Don’t Have to Say Too Much™ 101
A lengthy, technical introduction to a digital exhibition portraying extremely admirable people in Black History
This Black History Month, it was high time I pay homage to a group of incredible people. Some of these individuals helped to shape some of the most important paths in music, art, government, and social entrepreneurship. Others have been pivotal in my growth as an artist and human. May they continue to inspire the future.
It was late January. Maybe Muzli Design Inspiration will spark some amazing idea…? No. Okay, ceramicist, make some porcelain bowls and brand them with some historical, black figures! Eh, no. Do I post someone else’s stills on Instagram? NO! Pinpointing the possible ways I would show my appreciation during Black History month was becoming very difficult after these countless internal conversations. Fast forward four or five days later. Stumbling upon some existing work led to some valuable inspiration. An old, folded contour line drawing, some design work, and a few text messages are apparently all it takes to come up with a viable idea. It all came at once.
I would use contour lines to draw each person I wanted to glorify, but with a twist: using the various selection tools in Photoshop. After, I would just use the Mac keyboard shortcuts to take screenshots. Problem solved right?
I realized needed to access reference imagery very quickly. Cue IMG_SRCH from Paul Kremer. Scouring Google’s image search for every black hero of mine proved to be a lot of fun. I was finally on to something. I saw so many images I had never seen. Beautiful, successful black people in B&W film photos, in DSLR photos, in portraits, in candids. You name it Google had it. Then when I wasn’t trying for it, inspiration hit me in the face again.
While typing in the F-e-l-a of Fela Kuti it happened. Auto completion. One of those pieces of user experience design that is very helpful, but I never thought I’d see it as source of inspiration. So I did something similar to Paul. Screenshot. There was an issue with screenshotting after this though. It was all design, no experience. How was I supposed to show auto completion with a still image? How would I show that I used the selection tools for these drawings and not just a dashed line with the pen tool?
A month ago I was lazily trying to figure out how to make a gif from No Rebrand’s animation screen then I stumbled onto Recordit. Bingo. Using their desktop app I recorded the interaction I had with Google’s image search.
How would I show that I used the selection tools for these drawings and not just a dashed pen tool?
Problem solved right? Well…everything was ready 😅. The figurative paints, brushes, and canvas (Instagram) were all prepared. Then I realized that Instagram doesn’t support GIFs. So I had to settle for the still, dotted lines on that platform. That’s alright, though. This work is all digital and using a website as a gallery space is something I’ve done before.
The shortcomings of this project proved to be so much more. I think it might be a great false equivalence to Black History. I was dealt some poor hands, but in the end I over came. Don’t wanna say too much, so here is the Black History Month gallery. I’m also working on a playlist/mix featuring some of the people in the show. Check out the playlist as it grows 💞™️.
