Ellen Flaherty

Art Center Fall Term

ellen — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:59:18 +0000

At Art Center we get three terms a year to reinvent ourselves. Three sets of resolutions and good intentions. Three terms of disappointment and failure. And three chances to become better designers. My goals:

Keep a creative sketchbook.
Take lots of pictures just for fun.
Keep a journal.
Experiment.

Bubblegum Best Album Cover//Booklet

ellen — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:53:30 +0000

This is a mockup for my friend Nathan’s new album. Dark and stormy listening ahead.

Summer 2010 // Term 2

ellen — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:13:22 +0000

I started to feel/see growth this term. Last term I didn’t. I probably grew a lot as a designer last term, but I didn’t necessarily feel any different. Now when I look at projects I did even earlier this term, I see every error of design judgment clear as day. I’m really proud of all of the work I did this summer. Some of it I actually feel is good design; the other stuff, the poorer designs, I’m proud of because they led me to the better designs. Other things I’m proud of: Every image or illustration in my work is 100% mine. No outsourcing or image searching. Taking every picture made my life hard, but it gave me the chance to art direct and design according to my vision—and not whatever was an acceptable resolution off the internet. I hope the next 6 terms continue to be so fruitful. And I hope to continue to stretch my limits (working with 3D forms, taking better photos, working with print shops to get what I want).

Motion 1 Final

ellen — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:07:01 +0000

Since my Motion 1 midterm was pretty in-your-face concept wise (I constructed a faux BP commercial in which their tagline is “BP cares about the little people”), I decided to be fairly abstract with my final — basically making an ambient music video out of type, geometric graphics and photos I took in Catalina. My style of animating isn’t to use a lot of whiz-bang graphics — I like to keep it simple and create a little suspense. Unless I get really crazy, I probably won’t take Motion 2. Animating is really tedious, hard work, and it’s really not for me, but I have learned from the class how to make my static 2D work have a kinetic feeling. Also, I understand more how to take the concept of pacing into my print work.

Art Center Cookbook

ellen — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:45:45 +0000

The assignment: to create a cookbook suitable for the lives of Art Center students. I chose to base mine around the 14 weeks of the term, e.g., Week 1: Welcome-Back Dinner Party — Week 14: The Aftermath. I also am using an actual orange in place of Art Center’s orange dot logo — the cookbook’s title is “Squeeze.” (I don’t think I need to explain further.) While the entirety of the book isn’t perfect, I learned so much putting it together; I feel prepared for my next book. I picked a few of my favorite pages/images:

Typography 2

ellen — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:18:18 +0000

Type 2 is a class modeled after the Swiss method of teaching design: Start with a lot of restrictions that lessen over the course of the term. We also were limited to designing the same book cover the entire term. The first week we could only use 9 point Grotesque MT light, adhering to a horizontal baseline. The last week we could use imagery, color, and any size or shape of Grotesque MT. Since I like restrictions when I’m designing, I actually had to learn how to loosen up a bit and be experimental. Here are some of my favorites from the term, plus some of my final book layouts.

Type 2 Book

ellen — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:15:02 +0000

Here’s a teaser pic of my Type 2 final book.

Final Communication 2 Poster

ellen — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 20:32:22 +0000

_line ● dot_

ellen — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 01:05:42 +0000

With fashion as my inspiration, I designed what felt like a million line and dot compositions based on color relationships and basic design structures — asymmetrical balance, complementary contrast, emphasis by anomaly, and so on. I selected 18 compositions (and 18 correlating fashion-themed photos) and bound everything in a flag book format. The minute I got done with it (after weeks of hard design labor and four prototype books), I thought of a billion ways I could improve it. Still, I’m extremely proud of it and there’s no way I’m going to spend another second on this project (at least for the time being).

The dimensions of the book are 6 x 18.5 in. when it’s closed, and nearly 4 feet wide when opened up. I was trying to emulate the drama and surprise of a fashion show. Also, the flag book format allowed me to emulate the pleating/draping/ruffles/fringe of a couture gown. To finish things off, I’ve indicated the cover with only a couple inches of tailor’s tape.

Book Cover

ellen — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 16:30:12 +0000

For this project, we cut out type in class and pasted it onto white sheets of paper to make a new typographic book cover for 20th Century Remix by Lewis Blackwell. Compare the actual one (top) with a few of my in-class covers. Fun assignment.