Post-It Art

For as long as I can remember, I have been a doodler. I always doodled in my school notebooks and in meetings where my attention isn’t being strongly held (I still pay attention; I think of it as multi-tasking). Recently, things have been very slow at work for me and I found myself doodling again to pass the time (having downtime is an odd feeling for me, I prefer to be busy). Also, I was trying to clear my head of some things at work, and doodling is one of my releases for that.

I also keep post-its on my desk (whoever came up with them is a genius in my book!), and they served as the perfect medium for my creative doodling endeavors. So, I started making shapes and coming up with stuff. I didn’t really think that much about it, I never do when I’m just doodling/sketching, and just let my mind and hand wander. I ended up filling four post-its.

A day or so later, one of my co-workers was talking to me at my desk. As he was leaning on top of my desk (I have a ledge-thing on top of it), he glanced down and saw my post-its. He was impressed and asked me from where they came. I told him that I made them, I was bored and just did them to pass the time (okay, I probably shouldn’t tell my colleagues that I was bored and found ways to entertain myself, oh well). He seemed impressed. Later, another colleague came over to my desk and was leaning on it (just because I’m used to people leaning on my desk doesn’t mean I care for it) and saw them. She was impressed and couldn’t believe that I did them.

Honestly, I didn’t really think about what I was doing, I was just trying to keep my mind engaged and do something. As I did them, I discovered patterns and sought to fill in empty spaces, but those details weren’t in my head at the beginning. When I started, I was really just moving my pencil.

My moral of this post is that we never know what others will find beautiful and we shouldn’t discredit work that we think of as “mere sketching” or “mere doodling” because you never know who else might enjoy it.

The other moral: doodle. It’s amazing how much you can clear your mind and it’s fun! :)


Nature Makes It Better

Do you remember in cartoons when a character is having a really rough day or is feeling kind of down that a dark rain could seems to follow them around? Well, that’s how I’ve been feeling the last few days.

I don’t want to complain, but I do want to set the scene for the picture I took and am posting. To keep a very long story very short, I will say that circumstances at my office are proving very challenging, and most recently, have left me a little uncertain about what’s happening in the future. There are reassignments being made and I’m not sure where I’m going, and the office environment can be a little intense. That’s all I’ll say, one should never speak poorly of an employer, but let’s just sum it up as it being harder than usual and I’ve felt my little black rain cloud (not a cute one like Winnie the Pooh) hovering overhead.

One particularly hard day last week, I was on my way to class. I was early (standard, since five minutes early is “late” in my family) and I was walking down the street when I saw a cherry blossom tree blooming. It was (is) so pretty and I stopped to take a picture.

Cheesy though this will sound, I really felt like this was a reminder to me that good things are coming soon. I felt hope about the future and remembered that even if there are rain clouds hanging over our heads, there is still beauty all around us and sometimes the prettiest things in nature are all you need to brighten your spirits.

My design take-away for this post is to just keep your eyes open and see the beauty all around you. This earth really was beautifully created and taking a moment to smell the roses (or just see them) can brighten any bad day. So, keep your (this most definitely includes me) head up and see what is around you–that’s a real designer.


LDS Infographic

I can’t believe it’s been a month since I posted; sad, I know. A lot has been happening, which I may get into later in additional posts.

I want to dedicate this post to a very cool infographic I came across on Facebook that I loved. I know I don’t tend to get very personal on my blog. On the one hand, there’s something intriguing and protective about not revealing too much about myself, but on the other hand, others may not know the different sides of me and feel like they know me. I don’t really know what the right answer to the “how much do I reveal about myself” question is, but I think it’s good to show different sides of myself. All that said, one of the most important things about me is that I am a devout member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, (aka LDS or Mormons) and have been for 15 years (tomorrow!).

Few things in my life bring me as much as my membership in the Church does. Or, better said, my happiness in life comes because I am an active, converted member of my church. It gives me peace and perspective when life is challenging, hope that things will get better one day, and joy in knowing who I am, what I’m doing, and where I’m going. I have been a member of my church for 15 years and have served a full-time mission (18-months for women) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (which was an amazing experience). I continue to be actively involved in my congregation (“ward”) and hold a leadership responsibility (“calling”) in my ward. My activity and membership in my church is not so much what I do, but who I am.

With that, there is a lot of confusion and speculation about my church and what we believe. And, with Mitt Romney is GOP candidacy race, a lot more attention is being given to the church. In itself, this attention provides excellent opportunities to convey what we believe and who we are, and the infographic below helps explain who we are and what we do. Mormons are indeed Christians, they are actually very devout Christians. We believe in the Bible, the Old and New Testament, and in its truth as scripture. We also believe in The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. It is exactly what it says it is, another witness. It does not replace the Bible, rather, it complements it, restoring basic truths, and testifying of the same Jesus who taught in Jerusalem, was crucified and was resurrected. In fact, there is a reference to God and/or Christ every 1.7 verses in The Book of Mormon. We believe in living prophets, like Moses, who speak for the world. Our prophet today is Thomas S. Monson. Joseph Smith, who we reverence, not worship, was the first prophet of this dispensation (period of time when God’s power was on the earth) and is known as the Prophet of the Restoration, because it was through him that the plain and precious truths of the gospel, including the fulness of saving covenants and ordinances, were again brought back and made known on the earth. These are basic doctrines and elements of my testimony, but I felt them important to set forth, especially in showing how fiercely we love and follow Jesus Christ.

With all that, I was really excited about this infographic. I really like inforgraphics. I like how they display information is interesting ways and can make statistics looks really cool and interesting (I’m both a designer and a bit of a geek). This was cool because it displays some important and basic information about my church. So, without further ado, below is the graphic:

 

I’m really grateful for this infographic. I’ve been looking for a way to integrate my faith into my blog, which is design-related (in case you couldn’t tell ;) ), and this was a perfect introduction. I hope you find this interesting and informative. If you’d like to know more about the Mormons, check out www.mormon.org (the BEST resource for learning about Mormons. Well, this and speaking to members.).


Not to Jinx Myself…

Well, it’s been almost two weeks since I started the web design portion of my program, and I’m really liking it (this shouldn’t come as a surprise). What does kind of surprises me  is that I’m picking up HTML pretty easily. I’ll be honest, at first I was nervous because of the technical nature of it, because I am not a big math, equations, technical thinker. I did fine with those types of subjects in school, but my passions and strengths were more with history, english, and marketing. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy critical thinking, I really like doing case studies in school, but I have just never been a big technical, linear thinker; thus the apprehension with HTML coding. Then, much to my surprise, I’m actually picking it up and understading it. I like that I can do it and have memorized the basics about how to create a website, albeit a very basic one.

That being said, I hope I haven’t jinxed myself. I know that I’m still in the basics mode and that things will get more complicated as I go on, but I’m hoping that getting a solid foundation will really help me when the harder things come into play. I just have to keep practicing so I can get better and make sure I have a solid foundation. This week, we’ll also enter the world of CSS, which I think will be really good and I’ll be interseted to see how it all works together.

As part of our class, and to give real-life application, we had to purchase our own web hosting space and domain name, which I did. Now, I can really make sure I understand how things work behind the scenes of websites. But, yes, I have my own website, which I guess makes me official. Once I get it put together and up and running, I’ll post it, but for now, you (my two readers) can wait in joyful anticipation of the day.


A New Year, A New Semester

I know, it’s been a ridiculously long amount of time since I last posted, so for the few people who will actually read this, I apologize for the gross delay.

Maybe I should start by summing up the end of last year. In my last post, I mentioned how I was in the Portfolio class and getting that put together and that my semester was winding down. Well, I completed that class at the beginning of December (click here to see the PDF of my portfolio) and started looking for jobs in the field–it seemed like a natural transition. A week after the semester ended, my grandpa passed away suddenly and the rest of December was a blur with traveling and funeral arrangements. However, I got to put my design skills to the test as I made a slideshow of him for the funeral (and learned a couple of new things, courtesy of my cousin) and made the program using InDesign and Photoshop. The funeral was very nice, a good tribute to my Papa, and it was nice to spend Christmas in a warm climate with my extended family.

Then January came and it’s been pretty uneventful, especially since the new semester/web design portion of the program hasn’t started yet. But, it begins tomorrow and I am so excited for it! I feel like web design is this whole other realm of possiblities that I haven’t even begun to tap into. My sophomore year of high school, we dabbled in the web software of the time, but that was a long time ago and there have been a lot of developments since then, and I’m really looking forward to jumping into it all.

My goal is to work just as hard, if not harder, in the web portion as I did in the print side, as I feel that a strong background and skill set in web design will open up more job opporunities for me, and enable me to take on some more side projects. I’m also going to try really hard to be a better blogger. Believe it or not, I actually like to blog, I’m just really inconsistent about it, but it’s a new year, a new semester, and a new start. Included with my goal to blog regularly, I’m also hoping to make it a bit more thought-based, in that I want to include pictures, links, etc. of design that I like and talk about it more instead of just showing my current project; to make it more a forum of design and why I like it, which I believe was the whole purpose of this assignment (create a blog) in the first place. I’ll likely revisit “Famous Fridays,” and go about it differently this year because that isn’t working for me the way I wanted it to, so we’ll see how my blog develops this year.

Stay tuned!


What I’ve Been Up To

I promise that I’m not dead or have disappeared entirely. I know it’s been a ridiculously long amount of time since my last post, but I promise, I’m still going strong. It’s been a busy month for me, things at work got…well…I guess interesting or intense are the right words, but I won’t go into here. Needless to say, in the busyness of work and school, the blog has taken a backseat, but I’ve actually missed posting things, and will try to be better in the future.

When we last left off, I had just posted about my magazine project, which seems like eons ago, when in actuality, it was only a few months. I’ve since moved through three other classes and now am in Portfolio. Crazy, right? Remember when I started back in January and the idea of portfolio seemed so far in the future, and now it’s here? Yeah, me too. There have been a lot of experiences since the beginning of the program, including that our class has reduced from about 10 in the beginning to only two of us remaining now (that’s another story for another day, maybe not best shared over the internet). Needless to say, Hung and I are here until the end.

To get us off to a good start in creating our portfolio, so we can make it awesome and I can get a new job (please, oh please!). Our new instructor, Tieghe (who’s awesome), had us make a PDF of all the work we’ve done since the program started, all of our projects in class and any projects we did on the side. I’ve been fortunate to be able to do a few side projects, including a recipe book for my friends’ wedding reception (post to come), which I was able to include. It was a really good exercise for me to go through and see what I’ve done, what I liked about each of the projects, and how I’ve progressed since the beginning. After going through them, we picked our top 10, then narrowed them down to our top/best five, which we’ll include in our portfolio. I’m looking forward to the next steps and seeing what my actual portfolio ends up looking like.

As some have asked to see what I’ve been up to–and since I have a PDF of everything–I decided to post the PDF here for your viewing pleasure. Most of this will be familiar, as I’ve tried to post my projects regularly; some will be new (the recipe book pages and the concept flyer I did for my friend’s non-profit organization), and one project is missing because I need to do a major overhaul on it and didn’t want to include it here, but I’ll finish it for my peace of mind soon and post it.  Again, this is not my portfolio, but a review of what I’ve been doing.

While I’ve already selected my top five projects, feel free to tell me your favorites. :)

Happy viewing!

Angie Projects in Review


Magazine Design Project

I know it’s been a while since I posted a project. To say that life got chaotic would be an understatement and the three weeks surrounding the creation of this project, combined with the past three weeks have had more than their share of crazy. So, I haven’t had time to post and there were some hardships associated with this magazine project, mostly due to our teacher quitting and having to find a new one. Thankfully, Tash (who is wonderful) stepped in and helped me out a lot.

This project was to create a magazine, and I found out about the assignment right before my trip to Utah in August for my friend’s wedding. I’ve mentioned how creative and well-done the reception was, and in talking with my friend who was I was staying with, I got the idea to do a craft magazine and using the wedding as my inspiration, came up with the title “Beauty on a Budget.” With the green light, I went ahead.

With that in mind, I went to work and found it to be a bit of a challenge to create a magazine from scratch. I did a lot of research and looked at a lot of magazines of all types and started going forward. I tried to incorporate a lot of pictures from the wedding I took personally; it wasn’t really coming together, but it was leading me in the right direction. The more I opened my mind and just let myself be more flexible in getting images that related to the wedding, but weren’t exactly from there, the more it came together. The fun tidbit about this project is that I wrote the feature article myself.

I got some higher quality images, some ideas from magazines and just went forward. After I came up with a name (thank you Tash for the idea) and the masthead, the rest of it kind of came together. Granted, there is still quite a bit of work and refinement to be made, but I try to post my projects as I do them so I can get some feedback and show the process. I will refine this when it comes time for my portfolio and will post the final things, but in the meantime, here you go.

The project had to have a cover, table of contents, feature article, and at least one department (the articles that appear in every issue) page. Again, it still needs some love.

Cover

Table of Contents

Feature Article

Department Page



And, there you go. I like the direction this is going and I think once it’s refined it will turn out really well.

Here, let me express my thanks to the following people for helping me with this: Kelly for the idea, Mark for the picture of the doors (he was the wedding photographer and a friend, so I got free pictures), Tash for pointing me in the right direction, and, of course, my dear friends Lance and Alyssa for their permission to use their wedding for my project. Who knew when they got engaged that they’d give me the idea for my magazine project? It’s pretty great how things work together. :)


David Carson: Edge Makes Design

Last week was crazy, I moved and was sans internet, so I didn’t have a chance to post, but I’m back this week with Famous Friday. This week we’ll look at David Carson.

History

David Carson is an American Designer who revolutionized design through innovative typography and graphics with an edge. Educated in Southern California, he was a surfer who studied sociology. He first became acquainted with graphic design during a two-week course in Arizona, and drew from what he knew to create something completely new.

He was the art director for RayGun Magazine, and a founder of Blue Magazine, designing a few of the early covers/issues before turning the project over to another art director, both in the 1990s. He opened his own design studio, David Carson Design, in New York in 1995. During the 1990s, especially during his work on RayGun, he began attracting international attention for his new innovative style. While innovative, his style was not always appreciated as it was often viewed as illegible. However, as people looked below the surface, they saw the innovation in his design and couldn’t help but be captivated by it.

Carson used the elements around him, including his Southern California-surfer background. sing the vernacular around him, he brought an edge to his work and the design world. Known as “the father of grunge” in design, he has become one of the most famous designers ever.

Work

Captions: 1) Blue Magazine premiere cover. 2) RayGun Magazine cover. 3) David Carson Lecture poster. 4) Surf Magazine cover.

Thoughts

David Carson redefined graphic design, breaking elements of modernism with edgy new ideas and concepts. He took what he knew and pushed the envelope of convention. I’m not one to push boundaries, but I am so impressed by how he can work typography to create something, and his use of images and graphics is interesting. He cuts and crops and manipulates images in unconventional ways but they seem to work well for him.

I can see how his work could be labeled illegible, but at the same time, I think one aspect of graphic design is to look beyond the surface, to find the deeper meaning of things and conceptualize an idea more than literally convey it. As I look at his work, I like looking for the hidden pieces and seeing how he layers typography to communicate a message. The layers give his work a different feel and bring a different level of understanding. It’s an interesting exercise to go through the levels of his work, but when you get to the bottom of it, you see new meaning and broader concepts.

As my takeaway, I appreciate how he uses typography. Typography isn’t my greatest strength in design, meaning that it’s not the first element I think of when I start a project. I usually have an idea of what kind of typography I want to use, but I don’t start working with it until a little later in my process. But, I think it would be interesting for me to do a project strictly with typography, though I guess my current project is kind of like that. I think that I can develop as a designer as I find new ways of using and working with typography. I may not be the next David Carson, but I can be inspired by him.

The other thing I appreciate about Carson was that he didn’t start his career in design, he made a career change from sociology. He gives me hope as I begin to make a career change.


Neville Brody: Visual Language

This week’s post is dedicated to Neville Brody, an internationally known/renowned designer, typographer, art director, and brand strategist.

Background

Neville Brody, born and raised in the United Kingdom, studied at the London School of Printing from 1977-1980. During his time there, he started to develop his own style, influenced by the emerging punk rock culture, which was not appreciated by many of his colleagues. However, the development of his style led to him create a new type of visual language that was based on subculture (see Art Directory Design). This new language involved mixing typefaces and combining different design elements, including geometric shapes, symbols, and pictures.

From 1981-1986, he was the art director for “The Face” Magazine and created some of the most memorable covers, many of which inspired other designers working on magazines internationally.  From 1983-1987, he worked with the following magazines: “City Limits,” “New Socialist,” “Touch,” and “Arena.” In 1992, he designed the image and branding for the “House of Culture in Berlin, and worked on the branding for the ORF (Austrian television) in 1992-1993, and Premiere from 1991-1994.

In 1990, he was one of the founders of FontWorks and has designed many typefaces within it. In 1994, he launched Research Studios, which is known for creating visual languages across various mediums and applications. And in 2006, he redesigned “The Times” publication with a new font “Times Modern.”

As a typographer, he has introduced many typefaces, including “Times Modern,” “New Deal,” “Industria,” “Blur,” “Gothic,” “Pop,” “Six,” and “Dirty,” just to name a few.

Works

    

 

 

 

 

 

From left to right, top to bottom: 1. “The Graphic Language of Neville Brody,” book cover; 2. “Seven Songs by 23 Skidoo,” album cover, 1982; 3. “New Deal” typeface; 4. “The Face” Magazine; 5. “Fuse” Magazine; 6. “Double Vision,” Cabaret Voltaire.

Thoughts

I chose Neville Brody this week because I just finished the module for “Magazine” in class (post to come shortly), and I knew that Brody was highly influential in the magazine design world. I wanted to see more of his work and learn about him. He also inspired my first project for class for Black History Month. I really enjoyed seeing some of what he’s produced and how he pushed the boundaries of conventional design. I like how he mixes in different elements to create something so interesting and memorable. I like, in particular, his use of shapes and patterns (as seen in the album cover, #2) because I like both shapes and patterns, they speak to me more than some things do.

His typography treatments are very cool and innovative. I can only dream of using typography like he does, and I am by no means destined to become a world-famous typographer, but I can appreciate both his creation and usage of type in his designs. I like how he changes the size and orientation of it, and how each piece is unique in its typography, and shows his versatility in design. Now, I recognize that not all designers are typeface designers, and that a handful of fonts can create works and wonders equal to Brody’s work (at this point in my design career, this makes my life better), but I do have a certain respect for those who can use various typefaces–including to mix and match them–to create things.

My takeaways, at least at this point in my design career, from Neville Brody are to not be shy to include different elements into a design (typography, shapes, patterns) and not be afraid to use them differently. Text can go in a different orientation and give a cool effect. As long as I don’t break the major design rules, there really is so much that can be done to create something. Text can go in different directions, patterns can give both a background and a texture, font size can change within a design, etc. I tend to be pretty cautious in my design, I don’t push a lot of boundaries, but I think there’s something to be gained in at least trying something new and outside of one’s comfort zone, because it helps to develop a style and see what one likes and doesn’t like. And as I’m trying to find out what my design style is, what makes me unique compared to others, I think an exercise in doing something bolder and different from what I usually do could be interesting.

Bibliography

Art Design Directory: http://www.art-directory.info/design/neville-brody-1957/

Research Studios: http://www.researchstudios.com/neville-brody/

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Brody

Images

1. http://lh3.ggpht.com/-UtS_513Ebxk/Rl7n0HTk8UI/AAAAAAAAO3k/Iu1rx9bQZd4/001_NevilleBrodyWork.jpg

2. http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/wp-content/uploads/2006/04/skidoo.jpg

3. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XzVUwfgeIMY/SxTzw8Imv-I/AAAAAAAAAOs/4MX0QBYT7nE/s1600/new-deal.jpg

4. http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ATEeJUpuyx0/TZDgeSnHxQI/AAAAAAAAAC4/mcLiuVPCmA8/s1600/neville-brody002.jpg&imgrefurl=http://iamlauravaughan.blogspot.com/2011/03/neville-brody.html&usg=__nPO-gtP0VTwPDfRIDkeP2IdpUqc=&h=410&w=640&sz=103&hl=en&start=2&sig2=3yEKGK5VwP1CshKLzBrZig&zoom=1&tbnid=kym1PepWIk7vDM:&tbnh=88&tbnw=137&ei=-65XTsqeKMqRgQeEmLCfDA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dneville%2Bbrody%2Bwork%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26tbm%3Disch%26prmd%3Divnso&itbs=1

5. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ywyRhO6JzQE/TP9jih2cEsI/AAAAAAAAALE/t1H40BlSNA0/s1600/brody12.jpg

6. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_x4FVqjDW7BM/S28ElRBjySI/AAAAAAAADtY/fryPl68qKxY/034_NevilleBrodyWork.jpg


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