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Sisi Chen

MFA in Graphic Design - 3 Yr Path — Graduate Graphic Design
Course:
GRFX-501 Graduate Studio 1
Faculty:
Christian Perez-Morin

Merce Cunningham Documentary

The assignment is to design a wordmark for one of the PBS American Masters documentary episodes, Merce Cunningham’s documentary A Lifetime of Dance. The audience is the ones who watch the documentary and are interested in cultural history. Merce Cunningham is a unique dancer in that movement itself is the principal subject matter of his dance, and the structure is not determined by narrative or musical form. Therefore, the desired result of the wordmark is his movements.
Learning Outcomes:
My solution is to design a wordmark that addresses the personality and characteristics of my character in the documentary. The concept of my design is to showcase not only the beauty of his dance but also the weirdness and unconventional movements.
The purpose of the logo design is to showcase both avant-garde dance and traditional ballet in Merce Cunningham. The idea is to have arrows coming from Merce Cunningham's handwriting on the choreography script.
Three wordmarks for further progress.
Digital version of two developingwordmarks.
The final wordmark has an elegant double counter letter "g", and the strokes of "e", "g", and "a" are disconnected from the counter. It demonstrates both the elegance and liveliness, as well as the innovative and avant-garde nature of Merce Cunningham's dance.
Pagination.