Light Study Book
Dec. 2019
As a semester long project for my Graphic Design Methodologies class, we created a series of four books based on a researched topic in order to learn about design systems. My books discussed artificial light: its form, its color, and its effects. Through these books I wanted to establish light as more than just a tool, but in fact a character. This fourth and final book combined the topics and designs of three initial books. I combined those books to act a as a character study of light–talking about how it presents itself, how it behaves, its flaws, and how it can perform.
The first section arranges photos of various lights I took into a "comic book inspired" sequence. Each picture acts as one frame in an animation of the light's forms transforming into each other.
The next section is a lighting color guide from a theatrical lens. I applied Max Keller’s stage lighting color character guide from "Light Fantastic: The Art and Design of Stage Lighting" to scenes of productions found on Rosco’s Color Gallery. The scenes are analyzed by their lighting’s color to identify a mood.
The third section looks at artificial light's environmental impact and includes Nadia Drake's National Geographic article, "Our nights are getting brighter, and Earth is paying the price." I tore apart and scanned artwork I produced of the sky to reference how artificial light can pollute our skies.
With light as a fully realized character, the conclusion shows what a performance would look like if it featured light as the lead. This final section shows a series of scenarios where the light is proactive and a silhouetted figure is reactive. I accomplished this by animating a sequence with light as the main focus, projecting those clips on a wall and filming my silhouette reacting to them.