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  My last group critique (11/18)  got me thinking about graphic design, and its comparison to painting, drawing, sculpture or really  any fine art.  This is the work I presented. The line drawings are results of my looking at interesting topographic maps. The wood panel is a study of the letter A, trying to make it unrecognizable as a character, but still using it's forms. Also, I showed my repetition of the letter P in pen on a a 4 1/2 X 7 1/2 in piece of paper. I made this one with the intention to see how it would look to have one letter repeated over and over, drawn closely next to each other, or overlapping. I really like the outcome, but when I've attempted it using other letters I think it is most successful when  I use lower-case cursive letters.  And the last work I presented was my Cocker Spaniel collage. It's the result of two pages from an old Time Magazine, and a Cocker spaniel stencil I made. 

So I hung these things on the wall, and the most questions resulted from the spaniel collage  and were something like, "what does the content mean?" "Why  are the pages cut out in the shape of a dog? of a cocker spaniel?" When I made it I wasn't thinking about any of those things. I wasn't thinking about how a viewer would perceive it, or what they might think when they read the text inside the dog- that inside the bottom cocker spaniel it said, "J.V. ALLEN & SON, INC. YEARLY SALES (THOUSANDS)". It is something from my sketchbook that I did in my spare time. I included it because I thought it was quirky and interesting to look it, but I didn't read into it like my peers and the grad student leading the class did. As a designer I think you do have to  evaluate many aspects of a work you're producing, because it is intended to be viewed by a large population (hopefully). But creating something to persuade people to buy something, or a package design, or editorial design is different that creating something that is intended to be in  a gallery or museum. The grad student said it was "kitschy".   While Kitschy isn't necessarily what most fine artists gravitate toward,  I don't consider myself a fine artist. So, as a graphic designer, is kitsch really that bad today?

From this critique I've realized that I guess I have to  put thought into everything I do? How it will be viewed, what people will think about when they see it, if it has connotations I want. But do I really? Since I have to do so much thinking when I'm making something a design project, I don't want to think when I'm doing recreational art.  Not everything has to be read into so thoroughly.