Wednesday, December 12th, 2007
Tomorrow marks the end of my first semester of grad school.
One more project to finish. It’s been a lot of work (this week especially), but has been a great time. There will be a revamp of this site to include all of the work that I’ve done. At this point I’d consider this blog a failed experiment. Despite the best of intentions, time must be devoted to more pressing matters.
Now back to the virtual grad student.
Sunday, November 4th, 2007
Obviously school has kept me as busy (or busier) than I expected.
Interesting though is this article that I found: on Basement.org via a feed I read regularly. I’m posting it here (and not as a collected artifact) because it provides a nice bridge between my first project in Grad Studio: a self-portrait poster which is now up on Flickr, and the 2nd project What Is a Book? which I am finishing in the next day or so.
As a society we just keep interpreting data and turning it information. With so much stuff available is everything becoming so overwhelming and watered-down that eventually humanity will no longer be able to process or cope with what has been created? So I put this link here because I found it important enough to make it not just part of a list. Because lists often don’t tell you anything interesting even if they are useful.
We now return to the regularly scheduled silence.
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007
I’m eternally grateful for the friends that I have. Over the past week people have bent schedules, excused my absence, been understanding, and offered hope in panicked moments. All because they knew I was trying my hardest to accomplish everything I’d taken on.
Thanks everybody – new friends and old. I’m sure I don’t say that often enough. It’s amazing what happens when you ask those around you for help. It’s something that I have always avoided, but it’s something I’m having to do more and more now that I’m back in school.
And school got exciting today, really exciting for me. Not quite sure why yet, but there are some ideas forming and old habits breaking. Amazing what sitting around and talking about design can do to enhance creativity.
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007
Two days into the Fall semester, today begins the third. The past two weeks I have been mostly getting stuff done in preparation for the amount of work that we’ve been told will be hitting us. The summer work will be making its way up here shortly, but it’s not high on the priority list at the moment.
So far there are both similarities and differences between summer and fall:
I think at this point I need to keep my mind open and absorb everything I can without looking backwards too much to what I’ve done or what I think I know. That’s a strange feeling.
Sunday, July 22nd, 2007
Grids, guides, and a giant poster. Bootcamp continued with Week 3 being all about grids.
No real surprises, some good discussions, and a really interesting project. Only two of us chose to do a poster (30″ x 72″). The rest of the class chose to do the 8″ x 8″ book or a website.
Definitely the most fulfilling project so far.
Notes on Grids, for later reflection:
Monday, July 16th, 2007
Drawing and rapid ideation with Eric Anderson. Working towards building models over the weekend. Nice to get a pencil back in my hand. Eric also showed us his tablet PC, and I have to admit that if Apple starts making a tablet I’ll be saving my pennies to be first in line to buy one.
Some drawing lessons:
Note: Posts with images should return soon.
Monday, July 16th, 2007
Mo photo on our seventh day of class. Dylan was a great instructor and was able to answer everyone’s technical and non-technical questions and do so without everyone getting lost or falling asleep.
Everyone showed their one day photo narrative assignment today, and there were some sets that really impressed me. I was generally unhappy with the work I put together. As usual I began by overthinking the project. In the end I took pictures of the dinner Gretchen was putting together.
Spent the afternoon working in Illustrator. Fun with the pen tool and bezier curves.
Some lessons from the day:
Wednesday, July 11th, 2007
Photographic basics, and a brief assignment for creating a narrative.
It’s amazing how I seem to forget this stuff every 3 years or so. F-stop what?
Also, I knew when purchasing my digital point-and-shoot that I was dealing with mediocre tools. Being asked to take expressive pictures with it makes the limitations even more apparent.
Spent the afternoon on a poster for my cell phone. Pretty happy with it considering it’s two hours of work and that includes the photography, done while sitting in class, and the headline.
Monday, July 9th, 2007
Today was our last day with Karen Moyer who was a great teacher. We covered our final exercises and discussed the benefits of different formats and some general rules on establishing page margins. The morning ended with a brief discussion on legibility, line length, kerning, and how leading affects legibility.
We also began descending into the depths of Photoshop today. We begin working with photography tomorrow (or at least learning about photography).
Some of us went to see Sicko tonight. Everyone should see this movie. If nothing else, it might change who you vote for in 2008. The United States must change how it handles healthcare and that change must come from the bottom up.
Saturday, July 7th, 2007
Another successful morning critique on Friday, along with some additional discussion about typography and typographic/visual variables with Karen Moyer.
Alex also brought everyone up to speed on typefaces and type families and why all typefaces are not created equal. Overall a very successful afternoon.
Looking back on the first week I’d declare it an immensely successful beginning to my graduate school experience.
Just a note: This idea for documenting my CMU experience comes directly from Dan Saffer’s blog about his time at CMU. In tribute, here is Dan’s Week 1 Wrap-Up from 2003.