A short break

Love the song, love the movie.

Finals are in full swing. Sleep is a luxury at this point.

I want

Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary

via Good

Have a lovely Monday! It's a balmy 70 degrees right now. It actually snowed on Friday, so I think the weather is highly confused right now.

Gill

If you click this line of Verdana, it will lead you to Gill.

Hello November

What a semester! I feel like  I'm really learning what it's like to be a designer. I'm juggling three major design projects along with two studio classes. Thank god I'm taking Beer and Wine Appreciation! It's nice to have a light course in the midst of everything else.  This is one of those semesters of setbacks. There've been a lot of restarts or near restarts, but I guess that's the best way to learn.

My mind is a bit overwhelmed at all that I am learning. A lot of it is happening outside of class. I've been working  as a shop moniter, but I spend most of my time learning to use all the equipment. Last week I plasma cut steel, this week a fellow worker and I made this:

It's a cabinet to hold all the beautiful new files for the lathe. Hopefully I'll come back in a few years to find it still in use. The shop is brand new this year. It's really fun to watch it come together. I also love that I finally know how to use almost everything in there. 

It's really October?

I've spent most of tonight avoiding work and instead browsing the blogs in this article. I have no idea why, but information mapping is really fascinating to me. We're working on a massive research project right now, all about the North American food system. I have to say, I am very excited to start organizing data. Turning paragraphs and excel spreadsheets into something visual is spectacular.

Some of my favorites:

Flowing Data's banned book map

Simple Complexity's most expensive cities

Images from projects real soon, I promise.

Stalled out

This blog completely stalled out this summer, mainly due to lack of reliable internet. Living on an island greatly reduced my access to day-to-day communication. Without cable or internet, I lost myself in the calm of summer. I have emerged a little wary of the "real" world- a place where everyone moves a little faster and I am bombarded with more visual stimuli than I can truly take in. Granted, island life is not all calm, there are tourists everywhere and the occasional heated word, but for the most part everyone was content to go to the beach and just relax.

So what did I do with my free time? I managed to read a record number of books (17), all of them fiction and all of them pleasurable. A few highlights:
Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind: a great mystery set in post Civil War Barcelona.
Joe Meno's The Great Perhaps: Meno is one of my favorite authors and this novel about family dynamics lived up to my expectations.
Tanya Egan Gibson's How To Buy a Love of Reading: I finished this in less than 24 hours, just to get to the end, which I thought fit the book well. This could've been one of those books that is well written up until the last 20 pages, but managed to wrap up well.
Guillarmo Del Toro's The Strain: Another 24 hour read, I cannot wait for this to be made into a movie, the book had great pacing. Zombie vampires, a great concept.

I also managed to plow through F Scott Fitzgerald's collected works, my favorite being This Side of Paradise, his first novel. It fit my current time of life, as it focuses on the college years and the overwhelming confusion you feel.

I am back into design thinking mode. This year is focused on bringing together all the skills we've already learned. Three major projects are already in the works, along with my elective studio work. I'll be posting progress later this week.

Summer

That lovely landmass right there is where I'll be residing for the entire summer- Martha's Vineyard. I'll be working my bum off at the Black Dog and also doing some graphics work on the side. Should be a busy, but fun summer. I arrived on Thursday and now I'm getting my bearings until I start work Monday. This is quite a surreal experience, escpecially since we seem to be living right behind Munchkinland. Some of these cottages are overwhelmingly "cute." Photos of those and other sights later, when I actually remember to bring my camera with me.

Inspired

Larger image

For the past 6 months or so I've been saving any images that I've found interesting or inspiring. I decided to condense the almost 200 images into my favorites. From modern art to design to photos, I like to flip through these when I need ideas for my own projects. I usually find these on different blogs. My favorite was Dsgnwok, which seems to have shut down. I am going to start perusing Ffffound, but I'm not sure I'll like it as much.

I survived my junior year of college. A few other final projects plus some cake-making to be posted in the next few days. For the next week, I'll be sleeping in and recovering from a nasty sore throat. Then it's off on summer adventures.

Money Shot

It'd be awesome if these were real. Click the image for a close up.

Now this is what ID is all about

My first real 3D rendering, after a semester's worth of tutorials and hours of frustration. I am actually very surprised at how much I truly learned. Hopefully I'll be able to retain it over break.

This is a redesign of the Zem noise canceling ear plugs, developed in Syracuse.

I'll be working on the money shot tonight.

Musicals

Thanks to Netflix, I have been watching my fair share of Golden-Era musicals. I attempted Brigadoon tonight, but got bored. Fortuantely, TCM is showing Bye Bye Birdie:



I am enjoying this a lot more. I love the innuendos that are thrown in during Hollywood Code-era movies. Especially when referencing Elvis and rock and roll. I just watched the South Park episode about the Jonas Brothers, which makes it all come full circle. Pop music is all about teenage girls and sexuality, whether the producers would like to admit it or not.

Of course, Bye Bye Birdie is not as good as Oliver! which I managed to watch three times last week, thanks to my roomate falling asleep every time.



I still have yet to get all the way through Fiddler on the Roof, though I know all the songs by heart. We have both the Broadway and Film soundtracks on record at home.

Sometimes it's just nice to have something light and bubblegummy to watch.

The Weather

I only have one more class tomorrow, then a few finals and projects standing between me and the summer. Speaking of which, it felt like summer today. 90 degrees in april? That's just as strange as a blizzard at this time. The magnolia's are blooming, the tulips are budding, my fan is out of its box.

I generally don't discuss the weather, as I find it to be the most bothersome small talk, but I have been working a lot with it lately. Here is part what I've made so far:



A few cards that are part of a weather game. Collect all the different categories (the different color stripes) and make a certain kind of weather. The one above is a sunny day, much like today's (with the exception of the temperature).

More of this project as the week progresses.

A lack of updates...

...is just indicative of the fact that I have been busy as a bee of late. Finals are closing in. I have quite a few papers and projects to bust through.

I think I am most excited for a project where I have to make this:


more understandable to people. Should be pretty cool. Have a lovely weekend.

Bookmaking

This is manifestation #1 of this project. I think it may be drastically changing this weekend. As a group, four of us chose a piece and music and divided it into sections. This is 2:00-3:00. The song is Steve Reich's "Groove Machine." Just sort of the landscape I imagined from listening. I wish the song was on Youtube. I shall have to do some digging.

Have a lovely weekend!

In Case You Missed It

http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/wherethewildthingsare/

No hyperlinks, so you know exactly what you're seeing. I would embed it, but I'm assuming any youtube clips will be taken down. It was fun looking at facebook last night, as most of the statuses were links to this trailer. The book is over 40 years old and has had such an impact on so many childhoods. It'll be fun to see it, because the audience will be such a huge range of ages.

My sister (who is quite a few years my senior) actually painted life-size monsters on her walls. I had a smaller sized Max on mine for a bit. Hopefully I'll be able to post the hilarious photo of my grandmother in the room.

Just wanted to give you something to smile about! More updates later, with some of my book projects.

Semiotics

My Symbology and Semiotics midterm, a strange form of puppetry to answer a given question. Can you guess the question? We've been discussing perception in class, in terms of user/viewer understanding. It's interesting, because there were six of us answering the same question, but each of us had different visual ideas (though for the most part, the same verbal answer). Visual versus verbal has kind of fascinated me lately, I've been struggling to find a balance between the two. Hopefully, I'll have time to write up some sort of longer explanation of what I mean.

This was a very fun problem to solve. I really love the forms created by the shadows:





Behind the scenes:

This is one of the reasons why I love McSweeney's so much:

A QUESTIONNAIRE REGARDING THE PHENOMENON OF THE SNUGGIE, THE BLANKET WITH SLEEVES, FOR TESTING YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF AMERICAN HOME ECONOMICS AND YOUR OWN PERSONAL DESIRES, WRITTEN IN THE STYLE OF WALKER PERCY'S LOST IN THE COSMOS

Have a good weekend!

4 Random Drawings from Sophomore Year

From my marker rendering class. I just dug them out while going through my stuff. Nothing special, but I really enjoyed the process of creating these. The tractor is fun, because I actually know how to drive it!

Cupcakes

Work in progress for my bookmaking class. Used Alton Brown's recipe from "Good Eats":


Unfortunately, we ate the cupcakes before I could get a shot. They were gooey and awesome cooked in mugs!

A Vote in Favor of Redesign

I guess there's been some sort of hoopla over Tropicana changing their packaging, to a point where they are changing it back to the original. First, if people are going to complain about a Pepsi Co. redesign, then why not look at the Pepsi soda redesign. Of the two, I'd say that's the more "generic" looking.

The funny thing is, I've come to realize even more so that I live in a design bubble. Everyone I've talked to likes the new packaging. At the same time, everyone I've talked to is a design student who also noted the change. Why do I like the packaging? It's clean, but still has playful touches, like the green leaf dotting the "i." I also love the glass on the front, which invokes the daily breakfast ritual better than an orange with a straw. I guess the original orange image was too realistic and straightforward for my taste. A package doesn't need to scream its message: a simple mix of color and words works fine. Especially for orange juice, which isn't trying to be "extreme!" or "bold!" or anything silly like that. Orange juice isn't loud, and the new packaging conveyed that.

Ah well, I'll just have to buy a carton or two and save it to enjoy on my own.

Save Some Words

I wish my vocabulary included some of these words. Trajectitious? Essomenic? Quaeritate?

I wish the FAQ section was updated. It's a really cool site, but the full purpose isn't entirely outlined. I'm assuming the words have been removed from the Oxford English Dictionary?

I made a logo of sorts this weekend:

I just wanted to do something quick that showed a little bit of personality. Why a bunny? Well, I spent a good deal of my life assuming that I was born in the Year of the Dragon, only to find out that my January birthday meant I was a rabbit. No offense to them, but dragons are far cooler than rabbits. So, I decided that if I was going to be a rabbit, I'd be a fire-breathing rabbit (with sharp pointy teeth)!

This guy was an honorable mention. A bunch of people said he looks too much like the Donnie Darko rabbit. I personally think he just looks pensive:

Not sure why they're so light. Saving JPEGs from illustrator is quite a pain.

Treehouses

A video of a group project I did last year of an installation we made. The assignment was to translate a written, abstract expression of a space into a full-scale model, entirely out of cardboard. We created these sort of treehouses, which, as you can see, were quite structurally sound.

Just posting this reminds me of the warm weather Syracuse was experiencing at the time. It was only April, yet we had 75 degree, sunny days. I think all the groups decided to make their pieces outside, just to have more time to soak up the rays.

Beautiful

Saw this posted over on Cinematical. Absolutely stunning use of still photography to create the animation. The song is pretty good, but really would be nothing without the visuals. It makes me extremely happy to know that there are still plenty of people out there willing to take the time to make something so complex and beautiful. My roomate found a video of stills of London, I shall have to find it and add it to this post. Oh, how I wish I had the time to learn to do all these things. I guess I will jsut have to learn them later.

Happy Friday! I am making mushroom soup and going to a dinner party! I hope your weekend is just as lovely.

How To Make a Tuna Salad Sandwich

The second simple exercise in Symbology. I'm a vegetarian, so it was a bit awkward as I haven't really looked at tuna fish in a long time. I never liked it when I ate meat, anyway. I'm more of a fluffernutter girl, with raspberry preserves. Or grilled cheese, with some mustard on it. Yum!

I'm watching Billy Elliot while working on making some rough books for my book binding class. Hopefully I'll have some schnazzy three dimensional stuff to show off soon. This semester is a lovely combination of theory (Symbology), computer skill (Alias), process (Plastic Production), intellectual pursuits (Jewish-American Lit and 20th Century American Art), and hands-on skills (Book Binding). I love having such a variety, my brain gets to work in so many different ways. I think in words, images, sounds, and emotions.

I leave you with my favorite scene from Billy Elliot, the "angry" dance:

Quick exercise

Assignment: Take "institutionalized" symbols and make them into a uniform system. This probably isn't the "best" solution, but I wanted to be both playful and as different from the established signs. It's hard to fix symbols that have been so ingrained in our psyche. The class is "symbology and semiotics." We spent the first class learning the difference between icon, symbol, and index. Very interesting, but very theory-based and conceptual.

The charrette from the first week was eye opening. I have a manifesto to post soon, the result of my group's weeklong struggle with solving humans' energy problems. That will need a whole post to itself. More to come in the next week!

Starting out with a Bang

We've hit the ground running in the ID department, starting the year off with a 5-day charrette. It's all based around the Next Generation contest held by Metropolis. We're working with Interior Design majors. The past two days have consisted of a multitude of environmental lectures, from sustainability to better building processes. Hopefully something great will come of this.

I will have some amazing update when this madness is done. For now, I have to get some sleep and recharge for tomorrow's activities.