it's december now: typography

Typography:
project 2: magazine design
My magazine, Catalyst, is about encouraging scientists and designers to work together, and how science and design are similar. I found articles dealing with my topic, and designed a feature spread (Design and the Elastic Mind) and then a secondary spread (The Bacteria Whisperer). I also designed a table of contents, letter from the editor, folio, running head, cover, spine, and subscription form. I also designed a masthead for the cover of the magazine. I hand drew the letters for the masthead, which are based on drawings of simple cells. The hand drawn type is repeated in the table of contents and in the drop caps of each article.











We stacked some of our magazine together and put them on the magazine shelf in the design library under "crit". ha.

it's december now: studio

studio:
project 2: dido
In groups of 3, we created fictional businesses and then were each assigned an aspect of design to be responsible for in the creation of this business. My group created Dido. Our mission statement is: "our company uses state of the art technology that provides our urban retail shoppers with a more efficient and stress free way to shop by tailoring the perfect fit and offering style advice." Dido is our flagship store in NYC, and it has scanning technology that scans each customer and records their measurements onto a card. The customer can then use the scanning technology to digitally try on clothes and see how they look on them, the way others would. Then when they choose to purchase an item, a unique pattern is made for them based on their measurements, and the clothing is individually made, so as to give each customer the perfect fit. The technology also offers style advice for things such as colors, styles, or accessories that may look good on a person based on their body shape, skin tone, or other factors. The items bought are made and shipped to the customer within two days. The customer keeps their scanning card and can use it again in the store, or at home on the Dido website to order more custom fit clothing without having to come back to NYC. We spent almost 2 months researching and refining our company.
I was in charge of branding design for Dido. First I chose the color scheme we would all use in our designs. I also created the logo. Then I created the environmental design, both outside and inside (we used the SAS building on campus as the location of dido). And then I designed the scanning cards to be used with the scanning booth. Throughout doing all this, I also created a photographic brand. The photographs of all the models were from a photo shoot I did. The image brand is very geometric which hints to the aspect of custom pattern making and fabric. Our audience is 20-something urban women.




Back of store:

Front of store:

Inside of store:


There are 12 different versions of the scanning card for the customer to choose from, hinting back at our notion of customization and individualization. The measurements and purchase information is stored in the RFID tag.


The final product has rounded edges as seen here. It is the same size as a credit card so it can easily be carried in a wallet.

For the final product, we turned in a 50 page 11x17 book containing all of our research, answers to questions, company audit, and final designs in paper and digital form. This is the table of contents from our book. This book and its design is reminiscent of a book a real design studio would pitch to a company.

CSS With Mr. Peterson

To learn some CSS in Typography class, we were to edit the HTML in our existing blogs and experiment. I started out by just playing around with colors, and I stuck with this gray/blue/white/purple color scheme. Then I played around with font stacks; my sans serif stack leads with Helvetica (because I assume most computers have it, and I don't like to think of different users seeing different fonts), and my serif stack leads off with Rockwell (which I suppose a lot of PCs wouldn't have).
The first goal I had was to add an image of me in place of the blog title box. So I deleted all the box lines (header wrappers). Then I added my image in "edit header" under the layout section. I then decided that I wanted to make my blog title in Archer Italics, but I couldn't it to work, and also most people (besides designers) probably don't have Archer on their computers. So I pulled my image into photoshop and typed the blog title on it and saved it as a JPEG. Then pasted that into the header, and now everyone can see Archer Italic! The only downside is, I had to replace the actual blog title to "." because it was layering the blog title on top of the image, so I'm not sure if that really works.
My next goal was to make the blog archive fixed to the right side of the screen so it would follow you when you scrolled, and you could go to another month without having to scroll all the way back up the page. To do this, I made the "outer wrapper" a fixed position, and messed around with the percentages of top, bottom, right, and left, before I had it where I wanted it. I also deleted the picture from my profile because I didn't like the way it looked. I also shortened my About Me section, to be more simplistic.
The next thing I wanted to do was make the Blogger navigation bar at the top disappear. I did this by finding the secret hidden nav-bar HTML, and then pasting a transparency HTML code before it, and set the transparency to 0. I thought this looked nice, but I then realized I need that nav-bar to get to my account to make new posts, edit, etc. So I took the transparency up to 10, making it just barely visible.
I also made the links in the blog archive turn white when your cursor rolls over them, and the title of each blog entry turns black when you roll over it.
The last change I made was to make the background image an image of wood. At first I had just a medium gray background, but I wanted to add an image. So I searched my hard drive for suitable images and found this wood image I had downloaded at some point in my life. I thought the color pallet suited the blog very well, and it brightened up the screen from the gray I had before. It also kind of makes it feel like a design studio!

Totoro!

I cleaned up a pencil drawing of Totoro I did this summer to give to my sister for her birthday.

Computers Are Microwaves

Typography
Project 1B:
After we completed our typeface design, we had to choose another students typeface and design something using their typeface. I chose Meghan Obrien's, called Spooked.

I thought Meghan's typeface was just dying to be hand drawn, and I came up with the idea of technology vs. hand made, making the point that there are some aspects to hand drawn designs that just cant be reproduced with a computer. So I found this wonderful quote and went with it! I hand drew the type (tracing over a printed out version, so I could get the proportions perfect since Meghan had spent so long designing them). I decided to go with a underwater theme because Meghan's typeface was so organic, and also I just love deep sea creatures. Around the quote I hand drew deep sea creatures and then scanned my drawing into the computer and placed a scanned in image of ocean water I found in an old book from the library behind the drawing. After printing out the design, I thinly traced each letter in black ink to give it another hand drawn effect, and to make the letters pop.




And here are just a couple "glam shots" of my typeface.

First-ies of Junior Year

Typography
Project 1: Display Face
For our first typography project, I had to revisit my typeface I designed last semester and revise it to make it better, and then transfer it into Typetool, which makes the typeface an actual font you can type with. I revised my typeface a lot. I can't believe some of the things I didnt do when designing it the first time around, it is now ten times better. I was also lucky I had designed a typeface based off the square because it made transferring it into Typetool a lot easier. My side bearings for all the letters were the same, which saved me hours of work.

This is my work document in Illustrator. It has all the variations of letters I did, as well as the letters put together to form words to make sure they work together well.

And this is my final typeface, including numbers and 12 additional characters. It is named Valor because originally the face was based on my self-defense class, which is why the design is so bold, and sturdy. Valor is the characteristic of being able to face danger without fear, which is what my self-defense class (and this typeface) is all about.
...and maybe a little about darth vader.


Studio
Project 1: Experience of Search
I was assigned to a group, and we were assigned the experience of searching. We then had to individually choose an experience we had with searching for something and design something to reflect that experience. For weeks I had been hearing about health care reform, and wanted to have an opinion on it because it seemed very important, but was just uninformed. So I chose the search for an opinion on health care reform. And I went through that process, researching and documenting everything. In the end, I came up with this concept map to show my experience.
I would post the PDF so you could read it, but blogspot doesnt read PDFs. It has a lot of good information on it though. My main focus was separating facts from myths. Hopefully reform will start to happen soon!


Imaging
Project 1:
We are currently learning Flash, so I don't really have anything to post for Imaging right now.

Jelly!

So I finished painting Jelly, but I can't decide if I want to outline him in pen a la Audrey Kawasaki, or not. I like him without, but the pen may bring out some of the small details like in his middle tentacles. I really can't decide and I'm too scared to try it out, because it can't really be undone! Opinions anyone?

Also, the colors are a little bright due to the light from the scanner, its a little darker/saturated in RL. The wash is painted with gouache, and the jelly is painted with acrylic.


Here's the little color/paint/ink test I did on the back of one of the side blocks, just testing things/messing around.

Jellyfish Mania!

Finally getting around to posting some of these jellyfish! This is one I've been working on this week. The drawing is pretty much done, so i'll probably paint it tomorrow. It's three separate pieces of wood I snagged from the shop at the end of last semester. When its done they would be viewed with about 1/2 inch between each piece. I wanted to take a picture of it while its just in pencil, just in case the painting doesn't turn out as planned. And because my camera broke—and I'm broke too—I had to scan it in (if only martha could see my correct use of em dashes!).

Vector Mei

Vector Mei that I made in Illustrator from the drawing I posted before.


I also painted a casting of my friends breasts (a thing they do for breast cancer awareness) for her, but I didn't have a camera to take a picture of it, but hopefully she will send me a photograph so i can post it! And I still have to paint mine too...

Summer: __________

Finally I found some time to post a few things from summer so far...

Wiibounce was an interesting experience that really opened my eyes. It's kind of hard to explain, but I read a quote that relates:

"So, here I sit - the equivalent of a graphic design short order cook just waiting for someone who might appreciate a true gourmet."

That's basically what I felt when doing designs for Wiibounce. I was just doing quick turn arounds for a client who really could care less about how good the design was. Which is fine, I'm not bashing that side of design, I realize there are clients that just want something done to get the information out there and don't have a huge budget to hire a design studio. But that's not what I want to do with my career. I don't want to be churning out frequent buyer cards, and gift cards (which don't interest me at all). I want to be creating interesting, thought-provoking stuff and that requires interesting clients that actually care about the design. I just hope when I graduate I can get a job at a great design studio, because it seems that is the key.

This summer has also been the summer of Studio Ghibli I've watched just almost every Studio Ghibli film now. I think my favorites are: Spirited Away, Whispers of the Heart, Pom Poko, and My Neighbor Totoro, Nausicca, and Laputa. I do not like: Grave of the Fireflies, Ocean Waves, or Porco Russo. I hope Ponyo is good. Its got the cute character down.
This is a little drawing of Totoro and Mei. Totoro turned out a bit skinny and leaning to one side and the two are standing on different levels, but oh well. I'm going to create the girl into a vector image and try and make it an amazing color vector to try and get better at vector-ing.


Audrey Kawasaki is my favorite artist and about once every few months she sells prints of her new paintings for around $300. I would love to own one, but definitely do not have that much money to spare. And all the ones recently have been very small (8.5/11) and dont seem to be worth the money. So... I decided to create my own. So I picked one of my favorites and traced it on a window (I knew I would never be able to draw it as good as her, and I wanted it to be as close to the real thing as possible, so it was a guilt-less trace. Normally tracing is like quitting to me). So then I painted it with gouche and I the original Kawasaki is painted transparently on wood, but I didnt have wood large enough so I used water color paper, and painted it opaque with bright colors instead of transparent just to see what it would look like. Plus I knew I could never replicate her painting skills so why not do my own?

Of course its no Kawasaki original, but it will do as a Kawasaki tribute on my wall. She is so talented. I really love all her stuff.

Paper Craft Fishies

After all our final projects were done, some studio friends and I finally had time to do a collaborative Fish Market project! The theme of May's Fish Market (which is the College of Design's gallery downtown) was "scale". So the 5 of us made about 20 paper craft fish. We hung them up the night before the gallery show at about 2 am, and the unexpected shadows made the whole thing look amazing! The shadows really make it look like they are swimming in water. I love happy mishaps.

Final Projects Part 4: Extended Design!

Studio Collective 2009
Here's some photographs I took at studio collective (a sort of design school gallery crawl) a few weeks ago.

Our sophomore studio!

The super cool screen printed studio collective poster.

My leetle section of stuff.

Some cool laser cutting work from the junior GD studio

Other cool junior work.Some clay heads we found in an art and design sculpture studio.

A swing/chair in an art and design studio. i had permission to sit in it... really...

Art to Wear 2009
This year was even more amazing than last years! This set is by Alyssa McNamara, and they are all based on garden foods. They're so cute, and detailed. Photography by various other people.

Sadly, I dont know whose collection this is, but i love it. Photographs by Grace Yang.

Speaking of design:
This is my awesome new Samsonite! Its a suitcase from the 30s. So cute! I got it from a flea market in charlotte for $15. It was pretty dingy, but I cleaned it for hours and now it looks brand new! If only trains were a feasible way to travel, I would be so 20s with my samsonite, 20s hat, running to the train to see my man in the military...


Ok well, there's my blog purge. Hundreds of hours of work (and play) all put into a blog in one day. This summer I am going to try to do a blog post 5 times a week at least, maybe even every day. Im going to also try to draw/paint/make something every day. Summer is for art! I've got lots of materials ive been saving, like wood to do some audrey kawasaki inspired paintings. And of course I have my obsession with jellyfish and siphonophores—that will come into play im sure.