December 2, 2009

Today as a class we discussed the following outcomes we learned through out the quarter in concept development. This exercise will help Jimmy prepare or make adjustments for his future classes.
Outcomes:
Analyze a project + initiate investigative research
Develop sources + inspiration for ideas
Articulate visual concepts with informative + accurate sketches
Create style boards that communicate tone + personality for design
Generate many different ideas quickly
Develop appropriate ideas for environmental, editorial, corporate, + entertainment applications
Write a marketing brief ( My favorite outcome I learned)

Divergent thinking- an understanding and a appreciation of design from a designer to a client.

Suggested reading material:
"Becoming a Graphic Designer" by Stephen Heller

Adjectives:

religious, relevant, rebellious

November 30, 2009

Today we talked about presentation and how it is a big part of design. The main point is that its hard to sell a project when you don't believe in it. Being able to communicate effective can help close the sale.

A key factor that I learned was body language and its sub conscious.

• How to read it
• Avoid it
• Be aware of it
• Use it
• Can read the audience as well

quote of the day-

"S.H.I.T" Sorry Honey Its Thursday -Oliver

My two facts and one lie was:

1. I am the oldest child
2. I was born in Montebello, CA
3. I wear a size ten in shoes (lie)

Adjectives:

raging, relaxed, radiant

11-18-2009

Today's topic of discussion was about creative briefs. And how important it is for you as a designer or client on being specific on what direction you might want to be going on a project. Not only does a creative brief make things seem a lot more professional, but it makes the job a bit more easier on the communicative side (depending on how well it is written of course or what it actually specifies). A creative brief can either be really simple or really detailed. It all depends on the designer, client, or firm. A few things a creative brief should include if not mandatory are the following:

Purpose
Goals
Target Audience
Selling Points
Tone
Content
Competition
Approval Process
Specs

I can say what really helped me learn about the structure of the creative brief was the examples Jimmy had in class today. It was pretty awesome that he got a hold of some actual briefs from past projects. I believe when we are given or shown authentic work from the design industry it really helps me get a better understanding of whats going on outside the classroom and a clearer view of what the job field might actually look like. With everything I've learned today in class I look back to the Kim Baer presentation and really think about what she say's about "being ready and putting yourself out there in the industry"

Kim Baer

This past Thursday on November 12, 2009 California State University , LA had the privileged of influential designer Kim Baer of KBDA come speak at our campus.

" A Life of Graphic Design: 30 years of fantastic fourth grade field trips"
For her presentation Kim spoke about how she got to were she is today. From the early stages of her life all the way up to her peak of her career. You could really tell she was happy about the choices and decision's she made in her life. It was quite interesting to hear her talk about how she never lives in regret and how if she could go back into time and change something she wouldn't. How if that event in her life changed it could have thrown her off from were she is today. Her path would have completely been changed. Overall her career is where it is today because of her deep passion for design. Kim also talked about five major topics in her presentation they were:

1. Annual Reports- Where strategic planning meets coffee table books. In this point of time she worked a lot with the corporate world and with business people in very high positions within a company. Which she referred them as "C" level.
2. Branding- From 2D to 5D. She stressed the importance of knowing how to market research. If you didn't know how you will learn how to!
3. Information Design- How a passion can take a year (or 20) off your life
4. Natural History Museum- Turning the insitution inside out. Research, Research, Research!!!
5. Natural Exhibit Design- Where the learning never stops!

Mrs. Baer also left us with four strong tips for us as future designers.

1. Intensive Curious
2. Jumping in and learning on the job (work hard)
3. Drawing (sketches)
4. focus on typography!

Nov 4 th 2009

Jimmy started class today by allowing students to voice their opinion on what they thought were the highlights and low lights of art 220. Since this was jimmy first time instructing concept development this quarter he was very interested in our feedback. He thought it would be useful in ways it can help improve future classes. Some of the highlights included:
open dialogue
four item object story
critiques
word/images
professional Q & A (industry)

Some low light included:
The apple (well many times) and the blog.

We also watched a few TED movies. I actually find these really cool. They give us an idea or an insight of how other designer's kind of think. It also displays there ability to communicate to an audience. A lot of them have great verbal skills and it shows because you can see the way there speech flows when they are on stage (again the importance of communication). Paula Schere was one of the speakers we watched. She talked a lot on how her work went to be serious play to serious. The way I took it was that when she had time or needed to express herself through art she was more creative. It was a new way she was feeling. She didn't have time deadlines or have to answer to anybody. She was free to be open, creative, and innovate. It was then when she was able to channel the way she felt through art. The serious comes around when the mass media began to like and approve of her work. They begin to expect the same ideas and want more production. This is when she felt trapped and repetitive with her work. It became serious instead of serious play.

Adjectives:
anxious: feeling nervous, worried or afraid, eager, producing feelings of nervousness or agitation.

avid: eager for or enthusiastic about something

able: physically or mentally equipped to do something

Nov 2nd 2009

What criteria we should not use when trying to unsterstand the value of art:
1. Personal reference - Dont say "I like" or "I love"
2. Rationale

You should also never show work to a client you dont like yourself. More than likely they are going to want it and your going to end up doing a project you hate doing.

We also talked about how messed up the CSU system is and how the state spends three times more the money on prisons rather than education. And whats up with these overpaid sports stars? Dont get me wrong im a huge sports fan also, but I couldnt get into alot of classes I needed along with my fellow colleagues to continue our education this quarter. Why are we turning down education these days? How do we plan on fixing our generations financial problems?

Ummm back to art 220. We touched the issue on how important it was for graphic artist to communicate and express their work to a client. In terms of them understanding it. If we cant convince the client or communicate it to them, how would they reach their audience.
Designer>>>> Clients(immediate audience)>>>>Audience


Adjectives
1. brawny- characterized by brawn; muscular; strong

2. belligerent - waging war; specifically: belonging to or recognized as a state of war and protected by and subject to the laws of war

3. berserk - injuriously, maniacally, or furiously violent or outta control

Game Day

What a day!
Today was a day of fun, competition, and learning all in one. Our previous homework assignment was intended for everyone to bring in some type of game we can play with our classmates. Jimmy didn't explain into much detail of what exactly we were going to be doing, but all I knew was it was game day! Who was going to complain. My classmates brought in all sorts off cool games from: Uno, Dominoes, Sorry, Monopoly, Worst Case Scenario, Mexican Bingo, Life and a few others. Now we already had a funny feeling there was going to be some kind of catch to this mysterious game day and we were right and honestly it wasn't that bad. Jimmy still wanted us to have fun, but at the same time he wanted us to be thinking as creative people and look at it from all different perspectives, not just a game player. Become or visualize yourself as if you created or designed the game. Sometimes I pictured myself as the consumer, I would ask myself "Would I buy this game" and why?



Through out the day my group played a total of three different games. We started off with the "The Worst Case Scenario" game. Honestly I should of automatically figured out by the boxes visual display that it was going to be boring. It was quite dull to be honest, but for some strange reason I still wanted to play it. I think it had to just do with the title. It had me thinking about it and I wanted to see what it was about. I was a little curious you can say. To make a long story short I wouldn't play that game ever again. I definitely wouldn't buy it for me or as a gift for someone. The questions the game ask were actually a little difficult and out the ordinary. The game suggest its for the ages of eight and up, but my group thought that to be a little obscure.

Adjectives:

breezy

faded

dramatic

Oct 21 2009 + Adjectives

In class today we watched two video's that had pretty strong meaning. One was made by IBM in 1968 named "Powers Of Ten". It was written and directed by influential artists Ray and Charles Eames. The film displays how the earth size can be scaled by zooming out further and further away by the power of ten. It is very unique because of the way they actually visually explain this concept. Normally people are use too zooming in on things rather than zooming out. The movie was kind of trippy and cool at the same time because it gives you a completely different aspect or perspective on how things can be, or how things are when you relate them in size. We also talked about how influencing this movie was, as we discussed about the world famous Simpsons. The intro to the cartoon show is a perfect example. If you haven't seen the show I would suggest you YouTube the "Powers Of Ten" and then quickly after YouTube a Simpson episode (any episode would work). After you would know exactly what we were discussing about today in class and you can see how influential that movie was even in today's generation.

Adjectives:

precious

shiny

crowded

ambiguous- open to or having several possible meaning or interpretations.



crabby- informal. grouchy; ill-natured; irritable; peevish



dynamic- pertaining to or characterized by energy or effective action; vigorously active or forceful; energetic

Adjectives Oct. 19 2009

economic - pertaining to the production, distribution, and the use of income, wealth, and commodities

ablaze - burning; on fire

halting - faltering or hesitating

Oct 19 2009

The first thing we did today was split the class into halves to form two large groups. The purpose of this was to present our homework assignment to one another and talk about what we observed from them. Our group got down relatively quick, so we began talking about the GAUGE organization. We also got to see a hard copy of a GAUGE poster Freddy designed for the organization. I personally thought it was a great design and quite appealing. Once the other group was finished critiquing the ten images we began our next class exercise and new lesson plan.

Story Telling
We were broken into groups of four and told to empty out our pockets. The idea was that each classmate had to provide four items each and combine them as a group. Our group managed to gather the following items:
checkbook
skateboard flash drive
stapler
whiteout
cigarettes
matches
i pod touch
fake bullet
cell phone
flash drive

Out of the ten objects we had to tell a story that included all of them and we had to do it within fifteen minutes. The whole idea was to be creative as possible and use your imagination. At the same time was critical and we had a deadline. Time management really showed us how important it was when we had to work as a team and played a key factor to the assignment. Unfortunately our group didn't meet this deadline. I truly believe we were off to a good start and had some good ideas. Our only problem was we didn't execute our story. We were trying to be too creative and had to many suggestions, we really didn't focus as a team to put all the pieces of the story together. I didn't take it as a failure, but rather as a learning experience. I observed a lot of what the other groups accomplished I started brainstorming on what needed to be done better if we had to do a similar exercise. Next time, we will execute and put together a compelling story.

Adjectives Oct 14 2009

Vast

Rich

Plain

Oct 14 09

For today's blog I wanted to talk about what I did the following day after class. On Thursday at around two o'clock I attended the GAUGE meeting in FA 226. I'm actually a new member to the GAUGE group and I like it becomes of the friendly atmosphere it holds. The vibe is chill and the members are very welcoming. During that meeting we talked about two upcoming AIGA events that were going to be hosted later that night, Milton Glaser and StimuLatte. Once we decided we were going to attend Milton Glaser. Pauleen, Eisen, Freddy and I planned to meet up with each other at the CSU LA campus at six thirty. So we could follow each to the movie presentation. Kind of skeptical of following Pauleen, because of the stories I heard about her driving lol, I decided to follow up with our plans.

Finally we were on are way to my first AIGA event and of course we caught all kinds of traffic and crazy drivers along the way. It pretty much took us a good hour to reach our destination and a few bucks of gas, but we made it. Shocking to our surprise and knowing my luck the event was cancelled. Apparently, the people who were hosting this event couldn't find the actual DVD to the movie. Now to me that represented horrible organization and looked very unprofessional. Staying positive even though we were all bummed and disappointed. The idea of going to StimuLatte was brought up and our new journey began, but this time an angry and annoyed Jessica followed along with us (they didn't refund her parking!!). Not cool.

Adjectives Oct 12 09

Famous

Itchy

Mysterious

Mon Oct 12 09

The lesson plan for today was a in class exercise about creative thinking. For this exercise we were separated into groups of about four people and in our groups we had to choose one simple picture from our previous homework assignment. When the majority of us picked out the image the next step was the actual creative part. The goal was to think of about ten words or phrases to describe the image by using a word to change the meaning of what the image was portraying. At first it was a little difficult because I wasn't exactly sure what Jimmy expected from us. The amount of time we had to complete this exercise was about fifteen minutes and when the time was up we critique the results as a class. We did this once more, except Jimmy wanted us to think as advertisers when we came up with our ideas. On the second critique I really thought the group with the tree image did a great job on the assignment. The phrases they thought of were really catchy, creative, and even funny. Overall, this exercise was pretty fun and interesting. I think working as a group played a really important part. I had to admit that I had a brain fart when it came to suggesting some ideas and after class it really hit me how important learning and building my terminology is.

Adjectives Oct 7 09

Angry

Annoyed

Afraid

Dreams

For our class meeting Wednesday we got to look at the 1990 film "Dreams" which was a movie based an actual dreams from the director Akira Kurosawa. Akira turned his eight dreams into what they say are eight short stories that are suppose to depict eight different stages of his life. From magical to realism, and after watching this film you kind of get to understand what that means. Now to be honest at first I had no idea what this movie was about and what it really meant. More or less after watching a dream or two I kind of got the idea that the dreams were going to deal with a lot of symbolism and metaphors. Since the movie was based more on imagery than dialogues it was really going to be important that I pay close attention with observation in order for me to understand what was going on.

Foxes Wedding
Honestly I had no idea what was going on or what this dream was about at this point. All I understood was that the little boy had left when his mother told him not too and typically when you disobey your mother your bound to get in trouble one way or another. So when he left and stumbled into the Forrest there was so much smoke going on it had a lot mystery behind it. It left me pretty clueless and unclear what was going to come out from the mists of the fog and to my surprise it did! Abstract, scary, and bright were all words that went through my mind as the mystery people came and marched out. It was super creative and unique the way they danced or marched. There body movement was nutty and the way they all paused in a synchronized fashion was magnificent. It still didn't help clarify who they were, but to me it didn't matter. Because I was so star struck on how weird this scene was and cool at the same time.

Peach Orchard
In this dream the young boy is led to a field by a mysterious girl that cannot be seen by anyone else. Everyone in his family thinks he's crazy, but his curiosity makes him chase her. She leads him to an field were peaches use to be grown until his family cut the trees down. This is were he encounters mother nature and the tree's spirits. They hold the boy accountable for his families awful mistake. The spirits actually make him cry, but the young boy is smart, brave, courageous and explains to the spirits that he had no part in trimming. He actually loved the peach orchard and would never take apart in a act to hurt the tree's. The boy showed so much emotion, heart, and bravery that the tree's were beginning to feel bad they blamed him for his families mistakes. So they rewarded him with a bright and colorful rain dance that brought back the orchard once more. Except when he tries to walk through the orchard he is brought back to the realization that all the trees are chopped down except one. The last remaining tree that symbolized the young girl that lead him there. Some colors that were used a lot in this dream were: light purple, dark purple, orange, white, green, and yellow.

The Tunnel
This dream was my favorite. I really like the meaning behind it and everything that it symbolized. I like how he expressed death on the soldiers faces with a eerie blue pastel color. I really felt bad for the lieutenant when he had to explain to his soldier that he was not alive, but dead. The soldier felt so sure that he was living he really had no idea. And as soon as you thought the depressed lieutenant was done being haunted by his soldier he began to walk away and you heard a thunder of marching steps. You could feel this persons frustration and disbelief of what was about to happen next. It was bad enough for this man that he had to live with the feeling of making a poor command that killed his entire platoon, but having to explain this to his group of grieving soldiers was going to be difficult. After he explained to the soldiers his feeling he stressed the importance that they had to stop haunting him and must move on and rest in peace. They were still in disbelief until he finally gave his final order as a lieutenant and made them leave.

Adjectives Oct 5th

Clean - free from dirt; unsoiled; unstained

Creepy - having or causing a creeping sensation of the skin, as from horror or fear.

Clear - free from darkness, obscurity, or cloudiness; light

Mind-Mapping Oct 5 th

Mind-Mapping,
also known as idea-mapping was the topic of today and a way for "us" creative people to learn how to take our idea's from the brain to paper, another way of brainstorming. The whole goal was to learn how to be more creative by using less words and more pictures along with some rules.

Do

• Put everything out there
• Identify every possible idea
• Document through sketching, writing, or recording

Don't

• Don't evaluate
• Don't research
• Don't judging

The key point was to generate possibilities so you can evaluate later. This is the beginning stage of the creative process. We also talked about having a open mind when trying to mind- map. Along with the negative things that can help ruin your train of thought.

"The easiest path for a fresh idea is through an open mind"

Allowing time and space for quality thoughts to flow is one key element to idea creation. Today's mind-mapping exercise allowed us to exactly clear our mind and express our thoughts and idea's. The mind-map that I picked as my favorite was the spider web, because of the creativity it had supporting it. It's layout was awesome! A spider that was in the center of a giant web, sticking all the thoughts together inside the web. I believe this mind-map has great potential to look cool if we had the opportunity to revise them, good job!

Adjectives 9-30-09

Elegant - of high grade or quality

Envious - feeling or showing envy

expensive - commanding a high price and especially one that is not based on intrinsic worth or is beyond a perspective buyer's mean.

Adjectives 09-28-09

Determined - having reached a decision: firmly resolved.

Substantial - fairly large

Young - being in the first or an early stage of life, growth, or development.

*.....sorry. I was playing around with the color pallet and forgot to change the text back to white. I was testing out the website lol

Sep.28 2009

Today, as a class we had are first exercise. We had to write down on a flashcard what we expected on doing and learning in a 10 week duration for Art 220 Concept Development. As we read each others thoughts of what this class was going to teach us. Jimmy pointed out key terms he thought were relevant towards the objective of our class and stressed the importance of learning the vocabulary. Some of the key terms mentioned were:

• brainstorm
• development
• effective
• production
• unique
• exercise
• interpret
• observe
• creativity
• process
• expand

By the way I was kind of dissappointed with the card I wrote, but I guess thats what happens when you arrive late to class...hopefully on Wednesday the parking will be a little better.