Playing Around with Design

Even though I don't have a studio right now, I never stop thinking and studying ceramics.

Some time ago, I made small templates of basic forms: Round and square plates. The forms are small enough to dash off a sketch or toy around with a design and variation. I can run off a copy on my printer and expand the idea or upload it into my computer.  

Here's an example:

The first one is a bit busy on the right side. And I would remove the small connecting lines at the bottom of the branch like figures.  

All in all, I think this would make a good wax resist platter. It would be interesting to try this in scraffito too.

 

   Here's a positive and negative of the same drawing.  (The darker snake is the original drawing.)  Although the snake image is about the same, the second image seems more of a 'fat snake'.

The third variation seems more dynamic just by adding another outline.

A lot of people do not like snakes. I'm not crazy about them, but I find their image fascinating. 

Maybe no one would want to eat an hors d'oeurvres off a plate like this.

Washington Clay Association 2013 Calendar

Great Job on the 2013 WCA Calendar!

Bezalel, Chaim

Ben Levy, Yonnah

Bushnell, Judith

Buss, Mary Lynn

Chapman, Linda Collins

Conrow, Ginny

Cooper, Ann Marie

Dahl, Dirk

Daniels, Lee

Duarte, Liz

Feng, Anita

Freuen, Gina

Funderburgh, Eva

Gale, Diane

Garrity, Wanda

Gouthro, Carol

Grava, Damian

Harris, Jeanette

Holly, Lin

Lindsey, June

Lewing, Paul

Lobb, James

Lurie, Gale

Mander, Sandra

Moore, Allison

Newman, Eric

Roberts, Inge

Rodriguez, George'

Romm, Sharon

Sachar, Charan

Sauer, Steve

Schwartzkopf, Deb

Thompson, Susan

Copies will be available at Seattle Pottery Supply and at Clay Art Center in Tacoma.

P.S. My work is the black coffee pot in the upper right corner.

Graphics Design - Logos

Well, I've been rather busy. 

We are in our winter location and I've been working on designing the new logo for a Wiki page for CLAYART.   

CLAYART is a worldwide clay artist's and a clay associated discussion email group that has been active for over 15 years. It began as an idea during a yearly National Conference for Education in the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) convention. I will explain NCECA and CLAYART further in future posts. But sufice it to say the internet email part of CLAYART is undergoing big changes at the moment. 

One of the new changes was the creation of a wiki page. My part was to design a tiny, easily-recognizable logo to mark the upper left-hand corner of the site. 

Being completely new to the designing of tiny wikis, I have been on an intense learning curve. 

I don't have sophisticated computer design software, but I have had an undergraduate series of courses in computer design which I took just because they were available to me. And I discovered that through Apple Pages, I can do a limited amount of black and white work. 

Warning:  Some Graphics Geekdom follows--

The catenary arch design was made by stretching a black circle into an oval, then overlaying it with a white oval, adding a thick horizontal line to connect the bottom of the arch and suggest the floor of a kiln. 

I blocked the bottom of the ovals with a lineless rectangle placed below the "bottom of the kiln" line and layered over the top (brought forward) of the oval shapes. That blocked the bottom sections of the ovals from view which is equal to erasing them. 

The teapot was made by manipulating black and white ovals. And the handle to the pot is made the same way by layering a white oval over a black one. 

The body of the pot is another black oval, with another white one imposed to suggest a lid. The lid knob is a standard shape available from the menu and layered over the black and white ovals (brought forward).

The whole design is on top of a black rectangle, which was sent to the back. This creates the top 3 borders of the logo.

The lettering at the bottom was lifted from a tiny graphic I had squirreled away and used on this blog some years ago. 

This is fine for a tiny wiki, but when I wanted to enlarge it to a huge file for use in other ways, that's where the trouble began. All the enlargements resulted in shaggy, pixelated lettering. 

I finally ran the whole thing out of my printer at page-size and, using a fine marking pen, smoothed up the letters one by one. Like, taking-off-your-glasses, sticking-you-nose-to-the-page making-pixels-go-from-squares-to-smooth-edges smoothing. 

More later---

Written later than the above versions.  Sorry for all the changes after the initial posting. On re-reading the first ones, I realized I could write a clearer description of the geek graphics.

Logo Variation

Now that I have a new logo design and business cards set up, I can morph that into any kind of other card.

By removing the text under the logo, I can add "Thanks" and add an address, phone number, website address; virtually anything then create a new master for duplication.

I like to tape a note card to the bottoms of my bakeware that say things "Place in a cool oven" or "Microwave Safe", "Lead-free glaze" or "Microwave Safe - contains iron glaze; may be warm to the touch." And sometimes, "Not suitable for food".

More drawer rifling. Obviously, I'm on a cleaning jag.

From time to time, I've designed business cards using computer programs.

One beloved program which is sadly no more was SuperPaint, a simple design program that worked on (now) ancient Macintosh. It ceased to exist after 1992.

 I loved it.

 I made this using Super Paint:

And this:

(Yes, I have been in the antique business too. For several years, my husband and I did shows and had spaces in antique malls.)

When a few promo cards for a clay show came back because of a few  bad addresses, I cropped photos and stuck them in an envelope. Later,  I scanned one into my images program.

With a bit of tweeking, it might be handy later on a future card.