We focused on calendars for this project, making two different designs for calendars based off of a designer we were assigned, as well as two different words that described our expectations for the upcoming year. The goal of this was to design a calendar inspired by our designer as well as the words we had chosen for the year. After sketching some ideas of my calendars, I started working on bringing those ideas to life. The designer that I had was Stefan Sagmeister, so I did some research about him to get a feel for his work and possibly some inspiration from some of the pieces. That didn’t quite go as planned, because I quickly noticed that there was no distinct style when it came to his work. So instead of taking inspiration directly from certain pieces, I decided to take inspiration from the way he worked.
I did this by trying things that were unconventional for me, which involved using physical materials instead of going straight to the computer. I enjoyed doing this because I felt like I had more control over what I was creating, but I also had to be much more precise. The two materials I worked with were paper straws and yarn, both used to create two different calendar designs. After placing the materials on paper the way I wanted, I noticed they were almost opposites; the straw was very linear and structured while the yarn was free flowing. I decided to go off of this and use the words ‘structure’ and ‘flow’ for
my inspirations.
my inspirations.
Because of this, my design ended up looking busy, but structured, which is what I want my year to be like. I want to do a lot of things and challenge myself, but I want to make sure I can still keep a good balance and keep everything in order. I also like the colors of the straws, because even though everything is very ordered, they are kind of playful and remind me to not take everything so seriously.
For the other design, the numbers and months weren’t working for me when I first added them, so I took out most of the numbers and replaced them with dots, making it less busy and easier to read. I like the design I finished with because I think it flows well and has more of a minimalist look to it, which works well with my word.
