Perceived Spaces: Chelsea

Group Essay on Chelsea

My group and I discussed possible areas in Chelsea to research. We thought of the obvious tourist destinations, like the Chelsea Market and the Highline, but we wanted to look into something other than what was most known. One of our members mentioned the West Side Highway. At first I wasn’t too interested. After talking to my classmates, I discovered there was more to the infrastructure than I thought.

Upon research, I found that before the highway there was the Elevated West Side Highway. It was torn down due to the weak structure and expensive costs to maintain it. Along the highway, there’s a large bike path. When my group and I went, we saw many bikers, runners, and roller bladders using the path. Personally, I didn’t know what the Chelsea Piers were, but we went to see that as well. These three parts in Chelsea were somewhat of an escape from the city. The highway and bike path allowed for less pedestrian stopping than in the central part of the city. The Chelsea Piers were similar in the sense that there was so much space to be active!

 

Process

My initial idea for the artifact was to create an older advertisement. I wanted to promote these few areas we looked into. I looked at really old Lucky Strike ads and kitchen appliance ads from the 30s-50s. I was interested in style, given that the West Side Elevated Highway was opened in 1930. I noticed the choice of colors. The primary colors definitely popped, which was what I wanted to do with mine. I also noticed a few black and white advertisements. Many of these ads had a catchphrase or a simple and straightforward text panel.

Originally, I planned to print images out and trace them to stylize them. Then I completely switched to a different tactic. I took or found images and worked on adobe illustrator to change their look. I put them in black and white, and then chose the trace option. After printing, I went over the black ink with black pen. That was to give it a sketchier and shinier finish.

I kept the text simple, as I intended for it to be. The biggest issue I had was how the text should look. I tried printing out text and writing it out, but all of it didn’t look right. Ultimately, I chose on one of my written out texts. I still don’t think the text looks complete.

As for the design of the ads, throughout the process I made a modern twist. I figured that since I’m promoting two current attractions, it’d be nice to make it somewhat modern. The advertisement for the elevated highway is in the same style because I thought it’d be nice to see how it’d look if we took an older model and put a current trend on it.

 

Conclusion

Ultimately, I enjoyed the process of looking into Chelsea and discovering areas I would’ve never looked into. It was a nice way to understand an area. I’d definitely do a personal study of another area in Manhattan because there is so much history that we don’t know. In terms of my project, I’m happy with the outcome. I like the sketchy and modern look. Looking towards older advertisements was fun to see how different time has changed. I felt that it was important that I decided on making a twist to it, rather than full on copying an earlier style. The only part that I’d change would be the text! I feel that it doesn’t fit the advertisement. If I had more time, I would’ve looked into other options for the way the text was presented.