Filed under: 1
WOWThe bfa exhibition was really nice. I am always blown away when I see work outside of the community of designers that I am familiar with. One piece that I was astonished by was Brian Watterson’s collection of postcards that he is sending to Stefan Sagmeister. It was a breathless array of hand drawn and beautifully designed greeting cards that he sends to sagmeister every week until he graduates in hopes of a job. Going to that extent makes the design impressive apart from how impecable the design overall is.
Filed under: 1
So after much deliberation and combing of the internet for sites that relate to mine so that I do not copy anything I think I have come up with a decent narrowed down idea. I plan to still build on the idea of the rapid loss of reefs but to narrow it down i plan to build an informational site that plays off the intense emotion surfers feel for the ocean. I plan on showing them an ocean without reefs and inevitably without waves and urge them to be proactive (when the waves arent good of course) in cleaning up their beaches and using their atature in the community to become proactive in the education of the public concerning the reefs.
Filed under: 1
Blogging to me is like an inner spewing of emotions, i dont know where it will begin and where it will end. Changing the world is suck an awkward idea to try and come up with a solution too probably because changing the world would take more than one plan of action and an execution way beyond any human mind but ill try. I wanted to bring it to light that our reefs are being destroyed at a rapid pace. It effects me and my family because we all surf, windsurf and enjoy the ocean. and waves come from reefs, or at least most of them, so the preservation of the reefs which in turn effects the waves is important to me and it would be somewhat world changing. (and yes im a surfer in ohio but im only here for school i live on cape cod home of the ice cold 6 foot close out barrels waves that rival anything on the west coast they are just a well kept secret). I have also surfed on lake erie and even their waves rely on a rock reef that is just as susceptible to destrtuction as a open ocean reef. On to idea number to and it has to do with my most prized of hopeful destinations that i want to travel to as i grow older. That is the land of a thousand waves, Indonesia. I would like to create a website that would help with the relief of the coastal communities which surfers flock to to get a piece of heaven on earth and under water but have been slowed by the devastating destruction from the sunami. I would like to help rebuild through halping people especially the surf community understand the reprocutions all of this has had on us.
Filed under: fuck
What the fuck was i thinking when i came to this hell hole? My friends from Boston arent even back in school yet and here I am not sleeping cause im so backed-up with work. What the fuck? I’ve also now been to over 20 interviews for some of the few graphic design positions that are available on campus and fuck them every single one of the people who interviewed me. I fucking know they play favortism towards their sex (most of them being woman), or people they relate to real well. And fuck it thats fine and that might be what its like in the real world and thats also fine but I say fuck them….why? Because I think they should be promoting a level of confidence and accuracy of performance put forth by the pieces in their portfolio, their demeener, and their appearance, not if they caight the latest Gray’s Anatomy or if they play magic just like the interviewer thats bullshit. And you may be saying to yourself, well how does he know? because on two suck interviews I had gone twice and both times I was amped about my preparation, and appearance and thought I was calm as a cucumber, and on the second visits I ubsurdly got to meet the candidates who got the position that I had vied for during the first round of interviews. When I met these people they seemed to be almost mirror images of the other. One trying to live in the past and the other a perverbial geek. Both were younger and as small as the school of art is I knew both of them and have seen their work. Not saying mine is better or worse but if you take away all those factors the one that still remains is the fact that me and the interviewer had nothing in common where as these two candidates although they might have been less presentable had much more to say on irrelevant issues. I guess i’m just bitter but I think thats fucked I feel jaded and out of place coming from a different part of the states is such a disadvantage, my dialect and interests are very different and I think that both this university as well as the U.S. still has problems generalyzing certain populations and making immediate responses. Hope they regret not hiring me.
Filed under: splendid
When I heard that the topic we were writing this blog on was Steven Heller I was excited as he is a well published design critic and I believe much of what he says has validity in the world of design that we live in today. His ability to breakdown and outline work in context to politics, cultural issues, and pure design issues is astonishing, and although sometimes I think he says things that are not so valid in the context of art and design I really enjoy his articles. Since my Heller book has not arrived from Amazon.com yet I decided to cruise the net to find some Heller articles as I know there are tons out there on the super sophisticated and fancy design blogs that have suddenly been popping up like wildfire, and each one seems to have a classic Heller article to read at the front of the line. As I begin to read I figure out a little bit about why everyone can read Heller and in essence can agree with him, because he takes such a subjective point of view on most design issues he claims neutrality and broadens his audience. I love his breakdown of post-modernist and modernist design because he calls out attributes of each in anyones design bringing to light the thought of a united design community instead of one divided. And since the issue of the web has been a hot topic in the past few years (for obvious reasons) many of the most recent Heller articles have had to do with this topic. One such article that I found very intrigueing was one Aiga’s website. It had to do with the sudden rapid increase in blogs over the past few years and the subsequent quagmire that has followed covering the internet with template designs and blogs that are little more than streams of conciseness written late at night half asleep. But on the other hand there is some usefulness to blogs such as in the research field. Now doctors and other professionals can get another professionals opinion with just a click of the mouse and an informal typing session. The problem is delineating the difference between what is important and what is not. Heller also speaks about the usability of blogs and that is how this quagmire has started mainly because most blogs are little more than log pages of text with a header especially the research blogs that are inevitably in question. Making these blogs more user freindly and more accessible would thus increase their use and increase the ease for those who don’t know about this asset or do not feel comfortable with using it. I thought this article made a good point and relates to anyone who uses the internet on a regular basis. Much of the interface and design is not taken seriously on the web. It is a conglomeration of the average joe slapping together a website without knowledge of usability. I mean this lack of-usability is present everywhere even in the most prestigious of venues like the library at my university. I would rather use the dewey decimal system than have to look a book up on the libraries database which is an online sink pit of dropdown menus and hard to navigate pages. Their is no two clicks to any page it takes 5 or more clicks just to find a classic like Huck Finn, you don;t even want to know how many clicks to get to a Steven Heller novel. This usability issue almost goes past just the user. It stretches to a web based generation which is somewhat stuck with this large unusable thing. The internet is a great resource but has been misused and poorly designed. The future must hold better design and easier usability for the end user or else the quagmire that we know as the internet will only grow and become so bogged down finding a resource or just surfing for a new outfit could take an innumerable amount of time and thus render the internet worthless.
Filed under: splendid
Sitting here at 2 am finishing a piece of work that is due at 8:30 am today and I got to thinking as much work as we have to do and as much money as we pay to be scrutinized on a daily basis how do some classes actually present you a contract to sign. Are you kidding me, I feel like this is almost a demeaning issue, we pay thousands of dollars a semester to be in school and if I want to sleep through all of my classes and fail out that’s my decision and if that does happen I shouldn’t have to worry about a breech of contract from the art department. And I thought the weeding out process of those who wanted to be here and those who dont ended with the two grueling portfolio reviews we had to endure. At the end of the day the fact is college students although they become cockier and cockier show respect to their teachers and I think with the amount of money paid out now adays to college I should be able to bypass signing a potentially invalid document and worst of all a strike to my personal character calling me out for whatever it is that piece of paper says before I even do it.
Filed under: blogs | Tags: blog, blogs, http, online blog, online diary, online journal, weblog
This blog thing is interesting. I have to use it because it’s a requirement for the class and it’s my first one and honestly the experience is weird. I feel like it’s a virtual journal but one that everyone can see and i’m not known to write insightful stuff so what do I write? Do I treat it as a working copy of my resume keeping everything polished and ‘politically correct’ so if any future employer were to stumble upon it they would see that I am well groomed and pray before I go to sleep. No honestly I don’t care who sees this and what judgements they make of me because this is what makes me the designer I am and I think if someone were to employ me in the future that reading this may be a necessary tool in his character analysis and then you could find a better suited employer. But damn that would be one hell of a process. So as I see it now it’s a ‘stuck between a rock and a hard place issue.’
