TYPOGRAPHIC DESIGN PROJECT

What Does It Mean to Be an Artist

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Digital Media | 2021 SUMMER

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The project “What Does It Mean to Be an Artist” is to rethink artist’s mission and examine the boundary between artists. As a performer conveys the message through performing, a writer conveys messages through language. An artist conveys concepts through art no matter whether it is a two-dimensional or three-dimensional piece. The presented designs aim to explore the beauty in fonts and to challenge common design rules in typography. In most situations, designers are not supposed to use more than two kinds of fonts to secure the oneness of the work. These are modernist rules based on previous designers’ practical experience and aesthetics. However, this project’s goal is to break the boundaries by prioritizing type’s shape instead of composition. While the works consider shape before readability and arrangement of types, they may no longer be admitted as typographic design, but they will still be art. Viewers will be deluded if they only see the work from distance. Types applied with gradient effect would let viewers become hard to tell whether they are three-dimensional metal crafts unless they choose to walk closer, viewers will then realize in fact they are all two-dimensional digital works. This is done purposefully to symbolize the vague line between an artist and a designer. While the definition of the artist mostly has been perceived as people who create works that are touchable and have physical forms, it raises a question: is a designer also an artist? This project encourages the viewer to rethink an artist’s mission, which is to convey messages through aesthetic works. Listing specific fields in the profile is common for an artist especially while he/she is seeking for a job, and concentrating on one field is considered professional. This puts artists in a box since they are expected to expand their skills visibly in front of people on the path they declared. The concept of this project is that the boundary between an artist and a designer is unnecessary. Defining an artwork’s category is less important than critiquing the aesthetics of the work itself, and being an artist is to seek out limits of every possibility for creating aesthetic work.