Getting Moody

"Do Not Even Take In Head To Offend Children" Viktor Safonkin

Our major homework assignment was to begin gathering images, typefaces, colour palettes and imagery that will allow us to start finding the voice for what our portfolios are going to look like.

Fortunately I am an internet hoarder. Over these years in school whenever I have been researching projects and looking for imagery that inspires me, I have collected images that I found to be clever and humorous.

I started by going through these images and narrowing images that represented my mindset and world outlook down to about 10 images. I need to know exactly what "feel" my portfolio is going to have.

I then went through another collection of images that I use for wallpapers on my laptop and culled out a handful of images that I found to really please me with their colour palettes, content and aesthetic.

I find that I am drawn to the Red, Black and Grey and White colour scheme constantly. Whoda thunk I'd wind up settling on De Stijl colours after four years? Surprises abound. Aside from this, I have also always been keen on cooler colours, especially purples and blues.

As I looked over these selected images for "mood" and colour palette I began coming to a horrifying conclusion. A conclusion rooted in something that has always creeped around in the corners of my mind... I am a very complicated person when it comes to taste and what I like.

I am not saying complicated as in refined. Complicated as in what I like aesthetically seems to be a confusing muddling of two extremely contrasting styles.

I am drawn to content rooted the dark; ugly, morbid, bleak, rusted, worn, and creepy visuals. It always seems to be countered with some sort of tongue in cheek, contrarian and silly subtext.

If I had to go back and find where this comes from, I have always found beauty in the horrific and dark. I listen to scary dark music, I watch my body weight in horror movies, and some of my favourite works of art are by Francis Bacon and HR Giger.

These things feed my soul. I find them beautiful, yet I have always been a "victim" of "normal" people telling me that the things I like aren't art. Why would anyone like these ugly and dark things, it's not... normal. So I believe that over the years I have learned not to take appreciating this stuff as seriously as I should. A perfect example of this is my taste in music. I have never been a slobbering stereotypical heavy metal fiend. I see the genre, its people and its traditions as having its tongue rooted firmly in cheek and it just being for fun. Honestly, how could all of this evilness be taken seriously.

I have also realized that if I can't take my own personal tastes and passions as deadly serious, you can sure as hell bet I'm going to approach you with the same type of cynicism. No offence intended.

The scary conclusion that I have come to is that I am going to have to find a way to come across as approachable, yet true to my creative voice and influences. I can design for myself, that I am sure of. What I am going to have to overcome in this project is how to design myself for others.... No sweat.