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Inukshuk Design

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What shape are you?

This is a project of self-discovery. You need to distill your whole being to a simple physical shape. Your design needs to be lively. Like the Paul Rand headstone below, it needs to bring movement to mind.

The focus of this exercise is to distill. This means you need to simplify your concept as much as possible. The challenge is to not squeeze all the meaning out of your work. It's a fine line.

The inukshuk you will design will be a timeless representation of yourself. Those who come in contact with it need to feel your presence.

How this relates to Graphic Design

I often find myself simplifying my designs. I simplify and simplify. Then I stand back to take a broad look at my work. "I've gone too far." I need to dial it back to two steps ago when the piece still had some meaning.

One of Paul Rand's contributions to graphic design is simplicity. If you look at his work, you'll see that he achieved a balance between clarity, elegance & meaning. This is what we want to achieve.

We need to remove all the un-necessary elements, until only the essential remains. This will be the shape of your model.

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The Process

Reflection

The first step in any design project is reflection. This is particularly important with this project. Put pencil to paper. A complete exploration is needed.

Explore all areas of your life. Answering who, what, when, where, how is often useful. Take a broad view, then a narrow one. This research could include family, friends, places you've been, your age, how you got where you are and much, much more. It can take the form of writing, drawing, even photographs or objects! These things all represent important parts of your life.

The result should be a pretty large amount of information. Once you are done, some organization is in order. Sort elements into concepts. You should be left with areas of your life, like containers, filled with elements which define you.

Keep all of your research. When it's re-organized, don't discard the old versions, like re-written thoughts.

Objects and Their Forms

Once you feel you've exhausted all avenues, you need to model your areas. This means that you need to attribute shapes to the concepts in your research.

Do you see any recurring ideas or objects? Try to draw conclusions from your information. As an example, water may be a common element if you have a cottage by a lake. Maybe you've also travelled on the ocean. This is a theme which leads to a physical object.

From this object, you can then extract physical attributes. In the case of water, you get fluidity, cold, liquid, soft, etc… Now we're getting to a shape. With more work in this direction, your sculpture's shape will start to reveal itself.

Once you have explored far enough, the result should be some sort of concept for a shape of your model. The tough stuff is now done. Now you can have fun playing. If you have come to a shape you find depicts your being, you can start sculpting it in clay. We'll talk about how you can build your model in class.

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Grading

This is a very subjective project. It calls for grading a fine art piece. Who's to say what grade it should earn? For this reason, the project will be deemed a success if it reflects the deep introspection you acheived during the research stage. It will also be evaluated on the aparent depth of the research. In other words, how much time & effort did you put into this?

Research (75%)

You need to hand in all your research. It needs to demonstrate the extent of your exploration. This is key to designing a representative inukshuk. It can be delivered in which ever format you wish; electronically, your original notes or scans of them.

Final Inukshuk & Rationale (25%)

This part of the grade is for the practical part of the sculpture. Does it match your description? Is it presented properly?

Your rationale will be graded on the extent to which it explains your inukshuk. It will also be graded for good form and writing. Take the time necessary to execute properly.

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Conclusions

Developing this Inukshuk is a lot like designing a logo. You are distilling a lot of information into the essential descriptors of an organization. Hopefully this process will help you develop an organized, methodical thought process. My wish is that you learn to take time to develop meaningful concepts you can use in Graphic Design.