18th Class (Last Blog)

Well we went over what we needed to do over the final project again today. I think it's finally starting to sink in that I gotta do all this stuff. It is interesting how this final project is completely unlike anything I have ever done before, involving a CD, Youtube video, and a postcard of all things. It is indeed a challenge and I do so hope that I pass this class at the end of the quarter. I do hope I have the resources to sort it all out. Not to mention I still have to film my video still, on top of everything else, while juggling all my other finals.

Jimmy Moss also went on a great deal about having the distinctions between fine art and graphic design, however, since he’s given this lecture so late into the project, I think it’ll be to late for many projects to fix, and most videos will be about fine art. This would have been a fantastic topic to think about at the beginning of the project when were planning things out. Oh well.

In the last week of school, I'll try and be as relaxed as I can, despite being more stressed then ever, cause it's vacation right after Tuesday. Also, been going over the self-assessment in my head and it doesn't look good for me at all. Guess the winds of fortune will help me pass this class, and not all my work. And my word do I have a crazy list of adjectives.

Luminous – Bright or shining in the dark. Or glowing with health and vigor.

Myriad – Countless, extremely great in number.

Harmonious – Forming a pleasant whole.

3-8-12 (17th Class)

Talked about Inception in class.  A great example on how a single idea could be the entire idea behind the movie, even the plot!  Jimmy Moss pointed out that the design brief was probably very vague which I thought was very insightful.  I do feel like I am learning things about the graphic communication profession, the pros and cons.

I also like that we discussed the AIGI student portfolio poster, which I never really liked.  Penguin with bling in a land of bubbles and rainbows?  WTF…  I’m glad it wasn’t a session of praising AIGI but rather an analysis like we had in the first week, seeing if the communication was there.  I also think in my opinion is that the demographics in the brief probably listed that the audience was mostly women, which lead to the poster made mostly exclusively towards woman.  When I saw the poster for the first time, it was very noticeable because it was so bright, but my instinct kicked in and I ignored it when I saw those rainbows and bubbles.  Student portfolio day isn’t Girl’s Day or Girlz only, and really should have been gender neutral.

Also, I’ll take the talk about Metro seriously and look into it more.

Taciturn – Silent by nature.  Reserved or uncommunicative in speech; saying little.

Succinctness - Expressed in few words; concise; terse.

Passive - Accepting or allowing what happens or what others do, without active response or resistance.

3-6-12 (16th Class)

Wow, writing this blog is going to be a tad difficult as the lecture went on without my notepad, so it’s kinda fuzzy.  In fact, I don’t really remember it all, shame I could get my notebook handy.

We also split into groups to do the 1, 10, 11, 100, sequence, and to find and explain what the next number would be.  In the end we did have some trouble working together as a group because we had large trouble building a consensus.  While I think I had a good idea and a clear way to explain it, I just couldn’t get it through with the group, and our presentation suffered for it, but at the very least we agreed to do that in the first place.  Maybe we lacked a leader in the group the keep order?

Later after class there was an interesting talk with the professor about the video project.  I hadn’t realized that the majority of the population of the school was Latina.  Also that the class had an unusually large amount of males in it, even though the girls still outnumber the guys by a margin.  I was also giving excellent tips on have a sort of tagline or motto, and for it to be proactive and positive.  I’m still not entirely sure what the second half of my video should be, but I have a direction for it, if not a concrete plan.

 

Focused – The state of maximum distinctness or clarity of such an image

Naturalistic- Imitating or producing the effect or appearance of nature

Revolutionary- radically new or innovative; outside or beyond established procedure, principles

3-1-12 (15th Class)

Watched the Maeda TED Talk in class, it was fairly interesting.  Learned that Wurman started TED talk, and I think I’ll visit the website sometime in the future for some of the interesting lectures.  I also learned a very important fact that the average human’s attention span is only 19 minutes.

The speaker himself talked about simplicity vs. complexity.  He seemed to be tired of simplicity and touted the perks of complexity (ie, sunset with clouds).  It seemed to me that Maeda just wanted graphic communication to return to the complexity of the 50’s.  Personally I think that simplicity and complexity work great together so long as you have a powerful contrast between the two.

I also thought it was interesting how designing phonebooks was good way for fresh students to enter the field of Graphic Design.

After that it was 10:00am, and it time to join the WALKOUT!

Saturated – 1. Unable to hold or contain more; full. (Fine Arts & Visual Arts / Colours) (of a colour) having a large degree of saturation

Desaturated - formed by mixing a color of the spectrum with white

Sopping - Saturated with liquid; wet through

2-28-12 (14th Class)

This was the class where we went over everything and anything we ever did in class.  Then we talked amongst ourselves for 2 hours.  Jimmy Moss put up the remaining schedule in a sort of visual graph which did indeed do spectacularly in helping me block out the remaining time I have left this quarter.  Oh and the list of great many things we went over this winter are:

Perception,

Brainstorming

Game vs Test

Teamwork

Critical Reflection

Mapping

Methodology

Presentation

Critical Evolution

Evaluation

Judging

Storyboarding

Visual Interpretation

Visual Literacy –(example: To read a picture)

Meaning

Analysis

Project Brief

Emotional Motivation

Salesmanship

Descriptive Language

Innovate

Punctuality

Professionalism

Networking

Critique + It’s Purpose

Growth

And Socializing, but that doesn’t count because it’s the same as networking.

As for the discussion about videos, I have a feeling that it might lose points for being so dark since the overall message is suppose to be positive.  I would still like to continue with my idea, because I like it enough, consequences be damned.

Also a note to myself: The credits on the video will look like:

Designed by Steven Steigerwald

Art 220 Concept Development course at Cal State La

Winter, 2012

Entropy – A doctrine of inevitable social decline and degeneration.

Ephemeral – Lasting for a short time.

Ephemeral Art – Temporary mediums, like drawings in chalk, or on a whiteboard with dry erase markers, or sand drawings on the beach. 

2-21-12 (12th Class)

Felt like this class didn’t have a plan.  Half of it was a team building game of ridiculousness.  The beginning was interesting as we discussed the GAGE speaker no holds-barred.  Frankly I’ve already wrote a paper discussing the speaker so there really no reason to write a blog about it.  The game itself I suppose was a commentary on working together as a group.  Seems like our group just didn’t cut the mustard in the end had to give up.  Not very inspiring ending.  I’m not sure what else to write about because that was the entire class.  The game was very repetitive and the speaker discussion was jut another part of something I’ve already written. 

2-16-12 (11th Class)

We finished giving our presentations this class and that was pretty much it.  Since I went last week there really isn’t much to say apart from some presentations.  I did catch some flak for commenting on the chess? Game because his presentation was similar to my own, even though I didn’t like his.  I’d argue that that presentation was vague, all over the place, with a good idea mixed in there somewhere.  Starting off funny is all well and nice, but if you don’t sell your idea, that’s all that someone is going to remember, and I didn’t like that his presentations was mainly just bashing the concept of chess.  Certainly would have been a great presentation if he bashed “standard” chess to sell his idea, but it didn’t come off that way, instead more like “chess is stupid, so I thought I’d do some things to it, but seriously, chess is stupid” which just rubbed me the wrong way afterward.

I did like the end of the class where we discussed and looked at some concept briefs.  It was insight into the inner workings of graphic design and I feel less intimidated at having one of these jobs if my instructions are so clear.  It’s hard to communicate a complex and detailed message if you always just “wing it” like I thought you were suppose to do.  I had fun writing my brief, though I didn’t have fun writing the GAGE SPEAKER EVENT paper, mainly because the speaker actually made me feel guilty at taking notes of her event.

I’ve noticed I’ve been writing very cynically lately, and I wonder why.  Can’t be healthy to be so negative and pragmatic…hopefully something will cheer me up soon.