TINY INTERVIEW 2
1. Describe how you made the cover of the current Actually People Quarterly.
PHASE 1
- Realize you are in Park City with your coworkers, forgot you had to make the APQ Winter cover and you have no art supplies.
- Look next to you and see a cardboard box.
- Search for scissors and find them easily due to Kim's (Fontaines' mom) super good home stocking/organization skills.
- Rip open the box and cut out the letters: E-S-C-A-P-E.
- Look around the house for places to put the E-S-C-A-P-E pieces to be photographed.
- Decide this doesn't feel quite right.
- Suggest a walk.
- Put the E-S-C-A-P-E letters in your pocket and put on your shoes.
- Outside look around and feel excited about the cover and the possibilities: snow=fields of white=negative space=plain paper=a good thing.
- Find a suitable location, arrange the E-S-C-A-P-E letters, take some photographs from different angles.
- Take some pictures of the Fontaines balancing on a rusted pipe looking sporty. Talk about the shoes each of you are wearing that belong to Kim and how you feel like different people in shoes that aren't yours.
- Follow as the Fontaines continue to walk and find another spot to place the letters.
-See an ideal location, this time with more snow (more snow= more white space=more paper=less of a border from the print shop because they can't print full bleed).
- Fall through some loose snow and into some mud. Feel bad about making Kim's Nikes dirty.
- Look back to the ideal spot, bend down and lean forward to place the letters, then take some photos.
- Try to walk through as much clean snow as possible to clean the mud from the soles of Kim's Nikes.
PHASE 2 - ABOUT A MONTH LATER
- Plug your iPhone into your computer and download photos to iPhoto.
- Choose two of your favorite photos and print them.
- Bring them to the Fontaines' house so they can make you dinner while you make the cover.
- Cut out A-C-T-U-A-L-L-Y P-E-O-P-L-E from one of the photos.
- Place the letters on the the print of the other photo.
- Feel happy about that place where the A and the two E's blend into the black of the foliage in the background image.
- Write WINTER 2013 on the bottom of the cover.
- Turn on the overhead light and take photos.
- Email yourself the picture that you like.
- Turn the photo black and white with photoshop and increase the contrast; play with the brightness.
- Decide you don't like the placement of the WINTER 2013 type and cut and paste it to the back of the cover, inverting the image so that it becomes a black background with white letters.
- Try to see as if you are looking at it for the first time.
- Email it to the Fontaines.
2. Describe your decision-making, how you prioritized one thing over another.
The whole process is a series of quick decisions responding to a ever changing environments which get more and more specific; macro to micro; the location of Park City Utah, inside or outside, knowledge of printing processes, the lack of materials, textures present, composition, balance, and then the computer work: contrast and brightness, composition and balance and fine tuning any typography.
3. How do you decide when something is finished?
If you've followed this process of not over-thinking things but making sure there is balance along the way you end up with what you end up with and there are no more decisions to be made.