PROCESS BOOK — Reed Smith

Cranbrook Academy of Art offers an education model that deviates from the traditional graduate arts program. With no classes, the academy reprioritizes the student’s focus entirely on time spent in the studio producing work. Studio time is the lifeblood of your time at school, and progress in your development revolves entirely on production, experimentation, and the freedom of open artistic pursuit. To honor this ethos, I sought out to create a process book summarizing this focus on creation and experimentation I found to be so fulfilling during my first year at Cranbrook. This book was designed to showcase my works created during the 2021 – 2022 calendar year. While the catalog consists of a variety of design and art objects I made, the book itself serves as a design piece itself echoing the spirit of artistic experimentation at Cranbrook. With a focus on typographic experimentation, I wanted to see if I could treat a text layout like an artistic object itself.

Cranbrook Academy of Art offers an education model that deviates from the traditional graduate arts program. With no classes, the academy reprioritizes the student’s focus entirely on time spent in the studio producing work. Studio time becomes the lifeblood of your time at school, and progress in your development revolves entirely on production, experimentation, and the freedom of open artistic pursuit. To honor this ethos, I sought out to create a process book summarizing this focus on creation and experimentation I found to be so fulfilling during my first year at Cranbrook. This book was designed to showcase my works created during the 2021 – 2022 calendar year. While the catalog consists of a variety of design and art objects I made, the book itself serves as a design piece itself echoing the spirit of artistic experimentation at Cranbrook.