Date of Award
Spring 5-30-2017
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Graphic Design
First Advisor
James Goggin
Second Advisor
Keetra Dean Dixon
Third Advisor
Benjamin Shaykin
Abstract
We view the world through a series of frames: contexts, mediators, constructs, oversimplifications. We place frames around things to isolate them and better understand them — to control them and define a context for our audience: magazines, book covers, wayfinding, signage, graphic overlays, subtitles, logos. These frames label, augment, enhance, and explain things for us. They also become habitual frames of mind, granting us fluid access to familiar subjects through consistency and reliability.
But how does the time we spend inside these controlled, reductive frames affect the way we interact with and interpret our realities? What is left out of the frame? What else deserves to be brought back in? What stories are not being told?
With these frames as my toolbox—my framework— I call attention to the untold stories and to the frames themselves. I question the ways we represent things and the ways we represent our own identities. I take the most oversimplified, overmediated, and bluntly prescriptive visual tropes that mass-culture has to offer, and play them back to themselves, full blast, to reveal the humor and anxiety bubbling beneath the surface. I work to explore our designed world’s periphery, reclaiming and reimagining my visual landscape.
Recommended Citation
Litowitz, Drew, "Frame-work" (2017). Masters Theses. 66.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/66
Creative Commons License
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