Working on the Final Artifact and Some Reading Response

I have begun working on the final compositions for my book. Working with different higher quality materials than the warm-up proved to be helpful. Cutting out and pasting on thicker paper has a more substantial feel and is easier to work with. I begin by cutting out the main dots which contain my found imagery. My found imagery is all from the same book so the paper qualities are the same. Blurriness is another constant for my images. Staying away from clean and clear images gives my pages a grungy feeling.

To add even more to the grungy feeling I have been using some dots as masks so that I can rub ash around them. After I take them off I am left with an outline surrounded by a cloud of smudge. This started on my page for pollution but is now going to be included in all of my pages.

Congested, Polluted, Isolated, and Inequality

The reading over layers and transparency was like learning about something after you have already done it. But it gave me background information that helped me understand why I took the direction I did. This entire project has dealt with dots. The good thing about dots is that they are easily moved and readjusted. This is the essence of layers. The ability to overlap objects and move them to create many different variations quickly. Transparency, though it didn't seem at first, has become a large part of the book project. Our typographic compositions are going to be printed on transparent paper and placed over our compositions. My cover also uses transparent qualities and layering of images to create depth. Layering the transparent word pages over the dot compositions gives reinforcement to the meanings of each piece. My theme is urban dystopia and my blurry images and smudge marks are overlaid with word compositions which use Grotesque Mt Std. The goal of the words in my book are to create a sense of melancholy, danger and other feeling that are felt while inside a large urban center. This happens on every page and ties the book together. My word compositions have not been placed on top of my dots yet, but I know that some pages will have overlapping areas of text and dots. The dots and words were created separately so this was bound to happen.