Madeline Hibbert BFA Scholarship Application

A lot of my current art consists of class projects and personnel study that I've done over the past year or so. My "anticipated evolution" however, and not just for the coming semester, but probably for the rest of my life, is to someday be able to say there isn't a thing I can't do. It's a bit of an ironic conundrum considering graphic design and other skills associated with it are an ever evolving medium, but that is perhaps why I love it so much. It's constantly changing, constantly challenging, and in my book that adds up to being constantly satisfying. 

There's always the possibility of frustration at first, but after you dig through it, there's a great feeling of reward involved. Like when I was first trying to learn Photoshop and Illustrator, I constantly felt hindered because I wasn't familiar with the tools. But after a while, it becomes second nature, and that's where the real fun kicks in because finally the creative juices can flow. I live for the world of visual communication. I love the magic of seeing a project come together, to watch life get breathed into it from the first inklings of an idea and transform from there. 

I use a wide variety of medias to best express the wide variety of ideas playing at my fingertips, though I tend to hunger after the graphic design and illustration kind. Anything and everything, from drawing, painting, illustrating, typography, photography, art history; I crave to be the ever better jack of all trades in design that I can be. I never liked leaving things out, and I hope to learn evermore next semester with such classes as printmaking, experimental typography, and graphic design, and add that knowledge to my repertoire. I still have a long way to go- I know that, and I like that. There will always be more tools and tricks to learn, as well as art styles, and I truly hope to build my skills and be a great professional. 

400 Word Essay

An amazing exhibit I recently visited was at the Shepard Union Art Gallery with Judy Elsley's Breast Cancer Quilts. 

There was a clear hierarchy in the presentation of the cancer quilt exhibit from the entrance to the back, but what struck me most importantly was that this exhibit wasn’t just art made out of quilts, this art was truly someone’s life represented through quilts, a powerful display utilizing the “verbal with the visual.”

The entrance showcased What The Body Knew quilts, segments created by Elsley back before she even knew she had cancer, signifying perfectly what her body knew before her she did. The set up also paralleled perfectly for me as a viewer as I entered the gallery, looking at the quilts trying to figure out the meanings. The quilts looked like cells, and cells going awry (like cancer). After continuing on, I discovered, as she must have, all the confusion was actually the scary discovery of breast cancer.

In the back gallery, I finally discovered the voice behind the quilts. She was an English teacher, and her name was Dr. Judy Elsleys, and that she loved to put the visual with the verbal, one of my favorite things too, which is why it made so much sense to see the visualness of the quilts combined with the words. 

All of her pieces dealt with her journey through cancer. She displayed a lot of positivity in her quilts, like what becoming healthy again meant, facing her fears and labeling them, and gratitude for the people supporting her. There was also a nice dichotomy with the quilt that had things she’d miss if she died and instead she turned them into things she loved about life. And her One Day At a Time quilt, that when you’re at a dark point in your life, it’s hard to imagine very much of the future. So instead, all you can do is focus on one day at a time, hence her Daily prayer quilt quote, “Gratefully and expectantly, I ask for one day’s portion of grace.” 

I took a lot away from that exhibit thanks to Judy Elsley and I’m glad I saw it. It was powerful seeing the verbal used with the visual with such a personal story, and as a graphic designer who uses the verbal with the visual too, the experience was something I will keep in mind. 

Identification Documentation

Madeline Hibbert BFA: Identification Document

1. Hibbert: “Sun Symbol,” Paper/Paint, 8x8”, 2D Design, 2015 

2. Hibbert: “Recipe Self Creations,” Indesign, 8.5 x 11”, Typography and Publication, 2015

3. Hibbert: “Lemon Pepper Recipe,” Indesign, 8.5x11”, Typography and Publication, 2015

4. Hibbert: “Themed Photos,” Photography/ Photoshop, 8.5 x 11”, Self Directed, 2015

5. Hibbert: “Practice Type Sketches,” Paper, 8.5 x 11”, Self Directed, 2015

6. Hibbert: “Movie Poster,” Photoshop,  11x17”, Art 3420 A, 2015

7. Hibbert: “Land O’ Lakes Challenge,” Photoshop, Photography, 2015

8. Hibbert: “In Class Color Correction,” Photoshop, Photography, 2015

9.Hibbert: “Letters In Color,” Illustrator, 16x16”, Typography and Publication, 2015

10. Hibbert: “Figure/Ground”, Paper, 8.5 x 11, Two Dimensional Design, 2015

11. Hibbert: “Similarity-Proximity Collage and Shapes,” Paper/Magazines, Two Dimensional Design, 2015

12. Hibbert:  “Illustrator Practice” Digital, Art 3420 A B, 2015. 

1. Madeline Hibbert : Sun Symbol

1. Hibbert: “Sun Symbol,” Paper/Paint, 8x8”, 2D Design, 2015


This assignment required the simple task of creating a moon or sun symbol with one added color besides black and white. Never the one to go completely easy or simple, I decided to incorporate a variety of sun symbols known around the world. I ended up drawing from many native american, ancient aztec, aboriginal, and asian symbols for the sun to create my own unique, slightly abstract, symbol for the sun.

2. Madeline Hibbert: Recipe Self Creations

2. Hibbert: “Recipe Self Creations,” Indesign, 8.5 x 11”, Typography and Publication, 2015

This project called for keeping themed recipes, real or created, for a total of three pages. Each needed a coherent page structure, yet enough difference to keep the look interesting on the eye and unique for each page. This assignment allowed for the use of color as well-not to take over the typography-but to strengthen it. That was something I keenly became aware of the more I worked on this to allow the typography to do the designing with the color and not the other way around.

3. Madeline Hibbert: Lemon Pepper Recipe

3. Hibbert: “Lemon Pepper Recipe,” Indesign, 8.5x11”, Typography and Publication, 2015


For this assignment, the only things allowed were typography and space to create visually dynamic page structures to showcase how a recipe can be set up in multiple ways to allow for readability and organization. It was all about the utilization of typography, negative space, and hierarchy for ease of use on the human eye. The goal was to use every part of the page effectively so that nothing appeared wasted or leftover. 

4. Madeline Hibbert: Themed Photos

"Eerie Candescence 1"

"Eerie Candescence 2"

Splat

4. Hibbert: “Themed Photos,” Photography/Photoshop, 8.5 x 11”, Self Directed, 2015

These photos are a combination of photos I have taken to create different moods. The first    photos were meant to evoke an eerie mood from the high contrast dulled colors of a morning sunrise coming over a foggy field, or from light cascading though open patches of clouds. The splat photo was meant to give a young punk fill, as a lot of youth wear converse and creating messes comes along with the territory. What I liked about doing these personal photos for design is that for design, there is also content, so it was good practice to create the feeling you want something to have and then create that for the theme.