Making an Image out of Words

I actually came across this on Reddit last night. This is a little bit of a variation of exactly what I'm trying to do with my word. Now, this has some stretched words which I can't do, and it is also in color, but it gets the basic idea.

Bill Cunningham

Funny how things work- I saw this article about New York Fashion Week on Pinterest the day after we talked about Bill Cunningham in class. It has some of his "best" photos. I look forward to learning more about him. http://www.pinterest.com/pin/163888873913539206/

“What Language Looks Like”

The goal of this project is to learn how placement, context and manipulation effect the meaning of a word. We selected our own word and emphasized its meaning on two-dimensional black and white, then were given a word with our group to create out of cardboard and place in a context to express meaning. With photography, we created personal booklets that also expressed the meaning of the word and displayed the installation of the big word we created. 

Ji Lee

I remembered seeing the work of Ji Lee, a designer that played with expressing words and ideas together, after talking about this type activity. I looked up his work again for inspiration, and I think its totally awesome and exactly what I am going for in this assignment. Here is a couple photos of his stellar work.

Pathfinder

The Pathfinder exercises helped me get ideas for how to manipulate my word, "change". Though I did have some trouble at the beginning, now I know new ways to manipulate text, which is exciting for me. I'm always looking for new styles and new ways to create, so this exercise was fun.

What Language Looks Like: Change

For the beginning of the "What Language Looks Like" project we have to choose a word and its find its definition. I've chosen "change", and it is defined as, "make or become different" or "
take or use another instead of."

Wallstreet Journal Magazine

I found some layouts on spreads and advertisements in the Wallstreet Journal Magazine last weekend. I really liked the use of white space to balance. After looking at more design work I just admire this style more and more, I love the minimalist, simple feel. 

IDEO

These news segments over IDEO were really interesting. The company is a product design firm in Paolo Alto, California, that was a pretty revolutionary office style back in what looked like the ‘90s. There was no big boss during meetings, but a collaborative environment. They had a couple of mantras written on the wall: “defer judgment”, “build on the ideas of others”, “one topic at a time”, “stay focused”, and “fail often in order to succeed sooner”. Overall the office seemed to focus on making people feel comfortable enough to share ideas and collaborate, and it worked because they came up with some really innovative stuff, I believe it was the boss (only in the technical term) who said, “Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius”. They also encouraged playfulness, and I can see how that would help stimulate a creative environment rather than a typical office. It seems like a great place to work, one that was fun but also one where everyone is extremely dedicated and works hard to contribute. It was pretty inspirational for office life could be like- fun and successful.

Understanding Comics

This reading was a little bit of information overload for me. There were a thousand visuals and the text was jumping all over the place, being in cartoon form. There were a lot of ideas thrown around, but here’s what stuck for me…

 When you turn an image into a cartoon, you are “amplifying” its meaning because you’re stripping the image down to its essential meaning in a way realism cannot.  It focuses you on the idea. We also see ourselves in cartoons, viewer identification has helped cartoon break into the world of pop culture.  All of the things we experience in life can be split into two categories, the concept and the senses. And words are the “ultimate abstraction”. Writing is perceived, you have to decode it, but pictures are received and the messages is instantaneous. We live in a “symbol-oriented culture”, where iconography is a form of universal communication. In the end, images only have the power that we give them.

Review of Writer’s Toolbox

From this reading I learned about the powers of writing. Writing can help you in the creative process, from mind-mapping to writing out ideas. Mind mapping has been used by Da Vinci, Picasso, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and many more. Mind maps can help you see patterns emerge and concepts that might need to be remapped. Concept maps are similar and help you make a more thorough analysis of “conceptual relationships and meanings” and help with “cognitive organization” by showing the relationships of concepts from general to specific and help greatly as a jumping-off point for future writing.  Freewriting focuses on a specific idea and helps put thoughts and ideas down, it is similar to journaling, and helps stimulate more productive thinking and writing. Brainwriting is essentially brainstorming, it helps you get many ideas out and on paper. This especially helps people who would rather write ideas down than present them in front of a group with speech. Word lists help us with idea generation and give us a sense of accomplishment. Writing also helps in the next phase after creative in communicating the idea, which leads to public writing on “proposals, project briefs, cover letters and even blog entries”.

Objectified

This was a really exciting film to watch, I had heard about it a lot before and seen clips from it previously. I think the main part that intrigued me, and its probably the same for most of the students, was just being able to see designers at work and get to hear from them because you so rarely get to hear from designers like that. With fashion all you hear about is the designers, but no so much with industrial and graphic design, there are less fan clubs, press coverage and prestige. So this was a fun documentary to watch.

I really do think I learned a lot, if not more than anything else just from being exposed to all of these designers I hadn’t heard of yet. I typed furiously to get all of the names down, and now have a great resource to go back to and look up their work. I also got to hear all of these designers’ personal philosophies, which was great and inspiring. I think it is always inspiring to see other people get where you want to go.

            This movie focused on industrial design but the ideas taken from it can be applied to all fields of design, and all fields of work because some of what people said was just advice in general. From Dieter Rams I will always think “Users react positively when things are clear and understandable”. From Jonathan Ive I will remember to, “get design out of the way”, make it so clear and simple that people don’t even need to think about it and the design couldn’t be any other way. From the Bouroullec brothers I know that as a designer I need to help people organize, from Marc Newson to look into the future, from Paola Antoneli that I should make good design available for everyone. From Bill Moggridge to remember the interactive design and digital software is as much as important as the physical design. And finally from Tim Brown, we need to be sustainable, we know people won’t keep things forever so we need to make a way to keep it safe for disposal or reusable in the environment.

            There are a million other tidbits from this movie, a million things that you could make into mantras from these designers. I think it was just an inspiring film. I honestly can’t wait to watch it again.

Make It Better: Project Brief

For this project we have been asked to select an object that we think is lacking in design, that costs under five dollars, and redesign it to make it better. The object could not work how it is supposed to, be really hideous or possibly both. For this project my team has decided to fix a cutting board that lacked in functionality.