Stadolnik - Visual Rhetoric

Making the Font      After establishing my design plans, I got to work tinkering around with different shapes and motifs. Working with pixels has a unique set of challenges due to their square shape: they have difficulty doing smooth curves, and any diagonal is inherently very jagged. Thus, I wanted to use straight vertical and horizontal lines as much as possible in shaping my letters. I also decided that I wanted to make the letter height an odd number of pixels so the letters could be divided through the middle by a 1-pixel tall line, which I find aesthetically pleasing.      The very first thing I tried was the slimmest letters, i and l. These were of particular importance because, as I noted in my last post, they require special attention (generally adding serifs) to make fit into a monospace font. I ended up drawing them like this: I chose to place the serifs like that because I wanted to try something distinct from the other monospace fonts I'd...

     For our final project, we don't actually have a specific assignment. Instead, we get to choose pretty much anything that ties into the topics we've covered in this course. Unfortunately, I didn't have any specific idea in mind, so the lack of a specific focus here was actually rather daunting. I'm also working alone for this project, so I can't really get ideas from a collaborator. And as a further wrinkle, we have to scope this project to be completable by Thursday, December 14 in parallel with our map project. While being expected to be making a smaller product is kind of nice, it also rules out a lot of interesting possiblities because they would take too much time      Thus, I decided to start by trying to find something that I would find personally relevant. I am a CS and Interactive Media and Game Development (IMGD) double major, and am an active member of the Game Development Club (GDC) here at WPI. In my free time I sometimes dabble in making ...

     We're up to our semi-final assignment of the course! This time, we have to make a map that portrays Worcester, MA (or part of it, if we so desire) in an unconventional way. I will be working with Jack Tulloch on this task.      Though we started discussing possible topics for this assignment right off the bat, it was surprisingly hard to come up with one that hit the trifecta of being an interesting or useful topic, being possible to complete using available information, and being achievable within the scope of this project. My first idea was to have the map highlight places of cultural importance across Worcester (such as the Worcester Art Museum), since most maps don't attempt to call attention to that type of information. This could, however, very easily have taken a large amount of time to research, especially since I personally am very unfamiliar with Worcester and both Jack and I are freshmen here at WPI. As such, we decided to shelve the idea. ...

Rough Draft II      After receiving Professor deWinter's feedback, Jess and I went about revising our comic. While she added lists of suggested classes for students to take for certain thematic approaches and darkened the lines on her characters, I made a simple infographic to explain how the thematic approach works, and added in some word art to make some parts of the text pop out more visually. We also did a bit of re-arranging, mainly on the first and fourth sections, to try to improve the flow and readability of the comic. Our completed second draft appeared as follows:      The infographic I made is visible in the pale green box on the left side of the fifth section. I chose a sun to accompany the step of finding a theme because it light casts down over and illuminates everything, metaphorically similar to how the theme affects and informs all of the subsequent steps and might even put the chosen courses in a different light t...

     After our brainstorming session, Jess and I each sketched our own ideas for how the characters representing each discipline could look. We also had been considering having one established as the "leader," who would do most of the talking. The rough designs I came up with were as follows:      My "leader" character was based off an idea we had tossed around in brainstorming, where they appeared as just a well-dressed figure with a mask. My interpretation would have the mask be WPI's seal, and the figure to be none other than Gompei himself. Foreign language was intended to be a dictionary with a globe one it, rhetoric was a podium with a face, theater was a comedy and tragedy mask duo, history was a suit of armor, literature was formed from a stack of books with glasses, and the arts were represented by a palette with a paintbrush and a pencil for legs. The sad checklist was intended to represent the Breadth and Depth requirement, as it cou...

     We have a new assignment, and this time we are once again creating something for a client. The task is to make a four to five-page comic which explains how students at WPI can complete their Humanities and Arts requirement, and our client is Kris Boudreau, the chair of Humanities and Arts at WPI. There are actually two different options for this assignment: to explain either the conventional Depth and Breadth method of completing the requirement, or to describe how the Thematic approach to the requirement works. I am working with Jess Hatt again, and we will be tackling the Thematic approach with our comic.      For the thematic approach, students select an overarching theme, then choose a capstone project (either an Inquiry Seminar or a Practicum) and a set of five regular classes which all relate to their chosen theme. This not only lets them focus on a specific topic of interest to them, but also provides much more flexibility with what classes th...