I Design Things

Whew. I’ve gotten the ball rolling on my senior project and wanted to do a quick post about where I’m going with it.

I’m going to be exploring the possibilities of genetic engineering, bending and twisting the science to allow for a world in which technology has reached a point where we have precise control over the human genome to the point where we can manufacture human beings from scratch for very specific tasks.

In addition, this technology would come with the ability to alter specific traits (hair color, eye color, etc.) of existing humans through ingestion of a pill or something similar.

I’m currently working on an identity design for the fictional company spearheading the research and commercial production of human beings, as well a creating a future/alternate world in which this could happen and these products could become a viable part of society.

I need to figure out what the moral compass of this fictional America is, how the criminal element would come into play with this technology, regulation of the technology, and possible abuses of the technology.

I’ll post more as information is finalized.

Here’s a poster and a small mailbox flyer for In The Margins I did. These will be getting printed soon along with posters by at least two other people. The event is on October 25th and anyone and everyone is invited to attend, not just Chester students.

You can click the images below for a larger version.

In The Margins is an event thought up by my friend Kelsey last year, aimed at bringing together students of all majors to share their art. It was a huge success last year and it’s happening again this October. We’ve got a newly renovated building on campus (Nutting) and In the Margins is going to be the first even held in it, even before classes start.

Students will be able to sign up for space and/or a table to sell, share, and make art. There will also be readings and possibly musical performances. In addition, we’re trying to encourage local artists, faculty, and other professional artists to attend and share their work alongside the students.

In the next few weeks I will be working on posters, mailers, and name plates, and a program for the event, and will post that work here as I finish it.

Continue Reading »

So I haven’t got a single idea for what to do for senior project. Daryl wants us to have something to show tomorrow night, and I’ve got nothing. He says at this point we should just be making work, any work, on our own. Two problems with this: One, I have no time. Two - and this is the big one - design is a discipline largely motivated by creating work for other people.

The last three years have not prepared me for the prospect of creating what is essentially art for arts sake that falls under the heading of “design” on command. They have prepared me, instead, to take other peoples specific, restrictive, and sometimes ridiculous demands and create something great.

I can draw, paint, write, or photograph something for my own pleasure. I can do those things for the sake of doing them, and for the sake of creating. That’s easy. That involves sitting in my room, unfolding the easel and opening drawers full of paint, paper, pastels, wire, and that one container full of dead bees. That’s easy to get started. I have lots of ideas for art. Design is another matter.

The problem with this class is that it is one that is not taught like a design course. It’s taught like a fine arts course. Photographers may venture into the commercial realm, but theirs is a discipline rooted in fine art. Design may take technical aspects from fine art, but it’s purpose is completely commercial, and therein lies the problem with Senior Project, graphic design, and the all important gallery show.

When graphic design is put up in a show, it’s almost always work that the designer has created for a client, or to promote themselves. It is almost never something created just for the sake of creation.

I can create art for myself. And some of it may even be created in ways similar to design projects, but I would not call them graphic design, because their similarity is only on the technical level. My artistic roots are drawing and painting. I got into college with a portfolio full of acrylic paintings and pastel drawings. There was not one single bit of anything you could call graphic design in the entire thing. I can create work suitable for a senior show, but it would not be graphic design.

Here, I need to be careful, because I don’t wish to offend, but I have yet to see a senior show at Chester put on by a graphic designer that I was impressed by. Calendars and movie posters, and type exercises. It was all nice to look at yes, and it showed good technical prowess, but every single one of them has been lacking in concept and communication. None of them had any restrictions on them, like a real-world project would. They were all too easy.

I want to escape from that for my own project, but I don’t think I can. I don’t think the format of the class allows for it, because it is aimed at the fine arts by being so open-ended. I could come up with an idea and set my own restrictions, of course, but they wouldn’t really be limiting if I came up with them, because anything I came up with would be too easy to get around.

The bottom line here is that I want to do something that will make people stop and go “holy fuck.” I think.

I think the problem might be that I don’t know what I want from this.

Got a few projects I’m working on right now, some more fun than others. The most enjoyable one by far is for Computer Animation. We’re just stepping into Flash and our current assignment is to create a 2-minute animation showing off all of the techniques we’ve learned so far. Storyline doesn’t matter, as long as it shows what we can do technically. Mine’s not quite done, but it’s almost there. Displaying it here as a Quicktime video because I’m having trouble with items outside of the stage showing in the .swf. Click here to view it

Continue Reading »

I decided against the Famine animation. It’s due Tuesday and that idea was far too complex for me to get done by then, at least done well. So, now I’m doing Tetris. Sort of. It’s starting off as a regular game of Tetris - except that I’m not animating the peices falling, just the peices building up on the bottom, as if it were in super-fast-forward, otherwise the animation would be HUGE - but then other peices are going to start shooting out the sides trying to bring peices down as they fall.

For Computer Animation, our first assignment is an animated GIF, minimum 75 frames.

Here’s some work-in-progress shots of mine. It’s a little pixel art peice, 100×100px, featuring Famine, a locust I thought up after a fire and some floods in my dorm building sophomore year.

The storyline for the animation will be simple. A little copy telling you about Famine, interspirsed with animated pixel art depicting  abird deciding Famine would make a good little snack, and then the bird getting eaten by the most badass locust ever. Thus far, I have the backgrounds close to done and the text all written up.

It would seem I only have one book to buy this semester and I don’t have any useful idea as to what it is. My school’s online bookstore only provides the title, first two letters of the authors name, and the edition. This, of course, makes it near impossible to find the book somewhere else for less money than the book store is chargin. Very convenient for them, I’d say. I’ve e-mailed my professor for more information about the book. I refuse to use the school’s system.

I feel the need to go into a lengthy rant about everything that’s wrong with my school’s book-buying system, and then everything else that’s wrong with Chester College, but I think I’ll refrain. Suffice to say the book-buying system makes it hard to buy your books used online or from other students because they tell you what books you need two days before school starts and, now, don’t even give you enough information to find the right book elsewhere.

At the start of every school year I’m always all excited to get all my stuff organized and have this awesome workspace centered around my desk with folders and notebooks and places to store things, and this year is no different, except that I think I’ve done a better job of getting myself ready, supply and space-wise, this year than in any previous year of college.

I have a three-rings binder, notebooks, Evernote, a nice wire-mesh organizer for notebooks, folders, and other important stuff, a billion pens, reference books, andall kinds of nifty stuff storage to make my desk awesome.

Flickr set of my workspace, because I’m bored.

Will this grand organizational scheme for academic success last beyond the first few weeks of school? Probably not, but I can dream.

And now I’m off to read all about Kohls company policies, since I start job training later today. Fun fun.

I thought I’d take this first post and write a little overview of the courses I’m taking this coming semester, so anyone who stumbles upon it will have an idea what to expect.

Senior Project - Open ended studio course spanning both semesters of my senior year. The course culminates in a gallery show at the end of the second semester. I have no idea what my project is going to consist of. None at all.

Interactive Design HTML, CSS, etc. Mostly based in Dreamweaver, I’m told. I’m going to drive myself batty in this course, since I’ve got the basics down pretty well. I’m hoping I’ll be able to get a more refined skill set out of it rather than it just being a run-down of HTML.

Computer Animation A misleading title, I think. This course teaches the basics of flash. I know next to nothing about flash, so it’s going to be a pretty intense course, luckily the teacher for it is really good.

Professional Practices I’m worried about this one. The woman who was supposed to be teaching it left and I’ve had bad luck the last three years with new hires at Chester. I have no idea how many actual design projects will come out of this class.

I’m also taking Contemporary Art Histoy, but there’s no art projects in that (it’s purely a lecture course) so it’s not really relevent here.

I’m also going to be trying to do some packaging design projects in my spare time, a friend is taking it (it wouldn’t fit in my schedule) but I’m going to try and get the assignments from her to get more practice. I quite enjoy packaging design and I’d like to be able to do more of it.