Abstract

Celebrations in America are a huge part of our culture. My goal for this project was to deconstruct and examine the idea of excessive celebrations for holidays, birthdays, and other events, and the visual language associated with them in order to understand more fully the influence and impact on our culture. I think this topic is important because it forces us as Americans to critically consider an area of our lives that we generally see as happy and joyous rather than something to be analyzed. The process for this project was to research, analyze, and understand the visual aspect of holiday celebrations and to represent these findings clearly throughout a series of magazine spreads. I explored the visual aspects of these celebrations by researching the ways that retail stores and the media portray holidays, and comparing that to Americans’ perceptions. The challenge was to represent excess without sacrificing good design in the process. This took  trial and error to achieve the correct balance of solid layout and visual interest and excess. The final spreads became what I think is an accurate depiction of celebration culture in America. They demonstrate the extreme emphasis placed on holidays in this country, and at the same time they highlight the ubiquity of actual celebrations.