Drum roll please...

...and tadahhhh! Heres my final project! Enjoy! (:

My Creative Process

John Coy

On May 12th, I attended an event that had guest speaker John Coy, who is an amazing designer, talk to us students about being a designer and what to expect when you enter the professional world. John Coy was the first AIGA Los Angeles president. He's been designing for many years and has been very successful in it. He had a studio in Culver City here in Los Angeles but closed it in 1996. He got a job teaching in Laguna at the Laguna School of Design and Art. 

John Coy said that to be a great artist, you must learn who you are and know yourself because in order to feel successful, you must know what feels right to you. I believe what he said here because no one is your worst critic but yourself. Once you are pleased with your work, then others will do the same. He also said when you start designing, luck has to do with it because sometimes you get those lucky accidents that make you say, "hey, I didn't think of that." 

He says when you design something, you should put your heart and soul into it because it is a product of you. If you have passion for what you do then everything will come smoothly. I agree with this as well because if you like what you do then keep doing it, if you don't then change the way you do it or just change it. Love everything you do. 

Games

So over this past weekend, Jimmy gave us a homework assignment that consisted of making up your own games and it was to have a pitch that we can give on Monday. Monday come along and we all showed our games that we created. Jimmy didn't seem to excited about them, even though he did say some were good ideas, just not well thought out. We spent most of the time going over everyone's games and then at the end of the class, Jimmy gave us another homework assignment and that was to pick one of the games, make it great, and present it on a presentation board for Wednesday.

So Wednesday gets here and we all have our boards in the front of the class. Some were really well done, and some just kind of did it just to get the assignment done. Jimmy then had us walk up to the front of the class to examine the boards and see which one we thought were better than others. He then flipped them so we saw nothing but the back and he talked to us about being more profession with our work. Even if it is something little, make sure it's profession, like removing the price tag on the back of the boards. That will show someone how well prepare you are and how professional your work is. After that a few of the students presented their work and we got to see how body language plays a big roll is a presentation. What you do with your hands, the way your body weight shifts, the tone of your voice, can really be the key to capturing the audiences attention or losing it.
Towards the end of the class, Jimmy showed us a little video and it was quite interesting. He wants us to write a creative brief on the video and on our game assignment for homework. This will be turned in on Monday.

MUSE

Muse: verb, to think or mediate in silence, as on some subject. 

We watched a clip from Ted Talk, that had Amy Tan who was the guest speaker, yesterday in class and Jimmy told us to look it up the word muse. He told us to look up cosmology and ambiguity. I hope he doesn't quiz us on the definitions of these words in the next class meeting. 

Before we watched the clips, we talked a little about what a story is made out of. We wrote down what we thought a story consisted of but I think Jimmy wanted us to make it like a mind map, so we as a class failed. During this assignment, Jimmy placed all the guys in the class in the penalty because we were speaking more than the ladies. Interesting how sometimes men can do all the talking, and the women just sits there.

Introduction, Perspective, Exercises 1-16

INTRODUCTION 

The introduction discusses about how designing is something up close and personal. It asks what designing is and what is considered a design. The answers for these two questions solely depends on the one who answers it. The introduction also talks about how designing is like being in a relationship. Firsts you need inspiration, this is when you spot a cute girl across the room. Next is identification, where you approach her and begin to talk, and after that is conceptualization. This is where you start getting to know her, you find out what type of person she is, and what are her priorities. Exploration/rationalization is next, which is when you begin taking her out on dates and starting to understand how far you can go with her on certain things. Like if she is a friendly girl, someone you can tease and joke around with, or someone who you have to watch every move that you make. This is when you decide to commit into something more serious with her or not. Next is definition/modeling, where you being to base your relationship on the things you have experienced with her. Last is communication and production, this is where all the feelings and emotions get involved and the relationship is built upon communication. 

PERSPECTIVE

One's perspective can be totally different from someone else. One's perspective can easily be changed just by moving over slightly. Perspective can be the key to whether a design is successful or if it isn't. How you view your ideas, and how you approach them, can help determine how far your design will go. Karl Aspelund really love teaching from what he says in his book, so he worked hard on that. If he gave up teaching, he would lose a part of his creative energy and curiosity. He says designing has to be about more than just creating stuff to sell, and this is how designers can contribute to the world in a meaningful way. 

EXERCISES

Karl Aspelund also says approaching a project backwards can help you develop better ways on understanding the project. First he says you should make a design journal, something you can draw, clip art, write, design, and sketch ideas out that can inspire you. Tackling a project from the end to the beginning helps you understand each step that is taken to get to the finished product. Take it apart and see how it works, know what you must do to reach the end by understanding the beginning. Know every little detail that goes into it and figure out why it was used. 

Brain Storming

So on Wednesday, we started the class with a Youtube clip about AIGA called Get Inspired. After the clip, a GAUGE member and he explained to us what they were all about. They're a student-base group that helps graphic design students develop a little more knowledge about the field. I was always interested in join but just haven't had time. Maybe I might be able to actually commit to it this quarter, only time will tell.

We then got into what was called, mind mapping. Mind mapping meant a quick way to get an explore ideas on paper. This is used as a brain storming tool that can help generate, visualize, structure, or classify more ideas. Mind maps are diagrams that represents words, ideas, or a task. It is a way to connect ideas. An open mind is the easiest path for fresh ideas, so allow time and space to pass.

Jimmy then made us create our own mind map about anything we wanted to and I chose, what if I didn't work so much. I had tons of things to put down, such as being poor, being a bum, not being able to go out and have fun. But I also put things like, I'll get to spend time with my family, friends, relax a little more, get rest. Not working so much has its pros and cons. I thought this activity was interesting because we got to see other peoples mind map, and they were quite funny.

Towards the end of the class, we watched a short clip about Scott McCloud on a website called Tedtalk.org. What Scott McCloud was talking about was really interesting, just the way he kept you into what he was talking about with the way he talked made it easy to follow. The way he presented his information was really funny as well. I'm starting to like this class more and more each day because it keeps me guessing what will happen next.

Life as a Comic

So over the weekend, we were given an assignment from Jimmy. It asked us to draw a few images of what influenced us to attend college. Honestly, it took me longer than the 20 minutes it ask us to take to think of what to draw. I finally came up with a few events that I could illustrate. There were 4 squares/rectangles that we had to draw in and so the first one I drew two straw huts being burned. Back when my parents were living in their country, the Communist Party in Vietnam raided their village so they had to flee for their lives. In the second square, I drew an air plane because after fleeing their village, my parents came to the states. In the third square, it had a father walking his son to school. My parents were very strict on academics while growing up, and seeing that they were struggling back in their homeland, they wanted the very best for us, so they always pushed us to studied hard. In the last square, I drew a graduation cap because it shows that I made it through the first half of schooling and its on to the next one.

After having the class look at all the comics, we had 15 minutes to organize it from bests to worst as a class. Now with a group that large, it was a difficult task, but we all decided to have a vote for the ones we liked, and those that had the most votes, would be placed in that order. With the ones that were tied, we had a show of hands on which one everyone liked from the two and then they were placed by the outcome of the votes. For those that had only one or no votes, there was a round of voting again to determine which ones were the best out of those two individual groups. In the end, the order was temporarily correct from best to worst, even though a few students thought some were placed on the wrong side of the scale.

In the last half of the class, we had the students who attend the event that had Seth Johnson as a guest speaker, talk to us about what was being discussed at the event. They told us about the 6 things that you should do as a designer and they were; 1. your job to ask the client, 2. make own work, 3. make more with less, 4. shut up and listen, 5. make things better, and last but not least 6. always be curious and never satisfy. They also gave us a web that Seth Johnson goes by and in the center of the web, it had his name Seth, then from the top moving clockwise, it went from client, copy, web, marketing, imagery, and vender. They also talked about other things he did and what got him to where he is at now.

Jimmy was also suppose to show us something on a projector but it was broken so we ended up not being able to finish what he had on his agenda, but what we did get to do was make our own homework. I thought that was pretty neat, tell me what other classes let you do that?

brainFART

So after receiving my book, I almost forgot about the reading. Luckily I had nothing to do, so I decided to look at the schedule of the class and saw that we had homework.

As I flipped through the first couple of pages and read them a little, I realized that this book can be of some help to me as an artist/designer. It talked about the different stages that an artist needs to go through, and they are; inspiration, identification, conceptualization, exploration/refinement, definition/refinement, definition/modeling, communication, and production. The author Karl Aspelund then explained about the individuals who inspired him and gave him the support to go through with writing the book. He also talked a little about where he worked at and how those people he encountered there also influenced him with this book.

First Impressions

So after dreading the Winter quarter, I have the same feeling towards this Spring quarter. Just thinking about the work load from the classes that I registered for along with juggling two jobs didn't sit to well in my stomach. As the first day of classes (March 28th), my first class of the day was Art 220, also known as, Concept development. Honestly, I had no clue on what the material was going to be about. What I thought what we might be learning was about the thought that went behind the ideas, the things that helped generate the ideas of a project. Soon after class began, Professor Jimmy Moss went straight into the what we will be learning and what is expected from us. He asked the class what the word concept meant and what we thought it meant. The word concept meant, something that is conceived in the mind. He then asked us other questions that I didn't know the answers to, thankfully my fellow classmates did. After almost two in a half hours of class, Jimmy let us leave with a Mandarin to tend to for the next ten weeks. What he asked from us, is to observe it on a day-by-day basis and record what we see as the Mandarin changes. I've never done anything like this, so it'll be something interesting, I hope!


Today (March 30), class was pretty interesting. After moving into a different room, Jimmy came up with a problem for the class to solve. Though it was just for us to arrange ourselves in alphabetical order, we had a few speed bumps that we ran into. There was some confusion about where the letters began and where it end, probably because no one really took the lead roll and directed the class on where to go. Maybe if someone, or I, did that, we as a class could have arranged everyone correctly a lot quicker. As class carried on, Jimmy said that development beings with an idea and designs are when ideas are expressed beautifully. He then began talking about time and how it isn't linear. He also expressed to us that relativity meant that time slows down when you speed up. This left me thinking about actually taking my time in life instead of always speeding through it.