Today has been an odd day. In fact, the whole week has been good and then bad. I have had some fabulous times with friends and family, I am speaking particularly of an amazing concert with my cousin Riley (last night we saw Frightened Rabbits, an indie-rock band from Glasgow, Scotland, at the Majic Stick in Detroit). And then I have had some major dissapointments, as my birthday week always goes. This juxtaposition is often my own fault, as I don't like to tell people that it's my birthday when they forget and make other plans, the rest is due to the weather changes and midterms and all that jazz.
I have to admit that I am a little bummed out today because I handed in a project that I am nowhere near satisfied with. Again, my own fault for procrastinating, but I was so sure that this one was going to work out, on time, and that it would be good. Instead, the collage I was working on decided to self-destruct in the last 15 minutes before the deadline, and so did I. I was cleaning it up and adding some small lines for finishing touches and all my glue came apart, my tech pens failed, and my other markers bled. On top of that, I couldn't get the title of the Newsletter to adhere to the coloured background because of the semi glossy paper from the printers at school. At that point I had attempted to simply reprint the headline, background and font together, but the school's Mac computers did not support the font that I had used at home, the font that I was counting on, so I had to do it by hand.
All in all, I am deeply dissapointed with my work today and in the past few weeks. Part of this phenomenon is in direct correlation to the fact that I am slowly progressing and am now expecting better quality work. I am becoming even more nitpicky. The other piece to this puzzle is, of course, my continuing procrastination. I have found some success in diminishing this, but old habits die hard.
And so, with that, I present several projects, recently returned to me, along with some (hopefully short) explanations.
This was the very first project that we had to hand in for my Design and Layout class. The only guidelines were to use the black and grey markers, and to draw something about the number 9 that was meaninful to us. As I am slightly OCD and enjoy even numbers more than odd, and my favourites tend toward 0, I was at a loss. I finally came up with some rediculous ideas, including having an animated number 7 chewing on a number 9, and then this one. It represents the beginning of the era in which I discovered I could be creative. I met K8 in Grade 9 of high school, and though we didn't become friends until later on, she has continued to be an inspiration. In fact, she's the reason I dropped all pretences and dyed my hair pink. One day, she wrote her name for a friend of ours and, as she always signs K8 is gR8, he interpreted it as above and it stuck. It became a joke between us for some time, and now resurfaced as the only decent design I could think of for this project.
 |
| Korean Script |
First things first: The image to the left was a project for my Typography class in which we had to translate an english phrase into Korean Script. Technically, each english sound or syllable was translated using the Korean phonetic symbols. I realize that this does not fully translate to Korean writing or language, nor does it give me the ability to speak it fluently.
Now, the business: This is meant to translate into one of the greatest sentences to come out of my previous roomie's lips. She once said, in all seriousness, "I'm just one kung-fu movie away from being a professional."
My professor's critique: Strong, bold lettering. Should emphasize spaces between words and sentences.
 |
| Borders |
This project was a lot of fun. It was the first project in which we studied the steady flow of calligraphy and had to reproduce 3 of the 6 borders provided, and add a final border of original content. I added Birthday Candles in the last 2 rows. : )
With this, the Korean script above, and several other projects, I have found that I really enjoy calligraphy and font work of all kinds, as well as the use of ink and brush. Its exciting and soothing all at once, if that can be said of such a repetitive task. The font work has since become the part of any project that I actually look forward to, especially if I can work with these tools. I just have to be careful that I don't walk around with ink marks all over my face.
 |
Robot 1
Design provided by prof |
This robot project was also fun, though slightly daunting. It was given to us through coordinates in our Prepress class and so it reminded me of my early Auto CAD classes with its polarized coordinated, as well as my grade 9 design classes in which we did everything by hand. My design prof in school has somehow been chanelled into this professor, though, and I find that, though we joke, he is somehow more nitpicky than I am. M. Mallet would be proud. I did well on this project, though it took me much longer than expected as I am extremely careful and precise with my lines. My only regret, other than wishing that I would have started it sooner, is that I had forgotten my compass, and so the circles are slightly wonky.
This is all that I have time to post this evening. I have several other projects from my illustration class that I would like to add, but they will have to wait until another day. Those projects have turned me upside down, as I did better on the projects I liked less, and worse on the projects I felt better about. And so I will make extra time to record them and their comments later on.
If, indeed, there is anyone reading this blog, I thank you for your interest and your patience. Your feedback is always welcome, though you may have more to say as my photos and artwork progress.
He's A-mazing.
