TYPE AS IMAGE: SP 25
Prof. Mary Banas
School of the Museum of Fine Arts at
Tufts University

When contacting me, use my tufts email and copy my personal email for best results:
mary.banas(at)gmail.com

Office Hours:
Fridays from 12–1pm, on zoom

How to make an appointment:
https://calendly.com/mary-banas/office-hours
please book this by 9am on Fridays.

Graphic Arts Area Instagram
Permissions doc for GRA IG is here

Syllabus
01 Description
02 Learning Outcomes
03 Assignments
04 How We Work
05 Studio Culture
Tufts University Policies

Briefs
01 Weekly Images02 Alphabet Book
03 Studio Experiments
04 Poster
05 Sequence

Readings

Tutorials (including how to print!)

Review Boards: Advice

Drive

Index

Type as Image

SYLLABUS

01 What is this course about?

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Barbara Kruger, 2020

Best known for laying aggressively directive slogans over black-and-white photographs that she finds in magazines, Barbara Kruger developed a visual language that was strongly influenced by her early work as a graphic designer. Here, Kruger interrogates the American subject, demanding they examine the conditions of their contemporary capitalist lives, and consider what it is that their flag actually stands for.

Jenny Holzer, 2021

Action Causes More Trouble Than Thought (2021), features one of Jenny Holzer's iconic Truisms. The print employs a highly decorative, cursive font which has been rendered in hand-applied palladium leaf onto a screen-printed silver-grey background. At first, the words remain somewhat elusive, merging into an overall elaborate pattern of flowing curls, but once discerned their meaning becomes clear and the simple message is richly communicated.

Ed Ruscha

Ed Ruscha: Drum Skins debuts a new body of more than a dozen round paintings made between 2017 and 2019 by the pioneering American artist known for his use of language. The presentation features text Ruscha painted on found drumheads that he has collected over the past forty years. Informed by memories of the distinctive slang he grew up hearing in Oklahoma, the phrases consist of double and triple negatives such as “I Ain’t Telling You No Lie” and “I Never Done Nobody No Harm.” As Ruscha explains, “I grew up with people that spoke this way.…I was very acutely aware of it and amused by it. It seems like you’d run from incorrect English, but I embraced it. I like seeing it and exposing it.”

Robert Indiana

GRA-0011 is designed as an introductory course for artists from various disciplines who use text in their work. This course investigates typography as an expressive form. How can you create intentional meaning with your type, in addition to what the words say? How does form hold meaning? How might we interpret the meaning we gauge from text arrangements?

This course introduces strategies for creating type as FORM, PATTERN, TEXTURE/SURFACE, and IMAGE.

Slide lectures, references, readings and project assignments will support students working with self-generated expressive text.

We will use the Adobe Suite and analog materials.

We will study vernacular type and the historical development of typographic styles. Students will develop a series of compositions using expressive typography.

The computer will be our primary tool but not the only one. You are encouraged to bring in skills in calligraphy, photography, and drawing. During the course of this class we will use Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator as the main software applications. A basic course for all designers and all graphic artists using text.

02 What should I expect to learn?

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Fall 2023

Gain a practical understanding of type as form

Gain a practical understanding of iterative making

Gain confidence in image-making and composition through a series of rigorous experiments

Make meaning through form, composition, and sequencing

Create speculative content

You will also:

Record and distill elements from your working process, aiming to gain new insight on your artistic practice

Work collaboratively with your peers

Experiment with the RISO printer

03 How are assignments delivered?

PROJECT BRIEFS

Mary Banas

What is a project brief?
In the professional design world, a designer and client usually meet and have a discussion about the needs of the project. From there, the designer will create a brief that defines what was discussed. The brief usually includes the scope of work, defines deliverables, defines audience, names the key stake holders, and important dates and deadlines.

How do I submit assignments?
Into our course Google Drive Folder, you will submit research, sketches, drafts, final work as digital flats (e.g. a PDF) as well as photograph and/or video (your poster on the wall, showing scale; a video of hands turning the pages of your book). You are responsible for submitting work into the folder on time.

Everything you need to know about this course is on this website—what is due, what is coming up, readings and references are linked here. Bookmark this website for your future use. It works best on desktop (not best on your phone). There will be a few occassions when I email you something, but typically I aim to document everything here for convenience and clarity.

If you have a particular need in terms of how you best process information and require another type of delivery, please notify me by the 2nd class meeting. This may or may not be accompanied by an official accomodation request.

04 How will I work?

DESIGN PROCESS

Fall 2023

How do designers make stuff? The short answer is , there are lots of ways. There are some tenents that come up again and again for designers, like visual research and sketching.

In this course you will adopt and experiement with a variety of methodologies to design. You will utilize and experiment with the following ways of working:

COLLECTION

CRITICAL REFLECTION

CRITIQUE

DESIGN PROPOSALS

PAPER PROTOTYPES + MOCK-UPS

READING

SKETCHING

VISUAL RESEARCH

WORKING ITERATIVELY

I have been designing professionally since 2003 and before that I was in college studying design like you. Most of the approaches I am sharing are things that work for me time and again, but know that they are many ways to design—you will find your own ways as you move through this work, and you will develop and discover new things as you continue with design beyond this course.

You can expect to do 4-6 hours of work outside of class.

05 How will we work together?

STUDIO CULTURE

Barbara Kruger, 2018

ENGAGED, RESPECTFUL PRESENCE

The nature of a studio environment is a bunch of artists learning and working together.

Being present in class is more than just physical: it includes but is not limited to:

01. communicating with your peers

02. engaging in critique

03. witnessing lectures and presentations

04. participating in discussions

05. making presentations

06. using campus equipment

07. taking notes

08. submitting assignments into our class Google Drive folder

The technical and conceptual work in this class builds on the previous week. If you expect to miss class, find that you are missing classes, or obtain a medical issue that may affect your attendance, you will not be able to make up the work and you should withdraw from this course.

Commitment to equity, inclusion, and a practice of freedom

By registering for this course, you are agreeing to a social contract. We recognize that in order to establish the conditions wherein we will collectively and individually develop a practice of freedom, we must confront and undo the work of oppressive indoctrination by challenging, unlearning and relearning modes of thought and existence in a space of generosity, support, and mutuality.

In the context of this class, cultivating a practice of freedom refers to the right of freedom from discrimination, which is afforded every member of this class, as it pertains to citizenship, race, ancestry, ethnicity, cultural expression, class, disability, place of origin, skin color, religious belief, sexual orientation, gender, age, record of offenses, marital status, and family status. This applies to all areas of shared space and related classroom activities including interactions with faculty, visitors, colleagues, and the class as a whole. By registering for this course, you acknowledge that you will be an active and engaged member of this community. You agree to uphold, and when appropriate, advocate for the practice and maintenance of this freedom.

Evaluation

This class is pass/fail. Your performance evaluation is informed by these three things:

—presence + participation: quantitative (20%)

—process: qualitative including risk taking, the quality of experiments/work, and your dedication to your work (40%)

—final output: qualitative (40%)

If you come to class and do the work, you will pass. If you miss class or do not complete work, you may not. Midterm check-in emails will be sent to those in danger of failing this course.

Tufts grades will appear as:

CR, NC. Credit, no credit. Instructors should assign these grades to SMFA undergraduate students taking studio art courses. A grade of NC is not acceptable for degree credit.

The minimum score for passing (CR) is a 59 in the course.

Course Attendance Policy

Your enrollment in this course is an agreement to follow this attendance policy. Please read this policy carefully.

If you miss 3 classes you can not pass this course and will receive a “NC” if it is past the drop date. There are no excused absences in this attendance policy. If you miss 3 classes, you can not pass. Check your calendar now to make sure you do not have any travel that conflicts with this course time.

This is a studio course, it is essential that our work is completed in community. You will work with and be in dialogue with your peers and the instructor. Engaged critique is an essential aspect of this course, we will review and discuss work in a public forum. The only way to engage with critique is to be present in class.

Tufts University Policies

Academic Integrity

Faculty Responsibilities

Faculty members and other instructors are responsible for creating an atmosphere of integrity and honesty in their courses, in their research, and in their other academic interactions. This is accomplished by:

Clearly defining expectations in course syllabi;
Communicating any course- or discipline-specific scholarly procedures to students;
Engaging students in robust ways; and
Reporting concerns about academic misconduct each time such concerns are known.

Student Responsibilities

Students are responsible for creating an atmosphere of integrity and honesty in all assignments, class discussions, research conducted, and other academic work. This is accomplished by:

Learning and using proper scholarly procedures;
Scrupulously following directions and asking for clarification when needed; and
Engaging with course material fully and meeting the spirit of the assignment.

︎︎Accomodations for Students with Disabilities

We support students with a range of physical, sensory, psychological, medical, and learning disabilities, including temporary conditions such as injuries or broken bones.

Depending on the nature of the disability and the particular needs of the student, a variety of supports are available. These can include, but are not limited to:

Classrooms accommodations (e.g., furniture, materials in alternate formats).
Exam accommodations (e.g., time-based exam accommodations)
Auxiliary aids and services (e.g., notetakers, CART services, lecture recordings).
Non-academic accommodations (e.g., housing, dietary, and parking).
Introductions and referrals to other campus resources

If you are wondering if a specific kind of accommodation is possible at Tufts, please contact us, and we can work with you on your specific situation.

Food Resources

Mental Health Support

01

Weekly Images

An on-going project throughout the semester; you will complete and upload one image each week to Google Drive

Is this you?

Project Description

Consider your daily exposure to media and how you process it. Our contemporary visual landscape, both on a personal and macro level, deals in the currency of attention. You are constantly absorbing (mostly passively) visual and moving images through your feeds. As opposed to this passive scrolling, your process images will demand that you actively record the world around you. The composite images will be a record of your life during Spring 2024.

Start by reading about artist and designer Ben Denzer’s project “2011–Present”. Denzer describes: “ ‘2011–present‘ is an ongoing daily archive of one composite image (photographs and screenshots taken that day) and one quote (heard or read that day). I’ve added an image and a quote for every day since December 23, 2011, and I plan to continue until I’m dead.”

Discussion of Ben Denzer’s work: what aesthetic qualities do different images have? What aesthetic qualities do the images share?

Using Ben Denzer’s practice as a direct example, develop a weekly practice to document what you have been observing.

At the end of the semester, we will take a look at what you have for Weekly Images. A path of breadcrumbs from where you are now to where you want to be as an artist may be revealed. Start paying attention to what interests you and put those things together all in one place. What threads will emerge? What themes will you see? What have you been paying attention to?

How to do this work / further considerations

Each week you will catalog your life. What do you observe? What materials did you work with? Where did you go? Who did you see or hang out with? What did you eat?

Your evidence may present as digital and analog photographs, drawings, doodles, written notes, scraps of material, impressions or rubbings, self-portraits, screenshots, salient quotations, inspiration, reference materials, bits of trash.

Experiment with these images to come up with new ways to express your week. Your images need not look like Ben Denzer’s work, but rather you can develop your own style. Perhaps you will draw your findings like Kate Bingaman Burt’s Daily Drawings. Perhaps you will place them in a specific grid each week like Daniel Eatock’s collection of Car Batteries.

Each entry should include an intentional composition and a line of text. Use this as an opportunity to experiment with different approaches to composition.

What is an intentional composition? Discuss.

02

Alphabet Book

A series of experimental, rapidly-created letterforms created by hand using paper, cell phone camera, scanners, and found materials from your environment resulting in a collaborative book made using the RISO printer and bound with an elastic band.

Project Description

We are starting with a mini experiment that will cover a lot of ground and get you warmed up for the semester. It will also be incredibly fun.

Part 1: PAPER EXPERIMENTS
You have some letter pages. Manipulate these letterforms to create new images. Print out your own letters on pages and make more.

Part 2: OBJECT EXPERIMENTS
Create new letterforms from found materials. For example, you can make them out of tape, ground meat, dirt, your hands, shadows, your hair, candy, shaving cream, sticks, photograph or make a rubbing of a crack in the sidewalk that looks like an “Y”... ETC.

Requirements:
—only work in black and white (includes graphite/pencil)
—create 20 new “letterforms” or compositions
—*avoid* large areas of smooth rich black, the RISO printer works better with a little texture

How to do this work:

Consider the following ways:
—cut
—tear
—slice
—fold
—crumple gently
—crumple intensely
—roll, wave
—place on scanner and move while scanning
—draw on it
—draw around it
—shade it in
—trace it onto a new sheet

Experiment with all of these materials/modes, at least once:
—graphite/pencil
—charcoal
—pen
—big fat marker
—ink and brush
—tearing
—folding
—cutting with xacto
—using the scanner

PRINTING RESOURCES:

Link for printing on Jumbo from the web:

jumboprint.tufts.edu/MyPrintCenter

Download Jumbo print drivers here

Part 1 (started in class)

PDF of Alphabet is here

only print the pages you need

Resist over complicating your letterforms or compositions. You will have the opportunity to layer colors on the RISO. Focus on experimenting with familiar and unfamiliar ways of working and manipulating the letterform.

How to document your paper experiments:

Photograph or scan the letters that you made, bring them into your InDesign document —

1. Open Adobe InDesign

2. File > New

3. 11x17, change units to inches, un-check “facing pages”, name your file

4. When you are in InDesign, use File > Place to place an image

5. To edit your image from Photoshop, go to Window > Links, use the hamburger menu, choose the image, and select “Open With Photoshop” — after you make your edits in Photoshop save the file with the same name and it will automatically update in InDesign.

6. Work iteratively by duplicating your pages.... In the”Pages” palette, select the page you want to duplicate, on a Mac computer hold down the “Option” key, drag your page slightly to the right until you see a vertical line, release. You should see the page repeated. Make edits on this page and keep moving forward. You can edit and select your favorites later!

If you are using the lab computers, here is how to save your files for use later on another machine:
File > Package, save the packaged file on your Google Drive or other place that works for you. The packaged file will include a PDF. This PDF is what you should print out before class, and what we will use for printing on the RISO.

Upload your PDF to the class Google Drive folder (X_Name) -- letter underscore Your Name.

Part 2

Take a long walk and bring your phone (camera). Try to be present and observe the world around you (instead of doing things on your phone—maybe even put it in airplane mode if you are tempted). Search for letterforms on signs, in cracks in the sidewalk, in restaurant windows. Look up and down — do the buildings make a letter with the sky?

Use objects found in your environment to create letterforms — after you make these, you will photograph them, bring them into the computer, and lay them out on your 11x17” pages in InDesign.

necklace

oats

rings

ribbon

matches (outside!)

grapes

leaf

wax

ribbon

Another way to think through the steps of this project:

Project Schedule:

WEEK 1
Project introduction, make and manipulate Helvetica letterforms in class, mini Photoshop and InDesign tutorials.

WEEK 2 (Mary in Amsterdam, follow along with my trip here)
Asynchronous class day — use this time to take a long photo walk. Gather found letterforms and spend time creating new ones, finalize your 20 compositions in InDesign.

WEEK 3 — RISO BOOK DAY

DUE:
20 Letterform Compositions at 11x17” size, as both a PDF and printed out

Put the PDF version of your work in the class Google Drive Folder, we will use these PDFs for class and will access the drive from the PC in the RISO room.

I am still confused, what am I bringing to class?
—Quantity: 20
—Size: 11x17”
—Composition can be: “pages” or “poster” style, or a mix of both
—Format: PDF (to send thru computer) + print outs (to use on the RISO glass top)

Here is a visual of what you will bring to class:

WEEK 4 — RISO BOOK DAY #2
Meet in 207

We will continue to print spreads and postcards in class today, assemble the final book and cover if we have critical mass

Making GIFs / making notebooks

By the end of class final 11x17” book due, containing a page from each classmate, bound with elastic band (we will exchanges pages and bind them with the elastic at the top of class next class if we do not have all pages complete)

WEEK 3, in more detail
Class introduction/overview of the RISO with Louis Meola (louis.meola@tufts.edu). After the orientation, Louis will grant you permission to book the RISO machine for your work outside of class and give you card access to the room.

(If you are not present in class on week 3 you will not be granted access and you will need to follow up on your own time to complete the assignment.)

Together in class we will create a book. Everyone will print multiples of their letterform pages and we will “bind” them together with an elastic band.

Right now I estimate the book will contain TWO compositions from each student (e.g. if my letters were “M” and “B” I would contribute an “M” composition and a “B” composition to the class book) — this may change when we are working together, for example, we may decide as a group to add more.

First, we will plan our book as a class. We will use your black and white printouts to take a look at what we have. We may decide on a sequence. We will choose which ink colors to use. Students will group their files by ink color and we will run the pages for that color, switch the color out and run the next batch of pages. After that, we can get weird and experimental by printing things on top of other things. We will let the process and the possibilities and limitations of the RISO printer guide our outcome! It will be exciting and surprising.

If we do not have enough time for each student to print their compositions on the RISO together in class, you will need to reserve the space and complete your prints before next class.

School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University

smfa.tufts.edu