Browsing by Author "Gravdahl, John, advisor"
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Item Open Access Between viewing and experiencing(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Adams, Margaret, author; Gravdahl, John, advisor; Coke, Pamela K., committee member; Faris, Suzanne, committee member; Moseman, Eleanor F., committee memberPsychologist, American philosopher, and educational reformer John Dewey, once said, "Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results." We learn through play and exploration. As an observer and participant in this world, my own personal experiences inadvertently impact me as a maker, and as a teacher. This is a continual revolving influence. My experiences, my artwork, and my teaching all have a direct impact on each other. There are intersecting connections and overlapping interests between design as visual communications and teaching. They are about shared experiences and both encompass communication, personal expression, collaboration, transmission of information, participation, and interpretation. Design and teaching are about communication. Design can communicate a message in different ways such as through typography, visuals, materials, color, symbolism, etc. What we know as a viewer by experience, impacts our interpretation of the artwork. We look for ways to relate to the artwork based on what we know. The artwork can push us into feeling uncomfortable to promote a concept or a message. Even though an artist may have a specific message in mind, there is no check system to ensure the viewer received that message. In the classroom, I aim to create a comfortable environment for students to encourage a safe place for interactive learning. There are checks and balances in place, such as quizzes, tests, discussions, projects, and critiques to ensure the message that was presented was clearly understood. If a student does not understand the message that was communicated, they can be affected since the message deepens the understanding of the industry they are preparing to enter as well as techniques that are needed to be a successful designer. Artwork is different, the message could be passive or ambiguous. It could be meant to engage and stir up a reaction. Art is between object and viewer; the collaboration is personal and internal. Teaching is a collaboration between teacher and student, it is external. With teaching, collaborating with students relies on student experiences to grasp the concepts being communicating. With art, collaboration depends on the object or art to start the discussion, whereas with teaching the focus is on the teacher to start the discussion. Design and teaching can be static or interactive but collaboration is always present. Design can encourage critical thinking, reaction, and even a change in the viewer's thinking. In my role as a teacher, I aim to encourage critical thinking. For example, I give a prompt and I expect students to come back with a concept for their project. They are acting and reacting to the direction they are given. I encourage change in their own thinking as we move through the semester and they learn new industry skills. As an artist, my artwork does the same. If I design a poster for a theater concert to promote sale tickets, my goal is to encourage viewer participation by convincing them to purchase tickets. I never questioned whether graphic design was a form of art, but in graduate school, I came to the realization that teaching is an art form and there is an unquestionable connection between design and teaching. As an artist, I explore concepts through sketching and digital exploration. Through this process, the concept develops. As a direct result, I grow as an artist, learning and expanding my knowledge and experience. As I choose materials, size, typography, and visuals for my artwork, I am framing a message. As a teacher, I play the same role. I choose the message I wish to convey to my students, and frame the presentation through a selection of materials, typography, and visuals. I have come to the realization that teaching a design class and creating artwork have many commonalities. In the classroom, I am creating an experience for the students–they are the viewers and what I am participating in is a creative act. Many disciplines grade student knowledge and understanding my asking multiple choice questions. As a design teacher, I can ask multiple choice questions when it comes to industry terms and basic design knowledge, but design as a visual communication encompasses so much more. Technique, content, and concepts must also be evaluated and that cannot be done through multiple choice questions. I must handle students individually in a studio setting, grasping what individuals are getting and not getting from the instructions based on the work they are creating. I must be able to think on my feet and change gears quickly relying on my own intuition of the design field. Teaching is a creative act the same way making artwork is.Item Open Access Building character through type(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Hall, Eli Marco, author; Gravdahl, John, advisor; Tornatzky, Cyane, advisor; Lundberg, Thomas, committee member; Moseman, Eleanor, committee member; Rouner, Donna, committee member; Voss, Gary, committee memberTypography, the art of designing with type began in the West around 1455 when Johannes Gutenberg perfected the craft of printing from individual pieces of type. Typography is the graphic designer's domain. It is the vehicle that clearly communicates a message. The expectations of designers are increasingly broadened, and as a result less time is given to understanding the craft. In my professional experience typography has broken down into five specific categories: calligraphy, hand lettering, type design, print design and digital design. Calligraphy is the art of writing, while hand lettering is the art of crafting specific characters for a particular goal. Type design is the creation of an alphabet including all of its characters numbers and glyphs. Print design ranges from movable type to any type where the intended output is print, whereas digital design has been created specifically for digital use. Today's designers are exposed to digital type from the beginnings of their educations. The lack of working, creating and experiencing type in the physical realm combined with the access to thousands of poorly designed typefaces has muddied the understanding of type. In this work, my intent is to expand my knowledge of typography through hand lettering combined with site-specific installations. Within the field of graphic design, typography is the most important element and the hardest to master, therefore it is imperative to learn type through a tactile process. The information you receive through a physical relationship is substantially different than the insight you would receive through an abstract experience.Item Open Access Dialogs(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2005) Hannigova, Marie, author; Gravdahl, John, advisor; Lehene, Marius, committee member; Dormer, James T., committee member; Risbeck, Philip E., committee memberDialogs, my body of work, strives to show that computers are not to be blamed for the deterioration of design quality in general. My work brings back the human touch to computer design. Although computer-based, it is visually stimulating, interactive and personal. The irregularity and imperfection that result from traditional art methods are amplified and elaborated upon in computer programs. The images are abstract in nature encouraging the viewer to use his/her imagination to interpret them. The viewer is encouraged to actively participate in the pieces: to touch them, change the image by opening a blind, flip pages of a book or place a removable tattoo on his/her body.Item Open Access Embrace: the journey to empathy and compassion(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Wadhwa, Sumanma, author; Gravdahl, John, advisor; Muntoreanu, Roberto, committee member; Chien, Claire, committee member; Aronis, Carolin, committee memberThe world right now faces a continual gap in opportunities and access to benefits between different social groups. Oppression and Marginalization are not just driven by income, but also by gender, ethnicity and culture, race, sexual orientation, class, and religion. There is a need to accept these social boundaries and unleash the humanity's potential to thrive with its boundless creativity, mutual respect and provide people with meaning. Design has the power to convert this noble thought into a movement that creates change, which is the aim for this campaign, "Embrace." I want to use design to reach masses and create a visual language to be adopted at grassroot level, allowing people to build a stable and accepting society. Throughout my graduate studies, I have created awareness about social issues including breastfeeding taboo and maternity leave. This awareness campaign is about a variety of social concerns which will nudge our thoughts towards becoming a more balanced society. Specifically, I have created "Embrace" symbols depicting and creating consciousness about the principles of gender balance, income, racial, ethno-diasporic equality, and family bonding. These symbols, at their core, represent the balance between our intelligence and emotional quotient. By creating a visual communication method through symbols, I want to create an awareness campaign using which, I would like to introduce a path for people to not only be aware but be proud of associating with this campaign. Through this campaign, I also hope to encourage corporations to transform their practices and embrace people of all types in their policies and use my symbols as a badge of acceptance of their socio-economic performance. I want to promote these symbols and this campaign as a representation of human-centric responsibility among corporations, thus, helping create a more equitable society. In future, I would want to see this campaign added as an 18th goal among UN's sustainability and development goals where embracing emotional intelligence will bind together and enable the achievement of all the other 17 goals.Item Open Access FUNdamentalist DOLLS(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Arnell, Nicole L., author; Gravdahl, John, advisor; Cooperman, Matthew, 1964-, committee member; Huibregtse, Gary, committee member; Lehene, Marius, committee memberTo view the abstract, please see the full text of the document.Item Open Access Gloss: an incomplete glossary(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2000) Lindsten, Scott, author; Gravdahl, John, advisor; Lundberg, Thomas R., committee member; Reid, Louann, committee member; Kwiatkowski, Ronald W., committee memberArtmaking at the end of the twentieth century became engulfed by theory. In the wake of such movements as poststructuralism, deconstructionism, and postmodernism, came a reexamination of aesthetics which incorporated an ever-broadening intellectual discourse. Many of these theories have their conception in the realm of linguistics, and language itself begins to exert its ascendency on other fields of study-indeed, on reality itself. This written accompaniment to my thesis art exhibit examines the complex, sometimes oppressive, sometimes sublime, nature of words and language and their effects on my approach to art.Item Open Access Packaging human expresschön: the intersection of visual communication, art, and music(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Schwartz, Tim, author; Gravdahl, John, advisor; Frazier, Jason, committee member; Bates, Haley, committee member; Sommer, Peter, committee memberThe human ability to communicate and share thoughts and ideas is fascinating and is the foundation upon which our cultures and societies have been built. I examine human expression through words, art, graphic design, and music. Verbal and written languages have developed with thought and words that communicate meanings contained within their definitions. Words can combine and express straightforward ideas and abstract thought, but words cannot and do not express everything. They are limited. Paintings, images, and visual design can communicate and express in realistic and abstract ways that are outside of words, just as music can. I investigate these ideas in my work, most recently through three specific projects. In WORDS ARE BOXES, I express and explore the idea that words themselves limit thought. I also investigate the connection between art, design, and music in two works. The first, LSWRTH, proposes that the physical packaging of music can also be a freestanding, independent piece of art through the design and construction of an Ellsworth Kelly-inspired vinyl record packaging triptych. I further develop the art, design, and music connection with a project titled MODES. MODES combines compact disc (CD) packaging as art, along with the animated model for a digital application which hears notes and visually generates corresponding colors in real time. This work models the concept that the music itself is creating art as a digital extension of human-initiated creative practice. Humans express themselves in many ways. Combining methods of expression can potentially result in a powerful multisensory experience that enhances our connections to ourselves, to others, and to our world.Item Open Access Perspectives(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Minguzzi, Silvia, author; Gravdahl, John, advisor; Tornatzky, Cyane, advisor; Risbeck, Phil, committee member; Moseman, Eleanor, committee member; Canetto, Silvia, committee memberWe see what we want to see. We perceive the world around us in our own way and sometimes our perception is far from how others might perceive it. We have got used to rely on our feelings and emotions when we see or judge something and sometimes this leads to the misinterpretation of the things around us, because feelings and emotions can't be objective. Perspective projection distortion is the inevitable misrepresentation of three-dimensional space when drawn or projected onto a two-dimensional surface. It is impossible to accurately depict 3D reality on a 2D plane. The main focus of my body of work is to apply my research on how the new technologies pushed the boundaries of perspective projection distortion in the digital art world. I use perspective projections in my work not only as a technique, but also as a philosophy. Being able of looking at the world from a different perspective, being able to challenge stereotypical perspective is a powerful way to fight inequality in our society: income inequality, gender inequality. Diversity can be as simple as a different point of view. I believe in the power of data, and in my work I always look for inspiration in different terrain: politics, economics, anthropology, psychology are my bread and butter. I believe that any modern artist needs to push the art forward, inventing, defining new paradigms of expression with powerful meanings. It can be done using new technology, or researching new techniques with old media. It is about the experience the artist delivers to the public - whether it is provocative, whether it changes how the viewer thinks, feels and views the world. This is what really matters, and it has nothing to do with the techniques that the artist chooses to use. Just as the development of acrylic paints in the 20th century did not mean that oil paints or even the practice of creating one's own paint from pigments fell out of practice, so it is with technology. Just as some artists paint in oils only or acrylics only, some create their work digitally. Image editing and graphic design software programs are yet another tool to add to the artist's palette. This is why in my work I try to use a wide range of media: from printmaking to digital fabrication, from graphic design and typography to motion graphic and projection.Item Open Access Recent propaganda: Jeffrey Lush(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2003) Lush, Jeffrey, author; Gravdahl, John, advisor; Ronda, Bruce A., committee member; Frickman, Linda, committee memberThe title of the show is a little ambiguous. It could have as easily been named How to Make Wheat Paste, or An Apology to Seymour Chwast, but those titles seemed equally as enigmatic. The posters for the show, and late-night postings came about as a result of events after September 11, 2001. The brutal act of the downing of the World Trade Centers in New York City was about to be replaced with an equally brutal act of invading Iraq. The United States, in the fall of 2003, was on a singular course to save the world from terror, and, unilaterally, strike against a sovereign nation. With shaky evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction, America headed to war. My goal, then was to express my displeasure, in whatever terms I could, be they vocal or visual. I figured that the best medium for me was that of the serigraph and a bucket of wheat paste. I have been in the graphics field in some capacity for the last 15 years. During that span, the computer has given designers the ability to control the production of artwork with much more fidelity than ever before. These technological means have had a two-fold effect. And one of the benefits has already been explained, that of more control of the printing process. However, graphic designers are trained to complete projects quickly and efficiently, and the computer has given artists the ability to copy and mime successful and previous campaigns. The latter of the two "benefits" of the computer has been the most vexing. Our printed forms of media are being designed by people with little knowledge of design history, principles of layout, and effective messaging keep the aesthetics of low quality. The discipline has gotten so concerned with how to operate the computer, that design becomes secondary to the method that produces it. My goal was to return to a real sense of our own visual culture and history in order to protest the war that seemed so inevitable. I turned to my history books, my favorite movies, ideas, ideas, ideas.Item Open Access The poster and contemporary American propaganda(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Craven, Deborah Mueh, author; Gravdahl, John, advisor; Tornatzky, Cyane, committee member; Fenton, Michael, committee member; Simons, Stephen, committee member; McDonald, Bradly, committee memberPropaganda is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as: ideas or statements that are often false or exaggerated and that are spread in order to help a cause, a political leader, a government, etc.; the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person; ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect. Throughout modern history, posters have been used as a vehicle to distribute propagandistic messaging. The period preceding World War I, through World War II is perhaps the most notable period of propaganda in American history. After 1945 however, nationalistic propaganda seemingly disappeared in the United States. Memorable national icons such as Uncle Sam (Fig. 1) and Rosie the Riveter (Fig. 2), and the messages to conserve for the troops, or plant victory gardens, were relegated to the realm of nostalgia. This thesis investigates the role of the poster in contemporary American propaganda. It addresses the link between the disappearance of the poster as a major vehicle for the dissemination of propagandistic messaging in connection with the increase of technology, and proposes that the poster has transitioned from a governmental communication tool, to a underground, "street art" driven conceptual vehicle, designed to challenge deeper thought about today's underlying issues rather than just presenting the same controlled information that we are bombarded with through mass media.