design student
After watching these 4 episodes I realized how different it was back in the day when I was a student. Not sure how many of you realize the huge difference and contrast from the late 80ies with now, it's phenomenal. First of all -and this is maybe the biggest difference- there is the computer that plays its central role in all this. When I was at school desktop publishing was just becoming a hot term. Everything costed 10 times more than it does now. Our school had about 5 Apple Macintoshes (I believe Classics) (for 17 students) with 13 (or was it 12 or 11?) inch black and white screens, running System 6 with MacDraw, MacPaint and MacWrite. You have to understand that the Mac's weren't an obligated part of the lay-out class because of the limitations of the software. Then Aldus FreeHand and Aldus PageMaker came on the market and only a lucky few (about 10, including me) from our class got a 14 day speed course of FreeHand. This was a big revelation to me, but as you can imagine (or not) version 1.0 was nothing like we know today :) That was in my 2nd year studying graphic design and that was about it what I learned about DTP when I graduated.
My print background
The basis I learned from school was valuable and well enough for its time to get started in the real world. Time changes and technology plays such big role now. I tasted the introduction of it all during my schooltime. Apart from sketching, drawing; screen printing, layout classes and the theoretical package (algebra, history, economics...), I also learned about paper, the process of how it is made, the different types of paper, the finishing... I learned about printing ink, and its composition, the different types of printing techniques and their processes, typography... Then there was also a class we called 'repro' where we learned about reprographic techniques. You might be more familiar with the term prepress. It basically came down to transmitting the design onto film. Then this film was transmitted onto the printing plate and things got printed on a press. A lot of handwork and micron precision work was involved during this process. Things were all far less automated back then and a lot was done *by hand*. Think about a dark room and retouching work on the films where needed etc. Sometimes things took a few days what only takes a few minutes with today's technology. I believe that PostScript was just becoming more popular and the first RIP (Raster Image Processor) imagesetters got introduced. Learning about these things the old fashion way gave me a valuable technical base about printing in general. Terms such as halftone, separation, screen lineature, screen angle, posterization, moiré or trapping etc. were part of my learning material. When I started my business I worked with a few prepress agencies who developed the printing films and print proofs for me to take to the printers. These days (at least here in Belgium) films get skipped, I deliver my certified PDF file which is then carried out via digital processes onto the printing plate and then the printing gets started.
Pre Internet time
As you might guess from reading this, I'm basically self-taught in everything I do today in terms of web design and the applications I'm using to produce my designs. When I graduated I only knew a scratch of FreeHand and that was it. I had hardly used a Mac (PC's weren't around for the graphic designer). Only in layout classes we saw a glitch of what was about to come. The first year after I graduated (in 1991) I followed an evening (speed) course in Photoshop (2.0!) and QuarkXPress and that was it.
My first Mac!
Back in 1992 I started my business on a Apple Quadra 700 with system 7 with 8 MB of RAM and a 140 MB hard disk. Before this I had my very first steps in Adobe Illustrator 3 on a Macintosh IIf with system 6. That’s when I learned to create logos, illustrations and layouts on a computer. And boy did I love working on it! It made me realize where the future of graphic design was going. From that moment on I knew that the Mac would take a special place in my daily life. I was one of those students that preferred working on a computer instead of using pencils and paint for artwork. Not that I don’t love drawing and painting, I do, I do a lot, but I saw a different world of creativity and unlimited possibilities… yes I know I was way ahead of time :-D
Believe in yourself and be passionate in what you do
People often email me for advice on schools and education and such, but honestly it's a bit hard to give advice because I graduated so long ago. Everything is so different now, it's like a new world that I'm not familiar with anymore. Web design or multimedia didn't exist in my student time and computers were hardly around. The only advice that I can give is that when you are choosing a school that teaches web design, to be on the lookout that they teach you about web standards and not the old school way of using tables etc.
It may sound cheesy but if you try hard enough anything is possible. The applications that you use aren't the most important part of all this, they are just a means to an end. Still, here I am with my Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials and tips and tricks on web design :) My job is one learning curve, mainly because technology in general plays such big role in our jobs today and we need to stay on top of it all the time. To conclude you have to stay eager to learn even after school and that can only be done if you are truly passionate about what you do. Combine that with believing in yourself and you'll have a firm basis. The rest are life lessons. The thing is when you love your job it feels like a hobby and you don't mind the constant learning. It's great to see that they teach people of varying skill sets to work together now. Like I mentioned in the introduction it's something that will always cross your path. Learning to interact with other will help you in many different ways.
8served
1
I study Communication and Multimedia Design (CMD) (Arnhem, Holland if anyone is wondering). The way CMD is set-up is that I constantly work together with a lot of different studies, be it Digital Communication, Technical IT, Business IT, etc.
The idea behind this is to give designers aswell as coders insight in how the other studies “think”. As a designer, this gives me insight in how the coders would like to see a website designed, built-up and delivered to them. This constant cooperation between studies creates a better “synergy”.
2
Wow, that took me back to my “old” days as well. I graduated from Illustration & Design in ‘91 and we had a crash course in Quark and a quickie 1 semester course using a PC/IBM and Autocad!
Basically, learned everything on the job as it came along. Pretty much sink or swim type of thing. lol.
I still have alot more to learn and this blog is alot of fun to check out! Thanks for the memories…
3
Wow, your post really takes me back. Perhaps not as far back as it took you but I didn’t learn a single minute of web page design during my graphic design course. Instead we were taught how to enlarge negatives on a large format, horizontal camera to be transferred to a screen for screen printing, this is now a dead art. That was just over 10 years ago. I would love to see a timeline showing the evolution of the graphic artist.
4
aaah the good old days at VISO land, problably one of the best graphic schools in belgium. I spend 7 years at that campus and pagemaker was our first grahic encounter :)
5
a very inspiring set of video. Collaboration and team play is a key part of most new projects
6
I remember doing a simple dropshadow effect in photoshop took 3 images. good times.
great vids.
7
A very interesting read. I did graphic design back in the day. I guess there would not be too much difference between what you did to I, as computers weren’t on the scene when I was young. As you can see from my not so stunning website, I didn’t pursue a career in graphics.
8
WOW this takes me back ... not the vid especially - but your words. Other than typography, (still a great passion of mine) I now find very little of what I learnt at one of London’s top Art colleges useful in my daily working life (due to the changes in technology - not any fault of my tutors). From what I can work out you probably left a few years after me. I was plunged into a commercial world before the Mac revolution where seriously talented, specialist artists ruled the roost. I started work in a very busy London art studio that had Graphic Designers, Lettering Artists, Typographers, Visualisers, Finished Artists, Airbrush Illustrators, Photo Retouchers, Paste-Up Artists a very knowledgeable Repro Department and something in the darkroom called a PMT machine (no jokes here people!). As much as I appreciate the leaps and bounds in technology that have enabled me to produced the combined result of the individual talents of the above mentioned specialists all by myself I do kind of pine for the days when it was a collective effort (it was certainly more fun). I guess that’s the main message of the video, “collaboration is good”. A bit ironic really ... I wonder what the creative genius of all those separate specialists could have produced given access to the software available to every wanna-be graphic artist/hobbyist today?
It’d be interesting to talk - you’re only down the road!
Regards - Deano
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