Theda Bara photo #2

I think this photo - probably a studio publicity still - is absolutely beautiful. The use of black and white, and the downward diagonal of her form, from upper right to lower left, is wonderful, IMHO. The success of her 1915 film, A Fool There Was, allowed producer William Fox to found Fox Film Corporation, and the success of her following films insured his success. A Fool There Was is one of the four feature films (not including two short comedies) that exist today, out of the 40 feature films that she made during her career. What I would not give to see her cinematic treatments of Carmen, The Vixen, and, of which only a tantalizing 40 seconds of which exist today, Cleopatra.

A femme fatale role model - Theda Bara

Not to be dismissed as mere 'cheesecake' imagery; this was one of hollywood's earliest and most popular femme fatales. The on-screen persona of Theda Bara - whose real name was Theodosia Burr Goodman - was built up to be the very essence of exotic mystery, but she was actually born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1885. Her eventual screen popularity was second only to Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford. Her sometimes risque pre-Hays code costumes only added to her reputation. What also contributes to her legend today is that the vast majority of her silent films (made between 1914 and 1926) were destroyed in a fire in 1937. There is a very wide tonal range in this photograph, from a value of almost complete white, to dark black. She has a very interesting photographic persona.

link to webpage - didn't know how to upload animated GIF(?) file

I wish I knew how to upload an animated GIF (?) file, but I don't, so you will need to follow this link:

http://lala.cursivebuildings.com/tagged/reaching

Stereophotographs, or stereograms, or stereocards, are two photographs taken side-by-side, separated by approximately the distance between the human eyes, and used to simulate human binocular depth perception, on a flat surface, using a special viewer. Sir Charles Wheatstone is credited with inventing the first stereophotographic images in 1840. For a number of decades, they were quite popular with the public, and stereocards and stereoviewers were all the rage. They were later updated to the plastic 3-D viewers and circular cards with minaturized photographic slide-like inserts. What is so appealing about so many of the stereocards to me now, is the historical quality of the photographs. The gentleman at the above-listed website came up with a clever way to somewhat duplicate their qualities on a regular computer monitor, without the need of the original 3-D viewer. I believe he uses an an animated GIF file. Apparently he overlays one of the images on top of the other one, and uses animation features to switch back and forth between the two images, very quickly, so that the brain puts it together as a single image, which creates the illusion of depth, without the special viewer. Because the points of view are slightly different, however, the brain also perceives a slight 'wobble', and the slight differences between the two images also tends to make the lighting 'flicker'. I am extremely intrigued by these images. I am very interested in history, and physical reminders of the past, and I think that these images are absolutely fascinating. The flickering quality of the light gives one the impression that one is watching a video clip of very early moving picture images. I would like to learn how to do this technique. I have a few older stereocards in storage somewhere, and I haven't been able to find them yet. Meh!...

back cover for book assignment

I really like the composition of this rear matchbook cover, as well as the slogan, 'Where the sunshine spends the winter'.

pages 10-11 of book

Another result of enlarging images is being able to see more of the process of their manufacture, such as more visible 'half-tone' dots.

pages 8-9 of book

Some of these individually printed matches are just wonderful. There is an attention to detail in the 'grilling steak' matches that is hard to believe, especially when you have to assume that smokers probably didn't necessarily pay all that much attention after an initial glance. This is the only 2-page spread where I went with horizontal-vertical alignment, just for some more variety. I'm realizing that the word 'Phillumenism' might have to be spaced a little bit in the middle, pre-press, to allow people to read what is probably an unfamiliar word, although this 'booklet' will be thin enough that that might not be a problem.

pages 6-7 of book

I think that one can really start to appreciate the skillful graphic design and use of color in these matchbooks, when they are scanned, and greatly enlarged on the monitor. The 2-3 page spread had the imagery on the 'inside' of the spread, with text on the outside, so I was trying to reverse that with this layout.

pages 4-5 of book

The idea was to include some 2-page spreads of just images and background color.

pages 2-3 of book

This is mostly a 'visual' book, so even though I wanted to include a certain amount of text, I wanted the graphics to predominate. I also wanted the ability to play with different approaches to text alignment. Each line of text is a separate 'layer' in PhotoShop, which gives one a great deal of freedom in letter and word placement, but which is also a little labor-intensive.

create-a-book assignment - cover

I wanted to do something a little different for the cover, so I kept it a little plain (saving the graphics mostly for the inside), and moved the title to an edge where it would not normally be located. I wanted to use the texture of the 'strike strips', as well as include the staples, the slight tearing where the staple comes through, and the scuff marks of previous use, reminding the viewer of the physical act of abrading the match along the strike strip.

Dazzle #7 - modern dazzle canoe

Chicago-based artist Carrie Schneider has done some photographs utilizing dazzle-type design. It's hard to tell if this is an actual dazzle-type fabric covering for a canoe. My doubt comes from the lack of a visible water-wick line, although if this were sewn in a synthetic such as nylon, that feature might not be as visible. I really like the idea of pleasure craft done in a dazzle-type design. Jeff Koons did someone's sailing yacht in this way, but I didn't think that the colors worked very well.

Dazzle #6 - painting inspired by camouflage inspired by modern art

The name of this painting, done shortly after WW1, is 'Painting of Dazzle Ships in Drydock, in Liverpool, 1919', by the British painter Edward Wadsworth. It's a wonderful modernist painting depicting the modernist-inspired surface treatment of the ships, as well as the linear treatment of the drydock and surrounding structures. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to suggest that Wadsworth ever worked on designing Dazzle designs for ships.

Dazzle #5 - authentic period full-color Dazzle designs

Here are some authentic, and presumably officially approved, designs for dazzle-painted ships. I'm guessing WW2 vintage. This stuff is fantastic.
It would be fun to have your acid-rainbow tie-dye design officially accepted, and then painted all over an unspeakably expensive Ronald Reagan-class aircraft carrier, such as the 'USS Sugar Magnolia'.

Miles, has anyone made cubeecraft ship templates? Coming up with dazzle-schema design projects would be a fun DMF 201 assignment.

Dazzle #4 - 'Poster ship' in B& W photo

Here is a b&w photo of the same ship, the RMS Mauretania, depicted in color on the Cunard poster. These things must have been a sight to behold, steaming across the open seas.

Dazzle #3

During both world wars, many passenger liners were converted into troop carriers. This poster from the Cunard company shows the color scheme from one of their troop-carrier-converted liners, the RMS Mauretania.

Dazzle #2

This is the USS Mahomet, in dock, from shortly after WW1. It's not easy to determine exactly where the bow of the ship is. Cubism was a influencing style, and also possibly(?) the German style of cinema known as expressionism (watch The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari).

I love Razzle-Dazzle!

My favorite camouflage approach of all time. Actually, it's more of an 'anti-camouflage', but it worked for a while. The birth of this style of maritime camouflage is attributed to Briton Norman Wilkinson. The British Admiralty was frustrated by the fact that they were losing so many supply ships to German U-boats, and by the fact that different weather conditions, and different lighting scenarios, made it difficult to come up with a camouflage scheme that would make it possible to make a ship harder to see under all possible conditions. Wilkinson came up with the idea of disregarding the idea of visual stealth, but instead painting a ship so that it was more difficult to see exactly which angle a ship might be steering towards. This was a brilliant idea, because most submarines and enemy surface ships used very complicated optical-mechanical sighting systems to estimate range towards the target, angle of deflection, and speed. The gunner (or whoever was sighting the torpedo) would then 'lead' the moving ship, and fire ahead of it (much like a hunter with a shotgun does). The idea behind what the British called 'Dazzle' painting, and what the Americans called 'Razzle-Dazzle', was to make it harder for crewman using optical rangefinders (which used a 'split-screen' much like some SLR cameras) to focus properly, and who had to estimate angles, as well. The British used dazzle painting on their ships all through WWI. The Americans used it starting in 1918, and through WW2. The British admiralty was not convinced of it's effectiveness, although it was good for morale (and I have read several British officer's excerpts from ship's logs which would, in fact, seem to indicate it's visual efficacy). The American navy had more confidence in it's effects. What brought the end of dazzle painting was the development of more effective targeting technologies, such as radar. Dazzle paint designs frequently used color, as shown by numerous surviving official designs, but unfortunately, there do not seem to be any existing color photos from WW1-era ships.
This example is the French cruiser 'Gloire'.

katazome stencil #2

This katazome stencil differs from the previous example in that it has been prepared for use by the use of black lacquer to attach nylon mesh gauze on top. The nylon mesh allows the dragging of a spatula over the top, forcing the resist through, without possibly catching and tearing any delicate parts of the stencil.

katazome stencil #1

There is a centuries-old Japanese method of dyeing kimono cloth called 'katazome stencil-dyeing', involving the use of a very specialized paper for the stencils, and a specialized rice-based glutinous resist, which is then forced through the stencil with some form of spatula, and then allowed to dry.
Back in the day, when I was going to school the first time, I cut a number of these stencils using x-acto knives. The Japanese normally made them to repeat them top-to-bottom, as they would use the stencil, then pick them up, and repeatedly move them down the narrow bolt of kimono cloth in this manner. I modified this Japanese design so that it would also repeat side-to-side.

cuubee craft #1

A first attempt at this. Both my own experience with chicken pox as a child, and the recent viewing of a vintage Spanish cinderella stamp on the web promoting measles vaccinations, nudged me in this direction.

book jacket #5

My anti-paen to repressive and demeaning workplace environments, in which countless minions have done their share of silently suffering. Here is an upbeat study from the 1950's for the guys at the top of the food chain, to aid in keeping the masses in line. Underwritten by Miltown.

'Scratch' assignment #2 - wallpaper design for an optometrist's waiting room

I wanted something very busy, contrasting, and not very restful. Just as appropriate for gift-wrap paper, as well.

'Scratch' assignment #1 - mouse line drawing of a street dandy contemplating an apple

Just trying to keep it very fast, loose, and modern in feel, using a very small diameter pencil tool, and trying not to let the mouse stop moving.

self-portrait #2

self-portrait #1

How on earth do people do self-portraits without using mirrors, or without having the obvious convention of having an arm sticking out, holding the camera up, and yet still stay in focus? It's not easy. I decided this was a good excuse to wear one of my best hats; a vintage Cavanagh homburg. Somehow it looks way too small for my head, but it really isn't.

"What we have he-ah, is a fail-yuh to communicate..."

Another cake from the 'cake wrecks' blog site. Title taken from the movie, 'Cool Hand Luke', which was probably the late Strother Martin's best film role.
Did the same person who took the instructions do the decorative text, or was that handed off to someone else? If there was more than one person involved, one would normally assume that that would increase the chances of this one not 'slipping through the cracks'.
You do have to give the cake maker an A+ for diligently following directions (and an 'E' for effort). They even made the '12' fancier without being asked.

'No - (somebody help me out here...)

I have stared and stared at this; yet another example of a perplexing sign. No sunbathing here? No stepping on terra cotta tile roofs? For the life of me, I can't figure this one out. Probably photo-enforced.

Another Navajo rug

This Navajo rug dates from around the same time as the 'eyedazzler' just listed. The colors are much more muted (some fading might have taken place), but it still is a riotous show of color. I think the freedom of design that the individual rug weavers exhibit is inspiring. Quite frequently these rugs would have been woven by people living the most difficult, abject, impoverished lives imaginable, and yet there is an individual spirit that comes through in these objects that is absolutely undeniable. Certain traditional 'craft' forms can become mired in tradition and stagnate, but you don't usually see that in the designs of Navajo rugs, no matter what the historical time period of this craft. There was a period when the quality of the wool used in these rugs greatly declined until a concerted effort was made to bring it back up to certain standards, but you generally can't say that about the designs themselves.

'Germantown eye-dazzler' Navajo rug

I have always appreciated certain kinds of textiles, especially ethnic traditions. My original B.F.A. show involved a traditional method of surface-dyeing Japanese kimono cloth, and the use of special paper stencils involved in that process. Navajo weaving has always fascinated me. Supposedly the Navajo learned how to weave from pueblo tribes, and then branched out in their own directions, which are incredibly inventive in the use of color in their design elements. This example dates from around 1880, and even though Navajo rug purists don't always like examples such as these utilizing harsher, commercial aniline dyes, I think the color scheme is amazing. This type of rug is sometimes referred to as an 'eyedazzler' style, and you can see why.

book jacket #4

The background graphic comes from an empty popcorn bag that I snagged from a restaurant that I working at in the '80's. The popcorn brand was started in the 1930's, and was probably still using the original logo, which is what caught my eye. Bold graphic, bright colors. I will probably clean up the entire scanned image at a later point (The eraser tool in Photoshop should be good for use on grease stains...)

book jacket #3

I wanted to use some simple color shapes on a white background, and move the letters around some more. I think the entire book jacket works together, and I think that the front works by itself, as well.

'the familiar' - #2

Anytime can be nap-time. When in doubt, get horizontal.

'the familiar' - #1

Faithful and hopelessly indulged companion, resting on a quilt that took me about a year to make.

'the other' - #2

'the other' - photo

I rarely know what to mention when I take photographs. I prefer for people to project onto them whatever they wish, and I seem to greatly prefer black & white.

book jacket #2

I'm not quite sure what to write about this one. I really enjoyed designing this book jacket, also. There is a much-heralded and unconventional western film which I have been meaning to see, 'Johnny Guitar' (directed by Nicholas Ray). I like the sound of the title and wanted to do an Indian take on it, since the graphics that I am using for this jacket are Indian matchbox labels. I liked the vibrant colors in the graphics, and the strong diagonal line made by the title. I tried to make the color of the title line at least be analgous to some of the orange shades in the dancing woman's sari. I like the visible horizontal lines running through the maharajah's face.

What about just building a fence?...

This is like a set-up for a 'candid camera' episode. Okay, so this road sign is visually clear, but what are we supposed to do with the information?
("Caution: adjust personal philosophy to Fatalism for the next 2 miles")
How do you protect yourself from falling cows?
It would be fun to set up a video camera just to get the varied responses of tourists, and edit a compilation of video clips. This reminds me of a scene from the movie, 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'.

'Red-Blue chair'

The 20th century Dutch art movement known as 'De Stijl' is perhaps best known by some of the paintings of Piet Mondrian, in which he used a white background, with bold black lines creating spaces which he filled with primary colors. A contemporary of Mondrian and adherent of this style was the Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld. He designed some extremely interesting furniture that embodied the clean lines and bold colors of De Stijl. This example is referred to as his 'Red-Blue chair'. I think the use of colors makes it wonderful to look at. Rietveld said that he usually banged his shins trying to settle into it, but others have said that it is actually more comfortable to sit in than it looks. The red and blue 'planes' are plywood, to make it easier to manufacture. I got to sit on one of his designs, the 'zig-zag' chair, when I was in Holland many years ago. That particular design also doesn't look comfortable, and looks as if it might break at one of the main joints when you use it, and flexes more than you might think, but it works, and it stacks beautifully. There have been several books written about the work of Rietveld. I enjoy good chair design, and a lot of designers and architects over the years have directed their energies at coming up with good examples. A really good chair design has to have a very skillful balance of comfort and visual aesthetics.

book jacket #1

Somehow it was easier for me to come up with a concept for a book jacket than for the posters. This is the full dust jacket; both front and back. I had been thinking about some of the very small, yet fun printed figures I had that were actually printed on individual matches, and I wanted to do something with them, so I came up with the idea of an industry with a community of in-the-closet illlustrators 'yearning-to-breathe-free' by subtly including aspects of their wish for general acceptance by portraying them on commercial matchbooks. This subject has been on my mind lately; I have friends who wish to legally marry, but simply can't because the law doesn't allow it. There was a woman in the midwest somewhere recently who had some sort of rapid and unexpected medical deterioration; the hospital would not allow her partner of 18 years (who a had a legal document giving her power of attorney) - and their 2 young children - to be with her in her final hours, so she died without any family members being able to be with her. The surviving partner filed a lawsuit, and a judge later upheld the hospital administration's policy.

collage assignment #2

A crown prince, on a goodwill tour of the U.S., is experiencing culture shock, and pines for the girl he left back home...
A cut-and-paste job from various sources, including photography books, a book of japanese patterns, matchbooks, and a matchbox label. The sky comes from a photo I took in Arcata, Ca.

Poster assignment #2 (yowzah, yowzah, yowzah...)

There was a veritable explosion of 'men's magazines' in the years following the second world war. The vast majority of them were quite cheap and tacky, yet some of them employed effectively catchy graphics on the front cover to snag the attention of browsers at the local newstand. This is my homage to that visual style. Everything here is intended to keep those optic nerves a-jangling along, including a background of narrow contrasting stripes. There is something about misaligned letters in a line of script that tends to catch the eye. For the words 'kit' and 'kat', I used four different layers for each word: one for each background, and one for each letter, which made it a little easier to manipulate and position each element. 'Club' required five layers. I also wanted to use different typefaces, in different colors, on different backgrounds. Tacky, but it accomplishes its intended purpose. This is an advertisement for a venue that is concerned about neither a social nor visual aesthetic. The performance date was inspired by an ad I once saw in a newspaper for a 'special event' at a strip club on Thanksgiving(!). Just doing a quick count, I think this image had about 40 layers.

Typography assignment #2

This letter has been manipulated to a much greater degree than the earlier one. It is a capital 'A' in 'old English', which has been greatly enlarged, cropped, and distorted, with semi-translucent colored panels overlaid. The colored areas are using the open areas of the letter as a frame, although with some looseness as to the color overlays. I was thinking of Piet Mondrian when I did this.

'alphabet soup'

So, this assignment was all about engaging in an exercise of observation; trying to find letter forms where we could see them. It was a useful exercise in visual observation and mental 'cropping', I think. I don't think I have a lot to say about the following individual entries; if I have to state what each letter is supposed to be, than I have probably missed the mark. We'll start out with an easy one...

'alphabet soup'

'alphabet soup'

'alphabet soup'

'alphabet soup'

'alphabet soup'

Poster assignment #1

There were a lot of lurid melodramas and exploitation films that came out in the 1930's (i.e., 'Reefer Madness). The film posters that went with them tended to be a bit dramatic. Whether they were actually meant to be 'educational', or just pretended to be, I'm not quite clear on. In this day and age, after the advent of the Jerry Springer tv show, Cole Porter's song, 'Anything Goes...' was never truer, and we're all a lot more jaded, but in the 1930's, these types of film posters probably had some visual impact. This is my salute to those types of posters.
I wanted to create a high-contrast between the background field and lettering, but I didn't want to use black, which would have been a little too clean for the feel I was going for here. I wanted to do everything possible to add to the tawdriness, and the background color ('botulism grey'?) is meant to add to that overall feeling. I wanted the visual hierarchy to go from the top to the bottom. The (fictitious) film title needs to stand out, but in this case I wanted it to not overpower the first word on the poster.

Typography assignment #1

I was looking for a feeling of motion with this study - of this form emerging from the mists, becoming more visually clear, and rolling/bouncing across the screen from left to right. The relative roundness of the letter G helped, as well as the fact that we normally read from left to right, although I actually constructed it from right to left, adding size and dimishing opacity with each new layer. It seemed important to make sure that the last 'G' was not upright, but that a sense of visual imbalance would suggest that the form just continues to move off the screen to the right. Working with varying layers of opacity was interesting, as well as noticing the different shapes that were created when they overlapped.

Collage assignment #1 - 'March of Progress'

I wanted to try to do a collage study using my small collection of vintage matchbooks, matchboxes, and cinderella stamps. The rawness and crudeness of some of these halftone images really appeal to me. When you enlarge those images, you get a feel for the visual process of the creation of those images. I also enjoy a lot of 'older' things, and both the funkiness of the images, as well as how 'dated' some of these things appear, create a feeling of a popular culture gone by, and history. The original Egyptian background with the sand, sphinx, and pyramids, came from a Danish cinderella stamp (it was an advertisement for some form of margarine). I extended it and made it wider partly because I wanted to include more elements, and partly because I wanted the other elements to dominate the Egyptian landscape. I was trying to convey a feeling of 'modern culture' traditionally not always having respect for older culture. An alternate title is 'Club Med - 1947'.