Apr 11
On Wednesday Eva Roberts spoke a bit about her life and her career. She showed some of her work and some work of her students. It was interesting to see the different kinds of projects, I wish we could have done the book cover design project where they had to reference a certain period in time, but maybe someday. After the presentation we discussed the benefits of portfolio reviews and going for whatever it is you want. I found this to be really valuable advice. I hadn't really given much thought to getting my portfolio reviewed, besides sophomore review of course. I've never gone to a portfolio review event before but I'll definitely go to one my junior/senior year.
I also went to a talk on Tuesday given by Rita Organ on alternative careers for artists within a museum setting. She talked about the different kinds of opportunities within museums and how to go for those careers. She strongly encouraged doing an internship with a museum. She told us about her own experience of getting an internship and her career. She also talked a bit about the many different departments of museums and one of them was exhibit development and design. This is the department that figures out all the various details of exhibits such as lighting, spacing, and the actual content. This made me pretty excited since I love museums and it seems like such a worthwhile and interesting career path.
Both of these talks have helped me get back my motivation to do work and be excited for the future. It's already the end of the week and the month is going by so quickly. Sophomore review will be here soon as well, and I'm ready for it.
Apr 4
I'm going with the 3rd ad because my audience is businessmen and politicians, mostly male. The third ad is more masculine and functional than first two ads. I'm going to make some slight edits to the third ad and experiment with different headlines.
Mar 28
GAIO is a conference about raising awareness of air pollution and encouraging people to reduce air pollution. My ideal audience is politicians, businessmen, and business owners, particularly within energy, manufacture, and transportation industries. My ideal audience member is motivated and wants to make progress that will benefit as many people as possible. They want the world to improve. The following are ads which appeal to my audience.
This is an online ad was made by a group against child labor to raise awareness. The ads uses pun and hyperbole. It says "The Children Notwork" which is a play on words with "Network". The ads shows made-up images of Linkedin profiles of children. This is an example of hyperbole because its showing child labor in a setting for professional networking. Its exaggerating the problem of by placing it within this professional online setting. This ad would appeal to my audience because Linkedin is a website they are likely to have used or have heard of, and they are interested in making change to help people. The ad also has a serious tone to it, a goofy silly ad would not appeal to my audience.
This is a print ad by Hilton Hotels. This ad is an example of amplification. A photograph of a man standing outside in New Zealand helps to convey the message of the text. The "GO INSPIRED," part of the text the relates the most to the image. The photograph is a tool in conveying how one might be inspired staying at a Hilton Hotel in New Zealand. The man, plants, mountain, and sky all work together to create a sense of inspiration. This ad would appeal to my audience because they are likely to often stay in hotels, probably nicer hotels, which the Hilton Hotels are. This ad is also clean and straight to the point.
This is an outdoor ad for an airline. It uses metaphor with its imagery. A blue box is wrapped up with ribbons to look like a present. The combination of color, shape, and line creates the British flag. The image creates the interpretation of a present and the British flag simultaneously. The way the box is wrapped is a metaphor for Britain. The box is also used to convey the "gift" the airline is giving costumers with some destinations being half price. This would appeal to my audience because they are likely to travel often doing business. The ad has a touch of humor to it in the present/flag image and again it is fairly straightforward.
Mar 25
Since the weather and roads are rather bad I decided it would best I didn't drive to class this morning. The last time it was snowing on my way to class I skidded and was perpendicular to the road and almost in a ditch... So, here is my progress on my Visual Identity Guideline book! I've included sketches of different grid systems.
I eventually went with a combination of B and C, basically a modular grid with 5 rows and 5 columns.
The pages are shown here as spreads. The book will be saddle stitched and have a 10 x 7 spread. For some reason Posterous will not show the pages correctly but if you hit the download button it shows up correctly.
There are still some pages I need to add and I don't have page numbers yet. Any feedback is appreciated!
Mar 8
I've watched quite a few Academy Award winning movies now. About a month ago I watched "Doctor Zhivago" with Ben, Gaby, and Marina, I'm sure you know by now. I also did a movie marathon the other weekend as I was working on my Type and Image II project. I watched "My Fair Lady", "The King and I", and "South Pacific". Topics and themes ranged from love, war, race, responsibility, women's rights, culture clash, high and low classes of society, image, and life in Soviet Russia.
I noticed in all these movies there were very long beginning credits with music, some even had intermissions. I can't remember if "Doctor Zhivago" had any random musical parts in it, I don't think it did, but "My Fair Lady", "The King and I", and "South Pacific" all had random songs pop up from time to time. "South Pacific" is a musical, but I didn't realize it was one until a few songs in. I think that was because there was so much normal dialogue between the songs that I hadn't really noticed. The movies were also very long compared to today's movies. A a movie coming out now might be 90 minutes long, Doctor Zhivago was 200 minutes long, more than twice as long. As I sat there watching it I could definitely feel just how long I had been sitting there.
I enjoyed "The King and I" and "My Fair Lady" the most. Though they are from the 1956 and 1964 I still enjoyed the content and humor of the movies. But I do enjoy comedies much more than dramas or tragedies. South Pacific was sort of tragicomdey. I don't want to get into details in case someone hasn't seen it. But there are lots of highs and quite a few lows. I didn't care for "Doctor Zhivago" at all. I think it's because of the content and just how long it was, I didn't realize how long it'd be before hand. I'm happy I watched these movies. Each one showed different times and cultures which I found to be enlightening, but I'm keeping in mind they are all works of fiction.
Mar 8
I know it's been some time since Valentine's Day, but I made 2 cards for the EPIC fundraiser. It was sort of exciting and I bought one of the cards for my valentine.
I went to the Epiclogue talk the other week. It was very helpful to hear graduates from the Herron VC program talk about what it was like to start their own design business directly out of school. I have been toying with the idea of this a little bit, but I really had no idea what it was all about and what went into it. I really enjoyed having the opportunity to hear the people from CODO and Attic Design talk about their experiences and struggles. When I get closer to graduation and I begin to decide what exactly I'll do, I'll think back to this talk.
This past Wednesday I went to the Epic meeting about sophomore review. I wish I could have stayed for the entire time but I had to leave five minutes early because I had a class I needed to go to. The pictures of how they set up their projects for review were very nice. I had imagined review being something which I had to make everything look grand and perfect, something similar to the way movies show company meetings. Before I heard the entire faculty would be at review, but I'm happy that it will be smaller now. I think it'll be easier to have a discussion with everyone with just 3 or 4 faculty members there. It was interesting to hear them talk about their own experiences like preparing, setting up, what happened at the actual review. I was surprised they said some people were still mounting thier projects and what not the day of thier review. I can't imaigne how stressful that would be, I'm sure it affected thier review. I wasn't worried about review before. It was some far off thing that faculty kept telling me not to worry about and I'll be fine. But with this meeting and getting the paperwork about review it's becoming more real, and more intimidating. But I believe I can pass!
Mar 6
So it's been a while since I've posted anything, but I've done quite a few things! I'm going to break it up into a couple different posts based on topic so it's easier for me to organize my thoughts and hopefully easier for you to read and digest.
I’m been listening to quite a bit of NPR since the semester began. Since I drive it’s easy for me to get more than 2 hours each week. Not everything I listen to is interesting: tasting wine, whether or not the super bowl will come back to Indianapolis in the near future, things of that nature. But there have been a few topics which I’ve found to be very interesting which I’ll summarize and give a few of my own thoughts.
The relationship between humans and robots was being studied by Clifford Nass, a professor at Stanford. He made a series of experiments testing the “rule of reciprocity” between humans and machines. The rule basically means if someone does something nice for you, you will do something nice for them. He found that people will apply that principle to machines as they do with other people. There was also a part of the experiment where participants had to turn off the machine and were told it would "kill" the machine by erasing all of its memory as if it never existed. The machine also spoke to the participants saying things like "Please don't kill me." The participants had difficulty turning off the machine but in the end they all did so. I found this interesting because as technology for machines and AI advances the line between human and machine my become unclear. It reminds me a bit of the movie IRobot.
Another topic I've been hearing a lot about lately is the sequester. I still don't know exactly what is going on, but I've heard Democrats and the President think it's a bad thing and Republicans think it's a good thing. I'm not sure what to make of it. I know funding for certain programs will be cut which the effects may be felt at some point... But I don't really have an opinion on it since I don't completely understand it, the effects, and why it's happening. I plan on doing some research on it when I have some free time, but I have a long list of things I've been putting off for when I have free time...
I've heard some news from Europe such as a King of England's body being found under a parking lot, the Queen having some sort of stomach illness, and horse meat being labeled as other kind(s) of meat. The meat thing is the most worrisome to me. Meat getting labeled as another kind of meat isn't a completely horrible thing, but as someone with a food allergy it makes me concerned. Could the same thing happen with other kinds of food? What will happen to those with food allergies? I hope this things get worked out and people will be more watchful of mislabeling food.
That's all I can think of for the moment for NPR, expect another post soon!
Feb 18
These are arranged by category with the newer sketches after the older ones within the same category.