For our first project, we were asked to write and research manifestos, mottos, and mantras to later create our own and visualize them on a poster using our creativity.
I began by researching what a manifesto, motto, and mantra are, and what each of them wants to convey. I also looked into different quotes from well-known artists within three selected art movements, which were: Surrealism, Dadaism, and De Stijl. I felt like a motto would be an ideal way for me to express myself and find something that would motivate me to keep on fighting during tough times.
To really get an understanding of what I was going to work with and create, I read and noted a few quotes from each art movement and see if there was anything that sparked the inspiration to what I was going to do.
By looking through a few hundreds of quotes from manifestos, mottos, and mantras, I decided to write down the ones that I found more interesting and inspirational. I have always felt a stronger connection to surrealism and dadaism when it comes to art movements since they have a more nihilistic view of life.
In the quotes I wrote down there was one in particular that I felt drawn to, a motto from the Surrealism painter Salvador Dalí. The motto reads: -“Have no fear of perfection – You will never reach it”.
Which I found oddly inspirational in a sense where we shouldn’t stress and push ourselves to reach something that we simply cannot achieve.
When I was done looking for inspiration and material to get an understanding of what I was going to do, I began writing down ideas and topics that inspires me to keep on moving forward and not give up. After I had written down the topics and ideas I took a look at them and marked what would fit me well and help me through hard times.
Coming up with a Motto with the selected topics
Whenever I had marked the selected topics I began writing several mottos to find one that would suit me perfectly and get the message across without any confusion. Since English isn’t my mother language, I found it quite challenging to build a sentence as short with a lot of information without making it sound odd.
I started off slow and steady with the ideas that I had, trying to get my message across. But I felt like it was too close to the quote that got me inspired by Salvador Dalí. I wanted to quote to be as unique as possible and for it to hit right home for me.
I began to expand my motto, it wasn’t very short anymore and I wasn’t very happy with that. I began noting down what had to be changed and think of new ideas on how to get the ideas into words on paper.
Translation: Perfection, Synonym: completion, perfection(cannot be translated), flawless
My final motto after trial and error, with feedback from lovely people is the following:
-“Perfection is inaccessible in a world where society is built on flaws”
I’m more than happy with this quote since it really hits home in my thoughts, ideas, and what keeps me going.
What set off the idea of the final quote is that I chose to look up the synonyms for the word Perfection and saw the world Flawless.
It was an easy enough word for me to play around with and came up with the final quote, using the opposites.
Digitalizing the Motto
To digitalize my motto I decided to have a colour scheme in greyscale to capture the emotion I wanted to convey; depression, destruction, and death. I made a list with ideas that would be relevant to my motto to add to the text visually, making it more aesthetically pleasing as well as making my message more clear to an audience.
Whenever I had a few ideas listed down, as well as what I would consider flaws in our world and society, I came up with ideas on how to work that into the motto using letters and illustrations.
Whenever I was done noting this I began to look into what fonts to use to fit my illustrations the best, i.e. if I wanted an L turned into a chimney I would have to use a Sans-Serif font since they don’t have the decorative serif detail onto them. Which would be easier to work with to create illustrative details with the ideas that I wrote down. I found a font called Alegre Sans which was perfect for my ideas.
I sketched down a few ideas on paper and later moved on to illustrator to see if it was possible to achieve them with the font that I found.
I altered the size of the words Perfection and Flaws since they are the highlights of my motto, and with this font, I wasn’t able to make them bold.
I opened up another tab in Illustrator to change the W into a factory roof like this.
I also decided to add a few details to really try to illustrate the word flaws into an industrial building. I decided to use a darker colour for the lines to make them less pronounced as the word FLAWS.
I added a few details to the illustration, like doors, another chimney and walls to make the audience really understand what was happening.
But it wasn’t enough, so I decided to add vapour coming from the chimneys to make it more dramatic.
For the O in World, I decided to change it to an illustration of the earth to make it more dramatic.
I made the illustration of the earth by myself, using a sphere tool and later on the pen tool to fill in the continents from memory, hence why it’s incorrect.
To fill in the void I decided to add two chemical plant chimneys, and with that a river leading to a lake with fish dead from the toxic waste they would release.
Here is my process how I added these details to my illustration.
Final Product
This is the final product of my illustration of my motto. I’m quite pleased with my work since I pushed my boundaries and learned new techniques using illustrator to reach a product I wanted. I also learned a lot of interesting things researching the fonts and new ways to use my knowledge of colour theory.
It was a fun project, that I probably spent too much time making, but I’m very happy with the final result.