Art and Design Commons^™

The Value Of Everything Is Nothing, Jason Dawes

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Photography was my introduction into art. I gravitated toward portrait photography fairly quickly. I found the interaction between subject and photographer to be an intense moment in time. I began to push that intensity - through various non-traditional approaches, such as placing ads in the personals. It did not take long before I turned the camera on myself, creating self-portraits in the domestic setting. I began to play for the camera. I created various personas that placed myself in some gray area between masculinity and femininity. Shortly there after, I began working with collage. I found the formulas and rigidity …

Square Wine: Thinking Outside The Bottle, Kathryn A. Zeltner

Graphic Communication

The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not a rectangular wine bottle with a square base would be environmentally beneficial due to its ability to fit more bottles into a single shipping container. An interview was conducted from the CEO of company that currently produces bottles in this fashion and she helped answer this hypothesis as well as provide insight into the bottle production process. In addition to the environmental aspect, the study looked to determine if a square-based bottle would be accepted by consumers in the marketplace. Being that consumer purchasing decision plays a huge role …

Brand Identity For New Artists In The Music Industry, Drea Achacoso

Graphic Communication

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the aspects of brand identity and apply it to new artists in the music industry. The research from this study was applied to Hills & Strongholds, an aspiring alternative rock band. Designs were created for the band’s brand identity on multiple platforms that attempted to portray the band’s musical vision. A survey was conducted to determine which logo and album artwork designs were able to effectively transport the bands genre and vision based on the audience’s perception. The results of this study can be used to develop Hills & Strongholds into a …

The Laes Pocketbook For Filmmaker Enthusiasts, Steven (Sven) Thien Le

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

The LAES Pocketbook for Filmmaker Enthusiasts was written to be an essential tool for Cal Poly students to use when approaching the broad spectrum of film making. This introductory pocketbook tackles many of the confusions and questions that arise when first starting with film making and utilizes the equipment available at Cal Poly to make the film making process simpler for students. Printed out on standard 8.5" x 11" paper, this portable pocketbook is meant to be folded, stapled down the spine, and carried with the student on their filming endeavors.

This pocketbook will go over types of filming equipment, …

From Banging To Baking: A Documentary On Malachi Chavez And Restorative Partners, Brandon Kuhr

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

No abstract provided.

Flapper Fashion In The Context Of Cultural Changes Of America In The 1920s, Soo Hyun Park

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study aimed to analyze the key characteristics of flapper fashion, which shaped the American fashion scene in the 1920s, and to review how this trend reflected the society at that time, which was changing fast in terms of the society, economy, and culture. Towards this end, comprehensive scanning of flapper-related images found in a variety of media at the time was done, and it was revealed that flapper fashion indeed reflected the prominent changes in women's role in the society in compliance with the early-20th-century modernity, which was a far cry from the traditions, while at the same time …

Material Potential | Recontextualizing Material Libraries, Diana Wagner

Masters Theses

Material libraries are growing resources that offer an opportunity for artists and designers to discover a variety of materials. These collections are composed in a traditional taxonomy, pairing materials based on composition. Samples are typically commercially made and are displayed independent of context, means of production, cultural significance, and application.

Through making we learn a material’s potential: the transformation it can make, the form it can take, and the new composites we can create. This generative experience lives in the studio and workshop. But how can we introduce this language of process, critical thinking, and making to activate and challenge …

Not Not Real : Exercises In Styling, Sophie Mascatello

Masters Theses

As a generative process of visual form, styling and artifice are co-dependent. Styling mediates visual and sensorial elements for aesthetic benefit, and artifice produces a fantasy otherwise unattainable. Together they are a rebus — an orchestration of symbols and shifted realities — that impacts modes of representation and subsequent shifts in taste.

In Not Not Real, the logic of “real” life is moot. Relevance and subjectivity are the only fixed parameters that govern stylistic intuition. The image produced — however candid or authentic it may appear — is artificial. But this imagery supersedes reality in provoking aspiration, rendering the …

Learning To Live In Thick Interface, Jonathan Hanahan

Masters Theses

As media platforms shift towards more dynamic interfaces, the separation between user and content grows infinitely. While advertised as thin, light, and seamless, these platforms mask a thick and complicated space in which society must navigate. This is what I call the “Thick Interface.” The Thick Interface is the portal we use to toggle back and forth and through which we communicate. It is solid and porous, physical and digital, enhancing and diminishing. It may also be a combination of these things simultaneously, or none at all. My work highlights—rather than masks—the complexity of this space through interaction, participation, and …

Speculative Archives : An Index, Sameer Farooq

Masters Theses

Building an official archive, a comprehensive depository of cultural memory, is an impossible pursuit.My work centers around the question: what gets lost in the capture ? Responding to this problematic, I create “speculative archives”— setting the practice of archiving against the archive. In doing so, my display systems (including photography, film and writing) reveal countless ruptures, even blind spots, in the smooth surfaces of the archive: the invisibility of the archivist, the challenge of capturing ephemera, the inherent value bias in collecting, and the inexhaustibility of documenting a subject.

Speculating on the archive has consequence for design practice. From the …

Family Science Program Faculty Member Awarded New Writers Fellowship, College Of Education And Human Development

Family and Consumer Sciences News

Dr. Sherria Taylor, a Family Science Program faculty member, has been awarded a New Writers Fellowship.

Volume 10, Issue 2: Full Issue

Manuscripts

Full issue of the March 2014 issue of Manuscripts. Includes work by: Lucy Kaufman, Thomas J. Luck, Mary M. Schortemeier, Verse Forms Class, Jeanne Gass, Jack DeVine, Mildred Reimer, Donald Rider, Donald Morgan, Joe Howitt, Elizabeth Hyatt, Arline Hyde, Stuart Palmer, George Zainey, Peggy O'Donnell, Lester Hunt, Arthur Graham, Rosemary Haviland, Fayetta Hall, and Jane Burrin.

Rieglematica: Re-Imagining The Photobooth Through Female Performativity And Self-Portraiture, Allison E. Riegle

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper explores the historical significance and advancements of automatic photobooth portraiture from the late 1800s onwards, focusing specifically on the intention behind the photobooth’s creation and the significance and cultural implications of its introduction into society. As it gradually became a staple of modern society, regularly visited by citizens to have their portraits taken, numerous artists sought out the photobooth as both a studio and a stage in which to document performative self-portraiture. The space and aesthetics of the photobooth have inspired artists to re-envision the confines of the booth and use its automatic function as a point of …

Re-Enchanting The Spectacle, Shayna Cohn

Graduate School of Art Theses

“Re-Enchanting the Spectacle” explores guiding notions and central themes within the art practice of Shayna Cohn. Cohn’s installation spaces and sculptures within them, evoke a type of fabricated aura and melodramatic attitude of entertainment sites. By isolating the affect outside of the original environment, Cohn references the perceptual duality of entertainment sites within this “post-sacred” era. Entertainment venues become sites of potential transcendence, yet are also inextricably tied to their automated mechanization. Drawing on the Peter Brooks’ analysis of the historical and poetic relationship between melodrama and the sacred, Cohn argues that contemporary notions of melodrama can be found within …

White Space: An Overlooked Element Of Design, Samantha Coates

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

There are many different elements used to enhance visual appeal in Advertising and Graphic design. While all elements of design are important, arranging all of these components effectively, affects the overall visual appeal to viewers. The use of space may be thought of as the single, most important element of design. How things are arranged contributes to how effective an advertisement is to its audience. While space is important, it is also vastly taken for granted, specifically in the form of “white space.” Whitespace is important to visual appeal in many ways. This includes readability, viewer perception of brand image, …

Visual Tension In Graphic Design, Raven Heinstein

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

My thesis explores the use of visual tension in various graphic design areas and works. It delves into the purposes of creating visual tension and in which instances it can be most effective, as well as most ineffective. It discusses the use and creation of visual tension with design hierarchy, rhythm and dynamics, symmetry and asymmetry, negative and positive space, color relationships, and typographical design. I will define visual tension, discuss its relevance and significance, and show informative examples. I'm using mainly secondary research in the form of textbooks and examples by other designers, but I have also included a …

Creatures Of Habit, Joyce Hankins

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

Creatures of Habit is a body of artwork that explores how patterns, habits and records relate to the human desire to find fulfillment and understanding. The work was approached using two distinct ways of making. The first draws upon the concept of a “closed system” to create my own self-contained processes to work within and form imagery around. The second way is responding to pre-existing patterns, or open systems, that allow for a transfer of internal and external information. Open and closed systems represent the human struggle to find control as well as feel connected to the surrounding world. The …

Paiting, Lucas Page

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

My work is motivated by the painting “as such” – as an inquiry into and intervention upon what constitutes a painting, how they are constructed, how they function, etc. Through an investigation of painting as a genre, both in its historical canon and contemporary forms, I deconstruct the formal and cultural elements surrounding the field. Four major axes serve as the basis for my inquiry and intervention of painting: Painting, Abstraction, Representation, Control. Taking as a point of departure the comment, “Your work is a representation of abstraction,” I aim to figure out how “the painting” (in all of its …

The Hat Lady Equation, Lauren Capone

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The Hat Lady Equation is a collection of poems by Lauren Capone. As influences she cites Elizabeth Bishop, John Berryman, among the exquisite minutiae of day-to-day living. The poems explore works of visual art by Alberto Giacometti, James Taylor Bonds, Chris Dennis, Blaine Capone (her brother), and creatures of the natural world including fish, the rhinoceros, a lettered olive shell. . . . Lauren shows a preoccupation with disassembling through the poems whether it's her identity, art, or happenings of everyday life.

A Face With A View, Cassie S. Jones

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis serves to examine my practice as a visual artist. In its contents I consider both the internal image and the external image and the constant negotiation that happens between these two sets of images. What comes to represent the internal is my own image, in particular, my face. What comes to represent the external are prevailing images of socially idealized beauty. Likewise, I argue that the face becomes especially important in this negotiation as it is the intersection between the internal and the external; the self and the social. Using artists such as Vito Acconci, Orlan, and Andy …