“I wanted to create a piece that explored the use of lines and words in a simple way to ask a complicated question. Asking this in a place like Times Square helps the question grow.”
London-born New York-based artist Shantell Martin on her Lines of Mars work for the Times Square Arts Midnight Moment project
“Language is not innocent. Language is a reflection of geopolitical reality. Therefore, as the United States rules the continents, it is very obvious that, through language, they also dominate the name of the continents. That political, cultural, and social control is reflected in language.”
Chilean-born New York-based artist Alfredo Jaar interviewed by RISD GD MFA alum Tatiana Gómez in “‘I Will Not Act in the World Before Understanding the World’: A Conversation with Alfredo Jaar,” v.1, RISD, 2018
Alfredo Jaar, A Logo for America [looped excerpt], Times Square, New York City, 1987
Project 1 Stasis & Flux
Three weeks
This is the first of three main semester modules: working with a subject you care about, you will start already in class on the first day by developing a collection of static typographic compositions. We’ll progress into a variety of size and shape formats, before evolving the static compositions into looping animations, before finally building them up into a 150-second piece at urban scale.
The spirit of this first project is unconstrained rapid experimentation and development. It will all be relatively quick: three weeks total, to give you a foundation of print, digital, and motion before moving onto the last two longer and more substantial projects of the semester.
- Learning Objectives
- Development of multilayered meaning through deceptively simple form
- Urgent editing, distillation, and communication of complex ideas
- Differentiation between, and strategising the use of, semantic and semiotic meaning
- Refinement of the formal combination of type and time, motion and image
- Leveraging the power of repetition through pacing, kinetics, contrast
- Custom drawing of letterforms and pictographic shapes
- Consideration of typographic modularity between various print formats and between static print and in-flux digital
Timeline
- Week 1: Thurs 10 Sept
- Project introduction Stasis & Flux
- In class: start Stage 1 Static Compositions
- For next week: continue refining your 11 × 17 posters, and start developing them into modular responsive compositions in square and landscape formats
- Week 2: Thurs 17 Sept
- Show more complete 11 × 17 poster designs, and design drafts flowing your compositions into square and landscape formats.
- Informal presentations, discussions, share advice, ideas, approaches, methods with each other
- Start Stage 2 Compositions in Flux
- JG Brief intro to lo-fi animation methods
- Work in class (while JG has 1-on-1s with each of you): Test animations and looping of your compositions within their portrait, square, landscape format constraints
- For next week: continue experimenting then refining your animated compositions
- Week 3: Thurs 24 Sept
- Stage 2 Compositions in Flux Continues
- In class: Work on expanding the looping animations into a longer-form 150 seconds format
- We will use the parameters from the official Times Square Arts Midnight Moment project submission guideline specifications
- For next week: continue development and refinement of your 150 seconds piece, while gathering and editing your Stage 1 static compositions and initial Stage 2 animations into a presentation that articulates the progression from stasis to flux
- Week 4: Thurs 1 Oct
- Project Stasis & Flux Final Review
- Share final or almost-final Midnight Moment pieces, with potential for acting on class feedback (and your own continued contemplation & analysis) to continue refining through rest of semester
- Consider actually submitting your work to the Times Square Arts Midnight Moment!
Stage 1
Static Compositions
- Class Thursday 10 September: 11 × 17 Posters
- Think about and identify a subject that you care about
- Research and find materials, news stories, essays, language, people, interviews around this subject
- Identify key principles, messages, vocabulary, phrasing, words
- Edit a variety of short communicative, bold, passionate, provocative statements with which to make as many typographic compositions as possible
- Work with typography only, in a portrait tabloid 11 × 17 format. (You are welcome to argue for what we might count as “typographic.” Are pictograms and emoji typography?)
- Pay attention to your process and make notes on your approaches, the thinking behind typeface choices, the rhythm and cadence of the words
- Although I’m asking you to note your actions, work freely and experiment. Try typefaces and approaches you’ve never tried before. Listen to the content you’ve gathered, and the voices present in your given subject. Allow all contextual aspects to inform your design process
- Think about what kind of impact you want these posters to have: Is there an urgent call to action? An aim to inspire people? A desire to express solidarity?
Work from approx. 3:45pm until 5pm. As you work, I’ll meet with each of you one-on-one for some quick intro meetings, then we’ll then regroup right on 5pm, where you will all submit notes or quotes or PDFs or PNGs or JPEGs or sketches or photos to our collective class Miro board for us all to briefly share, discuss, and comment on before you head off for the week.
Stage 2
Compositions in Flux
- Thurs 17 September
- Developing your static compositions into motion
- Start rough and basic: make storyboards, use Photoshop, film printouts with your iPhone, animate with Keynote transitions, try stop motion animation, make flipbooks
- From animation tests, start thinking about and experimenting with looping your animations: these can be really short, even just a few seconds
- Continue to work within the same portrait, landscape, square formats you composed for print, now in motion (think Instagram stories, IG square posts, landscape digital billboards)
- Thurs 24 September
- Evolve your animations and loops into a longer-form 150 second piece
- You might need to go back a few steps at this stage: storyboards, GIF tests, Keynote-based rough drafts
- Work towards a final 150 second piece for potential submission to Times Square Arts Midnight Moment
- Thurs 1 October
- Final review (solid works in progress completely ok!)
- Some Readings/References/Resources
- Create an Animated GIF in Photoshop Lynda.com is now owned by LinkedIn, but you can still find all of their tutorials for a quick overview of things like this: making an animated GIF in Photoshop
- Jason Farago, “Anti-American art to take over NYC's Times Square every night in August,” The Guardian, Friday 1 August, 2014. Some background about Alfredo Jaar’s seminal 1987 video installation, its reprise in 2014, and Midnight Moment, “the world’s largest, longest-running digital art exhibition, synchronized on electronic billboards throughout Times Square nightly from 11:57pm to midnight”
- Giphy Not just for puppy and Beyoncé GIFs: Giphy also has a drag ’n’ drop video file-to-GIF creator
- Keynote for Mac: Add a Magic Move transition You can make basic (and quite complex) typo/graphic motion graphics and animation in Keynote. I’m still learning After Effects myself, but I use Keynote all the time for basic motion typography and graphics, even for professional client projects
- Open, People Service Announcements, AIGA/NY, Times Square, 2013 Another Times Square project, this time super-short 10 second matter-of-fact notices to the people of New York