Name Tag Day!

Our first assignment for Elements class was to make a name tag. This is not your ordinary name tag with just your printed name on a board and a piece of string hanged on your neck. We were asked to take it a step higher with regards to creativity. We are in a design school, after all. The name tags may not be worn. They maybe just placed on top of a table, hanged from the ceiling, or whatever tickles our fancy! They should just be readable and should show our personality. I got super excited and a little competitive when I heard this.

Brewing Ideas

I saved my weekend especially for making the name tag. You can consider it cramming since it was presented the Monday after but the weekend was pretty long of a time already. I started listing down and doodling my ideas for the name tag on the morning of Saturday. I narrowed down my options, picked one, and headed to a crafts store in the afternoon to buy whatever was needed.

Ideas: 1.) Musical theater mask 2.) Milk tea jelly 3.) Airplane costume 4.) Contorted fake plant 5.) Proscenium  6.)  Chopped wood

Musical theater mask and a proscenium because I love theater. Milk tea with formed, frozen, glued jelly because I love milk tea (Kind of bizarre idea). Airplane costume because I love to travel (Kind of silly idea). Fake plant and chopped wood with contorted/carved interest section because I graduated BS Biology.

The idea that won: Musical theater mask!

My heart leaned towards the mask idea. I was too happy to have thought about it! Musical theater includes acting, singing, and dancing. In my idea, the half mask symbolized acting; the musical staff symbolized singing; and the pointe shoe symbolized dancing. The musical staffs were twisted to imitate a DNA strand and therefore incorporate a little Biology in the project! Also, the twist connects the music to dance by making it look like the ribbons of a pointe shoe.

Mask (Acting)

Theater masks usually consist of one happy and one sad forms. The full mask is pretty big to start with so I just opted for a half mask. I do hope that the "acting" idea still gets across, though. I bought a pre-shaped mask at Joli's for 20 pesos. Though it would be a lot more fun to shape my own, it would take so much time. Masks are used to hide a person but I made mine do the opposite. I put my name on it. I used the counters of A as holes for the eyes and tried to fit the 4 remaining letters  in the middle. 

Plain mask with letter guides

I covered the mask with one layer of paper mache. Thanks to my favorite childhood TV show, Art Attack. After it dried, I formed the outline of my name with thin folded strips of tissue paper and glued them in place. I covered this layer yet again with another layer of paper mache to hold them and make them sturdier. Though a little stressful, I made sure the letters were not sticking together because it would be hard to read if they are so. 

Outline for 3D effect

With another layer of paper mache and white acrylic base

I used yellow and magenta because they are my top two favorite colors! It's a good thing, too, that theater things are mostly red. I added black outlines to make the name stand out. I am not sure if I got that effect though. Part of me (and my brother) thinks it made the name less readable.

I painted the mask twice to make it brighter. The paint dried so fast so I was able to go on with the project on the same day. The paper mache took a while to dry though. I had to use our blower to hasten the drying.

Musical Staff (Singing)

The staff was probably the hardest to do in the entire project. There were a lot of wires available in the house. I chose the thinnest ones. However, they were pre-cut so I had to connect 2 wires to make them longer. A staff consists of 5 lines so I taped 5 lines first to position. I tried soldering the wires but it did not work because the wires were coated. The glue gun became my best friend at this part. I made thin (okay, thick) lines of glue to represent the bar lines of the staff and hold and connect the wires together.

Positioning the wires

Glue bar lines!

Since the staff is black, I spray painted the wires black twice and left them overnight. I did not know then if it was better to paint them before or twisting. I made a small replica to be sure: one straight, one twisted. The experiment showed that twisting the wires before painting did not really make the paint come off so I painted the whole thing while it was straight.

I twisted the wires around a balloon stick the morning after. It was great happenstance that the balloon stick and glass rod were almost of the same diameter! After fitting the wires in the balloon stick, I transferred them to the glass rod. I did not use the glass rod right away because I might damage it in the process. I used the glass rod in correlation to Biology again. We used glass rods in laboratory classes!

Twisted staff!

I made small paper notes and rests. I intentionally wanted metal or formed glue but they failed. I stuck them onto the staff and painted everything black again. It made me a little sad that they were not as visible as I wanted them to be. It must have been the color or the chubby bar lines!

Spot the eighth note!

The 2 sets of wires were longer than the rod but I opted not to cut them anymore. I styled the excess wires that extended out of the mask.

Pointe Shoe (Dancing)

I did not glue the wires to the rod. I used the end of a twisty balloon to hold the wires in place and hold the shoe. I made a pointe shoe out of paper mache. I made this on a Sunday so I was sort of running out of time. I had to use the blower again to hasten the drying. I did not have a red spray paint so the ribbon effect cannot be seen. Well, it's the thought that counts? Or not. The ribbon was skewed anyway! :(

While letting the shoe dry

Though I originally planned to paint it pink (as is in real life), I changed my mind and decided to paint it magenta instead for color unity.

Pointe shoe close up

Putting It Together

I asked my dad of the best way to stick the rod to the mask. He said that the hot glue would do it. I was a little apprehensive because I thought that the glass and paper would melt. I had no other choice but the hot glue, though, so I tried it. The pointe shoe was already attached at the other end of the rod so the top end was the only problem at this point.

Bombarded it with hot glue!

The glue looked so messy and dirty so I covered the area with red masking tape! Color unity!

Finished product! Say hello to my musical theater mask name tag.

Me (tired but happy) wearing the mask. Disregard the extremely messy shelves?

Contingency

I mentioned the musical staff probably being the hardest part in the project. That being so, I made another one just in case Plan A fails. To be honest, I did not think that the hot glue would do so much! Anyway, the DNA/ribbon idea was still a go. The staff made with wire was changed to a printed staff on paper. The pointe shoe was not shaped dramatically. It was only as if the Powerpuff girls would wear it.

Plan B.

 The staff contained the only song whose intro I can play on the piano. It also happened to be in my favorite musical so everything fits! I used clear nail polish to make the paper adhere to the glass. I did not know any other way. I just remembered my cousins project eons ago which also used the same material.

The notes in the original idea did not really make a good melody. The wire bending already made it special. In this contingency plan, the choice of song made it special. A little hint of special in both options!

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I had a grand time doing this project from conception to execution! It was so much fun to do even though it took me the whole weekend to finish it. Even though I had higher hopes for the wires, I really liked how everything looked in the end.

During the presentation in class, I messed up my spiel a bit. I forgot to share about the color choices and the scenographer idea. Goodness, that was the most important and most relevant thing that would make this united project even more united. I want to study interior design to make me ready for scenography. Theater correlation! Musical theater mask! Makes more sense!

When our professor asked the class which name tags they liked best, no one really picked mine. They either did not like mine that much, did not want to say anything, or forgot about my mask since I kept it right away. I am not asking for sympathy, mind you. I just want to point out how a lot of things in art and life are very subjective. Like what our professor said, the price of materials and the time it takes to think about and execute a project are not always directly related to the beauty of the end product. It is up to us future designers to make do with whatever will be given to us in the best possible way we can.

According to my professor, designing the name tag was easy because we designed for ourselves. Designing for others will be a whole different ball game. Learning the technicalities in this design school will equip us with the knowledge to face that. We might have delved into ourselves this time, but for the next projects, it will be about the clients' best interests already. Always, as long as they are ethical and moral.