F+S

 

So, MTV changed it's logo to be more simple and not just about how it says to the public, "music television" They mentioned how they wanted it to portray all sorts of identities. For the logo it self, I feel they could have done more with it, to me it just looks like the cropped in the initial image and inverted it. Although, the logo to me, is iconic and definitely will always be associated with that channel, and pop culture for a VERY long time. 

yahoo article

Design Process

While reading this chapter it was interesting to see someone's different view of what he thinks is the right way to design. I feel that process is a personal thing, and that person needs to find what works best with them. Yes, you can be taught, and you can be given ideas and directions to head towards, but even when you do hear that you should design a certain way within the process it seems to never stick, because it's not their way of doing process. While working here at school it's difficult for me to even develop a valuable amount of process. Yes, I'll have iterations, but if I don't get that specific number to do, it's difficult for me to explore more and more. I'm discovering that already, while it being the second semester here at KCAI, no one is going to give me a specific number of iterations to do. Which means, I need to start giving my self a number to shoot for. Obviously a high number is valued, but it doesn't mean that you're going to come up with a thousand different ideas within two research days before the next class. Exploration is key within design. And once I am out in whatever kind of field of design I will be in, no one is going to boss me around and TELL me what to do, so while here I should take advantage of practicing that.

One think I did really enjoy about this chapter was the list of questions he has within there. I felt that they were all valid in they're own way. Referencing this will be a great advantage, and possibly picking a few to focus on more than others would be nice too.

A revised list of objects..

Here is a revised list of my objects for the Problematic picnic.

It was decided that all I use are the bad things for my objects, besides the picnic basket/blanket.

Ants
Birds
Bees
Rotten Food
Dog Poop
Spilt Wine
Rain
Picnic Basket
Smelly trash
First aid
Poison Ivy
and, of course...
broken cookies


We're starting up the whole process of making icons so now it should get interesting with how my style of icon will come out.

The Contructed Image

While researching Bruce Lee and trying to find certain characteristics I'd like to show about him, without showing him as a person is coming along. Symbols are the one thing that I'm having a little bit of trouble on. Yes, I have obvious ideas, but trying to find something deeper is difficult because there isn't a whole lot of personal information out there about him. Yes, I can find quotes and try and read into them some more, but having a symbol and being able to identify that its Bruce Lee without an iconic image seems difficult to portray, which is obviously the point.

Here's a list of Index's and Symbol's that I'm thinking about using:

Symbols:
Ying Yang
Japanese characters
Different forms of water
Some sort of repetition idea, because he believed highly in doing one thing a thousand times.
And that's all I have for now...still thinking.

Index's:
Nunchucks
The color yellow to relate to his iconic jumpsuit that he would wear.
Broken things
Martial arts moves
Movies
Weapons
Pain Killers due to his death of an allergic reaction to them
The silhouette form of his kick, (but i feel that could also be a symbol).
Japanese traditional houses, such as "paper thin" walls, and wood work.
Dragons

Some ideas I'm tossing around right now are the portrayal of Bruce Lee as a comic. I'd take photos and them outline them with black marker on different colors of construction paper and then collage them together. Or also vectoring them on the computer then putting them together.

Another idea is more of 2D mixed with a little 3D. I have taken some photos of a friend with nun chucks and of them "punching" the air to show the action. I wanted to have it coming right out at the audience...so the idea of showing depth perception with construction paper would be interesting as well.

Kung Fu posters are pretty iconic and they look like a blast to construct so I'll be taking some inspiration from them as well.

 

  

 

Drawingsss.

 

Overview

  

Linear progression

  

Intentional

  

Simplified

While drawing and exploring my five objects it was interesting to see how loose and how tight drawings could be rendered differently, and sometimes...in opposite ways. My favorite part of the process was probably the simplification part because it was nice to be able to point out which parts of the object that we all thought was the most important and see how much information you need to give in order to portray the idea. 

Change one thing, update.

Here are some directions I decided to take within the change one thing competition. I'm not sure how to represent the idea on a serious note with my icons. I just look at them as being silly, so associating serious, bold colors with them is difficult. The last one I'm not completely sure of, I wanted to show that spaying and neutering could cause a LARGE family tree within a small amount of time, but that one just isn't translating as well. Also, and good point about my icon ideas was that I wanted to make it seem important, but easy to do.

 

  

  

 

KAPOOOWWWEY!

So, I think this explains my direction pretty well.

I went from a list with Grace Kelly, and Clark Gable, Harvey Milk, and Billie Holiday to Bruce Lee, and figured Bruce Lee was a little out of my comfort zone, and probably more interesting visually. I'm excited to get started and find props/imagery to use. I'm not exactly how I want to present my idea, I'm thinking a diorama would be a good direction with paper mache for my walls to get that Japanese look. We'll see. I'm still a little lost when it comes to how I want to portray the entire photograph.

Text, Image, Message

Thinking about how image works with type is a difficult concept to wrap your head around. Yes, this cleared some ideas up about how to use type with an image, and how it could be successful, but it also was hard to actually imagine it working within the one idea you would pursue. Yes, Iterations are key. And, I DEFINITELY need to explore and experiment more and more, taking risks while doing this as well. The one thing I did really take away from this reading were the visual examples that were expressed. I definitely got more of an idea from what each idea meant after looking at each example.

Once I started working with my posters it seemed harder to actually translate what I had learned from this article. This being the first poster I have EVER done in my life I think is getting to me too much, and I should just relax and not be constrained to just using my little electric box in front of me. Here are some examples that I'm tweaking and working on as we go through this project.

V+C | How to think

Ed Boydon makes a lot of good points throughout his blog post. I specifically enjoyed the idea about writing and drawing while having a conversation with someone. It seems to be a fun, and simple idea to do to remember what was said, and how many people one person can really talk to. I'm sure it also shows evolution on certain ideas talked about and possibly questions being answered two years later. Which relates back to not always having the answer once a question is asked. One of the other good points that Boydon makes is making mistakes quickly. I'm not sure if I completely understand this point, but from what I get is that you should work fluidly without thought, and then edit yourself as soon as possible to knock the bad ideas out so you can get to work on the good ideas. With this I feel that it relates to the project we're doing now because of how quick we chose our topic/story for our project. We edited the bad ideas out as soon as possible so we wouldn't think about it anymore.

V+C Story Ideas

Story one idea:

A Problematic Picnic:

-Picnic blanket
-Picnic basket
-Ants/bees/bugs
-Weather
-Picnic food i.e. sandwiches, fruit, fried chicken, wine, bottled water, etc..SPOILED
-Summer Dress
-Baseball Hat
-Plates, utensils, and napkins
-Sunblock
-Sunglasses
-Broken Cookies
-Grass
-Swingset
-Pond
-Mud
-Birds
-Dog poop


Story two idea:

Across the Country:

-Station Wagon
-Sunglasses
-Keys
-T-shirt and shorts
-Radio/ipod/tape player/head phones
-Gas Dank gage
-Cooler/food/cold drinks
-Atlas/ Map
-Mountains
-Skyscrapers (east coast)
-flat tire
-up/down window button
-Sunflower seeds
-Coffee mug
-rear view mirror
-Weather
-Palm tree (west coast)
-Luggage
- Corn or cows (midwest)
-Semi-truck/s
-Restroom

A new arrival

Here we are again, and it feels like that 6 weeks did not exist at all. Oh, well. Back to work.

Starting off in type we're putting together a poster for the "Change one thing" competition for AIGA. Sounds interesting, but intimidating. For now, I have some broad ideas about what situation or idea I'd like to change one thing in.

1.) Over consumption, or just basically the idea about how everything is "made in China"
2.) Animal Abuse, specifically focusing on puppy mills.
and
3.) The cost of higher education in America, and how private loans build and build.

Still brainstorming, and wondering about what other issues that possibly may be more light-hearted to think about, and possibly not a social issue.

-----The new class that us wonderful sophomores are taking is an image class, focusing on digital photography, and the first assignment consists of semiotics and translating them for our own self, and personality within on project. ICON, INDEX, and SYMBOL...these are all things that we have to find images of ourselves within.

KNIT KNIT KNOT

I'm going to REALLY miss my fiber elective.

Final taxonomy

Final product.

Ultimately, I'm happy with the turnout. I wish I had done more, but time is always an issue. And also, I didn't want to over do it. I liked that there was only five in the book, it made each one that much more special, and unique.

Throughout my taxonomy I had denotations, and connotations. My denotation was set in regular Cochin font, and my connotations were set in italics. Each of my patterns were a specific drop repeat pattern, so I named each one a name based off how much it dropped within an inch. My connotations were the pattern themselves, and what they portrayed. Such as, affectionate, rushed, or dainty.

The taxonomy was a lot of fun doing. I really enjoyed how much freedom we got within this project. It really helped me think more outside the box I think. Such as, picking a theme for our dot book was also fun, because how much freedom we had within it. Over winter break I'll definitely be making more patterns, and what not.  Making new marks would be an interesting twist within it as well.

SEQUENTIAL PROCESS

 LINE ONE SEQUENTIAL PROCESS: Starting with some main ideas about where I wanted the idea to go. Whiskers was an obvious, but still abstract way to go with the whole cat idea. So, I moved further into the idea, and found an object that would work well with the shape and idea of whiskers, a tree branch. I also did some iteration with my cat's paws, but they didn't work out as well, so I kept moving with the whisker idea. I vectorized it then at the very end moved the little tiny oval shape more to the middle to represent the nose.

LINE TWO SEQUENTIAL PROCESS: Starting with thumbnails of my  main ideas, I finally came upon, then heading into what tool I used for this specific marks, which was yarn. I thought this correlated back to my poem, because cats really like to play with string, so I brought in a toy they may play with. Then, showing some main marks that were made with leaves, then with the string. Finally it gets into what the final mark looks like, and how I vectored it, and finally moved one little fish shifting down a bit.

 LINE THREE SEQUENTIAL PROCESS: I decided not to show the whole idea with using my cat paws because i felt it would have got too confusing within the process. After starting the whole entire line over with the new thumbnail ideas and new tool I really got motivated to make it a successful shape. Starting with the thumbnails that I did in my art history class...then moving on to the flower I used. Then how I manipulated the analog shape, and finally deciding it looks better not manipulated, and finally how it looks with text.

Final reflection 02

Throughout this last project, the haiku project, we did several, several, several different processes. One was with analog shapes. We had to pick random objects that we could get dirty and have them relate back to our picked haiku. My haiku was a about a cat, and I thought it would be perfect to use cat paws as a mark for my final animation. So, I went through the process of have my cat walk on white paper while there was finger paint on her paws. She did not particularly enjoy this process, but it was fun to use something non conventional, and something other than just objects. Here are some photos of her paw prints: 

I wanted some part of the paw print to be the heart for my line that says, "or backyard love?"
After developing this idea in my head, and thinking it'd be perfect, I kept searching for different ways to portray this line with the idea of a cat and it being outdoors. In the end though I decided to go with a different mark and had to learn that sometimes the idea of something isn't always as good as the image getting the message across.

This is the image I decided to go with:

I'm happy I went with this image in the end, I feel it definitely speaks more to my haiku, and helped a lot more within my narrative.

All in all, the cat paw would have been a nice image, it just wouldn't have spoken as well to the idea of the haiku. But the tree shape that I used helped people understand the image and narrative better. The cat paw also would have been out of order within my haiku, the cat is introduced within the first line of the haiku, not the third, which is what I would have used the paw for. So, that was also not a well thought out idea. This whole semester helped me come to this conclusion, because this whole semester is about creating ideas to work, and visually communicate them to others.

Final reflection 01

Looking back at everything that I’ve achieved this semester in the graphic design department, I’ve honestly surprised myself. Coming from a community college to a pretty hard-core school and program was quite the jump for me. I’ve really learned a lot, and I may not be able to acknowledge them all, I know that I’ve had a drastic change in how I look at everything now. I can feel my eye get more cautious of things around me, and my judgment on certain things have changed as well.

Starting with project 1, the dot book, was a lot of fun. It was interesting to see how I could create some sort of a narrative within a book full of just dots. Yes, imagery helped a lot, but if all my dots within that book were black, you could still get some idea of what I was going for. Comparing that to this final project, the haiku, really helped with seeing a narrative within a haiku, and also how abstract marks can become something representational. Just how dots combined within a composition can become something representational. Another aspect of project 1 that correlated within project 3 is serendipity. Sometimes things happen for a reason, and something’s don’t happen for a reason. For instance, you have this set idea in your head about how you want something to look, but it never comes out that way, and within discovering how it doesn’t work, you find things that do, and even work better. Working through the compositions with in project 1, was so similar to finding the right marks for each of our lines in the haiku we chose.

Project two, the juxtaposition book, just didn’t see eye to eye with me. I feel that I had a lot of trouble within the entire process. I’d get frustrated with how things never came out the first time I did something, and then have to start all the way over. This was also very similar with how discovering marks and using the right tools, and words for my haiku came into play. After awhile though, you need to stop worrying about finding the one right answer, and just focus how YOUR right answer. This is definitely something I’m going to work on next semester for sure. Yes, most people in the world don’t mind being right now and again, but when it turns out to be that your wrong so many times it’s hard to see if you’ll ever get it right. Maybe I was too negative within this project, and got too down on the idea of everything being wrong. Which needs to stop, ASAP. Letting elements happen within the process is what’s so great about PROCESS. It makes it more interesting, and you just really have to learn to be light hearted within the process. If it doesn’t work out the first time, try and try again until it works best for you. Don’t get so wrapped up within the idea of THE right answer. MAKE a right answer.

RGB color leaf

So here is my RGB version of my leaf. I ended up taking a swatch out due to the color not having enough impact within the leaf at all really.  I'm not completely sure if I grasped the idea of the whole RGB thing, printing is a very confusing process.

It did definitely help within my color book though, color correcting I hope will get easier with time (obviously).

Final Haiku Animation

Why so scrawny cat-2 from Taylor Pruitt on Vimeo.

Music: Michael Giacchino, "We're in the club now".
 

Response: Paul Rand

(1) Paul rand was a very famous designer mostly known for making large corporation's logos. He is definitely well known and very influential in design today.

(2) There are a lot of different transitions within this animated interview. It uses zoom very effectively, as well as pan. After seeing this animation it basically made me want to start mine all over because it was just so seamless and seemed completely effortless. I definitely would like to progress to have great "unnoticeable" transitions throughout future animations.

(3) Yes, the quote, "Don't try to be original, just try and be good." is cheesy. But it's nice. and I don't think that he's really trying to get at the aspect of everything looking good, and nice. I think that he is trying to say that do what you like to do, and do it the best you can. Also, I feel that it could mean that in order to be good, you have to bring your own personality into it, so it is apart of you, possibly until it consumes you.

Final storyboard update and linear progression

So finishing up the animation and what not I felt the need to update my final storyboards. I took away some shots and ending up not having the fish leave the frame while their on. It definitely brought everything together and helped me show what I was going for while having the fish take the audience through the animation.

Starting out with drawing thumbnails for the line "or backyard love" was DIFFICULT. I just couldn't get the idea of just a heart out of my mind, so I instead of using my cat's paw to try and get a heart out of it, I decided to nix it and start fresh, and I'm quite pleased with the result. I think it feels backyard-esque and gives the shape of a heart.