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The strain I am under: the human condition and its effects on my design process

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THE STRAIN I AM UNDER:

THE HUMAN CONDITION AND ITS EFFECTS ON MY DESIGN PROCESS

by

Allen Mark Zimmerman

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSKI SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS DESIGN

December 2022

Copyright © 2022 Allen Mark Zimmerman

ii

“Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do
under the constant stress reveals who/what we are.”
—Charles Bukowski

“When you’re writing, you’re conjuring. It’s a ritual, and you need to be brave and respectful
and sometimes get out of the way of whatever it is that you’re inviting into the room.”
—Tom Waits

“Don’t let the bastards bring you down.”
—Dad

iii

For Ralph,
undoubtedly the sweetest dog that ever
graced the face of this Earth.

iv
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following groups of people for all of the undying patience,
understanding, love, and support they’ve showed me in the last year and a half:

My family and our close friends: Mom, Dad, David, Benny, Uncle Mark, Aunt Susan,
Veronica, Aunt Theresa, Uncle Mario, Jennifer, Pat Ivi, Mike Ivi, Eddie and Jodi Mulder, Scott
Dunlavey and his family, Tim Win and his family, Barry Weiss, and Dave Ekins.

The friends I’ve made at USC: Chloe (Soo Ji) Lee, Yumi Na and her family, Jude
Alomar, Jolynn Hsieh, Lisa (Xinyao) Li, Mingming Liu and her family, and Paola Espinosa.

My friends outside of USC: Wyatt Torres, Brandi Palmer, my boys in HANNAH (Shawn
Cross, Madhav Reddy, Nathan Elguea, Chandler Locke, and Drew Hooper), Julianne “Jules”
Hooper, Taylor Jones, Daniel Alvarado, Lauren Wilkins, Ali Jennings, Nicolay Danielsen, Diana
Lepe, American Castillo, Valley Taylor, Eve Clifford, Segal Ismael, Amanda Lyn Rockford,
Tristan Darling, Alex Salazar, Shaedon Boudreaux, Kelsey Taylor, Phillip Nguyen, Shayne
Nicole Winger, Frank Ralph, Jet Johnson, Jenn Timm, Julie Lindholm, Rebecca Loew, Nenagh
Brown, Barbara Obermeier, Randilee Serra-Golden, and Nicole Sixx.

My thesis committee: Ewa Wojciak, Jason Ellenburg, and Osvaldo Trujillo.

The other professors I’ve had the pleasure of learning from at USC: April Greiman,
Helen Kim, Brian O’Connell, Karen Moss, and Nitin Govil.

Thom Yorke, for inspiring the name of my book.

UBuildABook, for printing my book and helping make one of my dreams come true.

And, lastly but most importantly, you, for giving this paper life.

v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Epigraph………………………………………………………………………………………….. ii
Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………..…… iii
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………… iv
List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………………... vii
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………… viii
Chapter 1: The Human Condition………………………………………………………………... 1
1.1: What Is the Human Condition?….….……………………….……………………… 1
1.2: What Bearing Does the Human Condition Have on People?……………………….. 4
Chapter 2: How the Human Condition Affects the Design Process?……………………………. 6
2.1: The Relationship Between the Human Condition and the Design Process…………. 6
2.2: Examples…………………………………………………………………………… 11
2.2.1: Picasso’s Blue Period…………………………………………………….. 11
2.2.2: Red Hot Chili Peppers – By the Way…………………………………….. 14
Chapter 3: My Design Process………………………………………………………………….. 18
3.1: What My Design Process Is Like………………………………………………….. 18
3.2: My Inspiration for This Project……………………………………………………. 24
Chapter 4: Case Study: The Strain I Am Under………………………………………………… 28
4.1: The Process of Designing a Book………………………………………………….. 28
4.2: My Book’s Contents……………………………………………………………….. 32
4.2.1: The Cover Art……………………………………………………………. 33
4.2.2: The Eight Chapters………………………………………………………. 37
4.2.3: The Poetry………………………………………………………………... 45

vi
4.3: Final Assessments………………………………………………………………….. 47
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………… 49
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………. 51

vii
TABLE OF FIGURES

1.1 Figure 1: The Human Condition (Cartoon, 2022)…………….………….………..…….. 3
2.1 Figure 2: The Design Process (Illustration, 2022)………………...….…….….………… 7
2.2.2 Figure 3: The Blue Room (Oil painting, 1901)………………….………………….…... 11
2.2.2 Figure 4: By the Way (Album cover, 2002)………….………….……………………... 14
3.1 Figure 5: Mrs. Eaves Thumbnails (Sketch by Allen Zimmerman)……………….…….. 19
3.1 Figure 6: Mrs. Eaves Roughs (Sketch by Allen Zimmerman)………………………….. 21
3.1 Figure 7: Sirens (Digital collage by Allen Zimmerman)……………………………….. 23
4.2.1 Figure 8: The Strain I Am Under Roughs (Sketch by Allen Zimmerman)………….….. 33
4.2.1 Figure 9: The Strain I Am Under (Book covers by Allen Zimmerman)………………... 34
4.2.1 Figure 10: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Book covers, 1865)……………….…... 37
4.2.1 Figure 11: Moby Dick (Book covers, 1851)…………………………………………….. 37
4.2.2 Figure 12: The Crescendo (Photo by Allen Zimmerman)……………………………… 44

viii
Abstract
When people ask a designer what their design process is like, they’re oftentimes very
surprised to learn how much the designer’s own perceptions of the world around them tie into it.
By this, I’m referring to the way that they perceive and subsequently address abstract concepts
such as conflict, morality, and love in their daily lives, as well as real-world problems such as
social and political issues, work-related issues, and any ongoing personal problems they might be
facing. There is so much more than just feeling inspired and having an idea that allows a
designer to have a free-flowing and highly productive design process. If a designer ever finds
themselves having to deal with a particularly stressful or adverse situation, it can drastically
disrupt or even halt their design process, regardless of how they might otherwise be feeling about
themselves or life in general. The way one’s own human condition is impacted can affect how
they’re able to navigate their way through their day-to-day life. It’s because of this that I’ve put
together a book of topical haiku and senryū poetry as a case study of what it’s like for to be put
under a tremendous amount of strain, having to press onward despite that strain continuing to
build, and subsequently dealing with the aftermath of it all.
My design practice and research examine how the impacting of the human condition can
affect the design process for creative individuals such as designers. The book I have written,
titled The Strain I Am Under, contains a loose narrative that follows a nameless individual (as a
metaphor for myself) that is put under a high amount of pressure from the world around him,
which slowly mounts until it finally comes to a crescendo. Following this, the individual reflects
on everything he had experienced and braces for what the future holds in store for him. The book
examines the relationship that the human condition has on one’s design process over an extended
period of time. Through my research as well as the book I’ve written, I aim to shed some light on

ix
the complex relationship between the human condition and the design process in the hope of
helping designers better understand their own design processes and themselves.

1
Chapter 1: The Human Condition
German-American philosopher Paul Tillich once said, “The character of human life, like
the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is ambiguity: the inseparable
mixture of good and evil, the true and false, the creative and destructive forces¾both individual
and social.” Anyone would agree that every human being has both good and bad characteristics,
as well as the capability of being as good or as bad as they choose to be. The way that people are
and how they choose to act is the result of several external factors mixing together and having a
combined impact on the essence of who they are. These external factors can be many different
things, such as how we’re raised (namely what one is taught to believe by whoever is raising
them, e.g. religious or political beliefs), how we’re treated as we grow up (by family members,
one’s peers, authority figures, and strangers), what we’re exposed to over time (which includes
various types of media such as television and social media, behaviors such as kindness or
violence, and substances such as drugs or alcohol), and the experiences we have throughout our
lives, which are unique for each and every person. This is something that every modern human
goes through over the course of their life, and it’s something that human beings have been trying
to understand since the formation of the first world religion.
1
The phenomenon I’m alluding to is
what we’ve come to refer to as the human condition.

1.1: What Is the Human Condition?
The term “the human condition” was coined in 1958 by political philosopher Hannah
Ardent in her book, aptly titled The Human Condition. Throughout her book, Ardent explains

1
Jan-Olav Henriksen, Religious Pluralism and Pragmatist Theology (Amsterdam, Netherlands: Brill | Rodopi,
2019), p. 100-101.

2
what different aspects of the human condition are by comparing them to activities such as work,
labor, and action.
2
According to University of California San Diego professor Saul Levine, the
human condition specifically refers to “the state of being a human, with both the wonderful and
woeful feelings we experience.”
3
Similarly, Everyday Power writer Danielle Dahl describes the
human condition as being “all the characteristics and events that make up the essentials of human
existence” from birth until death, which include the emotions we feel, the aspirations we have,
and the conflicts we encounter throughout the course of our lives.
4
Essentially, everything that
people experience¾from the things they do to the people they meet¾not only impacts the state
of the human condition, but is also a literal part of the human condition itself.
Despite the human condition having a fairly concrete definition, what it means to
everybody is different because each and every individual experiences life differently. As Dahl
points out, even though most of us experience the same emotions, the things we experience from
when we’re born to when we die are unique for each of us.
4
This means that there’s a common
thread that connects all of us, even though our respective experiences and perceptions often
differ significantly.

2
Hannah Ardent, The Human Condition (Chicago, United States of America: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p.
7-11.
3
Saul Levine, “Stories of Our Lives and ‘The Human Condition,’” Psychology Today (October 3, 2021),
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/our-emotional-footprint/202110/stories-our-lives-and-the-human-
condition (Accessed August 10, 2022).
4
Danielle Dahl, “What is the Human Condition and Why Does it Sound Like an Illness?,” Everyday Power (April
20, 2021), https://everydaypower.com/what-is-the-human-condition/ (Accessed August 10, 2022).

3

Figure 1: “The Human Condition”, 2022 (https://www.antarcticajournal.com/cartoon-the-human-condition/)

This idea of the human condition being universally unique for everyone transcends beyond our
own personal social circles and the communities we live in. It affects the entire world as a whole,
particularly with regard to the international relationships of our world’s leaders. Whether
humanity ultimately achieves what Levine describes as “a mutually humane and benevolent
existence”, or world peace as many others put it, depends entirely on how we all collectively
choose to act based upon how our respective human conditions are affected by the choices and
actions of others, as well as ourselves.
3

4
1.2: What Bearing Does the Human Condition Have on People?
As Levine points out, the human condition is complex in almost every regard. One aspect
of it that is universal for everybody is the undeniable duality of it. Every human being is capable
of expressing and experiencing love and hate, communality and isolation, harmony and
discordance, all in equal quantities. Therefore, the human condition is capable of causing people
to both suffer and flourish. It’s something that can bring meaning and fulfillment to our lives, as
well as great pain and distress. This has led many people to simultaneously view the human
condition itself as being both a blessing and a curse. Because human beings are, as author Jeremy
Griffith describes, “the first organism to have developed the fully conscious ability to sufficiently
understand [and] even reflect upon our own existence”, this dilemma concerning the human
condition has led us as a species to collectively ask ourselves, “Why we are the way that we
are?” It has become critically important for us to find the answer to this question, as it has the
potential to help us finally understand who we are, end our collective suffering, save us from
destroying ourselves, reconcile with one another, and heal psychologically.
5

Another part of the human condition that is universal for everybody are the biological
aspects of it: birth, growth, and death. Every human being experiences these things, though some
people are fortunate enough to live longer than others.

There are several outside factors within
our control that can influence how long and how well we live (such as how we choose to act as
we grow older, who we choose to have relationships with, and what we ultimately choose to do
with our lives), as well as several outside factors we can’t control (such as how our parents raise
us, what we’re initially taught to believe, and the state of the environment we’re raised in.) How
we navigate through and subsequently cope with the events of our lives is the human condition

5
Jeremy Griffith, Freedom: The End of the Human Condition (New South Wales, Australia: WTM Publishing &
Communications, Second Edition, 2019), p. 44-52.

5
itself. Whenever we try to find meaning in our lives or attempt to resolve the problems we’re
faced with, we’re actually taking part in what Dahl describes as “the quest to explain the human
condition” and discover why we are the way that we are, as Griffith puts it.
4

Something that the state of the human condition depends on is what Levine describes as
“social cohesion.”

Because human beings are social creatures, the relationships we have with
other people, especially the ones where we can mutually share our feelings, ideas, and
experiences with each other, are vital to our well-being. He goes on to state that how our lives
turn out depends on the way we all interact with each other, and this in itself depends on the
decisions we make. This is something that is ironically exacerbated by the use of the internet and
social media. Even though the internet makes it significantly easier to communicate and connect
socially with other people, this has actually led to a loss in unity amongst most people. As a
result, more people are living very lonely and emotionally detached lives than ever before. One
group of people particularly affected by this phenomenon, largely because they often use the
internet and social media for their work, are designers.

6
Chapter 2: How the Human Condition Affects the Design Process?
2.1: The Relationship Between the Human Condition and the Design Process
Since we’ve established what the human condition is, it’s time now to discuss how it
affects the design process. But first, we must ask the question: what exactly is the design
process? The definition will change depending on who you ask, but product designer Andrew
Aquino summarizes the design process as being “every designer’s journey to solve wicked
problems.”
6
By this, Aquino means that the design process itself refers to however a designer
goes about solving the problems they’re confronted with in their respective line of work.
Something like the design process can’t have a universal definition because every designer goes
about solving their design problems in their own distinctive way, just as people go about solving
their personal problems in their own way.

6
Andrew Aquino, “What is the Design Process?,” Medium (June 3, 2017), https://medium.com/intro-to-digital-
product-design/lecture-2-accidentally-uploaded-from-phone-c23ef4aca05c (Accessed on August 20, 2022).

7

Figure 2: “The Design Process”, 2019 (https://discoverdesign.org/index.php/handbook)

Similarly, the design company Superside describes the design process as being “the steps or
phases taken in order to get a design to move from ideation, to finished product.” They elaborate
on this by providing five steps that any designer can apply to their own design process to help it
run more smoothly: starting with a creative brief, conducting graphic design research,
brainstorming design ideas, reviewing your process at the 10/50/99 stage, and presenting the
final product.
7
The first step, starting with a creative brief, is what sets the tone for the entire

7
“The Ultimate 5-Step Graphic Design Process,” Superside (April 5, 2020),
https://www.superside.com/blog/graphic-design-process (Accessed September 5, 2022).

8
project. Here, it’s recommended that a designer put together a creative brief, which is a
document intended to help a designer understand the project they’re about to undertake and what
is asked of them by their client. Information such as company details, brand guidelines, timeline
expectations, and what the final product should be are all things that should be included in a
creative brief. The second step, conducting graphic design research, is intended to help a
designer better understand their target audience. This kind of research includes noting competitor
designs for what a designer is working on and what’s trending with the target audience on social
media. Putting together a mood board, which is a collection of assorted media (such as images,
text, and objects) that helps convey a general feeling or idea for a design project, is also helpful
for conducting graphic design research. The third step, brainstorming design ideas, is important
because this is where the impetus for the final design product is born. During this step, designers
are supposed to brainstorm a number of ideas for consideration and to subsequently receive
feedback on said ideas. Any specifications the client is asking for must be considered for every
idea that is introduced here. Doing this step helps make the design process run more efficiently
because it is here that the idea for the final product is often settled upon, which increases a
designer’s overall workflow. The fourth step, reviewing your process at the 10/50/99 stage, is
crucial because it helps a designer stay on track with what they’re doing. During this step, a
designer is supposed to ask other designers and sometimes even their client for feedback on the
project when it is 10%, 50%, and 99% complete. It’s at this point that a designer will have to
make changes to many details like color choices, fonts choices, and font size. It can sometimes
be a very frustrating step, depending on however many changes need to be made, but it’s
important in that it helps keep things running smoothly, especially as a designer gets close to
finishing the project. The final step, presenting the final project, sees a designer gathering all of

9
their final files together and presenting their work to their client. It’s important for a designer to
be able to answer any questions the client might have about their design process and any choices
they made in designing the final product. Repeating these five steps, as stated by Superside, will
ultimately help a designer effectively refine their design process over time through constant trial
and error, though every designer should do whatever they feel is better for their design process.
7

According to author Dmitry Fadeyev, “our condition shapes the meaning of our activities,
just as our activities in turn shape and condition us.”
8
By this, he means that the human condition
and the design process have a correlative relationship; they are both capable of affecting one
another mutually. For example, if a designer were to experience something significant, such as
falling in love or having a near-death experience, their feelings surrounding said experience will
often seep into the work that they do following their experience. Then, after said work is
completed, the designer will often consider their recent feelings and experiences as they go
about starting work on their next project, resulting in changes to their design process that weren’t
present before. Fadeyev goes on to state that “[in order] to understand an activity like design, we
must first examine the underlying human condition within which it takes place.”
8
A designer’s
job is to come up with unique solutions for their customers and clients. It makes sense that in
order to understand what other people need, a designer must understand themselves first. In a
way, this makes having to understand the human condition a necessity for every designer. I
believe that understanding how the human condition can impact one’s design process can help
designers better understand themselves, their work, and their respective design processes.
With regard to works of art and design, Griffith explains that “behind every […] artistic
expression lies the shadow of humanity”, meaning that the pieces made by creative individuals

8
Dmitry Fadeyev, “Design Through the Lens of the Human Condition,” (September 2015),
https://fadeyev.net/design/ (Accessed August 10, 2022).

10
such as designers are often reflections of their own human condition. Like Levine, Griffith also
asserts that there is a duality to the human condition, which he equates to an ongoing battle of
good versus evil. This battle, Griffith argues, is a “debate [that] has troubled the human mind
since we first became fully conscious.”
5
It’s hard to disagree with Griffith’s assertion when you
consider that creative individuals such as designers, artists, writers, and musicians have used
their work as vehicle for expressing themselves in a wide variety of ways for centuries.
Considering all of this makes me wonder whether positive or negative impacts upon the
human condition results in the creation of stronger, more profound work. This is something I
have long heard people argue over throughout my career as a designer and an artist. Truthfully,
I’ve heard more people argue that strong work is influenced more by negative or tragic
circumstances rather than positive circumstances, often citing the works of Edgar Allan Poe,
Vincent van Gogh, and Hermann Zapf as alleged “proof” of this assertion. On the other hand,
I’ve also heard the argument that the strongest work comes circumstances where the individual is
feeling happy or at peace emotionally, psychologically, and/or spiritually. Personally, I've
noticed that the design work I do when I'm feeling positive is capable of being either positive or
negative in tone, while the work I make when I’m feeling negative is almost always negative in
tone. In an attempt to settle this debate¾whether stronger, more profound work is the result of
the human condition being impacted in a positive or negative way¾I’m going to examine the
history and circumstances in which two famous pieces of work were made, with one being the
result of more negative circumstances and the other being the result of more positive
circumstances.

11
2.2: Examples
2.2.1: Picasso’s Blue Period
My first example, which concentrates on how negative impacts to the state of a creative
individual’s human condition subsequently have a positive effect on their design process,
examines Spanish painter Pablo Picasso and his famous Blue Period, which took place between
1901 and 1904.

Figure 3: “The Blue Room”, 1901 (https://www.phillipscollection.org/event/2022-02-26-exhibition-picasso)

12
While it is unknown exactly when the Blue Period began, many speculate that it started either in
the spring of 1901 when Picasso was in Spain or during the second half of the year after he had
travelled to Paris. Regardless of when it started, the Blue Period proved to be a very difficult
time for Picasso. Near the beginning of the Blue Period, one of Picasso’s closest friends, Spanish
painter Carles Casagemas, had committed suicide. Learning of this caused Picasso to fall into a
deep depression. His living and financial situations at the time didn’t help matters either. Upon
arriving in Paris during the second half of 1901, Picasso experienced great poverty due to selling
very few of his paintings and not possessing a fixed studio in which he could work. He also
witnessed this same poverty happening to other people¾mostly that of drunks, beggars, and
prostitutes¾throughout his travels from Spain to Paris.
9
Even before the Blue Period began,
Picasso had experienced much tragedy and hardship that had a lasting effect on his work. In
1895, his seven year old sister, Conchita, died from diphtheria. Four years later, an associate of
his from Barcelona, Spanish painter Hortensi Guell, had also committed suicide. These events
only added more weight to the amount of grief he was feeling at the start of the Blue Period.
10
All of these occurrences in Picasso’s life at that time had a tremendous impact on the
work that Picasso ultimately created during the Blue Period. The subject matter of his work
during that time became very subdued, melancholic, and desolate. The figures depicted in his
paintings were typically prostitutes, drunkards, and everyday people struggling to survive. They
were often afflicted with physical ailments (such as blindness or gauntness) or emotional
ailments (such as loneliness or anguish), and their bodies were often bent as a sign of how
broken they were by their poverty, which is a feeling Picasso himself was no stranger to at that

9
“Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period – 1901 to 1904,” https://www.pablopicasso.org/blue-period.jsp (Accessed August 11,
2022).
10
Alexxa Gotthardt, “The Emotional Turmoil behind Picasso’s Blue Period,” Artsy (December 13, 2017),
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-emotional-turmoil-picassos-blue-period (Accessed August 11, 2022).

13
time. Picasso’s primary inspiration for these depictions came from his visit to a hospital located
inside of a women’s prison in France, where he saw many people suffering from venereal
diseases. All of his paintings during this time, regardless of the subject matter, were dominated
by various shades and hues of the color blue, hence the reason why it’s called the Blue Period.
The significance of the color blue, which Picasso himself attributed to Casagemas’ suicide, was a
communication of his own pain and grief.
10
By the end of the Blue Period in 1904, Picasso had
created over 170 paintings.
At the time, Picasso’s work from the Blue Period was not well-received. He still had
difficulty selling any of his paintings, with many saying they didn’t want such paintings in their
homes, likely because of the grim subject matter.
11
As a result, financial stability and an
improved critical standing would continue to elude Picasso for several years. However, the
public’s reception to his work from this period would improve drastically over time. Today,
many art enthusiasts and critics alike view Picasso’s pieces from the Blue Period as some of his
strongest work, particularly because of how effectively they communicate feelings of “poverty,
dejection, anguish, and grief.”
10
In 2022, over 70 of Picasso’s paintings from the Blue Period
were displayed in an acclaimed exhibition titled “Painting the Blue Period” at the Phillips
Collection art museum in Washington, DC.
12
Through the suffering of his own human condition,
as well as that of other people around him, Picasso was able to create what is now considered to
be an innovative, original, and fascinating body of work during the Blue Period.

11
Barbara Probst Solomon, “Callow Young Genius,” New York Magazine (September 11, 1995), p. 83. (Accessed
August 11, 2022).
12
“Picasso: Painting the Blue Period,” https://www.phillipscollection.org/event/2022-02-26-exhibition-picasso
(Accessed August 11, 2022).

14
2.2.2: Red Hot Chili Peppers – By the Way
My second example, which conversely focuses on how positive impacts to the state of a
creative individual’s human condition subsequently have a positive effect on their design
process, examines the creation of American rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers’ eighth album,
2002’s By the Way.

Figure 4: “By the Way”, 2002 (https://www.discogs.com/release/1162737-Red-Hot-Chili-Peppers-By-The-Way)

The primary architect for By the Way was the band’s guitarist, John Frusciante, who wrote most
of the album’s music and melodies. Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis described the
writing process of By the Way as “a whole different experience from Californication. John was

15
back to himself and brimming with confidence.”
13
Bassist Flea observed, “John went to this
whole [other] level of artistry.”
14
Frusciante himself described the writing process of the album
as “one of the happiest times in my life.”
15
There were many reasons why John Frusciante was in
such a happy and positive state at the time of the album’s creation. The band’s previous album,
1999’s Californication, their first album with Frusciante in eight years, was met with critical
acclaim and great commercial success, unlike their previous album, 1995’s One Hot Minute.
Californication eventually sold more than 4 million copies in the United States alone by August
9
th
, 2000.
16
The band subsequently followed that album up with a very successful world tour,
exposing them to a wider audience than they’d previously ever had at that point. Frusciante had
also enjoyed three years of sobriety from heroin, cocaine and alcohol addiction, and
simultaneously made several other positive changes to his lifestyle, such as taking up
gymnastics, reading, changing to a healthier organic diet, and abstaining from sex.
17
Kiedis was
also experiencing some positive changes to his lifestyle that in turn had positive effects on his
own creative process for By the Way, such as being clean from heroin and cocaine addiction for
almost two years, and his relationship with American fashion designer, Yohanna Logan,
flourishing.
8
All of these positive changes happening in tandem resulted in very prolific
songwriting sessions for the band, as well as a productive atmosphere throughout the recording
of the album.

13
Anthony Kiedis, Larry Sloman, Scar Tissue (New York City, United States of America: Hyperion, October 6,
2004), p. 456-465.
14
Q Issue n. 238 (May 2006), p. 85. (Accessed on July 17, 2022).
15
Helen Dalley, “John Frusciante: The New Album and the Lost Guitar Heroes of the 80s,” Total Guitar (August
2002), http://thechilisource.com/2002-august-total-guitar/ (Accessed July 19, 2022).
16
Recording Industry Association of America. RIAA. [Washington, D.C.: Recording Industry Association of
America, 2002] Web. https://www.riaa.com/gold-platinum/?tab_active=default-
award&ar=Red+Hot+Chili+Peppers&ti=&format=&type=#search_section
17
“John Frusciante: Perso e Ritrovato,” Il Mucchio Selvaggio Issue n. 570 (16 to 22 March 2004),
https://web.archive.org/web/20070928042122/http://www.johnfrusciante.com/interviews/translation_mucchioselvag
gio.pdf (Accessed July 17, 2022).

16
Like Californication, By the Way was met with critical acclaim and great commercial
success, with one critic describing the album as “a near-perfect balance of gutter grime and high-
art aspiration.”
18
The album went on to sell more than 8 million copies worldwide, with more
than 2 million being sold in the United States alone by October 19
th
, 2007.
16
To this day, By the
Way remains a beloved classic to many of the band’s fans, and several of the album’s songs
(such as “Can’t Stop”, “Don’t Forget Me”, “Throw Away Your Television”, and the title track)
are staples of the band’s live shows. Through all of these positive impacts on their respective
human conditions, the band was able to create what many consider to be a lush and sonically
gorgeous masterpiece of an album.

My research on these examples has led me to believe that it’s futile to even argue about
whether strong and meaningful work comes strictly from a place of great positivity or negativity,
because strong work has¾and continues to¾come from both places. It all depends on the
individual creating the work and what particularly influences their work. Different people react
in different ways under certain circumstances. Something that negatively impacts one designer’s
process could in fact have a positive impact on another designer’s process, and vice versa.
Regardless of whether positive or negative circumstances have a stronger impact on the design
process, what really matters is how well the work is executed. What does ideas or feelings does
the work communicate? How does it communicate them? How does the designer react to it?
How does the work’s audience react to it? If all of these questions can be answered in a clear and

18
Tom Moon, “By the Way,” Rolling Stone (July 2, 2002),
https://web.archive.org/web/20110116052304/http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/by-the-way-
20020702 (Accessed July 19, 2022).

17
explicit way, then the work is a success regardless of whether the person’s design process was
impacted by something positive or negative.

18
Chapter 3: My Design Process
3.1: What My Design Process Is Like
Now that we have a better understanding of the how the human condition affects the
design process, I want to discuss my own design process and how it’s affected by my own
human condition. As a designer and lifelong artist, I've always been organized, and have done
things in a very analytical and structured way. I've found that while these are good qualities to
have, applying the design process to real life doesn't work very well. Whenever I’ve tried to
work out whatever issues I’m confronted with in my personal life from the perspective of a
designer—that is, through constant analyzation, rearranging, and correction—I find that doing
this doesn’t work simply because that’s not how life works. Life in general is tumultuous and
unpredictable, like a wild roller coaster ride. Rigidly trying to apply the design process to
something as organic and free flowing as life is like trying to make an unruly, hyperactive child
sit still. It can’t be done. This has led me to adopting more of a hands-off, “take-things-as-they-
come” approach with many of the conflicts that arise in my life. That’s not to say that I just lay
down and accept everything that happens, but I don’t approach my problems like a designer
anymore because it’s caused me to overthink things and often overlook certain details that are
crucial to consider in rectifying those problems. The problems we experience as human
beings¾that is, those that affect the human condition¾are not the same kind of problems that
designers try to solve through their work. They both require a different kind of approach in order
to be solved.
Since high school, for most of the projects that I work on, I always do things in stages.
The first thing I usually do is try to come up with approximately six to twelve “thumbnail” ideas
for the project, which are very small sketches of my ideas that I usually draw out in pencil. They

19
aren’t terribly detailed, but they visually capture the gist of the idea and should be easy to
understand upon first glance. Something I learned early on as a designer is that your first idea
isn’t always your best idea; there are often many different avenues that a project could go down,
and it’s to everybody’s benefit to explore every possibility before deciding on where to take the
project.

Figure 5: “Mrs. Eaves Thumbnails” by Allen Zimmerman

When I try to come up with ideas for a new project, I find inspiration in an assortment of
different things. My first instinct is to consider any relevant past experiences of mine, as well as
whatever style of art is piquing my interest at that time, whatever music I’m listening to,
whatever books I’m reading, and whatever it is I’m doing as a recreational hobby (such as going

20
for nature walks.) One of the most important things for me when it comes to new projects is
relatability; if I can’t find a way to personally connect with a project on some level, I’m not
likely to come up with many strong ideas or even want to see the project through to the end. If
none of these things end up inspiring me, I then conduct research on whatever the project’s
specifications are. For example, if I was asked to design packaging for a food item, I would
research the history of that food, the company producing it, and the type of packaging typically
used for it, while also keeping in mind any specifications listed in the project brief.
Once I have enough thumbnails and feel as though I’ve explored every possible way I
could go through with a proposed project, I then try to get feedback from my professors or my
peers on which of my ideas resonate with them and which ones I should move forward with.
Once I get an adequate amount of feedback, I then come up with typically three to six rough
ideas, or “roughs” as I call them. These roughs are bigger and more detailed sketches of the
thumbnail ideas I’d decided to move forward with, and serve as a clearer representation of what
the final project would look like if I were to take in that direction. Like my thumbnails, my
roughs are also usually done solely in pencil.

21

Figure 6: “Mrs. Eaves Roughs” by Allen Zimmerman

As soon as I’ve finished my roughs, I again go to my professors or my peers and try to get
feedback. The idea that resonates the most with whoever I talk to is usually the one I end up
going with, though there have been exceptions in the past because I’ve felt particularly drawn to
another idea I’ve had. It doesn’t always work out to my benefit when this happens, but it’s
important for a designer to follow their instincts and to take risks sometimes. Doing this has

22
helped me gain a greater understanding of my own design process, as well as how the human
condition has both benefitted and sabotaged my own practice.
All the work I’ve done as a designer touches on the human condition in some shape or
form. I’ve long been fascinated by the human condition and its numerous facets, particularly how
we feel, process information, and interact with the world around us. My hope is that my work
will help people better understand the human condition and, by extension, themselves. Through
my work, I try to create something that visually communicates an idea or a feeling that I want to
express to my audience. For example, in December 2019, I was tasked with creating a poster that
visualized a poem by Jim Morrison called “Sirens”. I was given free rein over the artistic
direction I could take the project in, as long as my choices were relevant to my interpretation of
the poem. After reading it a few times, the poem “Sirens” struck me as being very tragic,
remorseful, and, to an extent, self-deprecating. The end result of my work reflected something
reminiscent of a tortured poet, drunkenly writing and rewriting his poem over and over in the
hope that it will eventually convey exactly how he feels about a lover of his, though he knows
that she won’t likely reciprocate his feelings or even read the poem. My peers at that time told
me that my poster effectively captured the tragedy and sense of longing that the poem exuded,
which is exactly what I was hoping my work would express to those who saw it.

23

Figure 7: “Sirens” by Allen Zimmerman

To make my design process more interesting for myself, I often look for alternate
creative outlets or mediums to work with (such as photography, collage, illustration, or writing)
in an effort to avoid creative stagnancy, particularly when I’m feeling distressed or burned out.
Combining different mediums together, particularly digital and fine arts mediums, is something

24
that often leads to more interesting results visually and helps me stay connected to my roots as a
studio artist. “Sirens” is a strong example of this, with all of that piece’s writings and blood
stains being done on paper, and everything else being done digitally. Being able to bridge those
two worlds together has deepened my love for what I get to do as a designer, as well as made my
design process a lot more open-ended as far as what my work can ultimately become is
concerned.
One of my biggest flaws as a designer, I feel, is that I become bored very easily with
whatever it is I’m working on. I have been called “creatively restless” by several of my peers in
the past. This has resulted in my collective body of work becoming very eclectic and varied in
terms of style and execution. There are upsides to this (such as displaying my willingness to
embrace a number of different styles, as well as my adeptness at utilizing an assortment of
different mediums and tools), as well as downsides (such as this creating inconsistencies and an
overall lack of unity throughout my collective body of work.) This has also had an effect on my
design process. In more recent years, I’ve noticed that I often try to work at a faster pace on my
projects in an effort to counteract this flaw of mine. This, too, has upsides (such as forcing me to
act more spontaneously and be more decisive over the choices I had to make), as well as
downsides (such as occasionally making what turned out to be questionable design choices and,
frankly, rushing through my work.) These issues were things I hoped I could overcome by
working on my thesis project, which I knew would take course for exactly one year.

3.2: My Inspiration for This Project
Before discussing my thesis project in length, I’d like to talk about what inspired my
project and what the state of my design process was during that time. There were two things

25
specifically that inspired The Strain I Am Under. My primary inspiration has its roots in another
project I had started working on during New Year’s Eve 2020. At the time, it had been nine
months since the pandemic had put life everywhere on hold. I had just finished my first semester
at USC as a matter of fact, and it was not a pleasant one for me. Back in March 2020, when the
pandemic started, I had developed a crippling creative block; I couldn’t illustrate, design, paint,
or write anything, no matter how hard I tried to. This persisted well into my first semester at
USC; being asked to do design work felt like pulling teeth. Fast-forward to New Year’s Eve
2020, and I was still stewing over this creative block I had. That night, while cleaning out my
desk, I found an old haiku poem I had written in 2016. Reading it again suddenly inspired me to
write five more haiku poems on the spot. Just like that, my nine month long creative block was
gone. Over the next ten days, I had decided to write as many poems as I was able to, and by the
tenth day, I had written 170 haiku and senryū poems. On the seventh day, I had decided to put
them all together in a book that I eventually titled Therapy, as writing those poems proved to be
very therapeutic for me. Four months later, in May 2021, I was asked by my professors at USC
to start thinking about my thesis project. Initially, I was quite stumped about what it was I
wanted to do for my project. Then I remembered how good it felt putting Therapy together in
January, and that got me thinking about how my design process and workflow had been affected
in 2020. I thought that there had to be some sort of a connection between the human condition
and the design process, and I wanted to learn more about it not only so I could better understand
what I had gone through in 2020, but so other designers and creative individuals could better
understand themselves if they experienced something like I had in 2020. I decided right then and
there that my thesis project would be a case study on the creation of a new poetry book, with the

26
poetry in it being a documentation of sorts for the state of my human condition and my design
process over a prolonged period of time.
My second source of inspiration for this project were a lot of the things that I had
experienced prior to and during the production of this project. In addition to the stresses that
typically come with working a demanding job and being in school, numerous different
occurrences, coupled with really poor timing, had a tremendous effect on the work I was doing
for this project. Throughout the year, I’ve had to repeatedly see my mother deal intermittently
with various ongoing issues concerning her sister, who is going through a turbulent divorce with
little support from anyone else, and her elderly mother, whose physical and mental health are
steadily declining, all of which has been unbearably stressful for her. In July 2021, one of my
closest friends, whom I loved like a little sister, suddenly cut off communication with me and
gave me no explanation as to why. On Christmas Day 2021, I’d learned from my parents that
another of my aunts was rushed to the emergency room and had to go have her gallbladder
removed. A couple of weeks later, the same thing happened to my father. Around the same time,
my mother’s sister had a mild heart attack (thankfully, she was all right.) In February 2022, the
war in Ukraine started, which greatly disturbed and angered me because I’m a Ukrainian myself
and I have family over there who have been affected by the war. In April 2022, one of my dogs,
who was just eight years old, suddenly and unexpectedly got cancer and passed away over the
span of two days. On top of all of that, I’d been battling with depression, anxiety, panic attacks,
weight gain, insomnia, and feelings of isolation on an almost daily basis. Turning on the news
every day and seeing most of the world slowly lose its mind didn’t help matters either, which
added to my problems with depression and anxiety. Not only did these events influence the work
I was doing for this project, but they also had a significant impact on my design process and

27
many of the other projects I was working on at the time, as well. While these events didn’t
directly inspire the idea of my thesis project itself, they did add more fuel to the metaphorical fire
and helped inspire me to see it through to the end, especially as working on it became more and
more difficult for me from a mental and emotional standpoint.

28
Chapter 4: Case Study: The Strain I Am Under
4.1: The Process of Designing a Book
Now that we have an understanding of what my design process is like and what inspired
my thesis project, I’d like to talk about book design. In order to understand and appreciate all
that I’ve done for my thesis project, I feel that it is necessary to know what it means to design a
book. There are numerous different facets to book design that have to be addressed when putting
a book together. The first thing that goes into designing a book is, of course, its contents. A book
designer must know what kind of a book they’re going to be designing, such as a photography
book, a novel, or a comic book, and the book’s contents determine that. Knowing what kind of a
book is going to be designed will determine almost everything else about the book, especially
with regard to how the book’s contents will ultimately be arranged, and how the book will be
printed and bound. A book designer should also have all of the book’s contents ready before they
even start designing it into a book. It goes without saying that a book’s contents are its
metaphorical guts. What’s inside of a book is what the book’s author wants other people to read
or see, and it’s also what people are paying to read or see. If a book’s contents aren’t sorted out
and organized beforehand, then it will never become a proper book.
The next aspect of designing a book that must be addressed by a book designer is that of
typography. According to CareerFoundry, an online UX/UI and web developer, typography is
“the art of arranging letters and text in a way that makes [it] legible, clear, and visually appealing
to the reader.”
19
Almost every book contains some element of typography in it, whether it’s on
the outside or inside of the book. Typography itself is extremely broad, and there’s so much to

19
Jaye Hannah, “What Is Typography, and Why Is It Important? A Beginner’s Guide,” CareerFoundry (August 3,
2022), https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ui-design/beginners-guide-to-typography/ (Accessed on September 9,
2022).

29
consider that it can almost seem overwhelming at times. The first thing a book designer must
consider with typography is what typefaces and fonts they will use. A typeface is “a design style
which comprises a myriad of characters of varying sizes and weight,” while a font is “a graphical
representation of text character.”
19
An example of a typeface is Times New Roman, which this
paper is written in, and an example of a font is Times New Roman Italic. Several thousands of
typefaces and fonts exist, and each of them are designed for different purposes. For example,
some typefaces (such as Calibri and Helvetica) work better for body text in books, newspapers,
or magazines, while other typefaces (such as Mrs. Eaves and Impact) are better for more
decorative purposes, like on title pages or book covers. It’s the same for fonts, as well. While a
book designer’s personal tastes will influence what fonts and typefaces they ultimately use, one
must consider how their readers will react to them. If a typeface or font is treated in a way where
it is illegible or aesthetically unappealing, then most people won’t bother to engage with the
book it’s a part of. It’s important to keep the typefaces and fonts used consistent throughout the
book in order to prevent its contents from coming across as confusing or messy.
There are numerous different elements to typography outside of typefaces and fonts that a
book designer must also consider when designing a book. One of the most important elements is
that of spacing, of which there are different kinds, such as kerning (which is the spacing between
two individual letters), tracking (which is the spacing between groups of letters), and leading
(which is the vertical spacing between lines of type.) How much a book designer will have to
adjust these spacings depends on the typefaces and fonts they use, as well as their size. The
spacing between individual letters, words, and lines is absolutely critical to get right, especially
for a more type-driven kind of book such as a novel or a poetry book, because spacing plays a
big part in the legibility and visual appeal of text. If the text in a book isn’t clear and easy to

30
read, then no one is going to want to read it. Another important element of typography is size.
Every typographical element in a book, especially body text, must be an appropriate size in order
for it to be readable and aesthetically pleasing. The size of the text is determined heavily by the
typefaces used and the size of the book itself. Two other important elements of typography are
the weight and color of the text. Regarding the former, the weight refers to the thickness of the
individual letters and words. The weight typically increases or decreases concurrently with the
font size, though it can also be changed without affecting the size. Weight plays a strong part in
text being legible, with it helping to make anything from the title of a book cover to body text
clear enough to read. Regarding the latter, color in typography is something that can vary in
usage, depending on the book and its contents. For example, body text is almost always colored
black, while things such as footnotes can be colored differently, depending on the author’s
preferences. Color in typography tends to change the most for a book’s cover art and spine, in
which case the text’s color is considered along with that of the art or background color.
Typography might be the most important element in designing a book, especially when there are
no visual elements, because the typography is what relays the information to the reader. If a book
designer does not have strong typography in their book, then the book is almost guaranteed to be
considered a failure.
The third aspect of book design that must be addressed by a book designer is placement.
In addition to text, every visual element in a book¾including photographs, illustrations, and
figures such as graphs or charts¾must be arranged in an aesthetically pleasing way. Size plays a
significant part in where things can be placed on an individual page or a book cover. Often, a
book designer must try to find an appropriate balance between the visual or typographical
elements and the leftover negative space on the pages they’re on. Negative space is something

31
that tends to be easily overlooked, so a book designer must remember to it keep in mind when
designing a book in order to maintain that balance. The placement of these elements in a book
play a significant part in determining the aesthetic appeal of the visual elements and text.
Everything has to feel as though it’s in its right place. A strong sign that everything is expertly
placed throughout a book is if the reader doesn’t question it upon first glance. If any of the
book’s visual or typographical elements aren’t appropriated arranged, then it runs the risk of
coming across as being poorly designed or illegible.
The final aspect of book design that must be addressed by a book designer is the book’s
physical components. As soon as the book’s contents are arranged into neatly organized and
divided pages, it’s ready for printing. Before it can be printed, however, there are still things that
a book designer must consider. This includes finalizing the book’s physical dimensions,
determining how the book will be bound together, how thick the book’s pages will be, whether a
hardcover or a paperback cover will be used, and whether the book will be printed using either
RGB or CMYK color models. Regarding the latter, RGB (which stands for “red, green, blue”) is
a color model designed for displaying digital works such as electronic books, while CMYK
(which stands for “cyan, magenta, yellow, key”) is designed for printing with ink, which how it
is for most books. Most of the other physical components are mostly a personal preference of the
author, though the book’s contents and tradition can serve as an influence, as well. The book’s
physical components can say a lot about the book’s contents and the author. They’re the first
thing everybody sees in a book and can help reel in potential readers. If a book’s physical
components are poorly put together, it will turn off a potential reader as soon as they see or touch
it. It’s important for a nicely designed book to be physically sound, easy to interact with, and
comfortable to hold.

32
As you can see, book designers are not like typical graphic designers. There’s a lot that
goes into designing a book, with certain aspects of the process being things that some traditional
graphic designers might never have to consider with their own work, such as arranging text or
determining the thickness of a particular type of paper. It’s because of book designers that so
much information is at people’s disposal all over the world. Every kind of book, from art and
poetry books to instruction manuals and photography collections, exists in part because of the
work that book designers do. Though a large amount of design work is becoming digitized, there
are still so many book designers out there that design and print all kinds of physical books.

4.2: My Book’s Contents
The Strain I Am Under features 360 assorted haiku and senryū poems (picked out of a
total of 4,835 that I had written for the project), spread out evenly at 45 poems each over eight
chapters, which feature their own distinct themes. Each of the eight chapter opening pages
feature a black-and-white photograph that is meant to act as a visual element to the overall tone
of the chapters they’re respectively a part of. In addition to the poetry itself, the book also
features a front matter page, an epigraph, a dedication, an introduction, an acknowledgements
page, and an about the author page. There is also a written description on the book’s back cover
that explains the book’s narrative and briefly describes the subject matter of the poetry. The
finished book contains 390 pages in total, front to back. Its dimensions are 8.5² by 5.5². The title
of the book is actually a lyric that I lifted from a Radiohead song called “Street Spirit (Fade
Out)”, which is from their 1995 album, The Bends. I felt that the phrase was bold, poetic, and
direct, and that it succinctly expressed what I wanted this project to say about my experience and
the work I did for it. I worked on this project from May 3
rd
, 2021, to May 3
rd
, 2022.

33

4.2.1: The Cover Art
I put together the book’s cover art in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator over the
course of a couple days. I had actually been working on the book’s cover art while I was writing
the poetry, and I ended up doing multiple rough versions of it on paper before introducing it to
Photoshop or Illustrator. Here is one of those early roughs:

Figure 8: “The Strain I Am Under Roughs” by Allen Zimmerman

As I was writing my poetry, I made it a habit of mine to keep track of how many poems I ended
up writing each day, just so I could have some idea of what my workflow looked like. About
halfway through the project, the idea for the book’s cover art came to me: present those numbers
in a linear arrangement on an intensely colored background. Here is the final piece of cover art
for The Strain I Am Under:

34

Figure 9: “The Strain I Am Under” by Allen Zimmerman

My process for putting the cover art together was simple. I wrote the numbers out on
assorted sheets of paper, experimenting with different writing utensils (such as graphite pencils,
ballpoint pens, copic markers, and ink brushes) and types of paper (such as notebook paper and
printer paper) until I found results that struck me visually. I then scanned the papers I decided to
use onto a flash drive and dumped them into Adobe Photoshop. It was there that I tweaked the

35
images’ size, saturation, hue, and transparency. Then, I moved over to Adobe Illustrator and
created the background of the cover art, using the Paint Brush tools. Once that was done, I
transferred that file into Photoshop and started arranging everything together. The last thing I did
was transfer those files back into Illustrator to add in the book’s title, as well as the text on the
book’s spine and back cover. I’ve always found that between Photoshop and Illustrator, the latter
is the better of the two for adding type in, namely because of its Type tool has better interfacing.
Unlike the cover art for my previous book, Therapy, the idea for the cover art to The
Strain I Am Under came to me very quickly, which I thought was very surprising, considering
how much stress I was under at the time. The cover art was heavily inspired by the album covers
of Trickfinger and Trickfinger II by American acid house musician, Trickfinger. Through those
two album covers, I realized that numbers could represent almost anything, and I wanted to use
that to my advantage. Though the numbers in the cover art initially represented how many poems
I wrote each day over the course of a year, they later came to represent how each and every day
was like a different battle for me. Some days were easier to navigate through, while others were
more arduous and stressful. My decision to use intense colors such as red, red-orange, and black
further illustrated this point, giving the covers an air of ominousness and unease. In addition to
being visually intense, I wanted the cover art to look organic and rough. Since poetry is so
personal in nature, I felt it would have been inappropriate to use a photograph or a digital image
for the cover art. Just as I wrote my poems out on paper, I wanted the book’s cover art to reflect
this, as well. It also made the designer in me really happy, since I enjoy combining both digital
and fine arts mediums together, as I’d previously mentioned.
Something I didn’t realize until I started doing it myself was how important designing a
book cover is for putting a book together. Contrary to the popular expression, “Don’t judge a

36
book by its cover,” this is something that almost every person does with books. According to
Limelight Publishing, a well-known publishing company, “a book cover design is one of the
most important aspects of marketing a book. If the cover is not designed well, you will lose
sales.”
20
A book cover is more than just a visual component to a book; it’s the book’s face, so to
speak. It’s the first thing that everyone sees with any book, creating. As such, a visually
appealing book cover has become something that reader, book retailers, and designers alike all
want from a book. For a reader, a strong book cover is what piques their curiosity about a book
they’re unfamiliar with and gets them interested in that book’s contents. For a book retailer, a
strong book cover is a strong seller; since book covers are what help interest readers in the book,
strong book covers are what help make book retailers money, in a way. For a designer, a strong
book cover is a reflection of the book’s contents, its writer’s feelings about said contents, and/or
who the designer is. Considering all of this, a book cover might possibly be the most important
component to a book because almost no one is going to want to buy, sell, or read one if it has a
visually unappealing cover. These days, a traditional looking book cover won’t cut it; most
people want book covers that are new, exciting, and beautifully executed.
20
Several classic
novels, such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Herman Melville’s Moby
Dick, have seen a resurgence in sales over the years due in part to new book covers being
designed for them.

20
“The importance of a stand out book cover,” Limelight Publishing (2022),
https://www.limelightpublishing.com/en-us/blogs/news/cover-design (Accessed September 8, 2022).

37

Figure 10: “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, 1865 (https://www.limelightpublishing.com/en-us/blogs/news/cover-
design)

Figure 11: “Moby Dick”, 1851 (https://www.limelightpublishing.com/en-us/blogs/news/cover-design)

As daunting as it was, putting together the book cover for The Strain I Am Under was arguably
my favorite part of the entire project. In a weird way, it felt like I wasn’t even working on my

38
thesis project because it was so starkly different from what I had done over the course of the past
year, which was mostly write. It felt so refreshing, and it also reminded me of how much I love
being a designer and a visual artist.

4.2.2: The Eight Chapters
The Strain I Am Under is broken up into eight chapters, with each one featuring 45
poems and their own distinct themes. My intention with the themes was to effectively recreate
what I felt like I was going through in the year that I was writing the poetry and juggling
everything else going on in my life. At the beginning of this project, the state of my human
condition¾particularly the way I was perceiving the things happening around me¾and my
design process were slowly starting to snowball downhill. It continued to worsen over time as
more and more was thrown at me. I felt as though I was losing control over my life and that there
were less choices I could make with each passing day. I was getting pushed closer to my limits,
and I eventually felt as though I was going to boil over and just lash out at anyone or anything
within my vicinity. I felt so low, but at the same time, everything just kept building up. I wanted
to capture that feeling, that of a mental downward spiral and an emotional accretion happening
simultaneously, and I wanted the reader to imagine that happening to somebody as they were
going through the book. The flow of the chapters is essentially what it felt like I was going
through over the course of the year that I spent working on the project.
The first chapter of the book, titled “The Calm Before the Storm”, acts as a prologue to
everything else that’s going to unfold later on. It details how life was for the unnamed
protagonist in the book before he was put under a tremendous amount of strain from the world
around him. The subject matter of some of the poetry in this chapter reveals what the

39
protagonist’s primary interests were before becoming strained, such as love, nature, and an
appreciation for life in general. Overall, this chapter is a metaphor for how I thought and felt
before becoming overwhelmed by everything happening in my life at the start of this project.
Many of the poems I wrote for this chapter were incidentally among the first ones I wrote for this
project.
The second chapter, titled “And So It Begins…”, sees the protagonist starting to be
affected by a high amount of strain from various different external forces. These forces are
metaphors for the things that were actually affecting me as I was writing the poetry, such as
personal struggles, social and political issues, stress from school and work, and dreams I was
having at the time. Interestingly, even though the protagonist is now under a lot of strain, we see
him manage to maintain his optimism and try to do all he can to persevere through what he
believes is merely “a bump in the road.” This is the last chapter in the book with poetry that
features any kind of lighthearted humor in it.
The third chapter, titled “The Emphasis on Coping”, is rather self-explanatory: here, we
see the protagonist do what he can to cope with his increasingly difficult situation. The strain he
is under is slowly mounting, but rather than give in to despair, he instead gains more of an
appreciation for the little things and doing what he can to catch a breath whenever and however
possible. He still retains his optimism, but acknowledges that his situation is getting worse and
harder to manage. This chapter was heavily influenced by the walks I would take to decompress
and the thoughts that would run through my head during those times, as well as conversations I
was having with friends and family members. With the exception of a few poems in the final
chapter of the book, this chapter is the last to feature any haiku poetry; the majority of the poetry
in the rest of the book is senryū poetry, which is of a more personal nature than haiku poetry.

40
The fourth chapter, titled “Nowhere to Hide”, is where things really start to get bad for
the protagonist. The external forces implementing the strain that he is under begin to make
themselves more apparent and start to spread their influence everywhere at a rapid pace. The
protagonist tries to seek refuge from it, but to no avail. The theme of desperation is very
prevalent here. Over the course of the chapter, we see the death of the protagonist’s hope and the
last traces of the optimism he had held onto so tightly. A lot of the poetry in this chapter, as well
as the chapter’s title, were inspired by the feelings of anger and hopelessness I felt whenever I
would watch the news, which was almost every day. As a result, a lot of the poetry in this
chapter starts to become more overtly political and dark in humor.
The fifth chapter, titled “Under Their Collective Thumbs”, is something of a continuation
of the previous chapter. The external forces implementing the almost unbearable amount of
strain are now in complete control, leaving the protagonist feeling as though he is living in a
nightmarish dystopian society. He feels as though is he suffocating here. At this point, while his
optimism is gone, he hasn’t necessarily become a pessimist or a defeatist. Rather, we see him
become a political dissident, crying out and rebelling against the blatant corruption that has taken
over. Sadly, as often is the case, his cries fall on deaf ears, and we subsequently see him become
cynical and bitter. This particular chapter was inspired by a lot of different things. As with the
previous chapter, it was partially inspired by a lot of what I was seeing on the news every day. In
particular, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a huge source of inspiration. As a Ukrainian
myself, it disturbed and angered me deeply to see what was happening to those people. It still
does… In addition, socio-political novels such as Animal Farm by George Orwell and
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, which I was reading at the time, were another strong
influence. In a way, this entire chapter was just a metaphor for going down a road you can never

41
come back from. I’d like to think that could apply to both the protagonist himself and the world
he lives in.
The sixth chapter, titled “Tearing Myself Apart”, is arguably the darkest chapter in the
book. In it, we see the protagonist, who is no longer able to deal with the insufferable amount of
strain he is under, isolate himself and retreat inward. There, he finds himself at war with himself
over everything that has happened, past and present. There are several prevalent themes,
including self-loathing, betrayal, broken-heartedness, and drastic change in one’s beliefs. The
tone of this chapter was greatly influenced by some of the music I was listening to at the time.
The Wall by Pink Floyd, Damaged by Black Flag, and the music of American indie rock band,
Pedro the Lion, were all strong influences on the tone of the poetry I wrote for this chapter
because of the way they exuded pensive angst and pent-up frustration. Furthermore, the name of
the chapter itself was inspired by a lyric from the song “Tearing” by Rollins Band. Of all the
chapters in the book, this one was the hardest for me to write because it forced me to
acknowledge a lot of things that I don’t think I would have been able to otherwise. I’ve learned,
though, that that is the nature of writing anything deeply personal. It comes with the territory and
is therefore inevitable.
The seventh chapter, titled “The Crescendo”, is, as the name implies, the loudest
movement in this literary suite. Here, we see everything come to a head. The protagonist
emerges from his self-imposed exile into himself and defiantly challenges the external forces that
had put him under so much strain to a fight. These forces are just as anxious to fight, angry at the
fact that someone is resisting them, but also eager to make an example out of him in front of the
rest of the world. We see the protagonist renew his calls for rebellion, and he asserts that he is
going to stand his ground and go out swinging, even if it means getting hurt further or possibly

42
dying. Nothing scares him at this point. Even though this is the penultimate chapter of the book,
there’s an air of finality to it, as though this is really going to be the end of everything. The
poetry in this chapter was inspired by a lot of those tense moments where I wanted to lash out
and scream in people’s faces because I was feeling particularly close to my breaking point.
Obviously though, I didn’t do that because that wouldn’t be right of me to do. This was perhaps
the hardest chapter for me to arrange the poetry for because I really wanted it to feel like the
tension was gradually and steadily building until it all finally came to a head, ending on what I
wanted to feel like a jump cut to black, à la The Sopranos.
The eighth and final chapter, titled “As the Dust Settles”, sees the metaphorical storm
coming to an end. The clouds start to part a bit and the protagonist sees sunshine for the first time
in a long time. He feels it touching his face, and this allows him to finally breathe easy. We see
the return of his optimism, but now it’s mixed with a lingering bit of cynicism because of all that
he had been through. He’s pensive, contemplating the future and wondering what it will hold
from here on out, but knows that what he went through could just as easily happen again. The
end of the protagonist’s journey is actually somewhat ambiguous, which was intended to be a
nod to the quote by Paul Tillich that I included at the beginning of the first chapter of this paper.
None of us know exactly what the future holds, and it’s no different for the protagonist. This was
the most important chapter in the book to me because I wanted it to be the one that people would
read and hopefully learn something from, particularly that even though life can be wild and even
unbearable sometimes, it’s always worth seeing through to the end because there’s still so much
good in the world. The protagonist may be walking away from all of this scarred and hurting, but
he’s still carrying on despite everything.

43
Additionally, every chapter features a black-and-white photograph featured on the
chapter opening page. Though they’re very abstract in composition, these photographs are meant
to act as visualizations to the overall tone of the chapters they’re each a part of. Initially, I was
planning to add assorted hand-drawn illustrations, watercolor paintings, and collages to a select
number of poems in the book (approximately one third or one half, at most), but I quickly
became disenchanted with this idea because I couldn’t settle on a particular style that felt
appropriate. The idea to use abstract photographs came to me one rainy day in April 2022. After
having a particularly frustrating day at school, I spontaneously decided to go to the mall for the
first time in a few years. While I was walking around, just blowing off some steam, I felt my
phone fidgeting around in my pocket. When I took it out, I saw that my phone’s camera was on
and that it had somehow taken the following picture:

44

Figure 12: “The Crescendo” by Allen Zimmerman

To this day, I have no idea what this is a photograph of (though I can see what I believe is the tip
of one of my fingers), but something about it really struck me. It has a particular intensity that
really resonated with how I was feeling that day. It was then that I came up with the idea to
include an abstract photograph at the start of every chapter in lieu of including assorted pieces of
media throughout the book. The idea of the only visual element in the book being abstract
photographs resonated with me because it contrasted so heavily with how direct most of the
poetry in the book is. The photographs would set the initial mood, while the poetry would firmly

45
establish that mood. Having only eight photographs instead of 180 assorted pieces of media also
helped keep the focus on the poetry itself, which is supposed to be the point of a poetry book,
and it made dealing with an already substantial workload much easier for me.

4.2.3: The Poetry
The poetry in The Strain I Am Under consists entirely of haiku and senryū poetry. Both
haiku and senryū are types of short Japanese poetry that consist of seventeen syllables spanning
over three lines that respectively follow a five-seven-five syllable pattern. The lines in these
types of poetry do not follow any kind of rhyming pattern. What sets haiku and senryū poetry
apart from each other is the subject matter: the former is strictly about nature, while the latter is
typically about human foibles. Also, while haiku poetry tends to be very serious in tone, senryū
poetry tends to be more humorous or satirical. That being said, however, both forms of poetry
are able to be written in whatever tone is preferred by the writer.
21

There were a couple of different reasons why writing both haiku and senryū poetry for
this project had appealed to me. Firstly, the short length of both types of poetry made writing a
lot of poems at once very fast and easy. This was especially helpful because it was essential for
me to be able to write down all of my thoughts and ideas as they came to me. Secondly, the
thought of being able to say a lot with so little appealed to me greatly. When I was writing these
poems, there was a lot that I wanted to say, and as it slowly became more of a sizeable project
for me, I didn’t want the work to be seen as excessive or drawn out just for the sake of being
poetic. It was important to me that the poetry came across as very immediate and to-the-point to
the reader because the book contains a personal narrative centered around being put under a

21
“What are Haiku, Senryu and Tanka?” Akita International Haiku Network (July 26, 2009),
https://akitahaiku.com/what-are-haiku-senryu-and-tanka/ (Accessed on June 14, 2022).

46
tremendous amount of pressure. Lastly, both haiku and senryū poetry are types of poetry that I
don’t see very many poets going out of their way to write today. Since I have a strong admiration
for these two types of poetry, I decided to do something different from what most poets are
currently doing and something that could also potentially be interpreted as feeling fresh to some
people.
The poetry in The Strain I Am Under spans many different subjects. As I’ve previously
mentioned, some of the poetry in the book touches on subjects such as coping with pressure,
nature, love, desperation, heartbreak, having an appreciation for life, and drastic change in one’s
beliefs. Other prevalent subjects include personal themes (such as alienation, loneliness,
isolation, anxiety, hopelessness, betrayal, guilt, grief, anger, acceptance, the duality of human
nature, and having a sense of purpose), political themes (such as corruption, abuse of power,
hypocrisy, immorality, defiance, dissension, and criticisms of certain political ideologies
[specifically socialism, communism, fascism, and globalism] and political phenomena [including
groupthink, doublethink, and wokeness]), and other miscellaneous themes (such as social media,
the future of the world, dreams, and the lamenting of the state of mankind.)
The way I was writing these poems every day was very immediate and reactionary; if
something happened to me or made me feel a certain way, I would try to write about it,
regardless if it was positive or negative. As a result, The Strain I Am Under feels more like a
personal diary than a book of poetry to me. Everything I wrote more or less reflects how I was
feeling about something on a certain day, regardless of what the subject matter was. My hope for
when people read this book is that, at the very least, they can understand what it was I was trying
to say, relate to it in some way, and walk away from it feeling a little less alone. I think that’s all
any of us hope for when we offer up our heart and soul’s work to be judged by others, even

47
though, as one of my design professors once told me, designers aren’t supposed to be so
emotionally attached to their work.

4.3: Final Assessments
Working on this project¾more specifically, writing these poems and putting
them together in a book¾was simply a vehicle for expressing myself during a time of great
distress. Even though expressing how I felt was the furthest thing from a solution to alleviating
the strain I found myself under, just having the ability to air my grievances without any fear
helped me feel more in control of the situation I was in. If I ever felt particularly frustrated or
overwhelmed, I knew I could just write something down as a means to cope. It didn’t even
matter if whatever I had written ended up becoming a poem or not; just being able to channel my
thoughts and feelings into an outlet provided me with the closest thing to relief that I could come
by during that time. It helped me feel as though I had some control over the state of my human
condition when too many things were impacting it in a negative way. It also helped me maintain
a steady workflow for my design process during this time. American author Lori R. Lopez once
described poetry as “the language of the soul.” I agree wholeheartedly with her statement; after
experiencing all that I have over the past year, just being able to write poetry and express what
my soul was saying made coping with everything affecting the state of my human condition and,
by extension, my design process all the more bearable.
There have long been debates surrounding whether the strongest pieces of work are
influenced more by positive or negative impacts upon one’s human condition. After examining
both sides of that argument, I’ve come to the conclusion that the strongest work is capable of
coming from both kinds of circumstances. Every person reacts differently to the situations they

48
find themselves in and the adversities they face, which means that the work they create can
emerge from a number of different avenues. It depends entirely on the individual and how they
react to whatever is impacting the state of their human condition.
The human condition is something I feel we all must address, especially designers
because of how much it ties into the work that they do. To understand our own respective human
conditions is to understand ourselves, which is something every human has been trying to do
since the beginning of their existence. Applying that understanding of the human condition to the
design process can help give designers a greater ability to recognize their clients’ problems, and
subsequently produce a possible solution to their problems more quickly and efficiently. Having
that understanding and the ability to effectively produce solutions to a client’s problems helps
give a designer a stronger hold over their own design process, which in itself has a beneficial
impact upon the designer’s human condition because they can feel more in control over what it is
they’re able to do through their work. The human condition and the design process are both
deeply intertwined with each other. The sooner more designers understand and accept this, the
sooner they can get a better grasp over their output and their personal lives.

49
Conclusion
For this thesis, I studied the relationship between the human condition and the design
process. After defining what they both are, I was able to attain an understanding of how the
former affects the latter. Though the relationship between the human condition and the design
process is largely a correlative one, the human condition tends to have a greater impact on the
design process because creative individuals such as designers are often driven to incorporate
their feelings and their interests into the work that they do. As I’ve previously stated, designers
need to understand themselves and their own design processes if they want to be able to
understand how to solve their clients’ problems. If they can’t work through the adversities they
face in their personal lives, it can affect their design process tremendously and they won’t be
able to produce the best solution possible for their clients. As such, it’s critical for designers to
recognize how important the human condition is to their work.
In an effort to document how my own human condition was impacting my design
process, I put together a poetry book called The Strain I Am Under as a case study. The finished
book and its contents reflect how the state of my human condition was impacted by numerous
outside factors over the course of a year, such as the stresses associated with work and school,
the war in Ukraine starting, and ongoing issues concerning friends and family. These
occurrences affecting the state of my human condition in turn affected my design process as I
was putting the book together, particularly with regard to how quickly and how often I felt like
working, as well as what I was interested in working on at the time. In the end, finishing this
project gave me greater insight into how my own design process works, how I react to and cope
with the stressors and adversities I face, and what it is I can do to improve both the state of my
human condition and the efficiency of my design process.

50
If you’re a designer and you’re currently struggling with certain things in your life, I want
you to ask yourself: why are you the way that you are? If you already know how to answer that
question, it’s my opinion that you’re well on your way to becoming a greater designer than you
already are. If you don’t know how to answer that question, then I hope you’re able work with
yourself enough to find out how you can.

51
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Asset Metadata

Creator Zimmerman, Allen Mark (author)

Core Title The strain I am under: the human condition and its effects on my design process

School Roski School of Art and Design

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Design

Degree Conferral Date 2022-12

Publication Date 10/28/2022

Defense Date 10/28/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag book design,creative process,design,design process,designer,human condition,OAI-PMH Harvest,Poetry,strain,Stress

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Wojciak, Ewa (committee chair), Ellenburg, Jason Fowler (committee member), Trujillo, Osvaldo (committee member)

Creator Email allenzim@usc.edu,zimmerman.allen@yahoo.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC112212328

Unique identifier UC112212328

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Legacy Identifier etd-ZimmermanA-11290

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