TYPE AS IMAGE: FA 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.
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Syllabus
01 Description
02 Learning Outcomes
03 Assignments
04 How We Work
05 Studio Culture
Tufts University Policies
CalendarBriefs
01 Weekly Images02 Alphabet Book
03 Studio Experiments
04 Poster
05 Sequence
Readings
Tutorials (including how to print!)
Review Boards: Advice
Drive
Index 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.
necklaceoats
ringsribbonmatches (outside!)grapesleafwaxribbonAnother 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 DUE
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)
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.
04
Your studio experiments will inform a series of speculative topic-based posters. This is the largest project of the semester. This project will explore typographic and formal hierarchy as well as making meaning.
05
︎︎︎ In a way, we come back to the start,
for this project you will edit and order your formal typographic experiments to
create meaning, The final form for this will be in the form of a printed book or screen experience; students will choose to incorporate their own writing, an existing text, or no additional text. This should come together rather naturally for you, and is an important but lighter assignment because of the timeline.
© Professor Mary Banas, Fall 2025School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts Universitysmfa.tufts.edu