Process

Jeffrey Keedy teaches the most important graphic design class for second year CalArts students. Beyond being a typographer and critic, ornaments are Mr. Keedy’s forté. For the 2007-08 school year, Mr. Keedy designed the CalArts course catalogs with ornaments decorating many pages.

CalArts catalogs 2007-08

Mr. Keedy assigned my class to design ornaments inspired by a culture in The Grammar of Ornament. I designed Indian and West African ornaments.

First, I sketched my ornaments. I drew and redrew the ornaments over and over considering hierarchy, white space, continuity of form, white and black balance, thicks and thins, and West African and Indian ornamental history.

I traced my sketches in Adobe Illustrator, then scaled rotated, scaled and alternated colors to create layered patterns for each ornament.