This piece of design was created by myself, Dan Kozerski, over the past few weeks, to be presented on February 7th, 2012. No Time to Watch the Clock is the title of the piece and it’s components for creation were photography, pencil drawing, and digital illustration. In addition to this I have mounted it on thick black board for presentation. Follow me as I walk you through the creation process.
When given this assignment, and completing the accompanying exercises, I went back and forth, multiple times, between two different jobs I have had in the past. These included caddying at a country and washing dishing at a high-end American bistro. I never really had an awful time at either job; however, I found many ways that I could play off of the stereotypes of each one, or embellish some of my experiences. Most of my original sketches seemed a bit lofty, due to the fact that they involved a heavy photographic component, an area which I don’t have much experience within; however, I decided to pursue the challenge and rented the needed equipment from the CDM building downtown. My plan was to focus the majority of my workload into the arrangement of the shot.
After importing my photos and doing the necessary editing, cropping, and typographic placement I had several nearly complete compositions; however, I was only really satisfied with one of them. In fact, I was so unsatisfied that I starting playing with one of the extra photos I had taken, not pertaining to the particular planned shots, which birthed the idea that would become my final piece. Around that time I was working on some design branding for myself as well as for a friend of mine who DJs, so I was very influenced by expressing a certain point through simple flat images and color schemes.
That being said, initially I had taken a photograph of a sink full of dishes and overlaid a flat, white, digitally illustrated silhouette of a spill, or puddle of water and suds. Within the illustration I individually placed the letters of a very bubbly and round font, to spell out the phrase “DONT LET THE SUDS OVERCOME,” and deleted their selection from the puddle. At the first critique I got a lot of good feedback, and while many people saw potential in all my designs I still gravitated toward this one. However, I knew it need some sort of improvement, and while I was hesitant to check out the camera equipment again, one student commented that the background was “disgusting” and many others agreed that it didn’t fit. With that in mind I pursued the challenge to give this design a facelift. This led me to the creation of the final product.
The final photograph is a close up shot of a sink filled with suds. From the top left corner just enough of a bottle of soap is revealed for the mind to decipher what it is. It is also out of focus while the main mound of suds is very sharp. Then, taking the typographic element further, I printed out and traced the digital puddle. With pencils I drew and scanned a more form-fitting font of my own, in which no letter is exactly the same or shares the same features, and deleted it from the puddle like I had done before. The text still reads the same, yet it’s tough to comprehend at a first glance. This, coupled with the fact that the photograph is slightly ambiguous when first seen, makes this, in my eyes, a great example of deconstruction. It forces the viewer to work in order to receive the message.
You see, having a dishwashing job is very redundant. The dishes come in and the dishes go out, that’s all. It gets very boring, yet you can’t stop because falling behind will make it even worse. The one redeeming quality of washing dishes, especially on a weekend night when it’s busiest, is that you don’t ever watch the clock. However, this quality comes at a cost. The reality is that you can’t watch the clock or the suds will overwhelm you. It’s like an awful game. In creating this design I wanted to capture that thought. I decided that the best way to do that would be to create an image of comparable meaning. The photograph is right in the sink and suds, almost as if it’s a point-of-view shot from the worker’s perspective. Also, the image as a whole is slightly overwhelming, like the suds, and the letterforms float among the digital puddle as if almost to represent the dishes. I put a lot of thought and work into this piece and I feel that it’s stylistically different than anything created by the other students, in regards original photographic images mixed with simple digital compositions. I’ve very proud of what I’ve created, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
This is a great piece. I really enjoy how you manipulated the text and the manner in which you combined it with the photograph.
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