Design and Education

Well, I'm not going to start by saying it's been crazy busy because normal is crazy busy. So I'll say it's normal.

Yesterday was my last UCLA Extension course. This will free up SO much time to work on my other two classes' final projects as well as some side work. I'm excited to have my Tuesday nights back.

Two points of interest that I've been meaning to share. As some of you may know, I seriously contemplated going into education when I graduated from UCLA. Although I've taken another route, I'm still quite passionate about it. I've found two sites that combine design and education.

The first is an article by Metropolis Magazine about school building design and it's connection with student learning. Nueva School, in Hillsborough, is mentioned. IDEO also has a small list of things schools can do to bring themselves into the 21st C. With all the money that is hopefully going to education from various Obama stimulous packages, let's hope these are placed in more classrooms.

Once my classes end, I hope to do a poster campaign for recruiting teachers in California for my portfolio. Yet, I feel hypocritical as I didn't choose the path myself. Largely due to the negatives such as large class sizes, under paid teachers, overwhelming expectations with little resources, and the testing emphasis our government has laid on teachers' shoulders. I guess many advertisers have this problem. At least the cause is a cause, not just consumerism, like buy this new flavor of Coca-Cola, it's sweeter and made with more chemicals we don't know exactly how will effect you in 20 years. At least it's honorable. Besides, if we had more people going into teaching, or if more people had it on their radar, I think our society would be better. Just look at Teach for America, flawed on some levels yes, but their corps members teach for two years and then have that experience to share at their next position as a lawyer, doctor, teacher or computer graphics technician. They'll share their experiences at social and even political levels and fight for the cause. I think it's hard for people, especially those without children, not in school or who didn't have much schooling, to put education into a primary ring. It's so important. I could go for days.

The second thing is less education and more art/science. I like to think of it as me in reverse. Satre Stuelke, a 44 year old 3rd year med student (former art school student) started the radiology art project. He takes chicken nuggets, Barbies, windup toys and electronics and uses a CT to see what's inside them. It's a collaborative process so if you have something you want to see scanned, e-mail him.

TTFN, ta ta for now

A bottle of gin, a cup, Lucia, wooden boxes, and Richard

While I haven't posted many paintings, I still have been attending class. Here are the ones I've been waiting to dry.

Gin Bottle and Tea Cup
19"x10"

I was so lucky I brought this non-standard sized canvas for this set up. The long shadow was so interesting to me and with this canvas I could give it all the space it needed. This set up was after some Richard Diebenkorn paintings with scissors and ink bottles. (I've decided he's my favorite artist--he went from abstract, to contemporary realistic, back to abstract with his Ocean Park series. He lived in both LA and SF--a true Californian artist. I love seeing his landscapes turn into abstract paintings in Ocean Park...it really made me appreciate abstract art. It's not just something anyone could do, it represents something. That's the point. I'm currently reading a huge art book on him and am just eating it up!)

Lucia
10"x10"

This will be the first of many people. My still life class has ended and now it's the figure! Harder, but more interesting (although I have come to see objects differently, especially dead fish, pumpkins and glass bottles).

For my first portrait in a while, I'll cut myself some slack...but this isn't my favorite one. This time we looked at Diebenkorn for his figure paintings. I think I got carried away in the blue and the shadows and I wish it looked more female, but it was hard on such a small canvas, so the next one will be a larger canvas.

Morandi II
9"x12"

Then still life returned, as we had a make up class after a figure painting class. While I'm glad she squeezed it in...wow...was I exhausted after one painting, especially a face. It was like a marathon. I rehursed a couple different reasons for leaving, but ended up staying and painting. I'm glad I did! I got a chance to focus on the big picture of painting and with the crit. from the last class fresh in my mind I could use other people's advice in my next work. I like how much simplier this one is than "Lucia".

Richard
12" x 24"

So I loved working larger. I was able to use a bigger brush (size 12, about 1 inch wide) and not get caught up in the little details. As I was on the shadow side, I had to use almost white paint to make the light side bleach out enough so his head looked round not flat. I've also never painted a man in oils, so this was a first for me.

Anniversary Invitation

Crosslink Anniversary Invitation
6.24"x 4.5"

Here is the coorporate anniversary invitation I 've been chatting about. It is for my father's company, Crosslink Capital, in SF. This event is corporate in nature, but also celebratory and as thank you from the company to all its past clients, employees as well as current employees. They didn't want it to feel stuffy or self congradulatory. I took their logo, the intersecting links in blue and grey/purple and punched up the color a bit with an orange-yellow gradient background to add warmth. It was printed up last Monday and went to 200 people yesterday. It was great experience and I hope they ask me to work for them again!

Information has been blurred out to prevent party crashers.

Patagonia Museum

Research Page
11"x17"

My current project for my UCLA Designing Experiences class is to make a coorporate museum for the Patagonia company. Every week we are expected to have color 11"x17" sheets of research, work, or diagrams...usually 8 a week. Not only is it a lot of work to collect and do the work in 7 days, but it's also a lot of work to put the images, text ect together in a visually pleasing way. I'm getting better at it, and InDesign as a concequence, but mostly I refer to this class as a part time job with the amount of time it consumes. I've selected four or so pieces from two weeks of work so you can see my idea process. The first page is a research summary page including Patagonia's mission statement:

Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

Big Idea Page
11"x17"

Here on the 'big idea' page I explain my goals, how I want to accomplish them, and what I want the viewer to experience at the museum. I really wanted it to be more than a 'look how great we are" tribute to ourselves company museum. Patagonia isn't about spotlight. The museum will be more like an eco-education center with a small history area. The museum will be at their flagship store in Ventura, CA. You can click any image to zoom in.

Street Banner Page
11"x17"

After an hour of brainstorming, I came up with the exhibit title "Patagonia: join the journey". I like that it invites people to join them in their quest to eliminate the environmental crises (global warming, over fishing, deforestation....). They have great corporate practices from personally checking up on their factories, organic cotton, using the back side of paper, LEED buildings...check it out. I started recycling even more and I am going to try to buy less H&M clothing (soo cheap) and replace it with organic cotton (cotton accounts for 25% of ag. run off that is bad for the Earth). I just wish it wasn't so expensive!

In LA, and many other urban communities have street lamp banners which hang off lamps along the sidewalk. These banners are priliminary mock ups. They are hard to make since they are an odd size (8' tall and only 3' wide). I am going to change them to one image spanning to banners per pole so it's less confusing. I'll show you later.

Opening Night Invitation Page
11"x17"

Another part of the assignment is an invitation for the unvieling. The rock climber (symbolic of the roots of the company as climbing gear) that opens up. The opening is a dye cut (jagged edge) along both the crack and the climber's leg, to open up to a picture of a river and two textures on the flaps. I took all of the inside of the invitaiton pictures last summer while I was in Alaska with my family. The river's name is Fox River. The back, currently blue, will have notes about the company and the goal of the museum. I'll show you this later too.

Title Wall Page
11"x17"

The title wall is the first wall the visitor sees as they enter the museum. Ours is 14' high and 30' long with a 10' tall door just to the right of center. I decided to have the illustrated logo on the wall and have the door cut out the photographic part of the logo (of the real mountain range Patagonia). In front of the wall is a 4 foot hall way and then glass doors with 'patagonia' etched into the outside. My idea is that it gives the logo a real feel and then looks deeper into its roots.

Photos from Title Wall foam model:





The photos make the image easier to understand and give an idea of the actual view of a visitor and the 3D space--plus a chance to take cool pictures! (PS this was such an easier model to make than VP Deli..wow..1 hour instead of an entire day) I used acetate (clear plastic) for the glass door and glued the tracing paper letters to the back of it. This was a little crazy perfectionist of me...but I love the look!

Sadly, my teacher didn't like this idea for the wall. He said it was too coorporate and didn't add to the story/narrative of the museum...yea, guess so...my next idea was to switch the logo and photograph...but I think it needs to be even more darastic of a change. So plan b is to take vertical swatches of different nature photos on the wall over time to mirror the history the museum tracks of patagonia the company as well as nature. I'm not sure though...if anyone else has ideas, I'd love to hear them...it's due on Tuesday. Ekks!

**Raw images are property of Patagonia, Inc. 2009 and have been used for educational purposes only. www.patagonia.com

Science/Art--Final Book Cover

Science/Art
Book Cover ( 8.25" tall x 5.5" wide x 1" spine depth)

Lots of projects finishing up lately. Book cover and an invitation...as well as three projects in the final two weeks. Above is the Science/Art Book. I continued the cover design to the back, but in reverse. While you can see two posts ago the back had an more graphically interesting type solution, this was a little 'too far' so I decided to keep it simplier and allow the image to speak for the book. Even people browsing a book store don't really want to work to read (people are so lazy!) so this is what I ended with.

Ten Things I Hate About You - Final Poster

10 Things I Hate About You
movie poster 11 "x 17"

Ta-Da! Here it is, the final poster. I ditched the large 10 logo since it was hard to read. I like how this turned out. I took the photograph myself and had fun decorating the brown bagged text book. Brought back so many memories of middle school/high school days. And yes, all the math is correct.

Science + Art Book Cover

The last project for my Intro to Graphic Design class was for a book cover of a book of our choosing, but not existing. I decided to combine Science and Art as they are two fields that I find interesting--especially their intersections. I actually found it difficult not to fall back on my 'science-self' as I was preparing my Target Audience Survey (TA, where we pin point the client, price, and distribution/feel of a piece of merchandise) to not get wrapped up in the research aspect of the assignment. I had to keep telling myself, "you're not writing this paper, you're designing a cover for the paper. You don't need to know this much about the subject." But I couldn't help myself.

The book is based on an article in Seeds magazine (an awesome publication that combines science and design) titled "The Future of Science is Art" by Jonah Lehrer. I also put my own spin on it an expanded it not only to the intersections of science and art in the future, but also by including examples of the two "opposite" fields intersecting with examples from this NPR page and others.

Here are some preliminary cover designs after we spent a week exploring type faces.
This one felt too sterile and textbook like.


This one looked like a textbook with the two bars on the top and bottom but I liked that the painting is on the slide as if it appeared in science.


This one would be a square format book. We decided that it was too science-focused and needed more of the art side. Apart from adding a French Barrett (spelling?) hat, more artistic tools in her pocket were needed at least.

This was my bow to Science magazine. The image is from this great site for GE's In Cell Photography competition.

Finally, was this idea of this split man (which was actually the first idea). I have posted three versions I am working with. I am having trouble deciding on three areas. 1. Title: Science/Art or The Future of Science...is Art? 2. The spine title 3. The back cover....is it easy enough to read? too much text?


This example has a more descriptive paragraph about the book on the back.


While this cover has a quotation from Lehrer's article on the bottom.

Let me know what you think!