winter 2024
10 ideas for a personal project:
- Learning how to screen print
- An ad/PSA campaign for the Seattle Public Library, “Read and Be Free”
- A how-to book about drawing from imagination
- A poster campaign for an imagined political movement calling for “Freedom of Attention”
- A Bakery Nouveau rebrand (packaging, print, web, business collateral) using Art Nouveau imagery
- Learning furniture design, specifically desks, drafting tables, and work surfaces for artists
- Character, environment, and accessory designs for an imagined video game
- A solo card game for fostering creativity (I already made something like this, but it could be improved)
- An Alphonse Mucha inspired poster that illustrates which fruits are in season, with beautiful women symbolizing each of the four seasons (for example, winter would be holding a giant overflowing basket of apples and pears)
- Learning to shoot, develop, scan, and touch-up film photography
The idea I chose is:
A how-to book about drawing from imagination
Drawing (or painting, or sculpting, or doing any visually-focused creative work) from imagination is a slippery topic, and one that has fascinated me since I was a kid. Before we can even start talking about putting pencil to paper, we need to clear up what we mean by “imagination,” because neurologists and philosophers agree that there is no such thing as representational imagination in our brains. Yes, it feels like we hold an image of something in our heads. But the fact is that there is no place in your brain where an visual image of a red triangle is stored. Rather, a non-linguistic symbol of a shape is called up by memory and linguistic modifiers like “red,” “shape,” “three sides,” “pointy,” “isosceles,” etc. adorn the symbol until the areas of your brain responsible for processing visual imagery are sufficiently activated and we “see” red triangle. Or something like that happens. I need to do more research. But I think that Dan Dennet has a pretty good idea of what’s going on.
Anyway, I could write about this topic at length, but needless to say it interests me very much. And there aren’t many books out there on how to draw from your imagination, so people might actually want to buy it. But it would also be a great exercise in typesetting and layouts, keeping things consistent between chapters. And I think it would communicate that I’m a designer who prioritizes imaginative work, fostering creativity in himself and others.
I’ve been thinking about this project for a long time, and the structure I’ve settled on is a sort of workbook, where there are exercises on a specific topic that the student is supposed to practice for a week, followed by a chapter that will explain some neurology and give some tips and tricks for accomplishing the exercises, and then the student will spend another week redoing the exercises. I want the book to be cyclical, and a student finishes it, they can take a break or go through the whole book again. Below is a chapter outline (my proof of concept for this book). I also did a quick cover mock-up (at the top of this blog), for which I used Hokusai’s “Mad About Painting” as inspiration.
