“The Byproducts of Twenty Twenty One” 2021, Digital Illustration / Poster – (click the image to enlarge)

 

The Byproducts Poster of Twenty Twenty One..

(originally posted to ryanseslow.com but there is context here. Publishing this here will publicly hold me accountable to turn this into an assignment)

Wow, it’s the final day of December, and 2021 is coming to an end. This has certainly been a challenging year..

It’s that time of the year when I get very reflective about my work. This meditation puts a focus on my personal work as an artist, as a professor (just finished my 19.5 years) and as a designer solving various problems for my clients both ongoing and new. A lot has been completed this year. Im proud of my work and of this blog too (more on that soon)..

Behold below, the byproducts poster of 2021! I have been meaning to turn this idea into a class assignment for my intro graphic design and illustration students for a while now, it always seems to escape me writing up the specifications for the project.. Perhaps it’s because the project and exercise itself is so much fun that I I keep it to myself! Let’s change that this coming year! (see, accountable..)

“Byproducts”.. what do I mean by “byproducts”.. well, I see it as a “secondary thing” or results that have been created or generated as a result of another intention. It’s incidental. About 85% of the graphics in the poster below were created in 2021, the other 15% are iterations and extensions of existing graphics taken from the last few years. I have been making art and design consciously for over 35 years.. (omg). This duration in and of itself results in a large repository of “things and stuff” that has been created over those years. Im pretty meticulous at organizing things so its very easy to find files by context and year. I love the idea of having a digital repository of my work on hand. The beauty of this poster (in my opinion) is the display of “orderly chaos”. The composition building process is a challenge and a puzzle. A design problem created on purpose to find harmony and unity by arranging shape, form, color and scale. Byproducts in this context are the result of the “unused things” that were created for specific purposes but didn’t make the next or final cut on a project or concept’s decision making. It doesn’t mean that these things don’t have value. They certainly do, and I love re-contextualizing them. Im giving these things utility by applying them as a promotional poster. A consolidated image of variety, aesthetics, styles and visual candy. A nice representation of how much I love to work this way and the work I love to make. 

The more time I spend looking at this iteration the more I realize I can add to it, or how I can re-compose it. I said it was a “poster” but we all know by now that it could be so much more. Imagine how this would look installed as a large wall piece applied into a clean white walled gallery? Hmmm.. 

When I posted this on a few of my social media profiles I immediately received inquiries if the piece would be minted as an NFT, or if the piece would be available as a physical print? I love all of these ideas and will let them dance in my mind for a few more days.

Happy 2022!