"You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let in your life. You are the sum of your influences."

This week, while chewing on and digesting the inspiration of our mentors, we had to re-read the first chapter of "Steal Like An Artist" by Austin Kleon. In this chapter, Kleon states the quote typed above, posing the question; what have I chosen to let into my life? 

This is an interesting question. Where does one even begin?

In elementary school, I suddenly shifted from being a bouncing and outgoing toddler, to a shy and reserved child. I didn't have many friends, nor did I want them. I stayed at home and instead used my time for video-games, doodling and making up stories. I've always had a very vivid imagination, creating adventures in my head for my newest favorite characters which would eventually lead to my collection of fan-fiction writings starting in middle school (cringe). 

Funnily enough, a future in graphic design never occurred to me when I was younger. Maybe I didn't even know it was an option. Instead, I wanted to be an architect thanks to one of my favorite games of all time: The Sims. Then I found out you needed to be good at math... needless to say I opted for another career path.

As I got older, I went through many, many phases. Indie. Emo. Stoner. Geeky. If it wasn't "popular" then I liked it. I appreciate all of those phases, as it introduced me to many new things. 

I surrounded myself in art, music and photography. I took as many art classes as I could in school. And as an introverted person who never went outside I (shockingly) even joined a few art clubs. I remember using up all my parents ink printing up images of my favorite pictures... what's even worse is I'd poke holes in my walls pining up said pictures. 

As you can see, not much has changed.

I like to enclose myself in what I call "organized-chaos". Another term could be "inspiration-corner". I keep the things that bring me a sense of motivation and creativity close by. That can be anything from the plants on my shelves, the color schemes on my chalkboard, or the interesting packaging I keep on display. I appropriated one corner of my bedroom specifically for this, while the rest looks semi-normal and neat... no promises.

Nowadays, it's not just the items and designs that are important to me though. I've learned that it's the people you meet that have the greatest value. Though having a love/hate relationship with people, I'm fascinated with every one of their stories. If you're an artist, I'm probably going to ask to see your portfolio and listen wide-eyed to everything you have to say.

Fun fact: did you know there's a library in Denmark that "rents" out people for an hour or so, and you go and listen to their life story? It's called The Human Library or “Menneskebiblioteket” in Danish. I'll just leave a link here.

I pride myself in the influences in my life because they have helped me become the person I am, and the person I'm developing into. You can't do it alone though, so to further broaden my influences, I'm taking as many opportunities as I can so I can see everything there is to see. Tomorrow I'm taking a van out of town to see an artist named Lubo Lukova with my fellow classmates. Something I never would have done a year ago. Maybe I'll have some new insight to share next post.

Last week, we chose an artist to be our mentors and I chose Teresa Sdralevich. I sent her an email asking what her influences for her art were and she got back to me the same day! It was kind of amazing. She seems like such a lovely person and does amazing work on top of that.

In her email, she included a document of an old interview she did. These are some of my favorite responses from her.

What are your suggestions for the new generation of designers?

Difficult question... it makes me feel really old! I don't know. Maybe: try not to be happy too quickly with a result. Don't flatter your ego with the number of likes. Pretty moralizing I guess.

Where does your design inspiration come from?

From the best children's books from the 60's and 70's, from street signs, industrial aesthetics, from languages... And from the unexpected within.

Along with that, she mentioned several artists that inspire her daily. All of them were great, but the three I decided to know more about were:

Alvin Lustig. An American book designer, graphic designer and typeface designer.

source: book covers

Sister Corita Kent. An American Roman Catholic nun, artist, and educator. She was so much more than just a designer.

sources: enriched bread | god's not dead

Bruno Munari. An Italian artist, designer, and inventor who contributed fundamentals to many fields of visual arts in modernism, futurism, and concrete art, and in non visual arts.

sources: design as art | T | self portrait

As I finish typing this up in paint covered hands, I'm so happy to have been exposed to all these great artists. They've already taught me so much.

That is all I have to say this week. Stay porous and stay curious.

— B

[insert clever title]

For my class, we're required to read this hidden treasure called "Steal Like An Artist" by Austin Kleon. Waiting an unexpected week for my book to be delivered (thank you Amazon Prime delay), I could finally begin to read it... and finish it. After reading through the whole thing once, I found it refreshing and incredibly relatable.

I even began some of the exercises he recommended, like keeping a logbook.

Now, the title of the book "Steal Like An Artist" only scratches the surface of what it means to steal like an artist. He goes into detail about that and obviously doesn't mean stealing art or claiming other's art as your own. It's more of stealing ideas (the good ones anyways) and molding them into something of your own.

Is stealing ideas legal?

From now on I think I'll ask every artist their opinion of this. I have mixed feelings about this question. Keaton talks about this and to quote him "The reason to copy your heroes and their style is so that you might somehow get a glimpse into their minds... If you just mimic the surface of somebody's work without understanding where they are coming from, your work will never be anything more than a knockoff." (p.36)

This is kind of where I stand on the matter. Understand where your heroes get their ideas and then start thinking like them instead of copying them.

Now, "originality" is supposed to be valued in the art world. But that "original" idea emanated from something else— someone else's work, giving that artist the inspiration for that so called original idea.

"Nothing is original and everything has already been done before."

We, as artists, feed off of each others creative minds whether we realize it or not. This is where having collections and a "stash" folder is so crucial. I've been collecting items for as long as I can remember. Bottlecaps, pins, stickers, pens, and don't even get me started on notebooks and sketchbooks. I think human beings are natural collectors. Of course, art and design is apart of that list. Though it's a bit newer, so far I have menus, business cards, catalogs, and posters wherever they will fit in my room. I love having physical copies of designs but digital hoarding can be so much more convenient. Pinterest (link) is something that has been around for awhile but I never got into it until last year or so. I find it's good for some quick inspiration but I don't go to it too often.

Kleon also suggests "climbing your family tree" and finding a mentor. So I've decided to study the amazing Teresa Sdralevich. She is an active designer working in Brussels. Besides her awe-inspiring work, she uses her work to address social, political, and cultural topics which is what I'd like to do with my design abilities.

Below are some examples. There's a playfulness in her illustrations and her use of bright colors is wonderful... and I mean, just look at her studio. I only dream of having a place like that one day (I'm not crying, you're crying).

I'm excited to follow in her footsteps and see where she began. I've sent her an email so hopefully I'll hear back soon. Since I've finished the book already, I'm giving it a second run-through while I wait for Kleon's recommended books to be delivered to my house. This adjourns this weeks blog post. Have a wonderful seven days. Until next time.
— B

Image sources:
"Good Theft vs. Bad Theft", Steal Like An Artist, Austin Kleon (p.39)
"Folon Poster Contest", Teresa Sdralevich
"Posterzegel march 2014: Family, don't feel like it", Teresa Sdralevich
"La Donna Scimmia", Teresa Sdralevich
"Posterzegel may — elections: Are our dreams in your programs?", Teresa Sdralevich
"Studio", Teresa Sdralevich

Welcome to the Joy Ride

Hello and welcome to my blog. This will probably be the longest blog entry on here, so bare with me.

My name is Brooke Armstrong. I'm a 21 year old who is just trying to live day by day without getting in to too much trouble. This is a blog dedicated to my Graphic Design III class where I will be posting creative designs and my reasons for why I liked it and why I believe the design to be good solutions to the problem.
I fell in love with design when I was in high school when I took my first graphic design class. I decided that this was the career I wanted when I took a tour of my cousin's office at Ogilvy & Mather in Chicago. It's been a slow going process because of my medical issues, but I don't let it slow me down nor do I wish to be defined by it. Instead, with the time that I have I pour all of my energy into my studies, hoping to learn as much as I can while I'm here at Parkland.

My creative process isn't much different than my peers. I begin like anyone else and research, research, research. I love looking through other's designs and ideas. It really inspires me and gets my brain thinking about my own direction I want to go in. Then after that, of course, is the concept stage. While I'm researching I like to draw or write down specific ideas that I liked in someone else's design. Throughout the beginning I try to get down everything on paper so that I don't lose any of that valuable creative thinking. I spend the longest on concept sketching and find that this is the most important stage in a creative process. If you don't have a good concept when moving forward, you most likely won't have a good end product.

I struggle from time to time with the fact that everything has been done before. Design is just a collection of borrowed ideas and my time on this earth will probably never amount to coming up with the next Helvetica or being a founding-mother of the next art movement. Which is ok, I don't aspire to be that. All I want is to be happy, pay the bills, and have some sort of creative outlet where I get to let my craziest ideas run wild.

This image below is a piece from my portfolio. It's a menu design for Maize Mexican Grill. I really enjoyed this project because it was a project that went so smoothly, the ideas came so naturally to me and the end piece was a beautifully minimal and elegant menu design.

I consider this a creative piece because it uses few elements, but the elements that are used are done well and it solved the problem that the original menu had which was messy, over-crowded with information and inconsistent. I think this has a nice balance and is aesthetically pleasing overall.

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the posts to come.
- B