Structural Patterns

“The School of Practical Philosophy & Meditation offers a journey of self-discovery that guides students toward understanding their innate wisdom and appreciation of the underlying unity connecting us all. Philosophy Works, the introductory ten-week course, prepares students for mantra-based meditation, an offering upon completion.”

THE CHALLENGE
In-person enrollment has been dropping for the last two years. The brand identity has gone through many iterations. We need a campaign that will once again establish the School as the NY community hub for Practical Philosophy.

THE GOAL
To reach our audience more efficiently, speak to their pain point and engage them with the benefits of PHILOSOPHY WORKS. We expect to increase our in-person Philosophy Works classes on the Upper East Side and Tribeca.

MY DESIGN APPROACH
When on the subway, I seek out the illustrations commissioned by the MTA and I tend to lose myself in the stories that the illustrators create. I do not seek out advertisements. (Of course, I don’t need to as they can’t be missed.) Generally, the advertisements are not engaging. My approach to this project is to be a visual artist and storyteller, not an advertiser. My goal is to create an in-car advertisement that people may lose themselves in through illustrated New Yorkers and the possible interactions and activities of these characters. The School’s Creative Director, Jaime Sears felt that the advertisement needed to speak to the difficulties and uncertainties (“pain point”) commonly experienced by New Yorkers at this time. Ideally, the scenarios in the illustration will be familiar to most New Yorkers.

With these concepts in mind, I rode the subway and traversed the city. I photographed fellow commuters and eavesdropped on their conversations, observed their interactions. Specific individuals and life moments are represented in the final illustration. The majority of the characters in the final composition are real New Yorkers – commuters, pedestrians, recyclers, and even our infamous subway rats…

THE CAMPAIGN
As meditation is a key element of the School and a practice known to calm people, I elected to have meditation be the central element to the design. Without the funds for a photo shoot, I searched online for people meditating. I found an attractive young woman sitting on the floor with her hands’ index finger and thumb touching. At the School, people generally meditate in a chair, however, design-wise, I felt that the chair would take up too much horizontal space, so I purchased the rights to the photo of the woman on the floor in a criss-cross applesauce pose and changed the hand pose. I based the central illustration on this photograph. I also wanted to make the name of the School central, so I placed the School’s name on her t-shirt at the very center of the design.

I surrounded the meditating woman with vignettes of everyday life from subway to street. Moving from left to right: subway musicians, a Hasidic commuter studying, a young woman with her earbuds in place, a businesswoman busily texting, two men in conflict, an MTA maintenance worker sweeping as he watches a business dandy toss his coffee cup on the platform floor with a trash can nearby… At the center, a woman meditating with a fiery aura outlining her figure. Then to the street (right side of the design) – a young female pedestrain wearing a surgical mask, PRIDE revelers enjoying life, an older man observing the street scene from his window, a mother and daughter gardening, a food delivery guy on his bike, and people recycling. A few of these illustrations, I had already created for past projects. The subway musicians and female subway rider I rotoscoped long ago for a series of animations reflecting New York City life. The rat and delivery guy are from a 2D video game and installation, una geografia de ser. Recycling past illustrations was necessary as the turn around on this project was very tight. However, the rest of the work is new.

I created a version of the graphic illustration with thought bubbles or spoken text for the various characters, but the School preferred that viewers interpret the illustration for themselves. Throughout the illustrations, I attempted to represent points of conflict that are common to the density of New York City.

The platform poster is much simpler and hopefully striking. It merely presents a woman meditating. Since people are on the platform for a shorter span of time, waiting to get on a train or exiting the station, I wanted to create a graphic that would immediately speak to the commuter.

Here are images posted in the subway cars and in the platforms:

Custom t-shirts are more than just an excellent way to express yourself, they’re also incredible ways to get your artwork in the public space. Whichever you’re placing a custom order for, it’s important that your art or design comes out the way you want it to.

There’s nothing worse than seeing your work of art fail to translate to what you had in mind, which is where following this guide can help. Here’s how to get the best screen printing results from your art submission on sites like The TeeHive or Threadbird.

Using Vector

Vector based images and screen printing are a match made in t-shirt heaven. These files can be resized at any scale without losing an ounce of detail thanks to the mathematical equations surrounding their magnitude and direction. Even better, these images use both lines and curves.

When it comes to color assignment, vector is superbly clean. All you’ll need to create a vector image is a program like Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator, or Inkscape.

Using Raster

Unlike vector images, raster uses pixels instead of lines. This makes using the correct DPI crucial from the get go, but it translates wonderfully to screen printing when done correctly. For reference, a web image looks stellar at 72 DPI while screen printing requires at least 300 to look decent.

While you might not be able to scale up with a raster image, you can create images at the same size they would be on the t-shirt. This gives you the ability to pay close attention to small details, which also helps in translation. Programs like Photoshop and Gimp utilize these types of images.

Screen Printing 101

The true secret to achieving a fine quality print is using highly defined artwork. That can be easier said than done, as many people find themselves with excellent art that simply isn’t ideal for screen printing.

Often times, individuals opt to do a test print first to make sure their design will translate like they want it to. While it’s always a good idea to test out a company’s quality first, test prints are often made using a different technique. Most of the time, companies will use a digital print or direct to garment printing.

The best way to make sure your art will look fantastic after the printing process is done is to contact the company you plan to work with. It isn’t uncommon for their artists to be able to recreate your image in a more screen print-friendly version. Always double-check to see if that comes with an extra cost, though.

Tips and Tricks

When uploading files to print, make sure they were created in the proper format beforehand. Simple saving something as a .pdf or .eps isn’t going to cut it when it comes to the quality you’re looking for.

Avoid using:

• .jpg
• .png
• Photographs
• Sketches
• Or anything with a low resolution

If you are dealing with hard copies of your artwork, it’s best to email the company you’re considering working with. Most have designers on hand that can work with you to ensure your work of art translates properly to the screen printing process. If you happen to live close by, it never hurts to drop in for an in-person chat.

Getting the Color Right

If your design is pre-made and ready to go, then all you’ll need to do is pick the color garment you think it would look best on. Try out different option to see what you like the most, and don’t be afraid to use multiple colored clothing items.

When designing from scratch, you have more ground work to do but a lot more room to play with. Simulate both ink and garment color combination by creating mock-ups first so your can proof the results before placing an order.

Most printing services use Pantone colors, but it’s important to keep in mind that the colors you’ve used in your vector or raster piece might become slightly off during the printing process. This happens because computer monitors vary widely in color, brightness and contrast.

What you see on your monitor might not be the same the printer sees on their screen. If you own a Pantone Solid Coated Formula Guide, then making a note of which shade you intended to use will solve this problem. If not, the printer will choose the closest available Pantone based on what they see.

Nailing the Best Prints

Getting the best screen print results for your artwork takes some time and dedication, but the above advice will help your work translate the best it possibly can. You’ll have a slew of awesome t-shirts ready to go before you know it!

This articles has been written by Ashley Lipman

So I export a lot of my illustrations or frames from my animations to images that can be printed onto various products from t-shirts to coffee mugs to stickers and I post them to RedBubble or Society6 or TeePublic. This design I really like and I partly do this because I want to wear some of the stuff that I draw, and this is such a case.

This past fall, I entered in to a conversation with a man named Jerry who sat near me on a downtown Brooklyn bench. Jerry was very interested in what I do for a living and asked me to teach him any skills I may have. I told him that I’d be happy to, gave him my card, but told him that he’d have to show up sober. I haven’t heard back from Jerry yet. Some weeks later, I photographed people recycling in the Lower East Side during an afternoon walk about a week before Christmas 2015. There was no particular reason to take the photo other than I liked the composition. Here is the photograph as an animated illustration and a small portion of Jerry talking about the social contract in U.S. culture… According to Jerry, we all play a role in the project that is this country and he wants to play a larger role.

I have been working on a series of portrait illustrations of individuals that I consider akin to dictators over the past year. The series is titled “Drunk with Power”. The intention of the illustrations is to make them into animations which is happening very slowly. Occasionally, I’ll make a quick animation, such as the one above. There is also a web version of this animation that uses code for the background rather than triangles colored using markers: http://rmz.nyc/mugabe.html

I’ve been following closely the dispute between Russia and the Ukraine regarding Crimea. At first, it seemed to be no more than a power grab by Russia for all sorts of reasons from capitalist power to cultural identity to saving face from a post cold-war reality. I’m not sure that this is not all true from the perspective of Russia, however, from the view of those who dissented and revolted against the Ukraine, it seems even more complex. Without living the reality, who knows, however from a distant observation, I couldn’t help, but create the GIF below.

There’s more to come soon!

I’ve added new art work to my Society6 site. Now you can get vector illustrated portraits of Putin and Stalin on everything from t-shirts to tote bags to coffee mugs to clocks and more…

Yesterday (2/23/2015) morning I attended a data visualization presentation by New York Times graphics editor Amanda Cox at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Amanda presented some great examples from the Times as well as other sources while breaking down her presentation to the topics Scale, Context, Pattern and Annotation Layer. I arrived late and missed the majority of the Scale portion. The following are notes from the presentation…

Make the data open, make it flexible, present a user with an interface to manipulate the presentation of the data, to see the data in various groupings.

The power of text: the most common thing that people do on a page is read and by far it is only the top of the page that people read. Most people do not click on buttons.

The example that Amanda presented regarding pattern is “Mapping America: Every City, Every Block”

Form is key to revealing patterns – use of familiar geography to superimpose information employing color, shading, shape and size. In geographic placement of data regarding the House District results one may quickly grasp that urban versus rural areas is decisive.

Annotation Layer
Annotation should be minimal, no more than a layer of pointers or outlines or brief notes superimposed onto graphics be it image or video. Amanda momentarily turned it over to a video interview with NY Times Science Graphics Editor Jonathan Corum:

She then presented a brief video documentation explaining aerial skiing by United States Olympic aerialist Ryan St. Onge and science reporter Henry Fountain in which extremely simple annotation is superimposed on to the video to make important points. She also compared this very simple graphic with and without annotation – “graphs are stronger when they say something” – Amanda Cox.

An example of the using annotation to illustrate different ways of looking at data is the NY Times “One Report, Diverging Perspectives” – a visualization of the last jobs report before the 2012 elections. The visualization allows one to view the report with “Democratic Goggles” and “Republican Goggles.” The data is the same and both interpretations are true, however the manner in which the data is interpreted depends one’s perspective.

Amanda Cox showed varying forms of engagement through the representation of data. In “All the Medalists: Men’s 100-Meter Sprint,” the reports begins the page with a 3D video animation that depicts the change of speed of gold medalists in the 100 meter run from 1896 to 2012. Following the video the page scrolls down to scatterplot displaying the same information. Of course, the time based animation will engage the viewer very differently than the static scatter chart.

The final example that Amanda Cox presented was a the superimposition of two separate data visualizations to present a cultural and historical reality of the United States. One was a visualization of the Republican versus Democratic votes in the 2012 Presidential Elections from southern states. The pro-Obama areas presented an arch of concentration that presented strong similarities to a very old visualization of cotton farms across the same states. When these two visualizations are collapsed one over the others, a strong sense of history regarding the present is established as the areas that were once cotton farm areas voted strongly for Obama.

Amanda made a point that beyond interactivity and cool graphics is the strength of the content. If one has minimal resources, focus on the content and in depth research. Practically, with so many people looking at the web on their phones, a simple text and image may be much more effective than an immersive experience.

With the imperative of Climate Change radical action is required immediately, including re-thinking design.

Come out Saturday to the green space at Division and Bedford, Brooklyn – La Casita Verde – for a fun afternoon of poster making for Sunday’s People’s Climate March. 1-4pm Saturday, September 20th at 451 Bedford.