Beautiful Losers

On Monday Jimmy showed us a documentary on a group of  artists called the "Beautiful Losers". At the end of the film he gave us a homework assignment to answer  two questions on the film. The first question was What was there inspiration? In the film I felt that their inspiration came from the kids they grew up with , a lot of their child hood memories and the innocence of youth. The second question was What where there ideas? One thing was to be self inspired, not fitting in, non judging and to think out of the box. A lot of their ideas were also based on being creative and not labeling themselves as one particular thing. As they grew older, most of them became designers and artists for commercial art, but they never lost their original views on art. They didn't sell out, but they bought their style of art to the mainstream world and let people who wouldn't normally see it take a look at it.
I really liked this movie I thought that it was very inspirational, after seeing it gave me motivation to do what I want and not let people bring me down on my art.

Wednesdays class

On wednesday we discussed the ideas that we had about how we could promote the graphic design program at school to students that went to Cal State Los Angeles. I thought that it was cool how we got to present our ideas. When we presented our ideas one thing that I noticed was that it that made it feel like our class was a graphic design group  and we were all individuals and went up and presented our ideas to the group. Another thing that was helpful was the feedback that the people in our class gave each person as they presented their ideas.

The Monday Class

During the first part of class on Monday, we talked about what Graphic Design is and Jimmy said that the it is a term that is evolving and it is a term that is problematic and always changing. After that we created a list of where we could find graphic design now. In the second part of class we had ten minutes to come up with a story with things that we had in our backpacks and our pockets. We had to work in groups of two. The story that me and my partner came up with was called "The Gray Wolf's musical journey". The things that we used for our story was a bookmark that had an image of a wolf, a high lighter, geek squad flash drive, Ipod and a Blackberry Bold cell phone. All these things told our story about the journey of the wolf trying to find music.

Production

The Chapter on Production was interesting because it was supposed to be the final of all these processes, but it is also sort of the beginning as well. I like how the author explains that Production doesn't mean that the designer is off and ready to leave the work for someone else. I know that as a designer, I wouldn't want to leave my project to the production team and walk away. It is important to be there for this stage just like all the rest. You want to see the finished product.

One important point in the chapter was the various prototypes. The throwaway prototype is used specifically to be thrown away. You only need it once to test the product at a certain stage. The prototype that I can relate to the most is Evolutionary Prototyping. I like it because you can use it as your work progresses and when you need to. Like your project, your prototype can grow and be molded and fitted to what you need it to be.

As a designer, you are always going to have to deal with feedback. Negative or positive feedback is most important at the production stage because you have to bring your project to life. You have to listen to both sides even though you don't want to hear the negative and just want to hear the positive. You have to listen to the positive feedback to figure out how to fix your project, and you have to hear the negative because you need to know what is wrong before your idea goes out to the public and does not get good reviews.

Screen Printing Workshop at Erge Designs

  On Friday, November 19, 2010, I went to the screen printing workshop at Erge Design that GAUGE hosted. This workshop was so much fun. I got to learn the process of screen printing. The type of screen printing that we got to do was hand made. At Erge they have two types of machines that they do screen printing on. One is hand made screen printing and the other is an automatic machine that does all the process of the screen printing. What I enjoyed about the screen printing work shop was that in the end we got to use the hand made screen printing machine. I made two shirts that had two different designs and we got to use two different types of paints. One was water based paint and the other was plasticizing paint. Here are the two shirts that I got to make. The shirt on the top is made with water base pain. It is a plain look and the shirt on the bottom is made with plasticizing paint. With plasticizing paint I learn that it gives it a plastic shiny look.

                                                                                 

 

Dreams

  On Wednesday we watched "What are Dreams?"  It was a movie made by Nova. I thought that this movie was good.  I learned some interesting things about dreams. I learned the when we go to sleep we have four stages that we go into before we start to dream. Stages 1 and 2 are light sleeping, then in stages 3 and 4 we are  actually asleep. From stage 3 and 4 our sleeping stages go backwards; we go stage 4,3,2 and 1. Then we fall into REM sleep, where our bodies go numb and we start to dream.
 
  I learned that some people suffer from REM sleep disorder. These type of people act out their dreams and don't even know that they are doing it. They feel that they are sleep and are not aware that they are acting out their dreams.  There is another rem sleep called non rem sleep. What happens here is that we just sleep through our dreams and we don't dream. One thing that is good about non rem sleep is that it helps people study while you sleep because whatever you were trying to study before you went to bed, your brain studies it while you are sleep. It was amazing to see what made our nightmares. This was due to having too much REM sleep. They say that nightmares can be good because  these dreams are helping us prepare for a situation that could happen in the regular world.  Since it is a nightmare we act it out in our dreams, and when this happens to us in the real world we are prepared for it.

Communication exercise

  On Monday we played a game called What and Who? it was a communication exercise that challenges the communication skills among our group. Jimmy showed us a paint tube and a board eraser, then he told us that the paint tube was going to be the what? and the board eraser was going to be who? He started by telling us that he  was going to introduces what? and pass it to the left. When he introduced it to the person next to him, he was going to say, "this is a what?" and then person would say "what?" and he would answer, "a what?" then the person would say "oh a what?". Then, that person would past to the next person next to them and they would say this is' "a what?" and the person that they where trying to pass it to would say "what?",  like they didn't know what it was and the person  with the object would act like they forgot what it was and would have to turn back and ask Jimmy what it was and jimmy would say "a what?" and that person would say that to the person that they where trying to pass it to. An they would say, oh a what? then the circle would repeat itself again.
 
  After a while of passing a what around he then he started to past the who? to the right side when he introduced it to the this person he was going to say, "this is a who? and then person would say who? then he would say a who? then the person would say "oh a who?. This process went on the same as "a what?"then that person would past to the next person next to them and they would say this is' "a who? and then it would repeat itself again.
 
  As we played for a while the game got challenging when the person in the middle had to pass a what and a who at the same time. It got confusing because when the left side got the chance to say "this is a who" and pass the eraser to the left side and the right side had to pas the paint of tube and say "this is a who", some of the people in the group had a problem of keeping track of what they had to say.  In the end the object of the game was to pass both objects around the circle and to have them end up in Jimmy's hands. In  the end the thing that I learned about the game was that it required a lot of focus, group communication and memory. I really liked the game, it was so much fun. I liked it so much that I decided to play it with my 3rd graders at work and the same problem happen to them like it happened in our group; they had a hard time when the person in the middle had to pass the objects at the same time, in the end they had a good time playing the game.

Communication Reading

This chapter was all about communication. As a graphic designer, it is important to communicate with others to get our ideas across. I like how this chapter deals with ways to communicate with clients and people you have to work with so that your work can be understood. One important concept of communication that I found was language. Aspelund says that language can be emotional or informational. I think that being emotional is more important when you are talking with a client about a specific project. You want the client to know that what you think is important is what they think is important. Dealing with an emotional language, you can have what the author calls a “point to point relationship”. This means that you can discuss each point of reference and how it relates to the overall design.

Another important factor in communication is the fact that different audiences need different types of communication. This can include where you decided to unveil your project, what type of pencils you use, and how you present your ideas to the client, or your design team. I think that Aspelund does a great job in this chapter of giving us as the designer different ideas of working with different types of people and projects and giving us ways to get views and ideas out to the public.

One of the main parts of communication is presentation. Presentation is how you show others your concept and ideas. Aspelund compares a presentation to being like a performance. The same way an actor gets ready to perform, a designer needs to be ready to make a presentation that will show someone else exactly what they want to do. He says that you have to know your lines, what direction your project is going into, and what is your motivation for the project.

In the end, I think that communication is very important in the art of graphic design. If you can’t get your point across to the people who are buying your product or the people that you are designing something for, then it’s not going to work. I also learned in this chapter that there are a lot of different types of communication and what works for one person probably wont’ work for someone else. You need to be ready to work with all types of personalities and you need to be able to communicate with them as well.

Concept Development

On Wednesday we worked with Decimal and Binary number. Jimmy gave us a problem to solve as a group, and he told us that binary numbers are only 0 and 1 and that 2, 3, 4 and etc are not binary numbers. He told us to look at the pattern that we saw in the binary problem and from that we would be able to figure out the numbers for 8, 9 and 10.  This was the problem that he gave us:

Decimal             Binary
      0                     0
      1                     1
      2                    10
      3                    11
      4                   100
      5                   101
      6                   110
      7                   111
      8                     ?
      9                     ?
     10                    ?

Then he told us to come up with answers of 8, 9 and 10 of the binary numbers. It wasn't easy. At first we came up with these binary numbers for 8, 9 and 10, 1000, 1001 and 1110. Then Jimmy started to ask the group if we all agreed with these numbers.  One of our group members said that she didn't agree and she came up with the numbers 1100, 1101 and 1110.  At first I agreed with 1000, 1001 and 1110, but I started to look at the pattern of the binary numbers and it didn't go with the pattern. But when our group member came up with 1100, 1101 and 1110, these numbers made more sense and I agreed more on these numbers being right. After Jimmy asked the group if we all were in favor of these numbers and our group got split with people that agreed and disagreed. After this Jimmy  talked about methodology and  how important it was as a graphic designer to be able to explain to a client a project and if that client didn't agree with you, that meant that you would have to come up with other ways to explain it to your client. In the end I learned that this exercise was not easy because we as group couldn't get everyone to agree with the numbers that we came up with. It also made me see that with our client there will be a day where I will have to use other methods to make my client see what I'm doing for them.

Creative brief

On Monday we talked about the importance of a creative brief. With a creative brief you have to answer these questions who?, what?, why?, when?, how? and where?. A creative brief puts in writing the idea of your understanding of the project that you are working on for your client. They can also sometimes be proposals because since it is a written document of  the project.  We also discussed that when doing work with a client it is always  better to take your time on a project. This is also a good tip if you want to actually make money. If you work too quickly and the work is not good enough, there is a chance the client won't pay you what it would have been worth. Don't get me wrong there will be a time where the client wants you to do a project in two days. But if you have a client that allows you to take your time on a project it is better for you to do so. The other part of the class we went over on the project was where we had to come up with a phrase and ten images that change what the phrase means. My phrase was "don't ask don't tell". These were the two images that the class chose to be my best ones.

Definition and Modeling

               After reading the chapter on Conceptualization, it was very easy to get into this Chapter about definition and modeling. The first thing that I found interesting was the fact that Aspelund compares a concept to a ghost. He says that a concept is something that we see out of the corner of our eye and once we turn around, it’s gone. It’s something that we don’t have a grip on. What comes next is definition. When we define our concept, we bring it out of the corners of our minds and into reality. Before your idea can become an actual reality, there are rules that we as designers need to follow. An idea or concept needs to have a purpose in the society that is going to use it. It has to have a function, a purpose and it needs to be cost efficient so that people can buy it.

                 

                One thing I learned about definition is that you have to know what you want and you can’t be in doubt about your work. As an artist and a designer, there are many times where I feel like my work isn’t good enough and I want to start over. What I have to tell myself and what the author talks about is that I can only make it so good. I can’t keep focusing on the bad parts or the idea will never leave the paper.  Sometimes I just have to let it go and fix it later.

                 

                 After figuring out the definition and purpose of my work, I like how the book focuses on modeling because you can’t have a project without a model. A model is something that takes what’s in your mind and lets other people see what it is. Once again, Aspelund breaks down every process, from the sketching to the actual physical model. As a graphic design student, I appreciate the little parts he puts in each chapter to help me along the way. One of these in this chapter was the fact that sometimes my model might not look like the sketch or even be the same proportion as my sketch. Problems come up all the time with any project and it is important to be prepared. These tools that he offers I think make it possible for designers like me to get the job done and be ready for whatever happens.

Wednesday's class 11/4/2010

On Wednesday we saw a video called "The Powers of Ten". This video was made by Charles and Ray Eames.  I found it very interesting how they use the power of ten and the effects it has as the camera zooms out. I liked how they zoomed out til we got all the way into outer space. Another part that was cool was how as we went to outer space the camera started to zoom in all the way to the beginning with two people and it started to zoom in to a proton of nucleus of carbon atom beneath the skin of a human hand. Another thing that I liked was the different learning facts. For example in outer space they talked about the planets, the solar system and the stars. But when they zoom in you get to learn about the hand and how it relates to the atmosphere of the galaxy. There are clusters of stars and galaxies throughout space and then you reach just darkness. At the same time, there are clusters of cells in the hand until you reach the carbon atom and then there is darkness. I thought it was interesting how the two were tied together.

Moday's class 11/1/2010

On Monday we talked about the meaning of Methodology. I found  that it was a set of methods, principles and rules. With this word we started to think about how it was related to graphic design. The way that I feel that this is related to graphic design is that as a designer when there's a project that we need to do for someone, we first start off by finding a method to create whatever it is our client wants to be created, whether it is a logo or magazine lay out. After we think about what method that we plan to use we then look at the principles of what we need to do first. We have to stay true to the principles of the clients ideas, thoughts, and how they want to be represented. But with any project there are always rules that we as the designer need to follow. These rules keep us on the right track so that the finished product is what we want or what the client wants.The rules also keep the project in line making sure that it fits the need of whoever it is that the client wants it to focus on.