Fly+Mighty

This was one of the successful projects this semester. Ben Clark designed a paper store based on the appeal of American Apparel. It may be a paper store of cool hipster fashion, but the project is really all about attitude and a critique of empty consumer culture. It comes complete with clothes to cut and assemble, photos of models wearing tight pants and xtreme v's, and all kinds of attitude.

Paper Categories

Paper stocks are too plentiful for me to list every type here, but we can arrange them as follows:
1) commercially milled paper
usually there is a minimum order. commercial printers order paper from mills.
2) specialty paper
includes decorative and hand made papers.
3) upcycled paper
for instance, when junk mail is made into wallets.
4) paper objects
includes paper products that are mass produced.

Congratulations Flat City Designers

Dane Overton's Typodula.

Amanda Clark's utopian city.

The Flat cities project is featured in a new book of formats folds and bindings for graphic designers. The students who have cities in the book are Phil and Amanda Clark, Dane Overton, Felicia Koloch, and Jihad Lahham. Congratulations to you all. The work looks great next to all the professional projects. You are in good company.

Paper Postcard: Process

After a direction has been determined, the mind maps and mood boards are filled with visual research, the next task is to build models and to create a look and feel. A series of 12 postcards provide a quick way to test some ideas and visuals. The postcards may not solve the look and feel problem completely, but they rule out some things, and they sometimes (hopefully) hold the kernel that directs the next step.

Each postcard represents a specific focus within the larger theme and focuses on a visual element: typography, image, color pallete, pattern/texture, image, abstract and representational symbols, and diagrams.












The shapes Carina used for her project are reflected above in circles, squares and triangles. The idea being that shapes and colors communicate emotions in ways that words can't. The final three dimensional shapes could be arranged to express how a person was feeling at a particular time. This series of postcards helped her to define some aspects of communication with color and geometric shapes.



Jaime imagined a place called Reverie, a city of dreams. Some of the ideas from his post cards carry over to the final project and some do not. The cards helped him to build the visual and verbal content for his city.

The cards are assigned and due the next class period. These are intended to be quick studies and then we move on.


Simple models of the projects structure include no text or graphics, just blank bristol board models. Jaime chose to stack the city emphasizing upward movement. In his idea, the dreamer begins at the lower level, with the goal being to reach the ultimate dream at the very top of the city.

Fortunato Depero: Unified Visual Language

Italian designer, Fortunato Depero worked from 1914 through 1955 and depicted figures and environments in the manner of futurism. The expressive qualities of the simple geometric forms are emphasized by dynamic angles and unexpected placement of buildings in the environment. The people and the environments share a cohesive visual language of form and color.

If citizens, or accessories are designed to live in the ”Flat City“ make sure they continue the visual form you have created. This way all the parts will feel unified, like they all belong to the same idea.

The imagery you design and apply to the forms can communicate a few different ways. You could communicate just what is there. In other words the form looks like what it is, but why not entertain some other ways you could communicate? What if the graphics depicted what was going on inside, or around the form? What if it was purely typographic?

Remember covering a three dimensional form with an even pattern or texture will visually flatten the shape. Differentiating between surfaces and planes will accentuate the form.

How To Imagine a City

To expand our thinking of how a city can be imagined, we wrote city poems. Each person begins with a sheet of paper and writes a statement about a city. They fold the top of the paper down to cover what they wrote and then pass the paper along to the next person who reads the first statement and then writes their own statement which is the opposite of the previously written statement. They cover what they wrote and pass it along again. Each person covers what they wrote and the new person only reads the previous statement and writes the opposite and so on. These are the cities we imagined...

A city that never sleeps
asleep by 10 pm
awake by 10 pm
fell asleep at 10 pm
i went to bed early last night
i haven't slept in days
i sleep all day every day
i am an insomniac

when you are in a big city there's Bright lights and events everywhere, and tons of places to go, you never stop.
the city can make you feel excluded or unattached because there are so many people and places.
i always feel warm and welcome in a department store
i almost never feel itchy and scratchy in a prison
i get the best medial treatment in prison
canada's health care system is the talk of the town
canadian bacon is the talk of the town

Cities where dreams come true
the city is a place where people suffer to live their reality
the city is a place where everybody chases their nightmares
the city is a place in which nightmares haunt those with problems most at night...seeping in through the window.
the city is a happy place with sunshine and rainbows. People have bright and colorful dreams

a city filled with a younger crowd during the winter
a city full of middle aged singles in tropical weather ready to party
a city with no middle aged singles that's not tropical, not able to party
single and ready to mingle, “cosmopolitan anyone?”
married and celibate anyone?
boring and wild

a place of dreams
a place of nightmares
people here never sleep
a city in which everyone lives on north, south, east, and west elm street.
mayor freddie krueger runs the city very tightly
freddy krueger runs his city loosely
son of sam ran a tight ship
daughter of jill didn't own a ship

I thank Laura Jean Mclaughlin for introducing me to this technique of prying the brain loose from its routine thinking. It comes from a book titled ”Surrealist Games“

What to do with a Sheet of Paper

Success in making anything improves as you understand what your materials like to do. we compiled a list in class of what can we do to a sheet of paper, and the properties of paper. first of all most paper has a grain. It is best to fold with the grain of the paper. If you don’t your edges will crack. To find the grain direction you can lightly fold the paper, do not crease, and press down. The paper will give more resistance going against the grain. You can cut a small strip of paper and wet it. The paper will curl with the grain

properties of paper:
weight, transparency, surface texture, color or tone, synthetic or organic material

things you can do to paper
cut, fold, score, tear, perforate, punch, crumple, soak, burn, rip, emboss, layer, make marks upon, stab, scratch, weave, cast ( paper pulp ).

some paper categories
1) commercially milled paper
usually there is a minimum order. commercial printers order paper from mills.
2) specialty paper
includes decorative and hand made papers.
3) upcycled paper
for instance, when junk mail is made into wallets.
4) paper objects
includes paper products that are mass produced.