Black History Month Project, Part One

My first "real" school project is in honor of Black History Month. It is an open topic but should send a message about why we should concern ourselves with studying black history, why it matters to us, etc. I've always appreciated black history; I remember my 4th grade project about black history, we had to research a famous African-American, past or present, and if s/he was alive, we wrote letters to them. I'm still waiting for my letter from Whitney Houston, but it's been 16 years, so I can probably let that one go.

In all seriousness, I've always found it interesting: maybe because I love history or because I love people or a combination of both. I remember growing up and studying this and being totally surprised at how things used to be, I guess I'm just naive because my mom taught my sister and I to respect and appreciate people for who they are regardless of their race and I thought everyone did that. Sometimes it's good to be naive.

When I first started thinking about my project, the words and feelings that came to my head were of progress, moving forward, endurance, overcoming, etc. I liked the idea of reflecting on all that's been accomplished and drawing strength from that to go forward. Then as I talked to Stephen, he helped me fine tune a little to get my idea to be more powerful, to send a message that made people think or remember, something along those lines. Then he told me that in some places, black history isn't being taught or not taught in its fullness and that made me concerned because there's so much to know and learn from it and I started thinking that if we don't talk about it, our children won't know about it and could be ignorant to some really important things.

Then, my ideas shifted into more of an innovative attitude, I started researching some inventions or innovations that came from black Americans that affect each of us; things like the gas mask, stoplight, open heart surgery, etc. In researching I also found out the fire escape, fire extinguisher, the thing that keeps train cars separated (the Jenny Coupler), the carbon filament for light bulbs, and many other things were invented by black Americans. Cool, huh? From there, I got the idea of "to know is to live" since a lot of the research I found was that they invented a lot of life-sustaining things that we take for granted or go unnoticed, and I started to sketch some ideas.

The left side of the page is my list of notes on inventions/innovations I found from my research. The right side includes my sketches. The top are my original ideas. The bottom are my refined ones, they show one advancement, the name of the person associated with it, and a caption to go with each one ("saving our soldiers," "saving our children,", etc.). I wanted my designs to have an emotional appeal to them.

Once I had a concept, I had to start researching designers or design periods and draw from them to create my idea, since I was going for an emotional reaction, Stephen pointed me in a direction towards people like Neville Brody, Saul Bass, and others of that period who went more for emotional messaging. I had to find some of their works from which to draw inspiration.

This is a piece by Neville Brody. I like that it's simple but has elements of contrast to it. I decided that to make my design the most effective, I'd want it to have a strong contrast between the image and the words. I looked at other works by Brody, many of which I liked, but decided that this best fit what was in my head. In addition to the contrast, I like that while this is a clean design, if you look closely, it's a little rough around the edges. I thought it would be a good effect to make the gas mask (the sketch I chose to pursue) a little rougher so it looks well used. I also liked the use of the monochromatic color palette.

Then I sketched out my idea. As part of the project, we had to hand draw (or trace) everything including the font. I chose a font I liked ("Dirtyhouse" by Neville Brody because it's a little rough around the edges and fits nicely with the design), traced it and copied it onto the image. I traced the gas mask too, I'm not that good of a freehand drawer.

You'll notice in Brody's work above that he put a type of textured background in his work, I was encouraged by Stephen to do the same. I decide to use semi-open circles. I like circles, if it's not too weird to have a favorite geometric shape, mine is the circle. The cool thing about circles here is that they can look like smoke, gas, or explosives if shaded and designed correctly and I thought it was a powerful image to have a gas mask with smoke surrounding it. The type is a little rough but it works with the rest of the piece, especially since I want the gas mask a little rough around the edges. I made the inventor's name a simple, clean sans serif font to provide some contrast within the typography too.

And because I'm an over-achiever, I started to work on my color board early. I tried to re-create the monochromatic theme and appearance. The words in the corners indicate the Pantone color so I could find it for easy reference later (but I've changed it a little bit now).

Like I said, this is a rough draft and I've already changed it a little, but I think this will turn out to be a cool project. The more I work on it and the more I learn, the better I think it will look. Rough form that it is, it's a start and it's all about learning the skills and I have to start somewhere.

I'll update as the project continues. The next couple of weeks will mostly be devoted to working on the project.

On another note, I am really enjoying the program. I feel satisfied and happy when I leave class. In class I feel like I'm good at something: like I have potential, that my ideas matter, are heard, and are appreciated. It also provides a good distraction from the hard things I've been facing in life recently. This was definitely the right decision for me and I look forward to learning more as I continue.