Michael Morris
California College of the Arts
Queen
Biography: Growing up in glamorous Baltimore, Maryland, gave Michael the ability to find humor in any situation. He moved to San Francisco in 2000, where he recently graduated with distinction from the California College of the Arts. Michael’s talents are practically unlimited, and his interests include print and motion design. He hopes to work for a firm that will challenge him, expand his horizons, and understand that he giggles at his own jokes constantly. He’s currently looking for a way to incorporate more pancakes into the world of design.
Objective: This is my thesis project, and it is designed as a reaction to the commodification of gay culture by "metrosexuals." Beginning with the premise that "gaydar" is no longer effective because straight men now look pretty gay, I created a manual, intended for gay men, that instructs on how to embrace the stereotypes that defined gay culture when it first emerged in the 1920s. The project is meant to be ridiculous and funny, and in being so, is meant to point out that stereotypes are alive and well. Part manifesto, part fashion book, part instruction manual, this project is a manifestation of my own sense of humor, social commentary, and design process. My thesis statement follows: Not Gay Enough? Has the mainstream popularity of gay culture left you baffled by gay-looking straight men? Mixed signals, false impressions, and scrambled messages have led us to the inescapable conclusion that gaydar is dead. Will you take this lying down? Are you worried that one day you will wake up and find that your circle of gay friends is actually a bunch of football-throwing, woman-chasing straight guys who pee in the sink, yet look and dress better than you? Your answer is here. Contained in these pages is your roadmap back to a gayer world. By embracing and amplifying the stereotypes that once made gay men outcasts, you will redefine them on your own terms. This guide will help reawaken your gay sense of flair, renew your unique cultural identity, and bring our collective gaydar back online. By following these principles, you will become more fabulous than you ever imagined. You will not be just gay, darling, you will be a Queen.
Tools used: I began with Adobe® Photoshop® CS to edit royalty-free fashion art. The Healing Brush and the new Replace Color feature allowed me to swap women's heads with men's heads, and then match the skin tones to make the image more believable. I also used the Replace Color command to change the color of the clothing to something pinker, which allowed me to change just the clothing colors without changing the skin tones. I used Adobe Illustrator® CS to alter scanned, vectorized clip art and add clothing or to change the heads of female figures. Using vectors made it much easier to change the facial expressions and allowed me to make the men's heads fit the female bodies. I also used Illustrator's symbol tools to create the pearl type on the chapter openers. After creating the words I wanted, I exported the files out to Photoshop in order to create soft drop shadows. All of my images were then placed into Adobe InDesign® CS, and the new transparency support features made it easy to not worry about clipping paths. The type in this project was easy to justify because of InDesign CS's awesome new type tools. It was easy to get a balanced effect and avoid rivers. Overall, the new type tools in InDesign CS made the typography in this project faster to change and easier to manage than I ever dreamed.
