Engage AIGA Leadership Retreat

ENGAGE! What a strong and powerful word. Maybe not in the sense of beating someone up, but in a way that can bring everyone together and unite in what they believe and enjoy doing with their lives. Engage is the upcoming theme for the AIGA Leadership Retreat. It is really such an honor to be working on this project. I see it as more than a project though, this is a real life event, and our work is going to be in a real atmosphere. It’s going and has been a challenge, but I’m up for a good challenge anytime. Our first task was to come up with the logo and color palette. Sounds easy enough! Well, have you ever made a logo? It’s not as easy as many people think it is, especially when this is a national event, and we’re students. People perceive students differently than professionals, and they should cause we’re still in the learning process. The logo for this kind of thing needed to be solid, and be able to work in all aspects of the entire conference. For some reason, I have been really into logos that play off the negative space, and create a whole different image. So for my first attempt, that’s what I tried, and it looked half way decent, but like every design, I really needed to push my idea even more. When I pushed it farther, it lost all of its meaning entirely, so that idea went in the trash. We were pushed as an entire class to push for hand made quality logos, and try to manipulate typefaces to create something completely new. This really stuck in my mind for some reason, manipulating fonts, who would have ever came up with that idea for an identity? From this point, I went back to the drawing board, and pushed my ideas. I kept thinking how could I make this work? My final logo that I came up with turned out descent, but in the end didn’t get chosen to be pushed even more, which didn’t hurt my feelings at all. Then, the finally three logos were chosen, and we broke into groups to make our name badges and web banners. The logo group that I was put into was all about dots, dots, everywhere. I see spots! I really enjoyed working with this logo though because there were just so many possibilities that you could have pushed for. It was a fun, and happy logo. In the end, the dots logo was chosen to be THE logo of the retreat. Each of these pieces have been pushed to the limit, and became stronger throughout each stage.

Simple Pleasures (In Design)

What are your simple pleasures in design? When I think of this question the first thing that comes to mind is doing meticulous work. I know that’s really vague and open to anything, but I love doing meticulous work with any kind of design that I do. Whether I’m making a logo, or putting together a publication design, I really enjoy taking the time to make sure things are placed where they need to be, and making sure that the kerning is absolutely perfect. I did a project for Eye magazine in typography, and if you’ve ever seen Eye magazine then you know they stick to certain criteria. The pg number has to be placed 1.5 picas from the bottom and side of each page, there is always a 2 pica border around every spread, etc. They are very picky about their designs, and it works for them; their magazine layouts are absolutely amazing, and it all goes back to the meticulous work. If they didn’t care where the page number goes, or the border being 2 picas, then the magazine wouldn’t have the same feel to it. I love meticulous work, plain and simple! It’s the meticulous work that really strengthens an overall design. If it wasn’t for designers doing this kind of work, then some logos and publications would look horrific. When I first got into design, I hated doing meticulous work and paying attention to the details, but the more I got into designing, the more I started to love and enjoy designing. It seems like something that no one would consider being a “simple pleasure” but for some reason, this actually helps calm me down if I’m having a bad day, or if I just get bored. It’s good to be a graphic designer, and to take the time to realize a simple pleasure in life.

Clever Web Banners

Clever web banners. Is there really such a thing? Apparently there are people out there that don’t believe in clever web banners, only crappy ones that irritate you. Well at least that was my experience with trying to find a web banner that was cleverly designed, and appealing to me as a viewer. I visit several web sites in any given day, and until now I have actually found myself paying closer attention to them. I’m looking at the design, the typeface, the message that it’s trying to send, etc. But I still found myself having trouble finding a well-designed banner. I just so happened to come across these two examples after looking through at least 30 different web sites. I chose these two examples because they really appealed to me. I think even if I wasn’t a designer, I still think these banners would appeal to me. The cinescene banner is just interesting in that it’s visually appealing, and the way that they have treated the red and gray words in the background just make it “easy” on the eyes, and the simplicity of the design brings me in as a viewer. The other banner is appealing to me for the simple fact of the texture that was used for the background, and the way that there is 3-dimensional space being created and that it all comes from one focal point, which I think that it gives it even more character and interest. All in all, I think they way to have a clever web banner is to have simplicity in your design. You should make it simple and straight to the point. No one is going to sit there and read a long web banner that has useless information, and isn’t appealing.

CSS Zen Garden

When this project first began, I knew I wanted to create something that had to do with being uncomfortable. When you think of zen, most of the time people think of something calming and relaxing. For my “zen,” I thought of the idea of using needles as the whole idea of being uncomfortable. Needles are usually filled with some sort of medicine or vaccine, but I’m filled my needles with paint. Creating the idea that art is my zen, and can be anyone else’s zen. Sticking with that idea of uncomfortable and art as a zen, I decided to make this web page to mainly focus on vibrant colors. I tried to keep an interesting color palette using somewhat of neon colors such as pink, orange, blue, red, and purple. I wanted to make sure that the colors popped, and wanted to make this page as interesting and intriguing as possible for my target audience of teens to enjoy even more. I wanted it to be easy for the viewer to comprehend, and understand what was the point of the page. This project was very stressful and time consuming, but overall, I thoroughly enjoyed creating this web page mock up. I enjoyed the process of trying to mentally figure out how a link will look at different stages, and how to make needles become of “zen” of some sort. I feel like the idea of making people uncomfortable and thinking outside of the box about zen makes this design even stronger and it comes across with a deeper meaning.

Line Weight

When this project first began, I really had no idea of where to take the printing term of line weight. This really could have went in any direction. Line weight seems more like an open field, and I could have created something with jagged lines, or something really off the wall as far as a design goes. But I wanted it to come across as being humorous. Humor, at least for me, helps me understand and retain information better. When you can create a great joke or something funny about something that people don’t know anything about, it makes it easy to remember. The whole idea of my project came along while I was getting ready to go to sleep. I am now a firm believer in the best ideas come when you least expect them, at night time. I came up with the idea to make my printing term, line weight, into something that really only designers will find humorous. So having a scale with a line on it doesn’t seem like the obvious choice, but that’s what makes this idea even better. I don’t like going for the obvious with work unless it is absolutely necessary, and this was the case of not going obvious. I think by me making line weight humorous, it will stay in people’s heads longer than expected or intended. Either way, I wanted it to be easy for designers to comprehend, and understand what was occurring.

Type Specimen Poster

This project was to make a poster that displayed the characteristics of any given typeface. I chose Optima because it’s a classic font, but it’s not like any of the other classic fonts. Optima has a slight curve at the end of the ascenders and descenders. Which is why I love this typeface. It’s not stiff, it that helps to describe it. With my poster, I wanted to be able to portray this unique aspect of Optima. I chose to use the question mark as the main focus of my poster. It creates a nice flow and it’s unlike any other question mark. The way I’ve placed it on the page, it is almost unrecognizable as a question mark. It creates more of a beautiful shape, and then with the text wrapped around it makes it an even more unique shape to look at. I also chose to make it asymmetrical to create that emphasis of focusing more on what the shape is. I had lots of trouble trying to figure out the alpha-numeric sequence and where to place it, in the end I placed it in the same manner as the paragraphs which was around the question mark. Overall, this poster displays how unique Optima is and how different it is just by seeing the question mark and it’s unique shape.

Deer Jon Book

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When this project first began, I knew I wanted to write something that had to do with my family. Since my brother has left for Iraq, we’ve learned that family is everything to us; we’ve become closer as a family. I’m not saying our family wasn’t close before, but now we appreciate how our family has grown. Sticking with that idea of families coming together, I decided to make this book be written mainly for my brother. I’m sure that people may think that our family is unusual for taking a deer head to places with us as a representation of Jon, but we embrace our craziness. The idea of the deer telling the story seemed to be the right direction in which to take this book. I wanted this to be for me brother, but not about my brother. Yes, the deer head is basically Jon while he’s away, but I made it where this deer has a personality; I made the deer seem like he was part of the family. The pictures that my family have taken with us and the deer tell a story. I wanted viewers to be able to look at this book and either view the pictures and understand the story or actually go through and read each page. Either way, I wanted it to be easy for the viewer to comprehend, and understand what was occurring. This project was very stressful and time consuming, but overall, I thoroughly enjoyed putting this book together. It seemed like I had more pressure on me to make this book spectacular since it is so close and personal for me and my family. Even though that was the case, I feel that it made my design and idea even stronger and it came across with a deeper meaning. Love you Jon!

Fear/Safety Psychogeographical Map

This project was about getting into the psychology of a map without it physically looking like a map. I’m from a small town, so Chattanooga is huge to me, and very scary. I’m terrified to go out and do things, but when I do, I usually explore things in my car, it’s my comfort zone and I feel safe there. So the whole idea of my map was to explore unknown places in my car, and my car become my art piece. I wrote things on my windshield, used post it notes to post what I was feeling, what was on the radio, and anything else I was thinking about at the time. So instead of making my car an installation piece, I had to try and figure out a way how to get my point across. So I made a booklet that has 14 different pictures, and on the fronts of the pages, I’ve related the time and a lyric from a song that was on at the time I was drifting.

Paper Plus

Nothing like taking a tour of a paper distributing company. Paper Plus is a local company that provides you service with various types of paper. I learned what skid paper is, and the differences between a long grain and short grain paper. Skid paper is big sheets of paper. Local companies such as Williams Visual Solutions and Allegra use these skid sheets to basically save on costs as well as other benefits. Then there is long and short grain paper. Long grain is just as it says long. It goes with the height of the paper. Actually it all depends on the size. If you have an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper then it’s usually going to be long grain. Short grain is dealing more with the width of the paper. If you need to make a fold in any kind of paper, you should always go along with the direction of the grain. You can go against the grain, but it leaves you with a jagged edge, whereas with the other way, you would have a smooth edge. Paper Plus keeps an in-house stock of paper, which most companies do, and this just makes things cheaper on the customer. This isn’t the best choice, but when you need something, and need it cheap usually go with the in-house brand. Paper Plus isn’t a manufacturing company, but they still have plenty of paper in stock; the paper that can’t be held in the store is held in a warehouse in Atlanta. The best thing about Paper Plus was getting paper swatches! These contain various types of paper dealing with the grain, color, etc. Thanks Alex for taking the time to speak with us today, and thank you allowing us to come visit, and for the swatches!! For more information, go to: http://www.industrynet.com/info.asp?CID=1709377

More map inspirations

I really like these maps and get inspired by them for the simple fact that they are so different than your normal map. Maps are direct and give you precise directions where as these maps seem to be all over the place, but still seem to have some sort of purpose. I believe that’s the idea of our project is to create a map that doesn’t necessarily read as a map, but still has a map quality to it.