wow, brianprince is in artschool.

projectartschool.com/blog

2009-09-11T10:27:00.000-07:00

projectartschool.blogspot.com is going down for a nap.
projectartschool.com/blog is waking up to new things.

as the PÄS plan rolls out, this blog will be set to the side and all new posts will be made at the new URL: projectartschool.com/blog at that blog, i will blend together the works of pd (primate design), project art school (PÄS), all the progress, process, projects, lessons, events, inspirations, motivations and art involved with the two. it's all a part of the simplifying process.

i'm still working on the PÄS logo and will post ideas to the new blog when they are ready. i would really love some feedback on those. and along with the new logo will come a new web site to carry a consistent brand for PÄS.

as for the renovation of the store, it may not look like a lot has been done, but i can assure you, it took a lot out of me to gut the place. if everything goes well, i'll be ready to move in after next week when the contractors are down building it out. again, follow the progress here: projectartschool.com/blog

this blog will still be online as a resource and archive, however, since there will not be any new posts, i feel it's appropriate to show a shot of this:

ok, now for anything new, visit http://www.projectartschool.com/blog

thanks,
brianprince

project artschool = PÄS

2009-08-24T10:26:00.000-07:00

as i seek to simplfy life, i strive to consolidate it's contents which can be very complicated. :) it used to be family + school + work = life. the past 19 months or so i've realized that my plate was much too full. family alone occupies the largest piece of the pie and to throw school on top of work on top of it all is just too much.

i'm consolidating work and school, sorta. i haven't registered for any classes this semester, but instead will open an art store in downtown fullerton. for quite some time it's been an unattainable dream, until now. i've always wanted to be in hospitality or work with people on a retail level. being in school, i've realized some immediate needs for local artists and i'd like to offer them conveniently right here in downtown. i will combine those needs with my work, primate design. and it will all take place at 115 S. Harbor Blvd. as soon as i can get the space presentable.

View Larger Map
the space will be called PÄS (pronounced PAUSE). it's an acronym for Project Art School, but it also voices art in general. we should pause to view art, pause in life, smell the flowers, appreciate the details and in my retail environment, i'd like it to mean linger, but move on. it's a place where you stop, but it's not the final destination. it's a place where you find inspiration, then go on to create on your own. a place to think, and ponder ideas. all that in a little word: PÄS.

as mentioned in a previous post, 27 May 2009, i wanted to open an underground art&book supply. well, this is it – only not underground. it's smack dab in the middle of downtown. the idea is to offer the exact supplies the local art professor's are requesting of their students so that they don't have to drive to westminster, irvine or pasadena to get them or pay high shipping costs from buying online.

in addition to catering to students' art supply needs, the space will be used for gallery exhibitions, professional workshops, and simply a place to come for inspiration with a library of art and design publications.

naturally the consolidation of work and school also means i'll be combining the 2 blogs to create one interesting, all-encompassing Art Blog. the look will also change as i work on a new brand for PÄS.

until then, i have a lot of work to do because this is only the beginning...

soon projectartschool.com will not be this blog, but the vision of PÄS. linger in thought.

go ahead, quote me.

2009-07-31T08:48:00.001-07:00

brianprince says:
"graphic design is electronic music, while illustration is a band. both forms of art are neither less, nor greater than the other."

yeah, i said it.

kill poet press: i made it into issue 7.

2009-07-15T23:24:00.000-07:00

i'm not sure how it happened, but i got a piece into kill poet's latest issue. i think this is my third time submitting and i finally made it in. i'm honored to be published with the likes of kill poet. scheck it out... killpoet.com

happy accidents: always something fresh.

2009-06-30T15:50:00.000-07:00

david carson defined graphic design in the 1990's. "the grunge" look was at it's peak and designers were rebelling left and right, and creating design materials by digitally spewing on the page. i'm so guilty of it and as a matter of fact, that's one the reasons i was attracted to this field. on the regular, i'm all about order, but there's something about controlled chaos that really fits my personality. the ability to use a computer to make things precise and call it art was the answer to my lack of knowledge in art, and now, ironically, i love the printmaking-splatter ink-brush stroke-torn edge-crinkle smudge stain, kneeling-on-the-floor-sweating, hands-on aspect of the work i do.

today, "grunge" has found it's place (mainly in extreme sports and occasionally the wanna-be-youth marketeers) subsiding from the mainstream. and for a little stint, the ornate, curly-q, massive-layered-patterns reigned the mainstream, but now it's all about functionality. clean, clear, concise design with the the purest of typography. driven by, i believe, the explosion of 'screen' media.

the more i experiment with "the cut-up" process and relate it to design, the more i realize that i'm way behind the current times. and i'm fine with that. cutting up design is very similar to what david carson stamped on the industry years ago. my studies this semester led me to understanding rhythm more and it's active role in visual patterns, deconstruction, book design – including syntax and the grid, and in graphic design’s general flow. (paper 1 | paper 2)

now that the semester has gone to the wayside (or wastebasket), the thought-bubble just popped and david carson splattered all over my walls. i should have been researching him much earlier. his latest werks seem to still be very contemporary to me and not necessarily '90's'. check'im out:

david carson: the new architecture book by paul anderson(harvard) and david salomon(cornell)"the architecture of patterns" covers designs in progress, june 2009.

david carson: lucky disasters. art w/out intent.

david carson: cougar paper promotion.

david carson: part of the worldwide rebranding of western union. 2009.

more resources on th eking of happy accident s:
http://www.davidcarsondesign.com
http://www.creativereview.co.uk

on another note, i've been retrospecting, or contemplating my time in this program (and yes, still wondering the what, why, and how's of it) and went back one year to spring 2008 to see the work i did. none of it is related to my visions now, but it's still a piece of me. here are a few pages of my semester-end notes from ayear ago when i was supposedly just getting my feet wet. i believe it's even pre-projectartschool.com blog.

umm, yeah.
i'm still getting my feet wet.
hmm.

cut-up: preliminary concepts for show in january.

2009-06-28T15:33:00.000-07:00

i have my first solo show in january and it's going to be based around the thread that holds my being together: words. since the beginning of my career in graphic design i've been concepting with words. and now that my run as an MFA graphic design student nears its end, i want to explore my time in words. there will be more than words in the show, including experiments with montage, the roller poem and the flicker machine strobing mad ambiance, but what it comes down to is what i see myself as – a word lover, as i've always believed: 1 word presents 1000 images in my head.

january 19, 2010 is set for the opening but the ideas are still brewing. it will be in the Center Gallery of the Titan Student Union at Cal State Fullerton which is a pretty small gallery, but will be nice and intimate with the dreamachine as the centerpiece.

the working title is CUT-UP: Words Are Image, but very well may end up as ONE WORD PRESENTS A THOUSAND IMAGES. there will definitely be a handful of poems i've written. and i may feature a cut-up and/or visually stimulating works from a couple other artists.

- - - - -
from my proposal:

At a surrealist rally in the 1920s Tristan Tzara, the man from nowhere, proposed to create a poem on the spot by pulling words out of a hat. A riot ensued wrecked the theater. André Breton expelled Tristan Tzara from the movement and grounded the cut-ups on the Freudian couch.

A poem encourages, if not forces, one to focus on imagery, theme, and associative relationships, rather than on chronological causal structures as found in a novel or longer works of literature.

In the summer of 1959 Brion Gysin, painter and writer, cut newspaper articles into sections and rearranged the sections at random, formalizing the cut-up method bringing the collage to writers, which has been used by painters for fifty years. Writers will tell you that often their best works are accidents and manifest out of a stream of consciouness that cannot be explained. The best writing seems to be done almost by accident, but for writers, until the cut-up method became explicit, all writing is in fact cut-ups. You cannot will spontaneity. But you can introduce the unpredictable spontaneous factor with a pair of scissors. (my first experiment ://here)

Graphic Design is, by nature, completely planned mainly because the end result must be universal and legible. but i don't think the process has to be...

William S. Burroughs, who is most know for this process said,“The cut-up is actually closer to the facts of perception than representational painting. Take a walk down a city street and put down what you have just seen on canvas. You have seen a person cut in two by a car, bits and pieces of street signs and advertisements, reflections from shop windows - a montage of fragments. Writing is still confined to the representational straitjacket of the novel ... consciousness is a cut-up. Every time you walk down the street or look out of the window, your stream of consciousness is cut by random factors.”

The cut-up is a mechanical method of juxtaposition in which Burroughs literally cuts up passages of prose by himself and other writers and then pastes them back together at random. This literary version of the collage technique is also supplemented by literary use of other media. Burroughs transcribes taped cutups (several tapes spliced into each other), film cutups (montage), and mixed media experiments (results of combining tapes with television, movies, or actual events). Thus Burroughs’ use of cutups develops his juxtaposition technique to its logical conclusion as an experimental prose method, and he also makes use of all contemporary media, expanding his use of popular culture.

The cut-ups can be applied to fields other than writing. Dr. Neumann in his Theory of Games and Economic Behavior introduces the cut-up method of random action into game and military strategy: assume that the worst has happened and act accordingly. If your strategy is at some point determined . . . by random factor your opponent will gain no advantage from knowing your strategy since he can not predict the move.

The cut-up method could be used to advantage in processing scientific data. How many discoveries have been made by accident? We can not produce accidents to order. The cut-ups could add new dimension to anything — film, photography, ceramics, writing, and even graphic design. There is no reason to accept a second-rate product when you can have the best. And the best is there for all. “Poetry is for everyone.” The word is image and this will be an exhibit of image and theme, mainly through the cutting and reforming of words.

My thesis will consist of the my own personal explorations of Burroughs’ and Gysin’s experimental ideals. This exhibit is an introduction to those explorations with hopes of finding a new purpose and place for graphic design in the cut-up arena.
- - - - -

i'm excited to finalize the details in the fall. but for now, summer will be spent with the family on the road...

the dreamachine: sommerville & gysin's vision of flicker.

2009-06-09T10:48:00.000-07:00

it's been about six months now since i told myself that i was going to build my own dream machine (or flicker machine) and i've finally accomplished it. it's my first but definitely won't be my last. i used the template provided by "FLicKeR" the movie's web site (flickerflicker.com) but as i read Chapel of Extreme Experience: A Short History of Stroboscopic Light and the Dream Machine by John Geiger, i'm finding that there are many ways to make the flicker-inducing machine.

on my first dreamachine i used a world map for a couple of reasons — one to represent that the effects of flicker are universal and the visions or "drug-less high's" produced by the machine have no boundaries. secondly, as i study the Cut-Up in literature resulting in poetry, i wanted to explore the splicing of informational graphics. the idea to cut-up something is to make it your own. cutting into the world map makes new names for the places that we already know and at the same time eliminates places we know, just as the effects from using flicker — creating a new world by tapping into our memory and the imagination and bring them to our consciousness, visioning unexplained instances. i will go into the effects of flicker in another blog post.

i plan on writing down my experiences when using the dreamachine in the form of directly-written poetry. This way i can create a Cut-Up Poem without cutting it up after it's written, rather going through the cut-up process in my mind first.

here are some pics of this beautiful creation:

steven heller called out my fate.

2009-05-30T16:20:00.000-07:00

"I have finally come to the realization that my self-education was like a dormant childhood illness that has returned in adult life to haunt me." i had printed this summer-2005-article from eye magazine (eye opinion) just over a year ago and stuck it with my stash of articles that may benefit me or be of interest one day.

just like my box of inspiring printed pieces housing direct mail pieces, brochures and ads as well as my browser's bookmark folder stuffed with cool web sites, i tap into these inspiring archives when i get into a rut. i have an oversized folder with articles that i've collected from the Times, online, or Xeroxs from books and other pubs that i resort to when i seek inspiration.

i have a meeting with some gallery directors next week to discuss a show i planned on exhibiting at the end of this semester. it was for the last project in my Special Studies class in which i withdrew after 85% completion. the space wasn't available any how, but is open for the beginning of fall. my biggest dilemma is if i should still exhibit my intended show — my decades book – progress shown at the end of this blog)? or do i come completely off the wall and make a show from something unrelated?

this is why i began the search in my article archives. i have plenty ideas for an exhibit, just none have ever been flushed out... and the meeting is next week. and now after re-discovering this article, i can't help but to believe that i'm merely a "capitalist tool," as steven heller put so in-my-face-ly. but it's true. i have a knack for pleasing clients, presenting a clear message, and selling the goods. but, is my lack of formal training holding me from finding my purpose in the MFA program? am i really a graphic designer? or just a creative person with the ability to juggle administration...

i should have been accepted into this program based on a social issue/graphic design problem that i wanted to confront over the next 3 years. instead, i was accepted based upon my "corporate" portfolio. perhaps my experience proved that i could think for myself with hopes that something would surface. well, after a year and a half, nothing has surfaced and i find myself completely alone. no comradery. no direction. no push. just a demand to create my own curriculum and plan to present to a committee. the news flash is loud and clear: i just don't have it.

read heller's article published in eye magazine summer '05 issue 56: "Me feral designer" and you will see where i'm coming from.

as for the exhibit in the fall, i'm still going to attempt it. i can't give up that easily. below is where my book was going. the plan was to extract the spreads and blow them up to present in a gallery setting... now, i thinking i'll do something much more interesting. as for the book, i was exercising a flow as the reader flipped through the decades of commercial art in america starting in the 50's. a rhythm would maintain with the chorus of vellum spreads showing a graphic transition of each of the decade "circles" as they separate the decade spreads.

cover:

50s:

60s:

70s:

80s:

90s:

and the NOW is even more incomplete than the 80s and 90s... i didn't have time to massage anything and before i knew it the semester was over. as i've taken the W's this semester, i've also taken a lesson. i know who i am and i will never stop learning, i just don't have control of the time line.

finally, just for fun, even as i discovered that the decades mesh together with fuzzy borders, i wanted to explore type treatments that represent each in a poster:

project artschool: i am a serif.

2009-05-27T09:24:00.000-07:00

spring 2009 has ended now, and...

there may be a change soon. on this blog, project artschool. since the last third of my first half of the graduate program withdrew nothing new and injected nothing progressive, i'm forced to rethink my purpose here. lack of direction. lack of motivation. lack of the knowledge or research to create a decent thesis statement. i'm lost. and i'm fine with it.

i have no regrets for anything. the past. especially these last three semesters. i learned a lot. i learned how to learn. i grew an interest in design literature. and discovered my place.

i am a serif. with flare. juggling more. and more. than any (one) thing compared. to. compare... ison. i can be extreme. wear boxers. and sweat passion. a tagline. for the who, what, where, and why. but that’s only the half. as i jeopardize. a reputation. i am alive. a living oxy moron. who dares. death. daily. exposed. knowing that one can only grow. with others around. as you will find on this index to my (school) life. online. is merely on line. and no one will truly know me until they find time. to sit in a coffee house. and sip fine conversations. with cream and sugar. sweet nothings. envisioning. a life that is bigger. traditional. realist. fictitious. dreamer. i am a serif.

so why all the long hours. drawn out. tail chasing. solitude. when i'm finding no purpose. when i dig up a graduate level graphic design problem that i want to explore, i will apply to an art school and hit it head on. i can't burn a bridge that was never built. until then, i will continue to be who i am.

there's no surprise why this time will be eliminated. the summer is now necessary. i need it.

my mind is currently focused on project artschool, the underground art&book supply...

Fullerton, CA

Orange, CA

Long Beach, CA

Big Ant Int'l: Global Coalition for Peace

2009-05-20T10:38:00.000-07:00

here is my biggest "Why Didn't I Think of That" moment...

“What Goes Around Comes Around. Stop the Iraq War.”

Global Coalition for Peace
Gold Pencil for Design award (Public Service Poster) at the One Show Design Awards. Four posters were designed to wrap around poles, campaigning for an end to the war in Iraq.

for the other two in the series, check out http://bigantinternational.com under works

Advertiser:
Global Coalition for Peace
Agency:
Big Ant International, New York
Additional credits:
Creative director: Alfred S. Park
Associate creative director: Frank Anselmo
Art director: Jeseok Yi
Copywriters: Francisco Hui and William Tran

Source:

ditch poetry: international feature.

2009-05-18T09:09:00.000-07:00

i just received notice that i'm an international feature in the Canadian poetry magazine ditch. two of my poems were selected and can be viewed ://here

thesis proposal: Understanding Poetry to Teach Graphic Design.

2009-04-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

i may be on to something here...

Working Titles for Thesis Project.
• Teaching Graphic Design with Principles of Poetry.
• Understanding Poetry to Teach Graphic Design.
• Poetry and Graphic Design: Different Media, Same Approach.
• Poetry’s Principles Are Graphic Design’s Process.
• Poetry’s Principles Solve Graphic Design’s Problems.

Working Statements.
• Overcoming graphic design problems with principles of poetry are specifically understood when the principles from the Imagism Literary Movement are used to create effective conceptual logos, the flow of Free Verse and Narrative Poetry are used to create technical and informational graphic layouts, and embracing Cut-Up Poetry leads to enhancing decorative graphic elements and montages.

• Many visual artists repel the power of words because they are blinded by image and therefore need to be taught the importance of the principles of poetry in order to identify their personal rhythm and intuition when creating successful conceptual, technical and artistic graphic design.

Overview.
Learning conceptual graphic design relies heavily on the students individual ability to translate ideas into graphic form with a sense that is pleasing to the viewer. Teaching it almost seems supernatural and unattainable. There is no formula that guarantees unique, creative conceptual results.

My plan is to improve graphic design instruction by creating methods that exercise a designer’s rhythm and intuition. These methods are rooted in principles from poetry through its literary movements and the study of it as an art form. Many visual artists repel the power of words because they are blinded by image. Conceptual graphic design has much to learn from poetry, old and new. As the outcomes of each are usually different (and sometimes considered one in the same), the processes are remarkably similar.

I plan to prove the direct correlation in the processes of writing poetry and creating multiple graphic design solutions through specific experiments and continued research. This thesis project will specifically address the following:

• The process of creating a logo by explaining the foundation of the Imagism Literary Movement

• The process to clean, legible and organized information and communication layouts through Free Verse and Narrative Poetry principles

• The process of designing decorative and montage graphics dictated by Cut-Up Poetry

My Worth. The Subjects Worth.
As I discover inspiration through poetry and find a personal desire to understand it better, my recent enthusiasm for works of literature trickles into my professional trade – graphic design and advertising, encouraging new methods and experiments for use in the design classroom.

The ideals mentioned in this thesis proposal are worthy of experimentation simply because they propose formulas for conceptual thinking. They have the potential to revolutionize the way graphic design in taught. In addition to teaching design students graphic design principles – type, image, color, scale, I believe it is important to teach a concrete method for developing rhythm and intuition. Rather than requesting students to just “come up with an idea,” relying on life’s rhythm, this alternative approach encourages them to see design in another light and enables experimentation like never before, manifesting conceptual thinking.

The future for applying poetry’s principles to graphic design is endless. This thesis will cover three (3) specific areas of application to get the connections started. Once the lineage is clear, many principles in poetry can be interchanged, overlapped and/or evolved to suit almost any graphic design problem.

When inspiration is lost and research is exhausted, the role of rhythm and intuition suffer.
Applying poetry’s principles to graphic design problems opens new avenues to conceptual, technical, and artistic graphic design.

Strengths and Weaknesses.
In order to articulate the benefits in this proposal, it demands an author who has an equal passion for both, poetry and graphic design. That is my main strength. With a background of experience in conceptual advertising and with corporate structure, I am able to visualize the big picture and organize creative mayhem.

As a young student to poetry and real graphic design, I will continue to research the processes of each, digesting their parallels and noting their differences.

Creating a curriculum for the design classroom should flow directly out of the relational studies between poetry’s principles and graphic design problems. This is an area that will take much focus as I fervently critique the three parts of this proposal.

The Goal.
Opening the creative mind can be dangerous. It often leads to procrastination, misdirection and frustration. Learning poetry’s principles and applying them to graphic design problems is a guided process with a solid foundation.

Success will be determined when a design student who shuns the written word, finds and appreciates the process of poetry and understands its power in every individual’s rhythm and intuition. Over time, when there is a method to control conceptual design, this will have been proven and opened to further exploration of more principles and more problems.

Proposed Bibliography.
Lupton, Ellen and Phillips, Jennifer Cole. Graphic Design The New Basics. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008.

Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style (Second Edition). Vancouver, BC: Hartley & Marks, 1996.

Flynn, Keith. The Rhythm Method, Razzamatazz, and Memory. How To Make Your Poetry Sing. Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Digest Books, 2007.

Butler, Mark J. Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006.

Hurtik, Emil and Yarber, Robert. An Introduction to Poetry and Criticism. Lexington, MA: Xerox College Publishing, 1972.

Woolman, Matt and Bellantoni, Jeff. Moving Type. Designing for Time and Space. Geneva: Rotovision SA, 2000.

Tufte, Edward. Visual Explanations. Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press, LLC, 1997.

Tufte, Edward. Beautiful Evidence.
Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press, LLC, 2006.

Tufte, Virginia. Artful Sentences. Sentences as Style.
Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press, LLC, 2006.

Wigley, Mark. The Architecture of Deconstruction. Derrida’s Haunt.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993.

Lyne, Sandford. Writing Poetry from the Inside Out. Finding your voice through the craft of poetry. Naperville, IL: SourceBooks, Inc., 2007.

Drury, John. Creating Poetry.
Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Digest Books, 1991.

Bennett, Audrey. Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design, A Reader. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006.

download the pdf ://here. it lasts longer.

typography, the original instrument.

2009-04-23T10:47:00.000-07:00

not only an instrument or tool, but a necessity. as the gentleman referred to jazz in this video, you need to learn the instrument or the music will be horrid. typographic care is evident in a good designers work and attributes to both, the rhythm and intuition of good design.

as the famous alex "ajax" jackson once said:
"i was a better designer before adobe allowed for multiple "command z's" (edit undo's) because i had to think about every move i was making."

AIGA-OC: 4th annual student design contest.

2009-04-20T08:24:00.000-07:00

AIGA-OC, The American Institute of Graphic Arts, Orange County chapter held its 6th Annual Portfolio Review and 4th Annual Student Design Contest last saturday, april 18th at Chapman University. i arrived with about a half an hour until it ended with shorts and flip flops on. as i walked in, i was surrounded by over 100 students from so cal design programs with portfolios in-hand, dressed to impress, being reviewed by 30 creative professionals from local companies like Y&R Brands, Oakley, Walt Disney Imagineering, Pencilbox Studios and many more (see list of reviewers here). i quietly made my way to the back where the projects for the contest were.

to my surprise, i managed to take Honorable Mention for my Chicago 2016 Campaign that i designed last Fall '08.

The campaign consisted of a logo, poster series, welcome package including event tickets, and temporary tattoos.

i left with a certificate that graced my misspelled name, but they promised to send me a corrected one next week.

to find out more about the contest and a complete list of reviewers, click //here.

JoAnn Kuchera-Morin: AlloSphere

2009-04-15T10:27:00.000-07:00

t(wo w)ords: holie molie.

JoAnn Kuchera-Morin demos the AlloSphere, an entirely new way to see and interpret scientific data, in full color and surround sound inside a massive metal sphere. Dive into the brain, feel electron spin, hear the music of the elements ... (Recorded at TED2009, February 2009, in Long Beach, California. Duration: 06:28.)
source

abbott miller: everybody dance now

2009-04-13T08:08:00.000-07:00

if i was somewhat close to new york, i'd be heading over to the AIGA National Design Center to see this show. Everybody Dance Now: 20 Years of Dancing in Print is an exhibit of visual and performing arts magazines Dance Ink and 2wice, designed by Abbott Miller.

somehow, i know it relates to the work i'm doing now.
have a look here: http://www.aiga.org

on another note, i've been pretty stale here on projectartschool.com. mainly because two-thirds of my life has been dominating one-third – school. i'm taking a big fat W in my 503A, grad problems class, simply because i do not have the time to dedicate to it right now. a W is a withdrawal. however, i'm still experimenting with some of the original concepts i started in that class, and as i won't get a semester's credit for it, i will be advancing my research towards a defined thesis topic.

in my other class, now my only credit-seeking class for spring, i'm working on a book that displays 6 decades of influential commercial art in america. it's been a lot of work, but has been very educational and inspirational. i'll be posting some of my progress soon.

this. spring break two thousand nine.

2009-03-30T22:07:00.000-07:00

for reasons i cannot explain the brakes came on so easy this semester as i contemplate during spring break starting today a revelation that my classes are far too behind my thesis topic is hiding a mystery that quite frankly i'm tired of seeking all i want to really do is write but get guilty feelings like i'm wrong then i find myself searching my archives of works nothing to be proud of except the words.

somewhere in the middle of that run-on sentence i found this string of words that talks about this.

typography.

rules i strive to live
by.

always check your kerning. start off with negative tracking. at least negative ten. don't write vertical when communicating quickly. (hotel and motel are the exception.) nor with uneven or unbalanced words.

please don't leave your typesetting to a sign shop. they only own silly fonts have no taste in typographic usage and don't design with a purpose. this pome is for them. listen up.

location is key. place your type carefully. simply. in a second. always close-up double oh's. closer than your average kern. look. moon. poop. food. be sure the captial Tee and whY is close to your lower case oh. To. Yo.

and spread your double el's. million. brilliant. trillion. killer. don't ever use a font named after a city. ever. and move comic sans. to the trash can. on a mac. or recycle bin. if you're a user of i.b.m.

make a capital vee and a capital eay comfortable. VAGINA. ENDEAVOR. tighten the kern. the space between them. simple rules. of typography. watch and observe. it's easy to learn. use your keyboard with caution. perhaps go back to a pen.

know your printer. eat breakfast with them. drive in their car. always shake their hand. photoshop is not graphic design. neither is a computer.

idea is king.

it's solving a problem. it's a service. translating a message from one to
another. from bow to target. the arrow. straight. narrow. responsible for the end result. the viewers perception.

there's meaning. there's reason. visual plus verbal equals message. graphic design is a verb. a+b=c. providing closure. problem solved.

communication.
the life i'm ruled
by.

that was supposed to be read slowly. start over.

sound in motion.

2009-03-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

words in motion.

2009-03-23T11:22:00.000-07:00

Mos Def - Words - The Ecstatic - in stores Spring 2009

503A : project 02 : static/dynamic study

2009-03-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

Same Content, Different Deliveries: A Sound/Silent Experiment
using one of my favorite contemporary poems by Jack Henry, i started to explore the way we read and digest communication delivered online. this is just a skim off the top of the ultimate goal, but i feel the questions proposed here are a good beginning.

TESTING THE AUTHOR'S ROLE IN WEB COMMUNICATION
As content becomes more dynamic, the reader becomes more lazy because the content is working for the reader. When content is static, the reader has to act, scroll and interact, forcing the reader to think for themselves.

S T A T I C

movie making

i remember walking
down 6th in Los Angeles
over near Spring Street

a movie crew stood around
talking in walkie-talkie's about
this and that

i stood and stared

an hour passed before
a tall man w/thin eyes
yelled, "action"

a car came around a corner
smashed into another
a guy jumped out
and started to run
before the director
yelled, "cut"

everyone applauded

a homeless guy
walked through
the scene, stopped
at a trash dumpster
pulled out some cans
kept moving

and no one said a word

D Y N A M I C
(refresh your browser to watch again.)
Your browser does not support iframes. contact me at 714 336 6170 for further instruction.

QUESTIONS & RESULTS
Overall Synopsis
I feel that the reader has lost many aspects of control the minute you put the content on the Web. However, this experiment is for Web based communications and whether Static design or Dynamic design is better.

I came to two conclusions: 1) if the reader has an interest in the content, then Static gives freedom to the reader allowing them to think through the content themselves as opposed to 2) if the reader has no interest in the content, then Dynamic will give them a chance to be told what the content says.

When the reader has control of the content (static), is the communication more or less effective than when the reader gives control of the content to the author?
More effective. It benefits the reader to pause when they need and move on when they need. If the content is designed properly, the pace should lend itself.

Is static design an outdated form of communcation? Is it more of an idea-stimulant?
No. Yes, it gives the reader control.

What do static design and dynamic design have in common? Do they both depend on rhythm?
They both tell a story. Each line is a step in the story line and each stanza is a new scene. Everything depends on rhythm, even reading the stock report.

Is dynamic design mere eye candy? Entertainment?
No. Especially not in this case, it's just as plain as the static page. It takes away the scrolling function and the line-break potential, as it controls the content.

Is static design is just informative? Serious?
Yes. According tot he author, but the reader can do whatever they like with it.

Which one stimulates the brain more?
Static. The reader is left with the decision making on pace and rhythm making their experience with the words their own.

Which delivers the message quicker? Better?
More memorable? More personal (w/emotion attached)?
These are subjective to the reader, depending whether they read fast, or are even interested in the content and care enough to move forward. The static design allows for that choice.

In what situations are these attributes relevant?
When the reader has an interest in the content. However, if they do not, the dynamic design is more enticing.

Does more dynamic mean more clear? Or overdone and confusing?
More clear. But perhaps not as beneficial.

Does sound integration fall into the category of static or dynamic's design communication?
It would improve both.

What leads the revolution: new eyes? or new authors?
New eyes definitely. New authors have to account for the new eyes that read their content.

483A : project 2 : 45 rpm album cover

2009-03-11T20:44:00.000-07:00

Calexico album cover for a special pressing release.

in order to research Calexico's music, i had many listens on their myspace page. i was inspired to create a desert feel but not wild west. more contemporary. i also really enjoyed the diversity of instruments and the laid back influence in the music. i knew a natural paper is what i wanted to capture the feel, but i needed to be inspired for the design before i got caught up pasting a cactus on it.

it hit me when i saw one of my favorite blankets in the trunk of my car. it was the inspiration and motivation behind the design of this 45rpm album cover.

from then, i knew what had to be done. the process of designing it started with this:

i recorded "Alone Again Or" that was streaming online into garage band. then took a screen shot of the track editor. this served as the center of my pattern intentions as mentioned in the project 01 paper i wrote in february.

i simplified the sound waves into one-color black.

then, went to town re-creating southwestern patterns and finally copying the flow of the one in my blanket.

when i had the pattern i was looking for, i added the logo and printed it in reverse on a color laser. my plan was to do xylene transfers onto some funky papers. first i tried butcher paper, but it came out way too dark, then cardboard, but it was very uneven. the purpose to do the transfer was to get a distressed look, but it was at the point of illegibility – so i ended up using some Fabriano watercolor paper, or is it printmaking paper? i can't remember, it's all pretty much the same. and instead of using the potent xylene solvent, i picked up some wintergreen oil from the local pharmacy to make the transfers.

i love the watercolor paper because i was able to have torn edges which really added to the feel of the whole piece. not to mention the physical softness in the paper.

after making the transfers, i trimmed and assembled it.

i really like how the greens transferred onto the off-white paper. it gave the perfect contemporary desert feel.

oh, and the last minute violator that had to match the piece.

overall, i'm very happy with it. the only thing is i couldn't get the wintergreen (ben gay) smell out of my studio for about a week.

buckminster fuller institute.

2009-03-04T11:10:00.000-08:00

i subscribe to the bfi.org e-newsletter and 9 times out of 10 i'm inspired by the innovative thinking out there. it always seems to put me in check and it gets me off my high-fineart-horse and brings me down to the science-designwithpurpose-earth.

check 'em out http://www.bfi.org

Bucky was one fantastic human being.

grad problems research : rhythm's role in graphic design

2009-02-28T20:52:00.000-08:00

503A : project 1: Rhythm's Role in Graphic Design, brian prince

The purpose of the research in this paper is to develop a basis for proving how rhythm is the fifth element of graphic design, and furthermore, the most important element. Topics explored herein include: life’s rhythm and the responsibility of the designer to be in touch with everyday human behavior; and the parallels between designer and music composer, designer and poet, and their roles as authors.

To critique graphic design, the academy usually breaks the art down into four descriptive categories, what I’ll call the four elements of graphic design: scale, color, typography and image. All important in the design process, each element brings a necessary cornerstone to a solid design. But, what I’ve discovered as a Graphic Designer, is that those elements need an emotional tie to make them effective to the audience. That emotional tie is rhythm. The designer as author has to understand A) the process: be as involved as possible in the initial research of a design problem in order to add real value, and B) the emotion: has to understand its readership as if they were the reader and be able to control what they are viewing.

The designers role IS rhythms role, making the relationship between content and the reader a synergetic harmony.

To be in tune with the viewer (reader/audience), the author must understand their needs. Articulating their needs into an effective, strong result is the challenge. This is where rhythm comes in. The term, human-centered design sprouts out of this very idea. It starts in the research, which can be as complicated as understanding the mind sets of a people group you’ve never encountered to as simple as a familiar everyday experience. The end user’s experience is the goal in mind. If you’re not pushing the right buttons at the right time, you will be out of tune and left with ineffective communication. The designer must become the ethnographer in every design problem he faces. In an article titled, Impact: Inspiring Graphic Design through Human Behavior, (Ia. ch. 21) the authors and principles of a design firm, IDEO, break down their fundamental step of the design process: contextual observations – getting into the environment, hands-on, personal interviews; and analogous experiences – loosely related, but inspiring to the project topic.

Design thinking should be immersed in the rhythm of the subject.

IDEO finds human-centered research to be inspiring to design. While I agree with that, I also feel that it is the basis for good design. It is the designers job to observe, organize, and tell the story appropriately in order to create effective communication. In order to obtain rhythm, the designer must embrace all three. Directly or indirectly, communication is persuading the reader to believe in something. Assuming you are in your target market, or playing the right sport on the right field, this persuasion plays the same role whether you’re translating music, poetry, or visual communication, all equally important.

Now that I’ve discovered how important the relationship between the content and the reader is, the responsibility of the author is greater than ever. To illustrate that, I first explored the similarities between an electronic music composer and a designer. When I say electronic music composer, I mean as in music producer, not wedding or radio disc jockey. The most obvious similarity is that they are both arrangers as opposed to creators. Ultimately something new is created in the end because each arrangement is unique, but the content was not from scratch. Rather than just playing someone else’s record, a good composer/producer carefully selects, combines and manipulates different parts of records into new compositions that differ substantially from the source materials. (II. pg. 33) I can easily swap out the title Composer/Producer with Graphic Designer or Poet in that statement and it would work just the same.

Granted the many levels of music, production, genres and sub-genres, the relationship I’m analyzing is between the electronic music composer—one who samples other music but creates a new rhythm, the poet—one who takes a dictionary of words as reference to create a new structured rhythm, and the designer—one who uses elements relevant to the subject in need of communication. Electronic music rarely has vocals and poetry rarely has music behind it, while design is mainly viewed with the eyes. Despite all three authors depending on different senses to absorb their message, they are all grounded in rhythm.

Rhythm is an absolute when articulating the patterns of each author. Each can feed off each other and still work in harmony because they all contain the common denominator: rhythm. Each has a duty to be a descriptive rhythmic pace-setter. As lyrics add another dimension to music, images add depth to words, and so on. And as mentioned earlier, the audience is a crucial factor in the effectiveness. Professional writers demand a reader, electronic music composers demand a dancer, and graphic designers demand a viewer. There are so many parallels between the three authorships, even in their evolution of tools. Music can be made with an instrument or electronically, while poetry can be written or typed and graphic design, drawn or computer generated. To me, these author-playing comparisons are important when exploring rhythm because when you align anything with music and poetry, you automatically associate movement and flow. I feel those associations are lost when thinking of graphic design because of either A) the eyes can’t sing or, B) design is perceived as the stand still medium.

Just as an electronic music producer can change up a beat, or a poet can break up a line to control pace, the designer can enhance the meaning of of a message by attaching emotion to their design. If rhythm was absent, we’d have loud monotone high pitches on the dance floor, unruly, page-full novel-lengthed poetry, and design consisting of only the four basic elements.
Max Bill once said in reference to one of his Bauhaus colleagues, Josef Albers, “Each picture has a unique ‘sound’, and this ‘sound’ is its ‘meaning’, each ‘tone’ finds it atonement.’”

to download the pdf click ://here.

Bibliography
Ia. Bennett, Audrey. “Impact: Inspiring Graphic Design Through Human Behaviors.” Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design, A Reader. Ed. Givechi, Groulx, Woollard.
New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. 306-310.

Ib. Bennett, Audrey. “Shaping Belief: The Role of Audience in Visual Communication.” Design Studies: Theory and Research in Graphic Design, A Reader. Ed. Tylor, Ann C.
New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. 36-50.

II. Butler, Mark J. Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006.

III. Herford, Marta. Max Bill: No Beginning, No End.
Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2008.

special studies research : structuring rhythm

2009-02-27T20:47:00.000-08:00

483A : project 1 : Structuring Rhythm, brian prince

Rhythm is everywhere.

It’s hard to put it in a box. From brushing our teeth to writing a love note, human life requires rhythm. Rhythm is a looping pattern. It’s a repetitive movement or procedure with uniformed recurrence of a beat, accent, or the like. But not always.

In search for rhythm’s origin, the list tops with music and poetry — music, for it’s pattern of regular or irregular pulses consisting of strong and weak melodies and har monies; and poetry, for it’s rhyming patterns and line breaks. Rhythm and Blues can almost be classified as both put together. But what does Rhythm and Blues look like? Often overlooked is visual rhythm, a rhythm that is not sound and a foot-tapping instigator, but a rhythm that enters through your eyes. As the idea of Rhythm is so big, this paper will break down a few elements in which I believe make up the structure of rhythm, or rhythm’s behind-the-scenes blueprint. I chose to explore visual patterns, deconstruction, the grid, and syntax in the context of graphic design’s general flow.

While studying wallpaper, my mind was opened to the endless variations in which pattern can be viewed. It was at this beginning point that I realized how big of a concept pattern is. At first impression, my thoughts were that patterns are only decorative characteristics, space-fillers, serving to only please an asthetic and not a design function, when really, they are much more complicated than that. Wallpaper originated from a practical, utilitarian function in tapestries which where used to keep the drafts out of upper classmen’s palaces. The intricate and dramatic designs were symbols of royalty. It’s no wonder that floral embellishments have made their way back into design. Ornate flourishing is in itself creating rhythm and “the structural analysis of pattern is central to modern design theory.” (I. pg. 185) Just as in ancient patterns on wall coverings that flow from a central motif, today the practice of pattern-making shares the same artistic values spawning from a central core. Pattern starts with the very simplest of marks. It progressively gets more and more complicated as you manipulate and duplicate the mark. Whether it’s a dot or an single ornate flower, it’s a combination inter-weaved together which forms a texture greater than itself. With the simplist of tweaks, the texture can be read completely different. To me, that’s the power of rhythm.

Contrary to creating a pattern, deconstruction takes complexities and simplifies them to their purest form. This too is a valid contribution to the structure of rhythm. The act of deconstruction is defining the individual parts of the original. Going backward or deeper into ones research will result in the undiluted beginnings. It’s like reading a definition to a word you don’t know, but then finding words in that definition that you don’t know, so you find yourself looking up a deeper meaning. This also plays on the idea that with the slightest of tweaks, something completely new can be created. In graphic design this is important because when I deal with the source, I’m able to communicate more efficiently. Breaking down an idea or the logic of a given problem allows the designer to anaylize the literal applications and origins as opposed to studying a translation. In order to study visual rhythm in the sense of graphic design, it’s important to understand deconstruction. It allows me to re-examine what I read or what I’ve heard and listen to the details “rather than the traditional scholarly labor of excavation.” (II. pg. 3) The way language is strung together using text is essentially impure. Examing text on its own makes a clear argument for itself and truly allows for an open sight of the big picture. A famous poet and painter from the Beat generation, Brion Gysin, explained that no one owns words. Anyone from anywhere can put together any words and they become their own. He also devised the cut-up method of poetry which is taking existing writings, cutting them as to rearranging them, thus creating your own. Text is concealed by language and we have to abuse it in order to find the original. This applies to graphic design in a huge way considering we are merely designers arranging already-created elements onto a page. Deconstruction also teaches me to liberate the true meaning of a problem. If I were to borrow an element or a typographic style, I better know where it’s coming from. I can’t just say I like it because I think it’s cool. The greatest thing about graphic design is that we always create something new in the end because the arrangement will more than likely be unique.

The third element covering the structure of rhythm is the foundation for all graphic design elements, the grid. The grid is the very casing in which scale, color, type and image are held. These are the fundamental elements in design but I’ve always felt that it’s more than that. The purpose of my research of the grid in regards to rhythm is to illustrate how rhythm affects the four concrete fundamental elements with an emotion. The placement of content in the structure of a grid creates a harmony with the reader and the content. Not only does this apply to a single layout on a single page, but can relate to something as minimal as the strokes in a logo to something as broad as a large text book. The grid may seem like a universal uniform that is very rigid and unforgiving, but the reality is it allows for the most fluid, freeing kind of work. It’s all about how you use it. If you were to translate a newspaper spread like the Stocks section into music, you might get a very rapid and busy monotone, but a magazine article might sing to you in scale and white space. This is rhythm in a still space. This is the freedom the grid allows the designer. Appropriately, Andy Warhol says, “Space is all one space and thought is all one thought, but my mind divides its spaces into spaces and thoughts into thoughts into thoughts. Like a large condominium.” When you can accomplish balance and flow in a rhymic way, you capture your audience. I believe the reader needs highs and lows to get excited and to take a break from the content. Just like life, communication needs rhythm. When you open a book the story doesn’t normally begin until about the tenth page. There is a syntactic build up that gets you there. By definition, syntax is a system or orderly arrangement. A pattern or language, more or less, is the confinement of design, but how you deconstruct and arrange it is the rhythm.

In order to liberate rhythm in graphic design, I believe it needs to be taught as one of the major elements in graphic design. From complicating to simplifying, from restricting to liberating, graphic design has the vitality of life and their common denominator is rhythm.

As the elements discussed in this paper function in our daily lives, so does rhythm. In my attempt to divide rhythm into these categories it’s really just a scratch on the surface. I felt that defining the structure would set up a good argument in defining rhythm in the graphic design world. What I really discovered is that it’s merely impossible to structure rhythm when rhythm structures everything.

to download the pdf click ://here.

Bibliography
I. Lupton, Ellen & Phillips, Jennifer Cole. Graphic Design the New Basics.
New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008.

II. Wigley, Mark. The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993.

III. Tufte, Virginia. Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style.
Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press LLC, 2006.

IV. Weiss, Jason. Back in No Time: The Brion Gysin Reader.
Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.

inspirational discoveries.

2009-02-23T12:13:00.001-08:00

i came across some cool stuff on the Web today and wanted to share:

g-speak

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

a house designed to challenge growing old

the NY Times article.
watch the video.

hip hop poetics symposium.

2009-02-13T10:15:00.000-08:00

my brother-in-law and i visited Fullerton College yesterday to listen to an interesting panel discussion regarding hip hop and poetry called, "What Counts as Writing: Rap, Spoken Word, and the Politics of Poetics." there were 3 panel members: Dr. Mel Donaldson, professor at Cal State LA; Eric Morago, performance poet; and an english professor from the college.

the topic questions revolving around the panel were: What is the difference between rap, spoken word and performance poetry? Is there a place for any/all of the above in the creative writing/composition/literature classroom?

i found it informative just because of my interest in poetry and now with my new direction of rhythm's role in design. i also enjoyed how they brought it into the realm of academia, because i feel that is very important as one day i will be teaching. most importantly, i find so many parallels with creative writing and graphic design and this is just another resource for me to prove that. the process and definition of poetry and spoken word, the performance of poetry, hip hop and cinema, lie in the very same pool of design and the author's responsibility.

a point that caught my attention is the question of who are we expressing this art to and why do the powers-that-be pick and choose what happens in the academy. why is charles bukowski talked about in school, but not today's hip hop degradation of women? something to think about.

the one line that i'm taking from this 2 hour panel discussion will be huge as i think further toward my thesis goal. stated by Billy Collins: This art of expression should "not only be accessible, but hospitable."

i find that totally relative to the design pollution we see in our society.

to spice up this post, here's eric morago, slam poet:

Antoine Bardou-Jacquet: video for Alex Gopher.

2009-02-10T21:59:00.000-08:00

this pretty much goes with everything i'm doing RIGHT NOW. the power of words/type, allowing the reader to interpret the design for themselves rather than have it told. the artist here is truly giving the viewer the freedom to form their own images with the type descriptions yet the storyline is still the same. it's freakin brilliant. not to mention my recent studies on electronic dance music and rhythm that is able to be translated in another medium.

video created by Antoine Bardou-Jacquet for the french dj Alex Gopher. a world made only with typographics. cult video for fonts lovers and graphic designers.

503A: grad problems 2009: study plan.

2009-02-08T16:34:00.000-08:00

i'm taking a slightly different approach with my grad problems study plan. since my professor is very proficient with the Web, i plan to do a couple Web based projects and i hope to learn the basics of CSS while i'm seeking advisement from him.

overall direction: to understand rhythm's role in design. this requires me to seek out rhythm in its most native or obvious vehicle: music. and dance i suppose. (Rhythm – which is not only heard but can be seen in the uniform movements of the dancing crowd.) i plan to do some experimentation with sound and silence in respects to the author-reader relationship. specifically analyzing certain rhythms and their emotional outcomes.

projects to be completed: 1) research paper, 2) Web-based sound/silent experiments, 3) poster project, and 4) final Web exhibit.

so, with these two classes, i have my work cut out. last week i built a great bibliography to feed my two papers. i'm excited to start putting together the pieces in my rhythm research.

483A: special studies 2009: study plan.

2009-02-05T18:04:00.000-08:00

plans changed a bit this semester. i will only be taking two classes, leaving ART 478 Studio Expanded for spring 2010. the class is super cool and will be very beneficial, but i just don't have what it takes to fulfill three demanding courses right now. besides, it will be perfect to take it along side my 500B, which is my artist intent course and will come in perfect timing to prepare for my show.

moving on... spring 2009 will consist of a special studies with Abeyta and grad problems with Wang. each course required me to devise a study plan. this blog is an introduction to what will happen (tentatively) in 483A:

overall direction: embrace design fundamentals such as the grid, deconstruction, patterns (wallpaper, etc...), patterns (flow, syntax, etc...), the time line, the study of soundwaves in the visual and the relationship between their effects and emotion.

projects to be completed: 1) research paper, 2) 45 Album artwork, 3) book, 4) logo, posters, and 5) final exhibit.

i'm exhausted just writing that down. all elements above will follow my research in context as well as content. i'm on my way to defining rhythm's role in graphic design. i'll be back soon to post the study plan for my 503A with Wang.

spring 2009 forecast.

2009-01-31T10:11:00.000-08:00

i made it through my first week of school and it's very clear that i have my work cut out for me. i decided to go ahead with the 500A writing class, but when i got there i discovered that the class was canceled due to lack of enrollment. so, i tried the next best thing and went to the 500B class which was unusually full because the 500A class was canceled. i couldn't get in. it was a long monday already, but i had one more hope.

there was a 483A special studies class that night (mw 7-945) and i decided to go for it. the class is full, but i proposed an alternate study plan for the semester that works towards my thesis objectives and i got in. well, not in the system yet, but i'm working on that. the professor is very open to my plan and i'm very excited about it and i feel it's crucial for my studies. i somewhat aligned the projects to go with his regular course, but i will be focusing on my research.

it's not ideal for me to have a mon-wed night class then wake up tue-thur for a morning class, but right now, i don't see a choice. i have a 503A grad problems class that i'm still trying to find "the problem" in. like the special studies, i'm on my own plan and i'm working to refine it so i can have it approved. that's what i'll do this weekend, so i can dive in come monday.

and for my third class, i'm in the creative photography building in a course called Studio Expanded (478). it's basically an installation class and i fell in love with it. i have a total interest for gallery space and public art. it's just going to be very demanding. i was inspired and encouraged by three videos we watched on the first day: Ann Hamilton, Tim Hawkinson, and Jenny Holzer, all installation artists.

so, i have the weekend to find the energy to handle all of this.

one year down...

2009-01-25T13:36:00.000-08:00

who knows how many to go. i wrapped up my first year and 2008 feeling really good. in academia land, i somehow pulled off straight A's. woot woot. in primate design land, i landed the GRAMMY Museum business. All awhile being super involved with my family. i also had a great christmas break/new years, and i can't believe spring semester is already here.

i had time to reflect on my first year in grad school and i realized that i don't have to get anxious over all the resistance i get from school and its makeup: deadlines, advisors, balance, and the quest for self-motivation. i'm just going to keep doing my thing and everything will fall into place. the more i get into what i'm doing, the more i realize that my work will never be done here on earth. i will always have goals, i will always be reaching for something and no matter what i do, things will always become more complicated. that's just been the trend in my personal history and i need to keep teaching myself how to breathe again.

i literally took a vacation from school this break. my intentions were to build a dreamachine, read, assemble some research and my bib outlines, and prepare for 500A - a grad thesis writing class. but i did none of that. well, maybe a couple hours here and there, but not enough to record in history. it will be tough ramping up to meet the demands of another full-time semester, so i'm going to ease into it slowly. i'm only registered for 2 classes as of now:
ART 478 - Studio Expanded, an exhibition course of sorts, and
ART 503A - Graduate Problems in Graphic Design with one of my committee chair members, Chen Wang.
i'm still contemplating if i want to enroll in the writing class, ART 500A. with my current workload and with two boys starting baseball in a month, it's not likely.

so, this is where i stand now. the frustration took a break, but it's not far (i can smell it) and the obstacle course continues as i guess-my-way, pretend-and-smile, research-the-facts, and do-my-thing into Spring 2009. here is my initial research goals: i want my thesis to be based on rhythm, from an artistic view and heavily influenced from the written word. i categorized three elements that make this topic: 1) kaleidoscopes and flicker, 2) calligraphy and mandalas, and 3) patterns and wallpaper. my interest in poetry will drive all this research. i hope that a love for story-telling and visual nostalgia will express my intended outcome in rhythm.

here we go again...

richard turner: contempt mandala

2009-01-22T11:05:00.000-08:00

the only gallery i had a chance to visit this winter break was csuf's grand central art center in santa ana. as usual, it was very inspiring and i'm glad i made the effort to get out of my lethargic-inducing christmas pajamas and head down there. contemporary installation artist, richard turner transformed the GCAC with Contempt Mandala. it falls into one of the elements i want to explore in my thesis. he utilizes all media, from video to sculpture. i forgot my camera so these pics are from my camera phone. i only got a few, but i wanted to be sure i got his statement as it relates to calligraphy and mandalas, one element in my three-part thesis on rhythm (more on that later).

here is a model of the casa malaparte, in the isle of capri, which is the center of his story.

here is sparkOC's review:
Contempt Mandala is a multi media installation that takes, as its point of departure, Jean Luc Godard's 1963 film Contempt. The film is about the making of a movie and the dissolution of a marriage. It simultaneously explores the creative process and the fragility of human relationships. The Buddhist mandala, a cosmic diagram, is the organizing principle of the installation.

to learn more go to http://www.contemptmandala.com

breathe. eat. and sleep.

2009-01-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

graphic design.
that's what i've been doing this past year: breathing, eating and sleeping graphic design. i'm a bit at a disadvantage not having my undergrad studies in graphic design. i missed out on art, in general, the industry of graphic design, in particular, when obtaining my BA ten years ago in communications. i find myself catching up, at rapid speeds, to be in-the-know about this industry that fascinates me. but, still have questions like what am i doing? doing—as in—an MFA in graphic design. do i belong here?

i have thoughts and inspirations that come from all over. from sculpture and public art to writing and reading. from parenting and christianity to soccer and running. these things take up a coexistence with eating, sleeping and breathing — daily life.

i often ask myself if i'm in this program seeking some sort of acceptance where normally i would never be accepted.

you can see the doubts i have. i believe this comes from lack of guidance, motivation and just plain out interest. when you're alone in something, it's hard to see the light at the end. sometimes we just need a little encouragement. will you give me some?

my first Cut Up experiment.

2008-12-23T07:51:00.000-08:00

i'm starting with words.
experimenting with the formula brion gysin devised for cutting up text, i thought it would be cool to see how things turn out. i started with the opening page on my last research paper (from the last blog):

EXPERIMENTAL TEXT

Sitting in a café, a fireplace flickers and the rain outside whispers sweet nothings to the six-foot windows. The presence of flesh is evident yet, it’s only sound that matters. I sit listening. Now, this bears no relation to my research-integrated critical analysis of Brion Gysin and the Cut Up. However, it is where I am now reading many books, many pages of words, developing a dialog with them sitting around this little table. Minutes later I’ve realized my mind was digesting photographic memories and everything seemed so familiar, so comfortable. I could just fall asleep.

Picture this. Waking to four or five conversations simultaneously creating chatter, each speaking to each other in the day-to-day whether it’s face-to-face or to-phone. As smoothly as the hazelnut latte made it’s way through my system, I find myself listening with my pen. Jotting down the random happenings/emotions/feelings/objections/subjections/directions/rejections/opinions of the people surrounding me. Sporadic input aligned on the page in a structure that tells the story of not one, but of a culture, thus creating a new story. I called it Panera Café 2008.

This is not the definition of a Cut Up, but it certainly seems to be a fine qualification for nomination for the evolution of the Cut Up, depicting the rawness of the age we live in, 2008. It was 1959 when Brion Gysin discovered the technique of cutting multiple texts and rearranging them back into one space — the Cut Up. don't blink.

EXPERIMENT EXECUTED (unedited)

The day-to-day whether
it's face-to-face or
to-phone as sitting
in a café, a fireplace
flickers

The rain outside whsys'
stem i find myself listen
ing to my pen jotting down
the presence of flesh is
evident

Yet, it's only sound that
matters/subjections/directions/
rejections/opinions of the
people surintegrated critical
analysis

Of Brion Gysin and the Cut Up.
His tructure that tells the
story of not one, but of a culture,
thus, pages of words, developing a
dialog

With them sitting aroun this
is not the definition of a Cut
Up, but certainly seem digesting
photographic memories and
everything

Seemeds of the Cut Up, depicting
the rawness of the age we
live in, Picture this Waking
to four or five conversations
simultantechnique

Of cutting multiple texts and
rearranging them in baspers sweet
nothings to the six-foot windows.
Theothly as the hazelnut latte made
it's way

Through myowever, it is where
I am now reading many books,
many random happenings/emotions
feelings/objections'd this little table
minutes

Later i've realized my mind
was rounding me. Sporadic input
aligned on the page in o'familiar,
so comfortable, i could just
fall asleep

Creating a new story. i called
it Panera Café 2008eously creating
chatter, each speaking to each
other ins to be a fine
qualification

For nomination for the evolution
008 it was 1959 when Brion
Gysin discovered the — k into
one space — the Cut Up
don't blink

gysin says that this method reveals something about the original message — a determination of the future — of sorts, and i see what he means now. liberating the words from their intended phrases makes a whole new ball game.

and there you have it. i look forward to editing this process, evolving the process, and exploring more with images, sounds and more themed writings. stick around, i think i'm opening up a whole new can of mind expansion.

Brion Gysin, the Cut Up, and the unshackling of words.

2008-12-20T12:40:00.000-08:00

the final for my history course (480T History of Graphic Design) is a critical analysis of an influential artist. i chose Brion Gysin. he's not particularly related to graphic design, but in his work (writing and painting), i find a lot of correlations. i found parallels with Deconstruction and the Cut Up, in which both breakdown or change, in order to create something new, if not better, or redifined, something new, nevertheless. he also explores a permutated grid in many of his paintings which stabilizes time sequence in one space. i find that to be huge in graphic design. and, though he wasn't solving graphic design problems of his time, he certainly was out to expand the conscious of our minds, and that, i can take and apply to present day design.

his writing is what fascinates me most. he developed the Cut Up, in which William S. Burroughs made famous. the literal act of cutting text and rearranging them presents a magical transformation of the words, oftentimes defining the future, giving a new perspective on the text and 100% percent of the time creating something refreshed. Gysin said, “The poets are supposed to liberate the words — not chain them into phrases...Poets are meant to make words sing.”

i respect him as a poet, painter, and all-around visionary.

click ://here for the pdf of my paper. 7 pages written, 11 in all including sample images...

W O R K S S I T E D
Weiss, Jason. Back in No Time: The Brion Gysin Reader.
Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.

Férez Kuri, José. Brion Gysin: Tuning in to the Multimedia Age.
London, England: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2003.

Wigley, Mark. The Architecture of Deconstruction.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1993.

Miles, Barry. The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Corso in Paris, 1957—1963. New York, New York: Grove Press, 2000.

Geiger, John. Chapel of Extreme Experience: A Short History of Stroboscopic Light and the Dream Machine. New York, New York: Soft Skull Press, 2003.

Gysin, Brion. “Foreword” The Process. Ed. Robert Palmer.
Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 1987. vii—xxi.

448 artists' books: unique book.

2008-12-18T08:39:00.000-08:00

our final in artists' books was pretty wide open — unique was the only criteria. i experimented with many ways to display a few of my poems. at first i wanted to use bubble wrap as the cover to a poem i called 'reaction.' i wrote it minutes after coming out of sedation. it's very sporadic and choppy and sort of insane, so i figured the bubble wrap kind of said institution walls... but it never came to fruition.

then i also explored a poem i wrote called 'come full circle.' i attempted to create it, but failed miserably. it's a little hard to explain, but basically i typed it out onto 8 sequential circles, each getting smaller as you got to the middle. i printed each on card stock with a rivet at the center point so that you can rotate each of the layers as you read it. well, the biggest problem was that i couldn't get the circles cut nice enough and then the laser toner started rubbing off on my hands and it all went sour. with more time and patience, i think it would be really cool...

so, lastly i opted for a fairly easy production, but i love the result: matchbook.

i designed the logo for this matchbook on a whim. i wanted a printmaking feel so i borrowed the 'woman' art from printmaker, colleen kinsella, and added some touches of my own to give it the feeling i wanted including the type. i printed it on watercolor paper for the soft feel and vintage edges. on the inside, i cut a thin slice of book board, dipped it into red candle wax and poof, you have matchbook.

during the last week, i went ahead and made a new cover for my narrative book too. this time i wanted the image on the cover to be more clear so that you could see my reflection in the photo to really capture that the book is titled 'Etta and I."

i also wanted to bind it with some thicker thread and introduce some metal (bolts) to finish it off. well, after that was all said and done, both my professor and my wife feel that the original green cover was better — more real and grungy as opposed to this blue one which was very clean and proper. i have to agree, since the inside is very weathered as well as the story, a grungier cover matches. so, i'll be putting the green cover back on, but this time with some leather bindery. here's the cleaner, blue version that will soon be changed back:

here's the original.

Chicago 2016. complete campaign.

2008-12-15T12:40:00.000-08:00

this is it. the complete Chicago 2016 Olympics campaign: logo. welcome package. tickets. poster. and finally, temporary tattoos...

originally i had stickers designed to finish off the promotional pieces to this campaign, but my professor suggested temporary tattoos instead, and i thought that was a brilliant idea. so here you have it...

i also decided a poster was a better fit than a t-shirt. especially since the posters are in a series and are more likely to be collectibles. (original blogs: process. final.)

the "element of surprise" packaging that contains a welcome letter, the tickets, and venue directions pullout. (original blogs: concept. mock-ups. finishing techniques. final.)

and last, but not least, and actually first. the logo. the most thought-out of them all. (original blogs: process. comps 1. comps 2. comps 3. final 4.)

448 artists' books: narrative book.

2008-12-12T15:12:00.000-08:00

the biggest, most in-depth project for artists' books was, by far, this one, my narrative book. i decided to construct a 48-page book illustrating a homeless journey i took at the beginning of 2007. long story short — i slept in my car (Etta) for 4 days and documented it with pictures and a narrative the day i got back. it was fun to re-read my experience and put this book together.

the technicalities: first of all it's a stab-bound. i laid the pages out very sporadically, just how my trip was lived: completely random, and printed separations in reverse. i printed all the black from the 48 pages on 48 plates and all the color ink onto another 48 laser printer plates (that's why the reverse printing). i did transfers using Xylene Solvent onto a random stack of colored card stock that i had laying around. this required many hours on the press at school.

i used book cloth to cover book board for the covers. i also used a Lazertrans transfer and matte medium (decopauge) to put a photo "Etta and I" on the cover. and spot varnished it with an embossing treatment. to cover the inside of the covers, i coffee-stained local maps of the areas i traveled in. i also used specific maps throughout the book to give the reader a sense of where i was at that moment in the story. the book, in general, is pretty random and uniquely messy, exactly like my trip. and wa la - there you have it:

due to the many ink blemishes that happened by accident in the letterpress room, i already started a new cover for the book. it's essentially the same, just this time i used a light blue book cloth and i made the 'etta and i' image more clear. this time you can see me in the reflection of the taillight, hence etta and I. it should be done real soon...

483A poster. final.

2008-12-10T12:07:00.000-08:00

the final product for the chicago 2016 promotional poster. i stuck with the typographic configuration from one of the computer comps as well as the diverse organic vertical stripes. i decided to minimize the RISE by creating a tag line with it below the logo: "The World is Watching. Rise." while maximizing the GO leading into the copy block making it the theme for the series of athlete posters. Rather than spelling out RISE real big, i went with symbolism in the imagery and graphics. the athletes represent victory and move your eye towards the logo in the upper right, while the colorful stripes cap off the top and bottom of the poster vertically — metaphorically saying RISE. to soften it, i went with a less-industrial, serif font for all supporting copy and i alternated the color in the stripes for each of the posters keeping a congruency but also mixing things up subtly. i also muted the colors slightly along with the off-white paper giving it an over all vintage feeling. i'm happy with it especially since it still works with the somewhat "standard" colors in the logo...

483A poster. concepts. process.

2008-12-09T21:23:00.000-08:00

the final stages of my Chicago 2016 campaign are wrapped up with some promotional goods starting with a poster. i started to go through a process that we learned called distortion: using descriptive terminology. my results don't necessarily reflect the process because, unlike the logo, i strayed from the protocol and just followed my intuition. mainly because i didn't draw any blanks to where i needed a stimulating exercise to gather ideas and also because the nature of the subject (olympics) — with a set color palette and a call for clean communication — i opted to just deliver a consistent poster that fit the theme of my packaging.

i did, however, start with a descriptive terminology exercise. but since i explored terms that weren't new, it didn't really expand my range of already-thought-out processes. i continued to dissect the words GO and RISE — basically my theme for this campaign. the distortion process starts with taking the definitions of the select terms and experimenting with them by adding Simile, Irony, and Parody. and from there applying a technique for final application.

i chose to just sketch out what was in my head and later translate the ideas into the computer...

another part of my research was to find any previous olympic posters from chicago and perhaps mimic (parody) or borrow from the style. since there has never been an olympics there, the closest thing to it was the 3rd ever modern olympic games in 1904, st. louis. the games were actually intended to be in chicago but since the world's fair was to be held at the same time in st. louis, officials feared a conflict and low attendance so they mashed them together. both the olympics and the world's fair were held simultaneously in st. louis on Teddy Roosevelt's decision. (source) now, since there wasn't much to go from, i opted out on that whole idea.

some other research and fun was watching these videos on WHY chicago should be THE city...

brion gysin: introduction.

2008-12-05T17:06:00.000-08:00

brion gysin's life is a work of art as i'm quickly discovering. i found myself engulfed in it my entire thanksgiving break. i couldn't get my nose out of José Férez Kuri's book, Brion Gysin: Tuning in to the Multimedia Age and John Geiger's Chapel of Extreme Experience...

i'm studying poetic styles as the beginning research for my thesis. that lead me to the "cut-up," in which william s. burroughs gave gysin 100% credit for. burroughs is famous for his cut-ups and it seems brion gysin was the unsung hero for them as well as in numerous other disciplines.

he was a painter and poet, and expressed himself through other outlets like performance, calligraphy, collage, writing (novels) and sound poetry. this is the reason why i suddenly became heavily interested in him over burroughs. not discounting burroughs, just got way into gysin at the moment. as you can see by the books i recently bought about and by him:

some highlights i found thus far are his cut up poems and roller poems that manifested out of the Beat Hotel with burroughs in the 60's:

his calligraphic paintings are inspired from his time (25 years) in Tangier, Morocco:

and here are samples of his early paintings inspired by his time in the sahara desert. other paintings (not posted here) have a lot of explanation to time and space relationship:

this stuff is heavy, and very inspiring to me.

furthermore, and completely off that track, he helped devise the "Dreamachine," a flicker-induced stroboscopic light that, when looking at it with eyes closed, can cause the effects of hallucination. more on that later. and more on him, too. can gysin's life get any more interesting? this is powerful.

for artists' books (448) class we had to do a quickie artist report on an artist that influences us. guess who i picked? yeah. the pdf is ://here.

history of graphic design: essay six.

2008-12-04T21:34:00.000-08:00

the final write-up of six. "Graphic Fantasies: Relections in the Glass Ceiling" by Véronique Vienne seemed like a women's lib essay from the beginning, but turned out not to be completely gender-focused, but more of a generation analysis. Vienne makes it clear that the next generation of designers is much less cautious of conflict and will express freely without hesitance compared to the older generation. She speaks from a woman's perspective, but in a very dry, to-the-point, guy-tone. Again, another thought-provoking essay that had me questioning everything all the way through. Bouncing back and forth between the stances: young, old, male, female...

whatever way it goes, graphic design needs to look through the glass with only using the reflection as reference.

my pdf ://here.

chip kidd: video presented by dwell

2008-12-01T13:35:00.000-08:00

quote:
"the next step for graphic designers is to figure out how to meaningfully generate their own content...whether it's a book...music...a film...or whatever...it's the natural growth...rather than just strictly working for a client." —chip kidd

source:

lesson:
i'm in school now not to learn how to please clients. i'm not here to better my portfolio. or to add to my resume. i'm here to discover my own art.

in 3 short weeks i will discontinue any undergrad projects and in the days to come, i will focus solely on my thesis. it will mostly be very dense the next year as i research and write, research and write. but when the time comes to experiment, it's going to be explosive. a hint on what will be involved is: poetry, cut ups, dreams, kaleidoscopes, visual structure, and blowing my own mind.

483A packaging. final product.

2008-11-30T23:59:00.000-08:00

the Chicago 2016 Olympic Games welcome package consists of a customized/interactive brochure/ticket holder. it opens to an athlete running with the word RUN with custom typography. you pull up on the tab to raise the tower with the word RISE in the same type, revealing the ticket slot and a tab that works with the word chicago. you pull the GO tab to reveal the Chicago welcome letter and pull the insert all the way out to have the venue instructions on the back. i think the pictures tell the story:

to see the process of this project, check out the previous blogs:
concept (original words - rise and go).
mock-ups (3D folding fun).
finishing techniques.

all i have left now is to create a couple promo items to go along with this package. stickers, a poster, a t-shirt... still in the works.

483A packaging. finishing techniques.

2008-11-29T13:08:00.000-08:00

the next stage of my Chicago 2016 packing project was to experiment with the metallic paper and various finishing techniques. this is a continuation of 483A packaging found ://here. i measured and made my own dies and printed them on SHINE paper and explored blind deboss, spot varnish and raised gloss emboss. all seemed to become a disaster.

first off, printing color on the metallic paper completely saturated the colors — so much, that after multiple test prints, it changed my concept.

i decided to use only a monochromatic design on the metallic paper. most of the framework to my package was in the metallic paper, and it resulted in a clean and classy look. below are my dies for the top-opening envelope, the backs of the tickets and the main welcome brochure/ticket holder.

but, i wasn't happy with my monochrome choice. it came out too green, so i added a little bit of magenta to give it a richer look.

the extra finishing techniques weren't working. they need to be perfect, so i decided to abandon them after my experiments. the blind deboss was done with a tool from michaels. i can't draw perfect circles so that idea was trashed.

the next attempt was to use embossing powder with a slow-drying ink (versa mark). in order to "better" my hand-drawn circles, i found a stamp with perfect circles. they had little graphics on the inside, so i cut them out to make just the rings. i stamped it, powdered it, heat gun dried it, and it looked like poo. i couldn't create the perfect rings, so, that too, was trashed.

now, i'm on to finishing this month long project. stay tuned for the final product.

history of graphic design: essay five.

2008-11-25T10:25:00.000-08:00

here i am today, reading the final essay/article (number six) from looking closer five, and i realized that i never posted my fifth write-up:

"Raging Bull" by Rick Poynor had me changing my mind with the wind as he wrote on the perceptions and usages of the term bullshit. it's funny how he writes to convince you, then continues to write to confuse you by convincing you to believe the contradiction of what he previously convinced you of. confusing, right? i have to wonder if it's all bullshit. truthfully, i don't and i found this essay to be very stimulating either way you look at it.

my write-up pdf can be found //:here.

TOYSPACE shopping bag on design spotter.

2008-11-17T01:09:00.000-08:00

this is a project i did in the spring. it is now featured on design spotter, a german-based online magazine that publishes student work. it can be found in the Stores + Shops section. have a look...

check out design spotter.
check out the original blog back in may.

textbook... subscriptions.

2008-11-13T21:20:00.000-08:00

yeah, that's it... my subscriptions are textbooks. i see the envy in my wife's eyes everytime a new publication comes in the mail. and my justification is that they keep me abreast of the latest in my industry. it just so happens that design pubs are a little pricey. but in the end, i gain lots of knowledge and inspiration from each book, plus they're all write-offs. subscribing to publications is actually the best textbook and i'll probably recommend/require them one day when i'm a gray-bearded professor. being in a readily exposed contemporary culture with many new ways of learning, they're a win-win — the text that keeps on giving. currently i subscribe to these pubs:

Print, HOW, CommArts, eye, ID and 2wice.
kristy gets cottage living, and some parenting ones.
while we both enjoy westways and the la times. in addition to those are the freebies, which are always a pleasure: freepeople, UO, and anthropologie catalogs, GDUSA and the fullerton observer.

life is good. and our mail box must loves us.

this. and that.

2008-11-11T19:15:00.000-08:00

last couple of weeks
i've been out of sorts
in this project artschool (coursework, in general)
department. discovering many books
and articles that i think will
apply to my grand scheme here
and to my thesis in particular.
the problem is that i can't find
the necessary hours to dive as
deep as i'd like. i'm constantly
skimming the surface in my
school-related research. i
spent last week up to my
neck in freelance and a few days at a trade show in las vegas
and well,
kind of abandoned my coursework.
couple good things though,
i registered for spring two-thousand nine,
sorted out my study plan, and
rented a gang of books from the Cal Poly library.
drove up there a few weeks ago to return a book
and ended up walking out with 5 more.
in addition to those books, i'm borrowing
a handful of design theory books from
my history professor, bought
some poetry books, and rediscovered
virginia tufte's book, "Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style."
it's at the top of my pile. i know it applies
to the direction i want to take my topic
because i can't keep my nose out of that one...

so basically, i have to catch up in my three courses now and dig deep into this pile:

i'm actually excited
for every free hour i can find and
yearning for christmas break time so
i can get into my new stack of
books.
from here on out, it seems
that my bibliography will have real
purpose
towards my final goal. it might look more
like a lit-major's bibliography — but that's the point.

i think.
and also — i'll be implementing a system
my mom told me in outlining
the information i'm reading. starting
with index cards and a shoebox.
and there you have it. a little bit of this.
and that.

artists to eye at the moment:
Brion Gysin
Frederick Kiesler
William Burroughs/Charles Bukowski/Jack Henry/Gillian Prew/Hollace Metzger/Antony Hitchin/Erica Jong/Allen Ginsberg/Marilyn Chin
J. Abbott Miller
Tristan Tzara
Sonia Delaunay
Genesis P-Orridge

topics to watch:
designer as author
architecture of deconstruction
visual culture in relation to intuition
formal structured poetry

neil sharum: soaked in sweat and smoke.

2008-11-03T08:23:00.000-08:00

MFA student neil sharum is in my book class (semi). he's been busy on his mfa exhibition and is graduating in a month. his photography is outstanding and he's looking for work...

have a look at some of his work from the show, mostly photographed at crash mansion over a long period of time (2 1/2 years, i believe). he was the official photographer for the club. he also has an 80-page book of his photography.

here is an accordian book of his undergrad work. it's fantastic. i wish i had better shots of each page.

check him out ://here.

history of graphic design: essay four.

2008-11-02T22:10:00.000-08:00

essay four was just plain great. it's too bad i completely forgot about it until 2 hours before my write-up was due. "Human Dignity and Human Rights: Thoughts on the principles of human-centered design" by Richard Buchanan was a good read, but unlike the previous three essays, i didn't have a chance to really dwell in the message. >over coffee. >in a park somewhere. i typed my response directly into the computer. printed. and ran.

the essay struck up good conversation in class... everything from outsourcing jobs overseas to intelligent design. human-centered-ness is huge within the design sphere. otherwise, it's just form. and form is nothing without content. and content is what speaks to the people. ethics were also raised when the professor reiterated that it's not ethical design producing people but rather ethical people producing graphic design. i thought that was pretty cool.

this essay goes beyond ellen lupton's essay, "birth of the user" as it really calls for the need to have substance, not just usability, or aesthetic, in order to trigger human worth.

i'm blogged out for this weekend. good night. the pdf is //:here.

448 artists' books: found paper book.

2008-11-01T16:16:00.000-07:00

"found paper" is anything that is found, just not in a store. i searched around the house for found paper and came across many things i could have made a book out of. for instance, misc ticket stubs from the tube and amtrak/metrolink. it could have been a "travel" book or i could have made a bible-thick stab-bound book of verizon wireless comps, from my previous agency life.

i decided to bind a collection of newspapers that i saved this summer. i stashed away every olympic section (BEIJING 2008) of the LA Times from thursday to sunday in the month the olympics were held. i have a weird olympic fetish, if you haven't noticed. so, with that, i decided to make a box/case to preserve the finished book for years to come.

the case consisted of the cardboard backs of large sketch books (found) and layout paper from the my old drawing classes (10 years old, found) holding the hinges together and to cover the flaps i used international calendar pages that were laying around in my classroom (found) and an advertisement with poster-boy michael phelps that slides into a newspaper stand (found... at the ralph's in brea). i used mucho PVA glue and some matte medium to decopauge the covers.

the actual book, the newspaper spreads, were too thin to bind directly. so, i reinforced the newsprint with book cloth in each spread's spine and sewed them together with dental floss. (found, found, and found). still thinking about covering the inside of the box, just haven't found the right paper or cloth.

and there you have it.

i also did another "found paper" book from another mini collection that i found laying around. for some reason, i've been saving the six-pack boxes of project artschool beer — getting me through this experience. they really had no purpose until now. i cut them up and bound them. then added a nifty little handle.

this book can probably be taken to another level or two. but i'll worry about that later...

voila. found paper.

this class is pretty much just therapy. a break from everything else in the world. i love these friday mornings when i can just escape the stresses of freelance and life in general.

a couple other little binding exercises i tested:
a stab-bound book (no glue used) with handmade paper...

and a pamphlet-stitch book (no glue used)...

and finally to wrap up this book blog, a sneak preview into the narrative book i'm creating now, "familiar days spent in unfamiliar ways." it's based on 4 days of sleeping in my car in random places throughout orange county. thus far, i've covered davey board with moss green book cloth and finished the inside covers with a coffee stained map of north orange county. the contents will be used papers from all over the place, wrappers and such, with xylene transfer xerox's of my story and photos. i'm not sure how long it will be but i'm guessing somewhere around 30 pages (stab bound).

483A packaging. paper mock-ups.

2008-10-31T22:23:00.000-07:00

after the exhausted lists of descriptive multi-meaning words, i took them to brainstorm ideas for the functionality and dimensionality of the mailer. keeping in mind that this has to be flat and at a finished size suitable for postage, i made paper mock-ups. most of my ideas have most likely been used in children's pop-up books. i like the interactivity of a pop-up or slider because it adds another dimension to such a flat piece. it also tends to bring the value of the piece up and makes it more of collector's item rather than a piece of everyday mail.

i know there is just a lot of folded white paper here, but this process helps with the form and structure of the final pieces. it will make a lot more sense as things get formalized.

i'm also pretty stuck on the SHINE stock by Reich Paper. here are some samples. i like the feel of it plus the metallic shimmer gives me an industrial look but with a touch of class which portrays my concept perfectly... "rise to the gold medal." pride. prestigious. performance.

come back soon to see how everything unfolds.

483A packaging. concept.

2008-10-29T09:59:00.000-07:00

alas, i get around to this post. Chicago 2016 admission/welcome kit (contains a welcome to chicago letter, points of interest reference, and tickets to respective events). the next stage for the olympic assignment lead into this 3-D/interactive mailer of sorts. it's been in the works for a few weeks now, i just need to take some digi's of my progress.

the concepting began with words again. i love words. the object is to find a multi-meaning word and dissect the guts out of it. the word that fits best is RISE. it describes sport, the city of chicago and national pride to me. so from there, i twisted it, turned it, opened it, closed it, chewed it, spit on it, you name it...

beyond the word, RISE, i felt i needed another word for support. i took my second choice, GO, and went through the same process. i also like the word GO because it's a part of chicaGO... both words are actions too, which i think is appropriate for an olympic games.

all together i found myself thinking of possibilities that i probably would not have thought of without this word exploration. also involved in my concepting was paper choice (so far, SHINE, from my friends at http://www.reichpaper.com fits my concept best) and a few finishing techniques (still undetermined).

stayed tuned for the progress.

Wiley design challenge.

2008-10-27T00:17:00.000-07:00

Wiley is a publisher of books on Adobe's products. This particular contest called for a cover design for the book, Photoshop for Right-Brainers: The art of photo manipulation by al ward. i'm not quite sure why i did this except for the fact that i was taking a break from an intense freelance job and came across it on the Web. i literally read the rules and designed it on the spot. i used some of the textures i had scanned for a version of my freelance job that wasn't approved. but i don't think i would ever buy this book in the first place...so why did i do this again? weird.

photoshop-mastery isn't necessarily a huge interest for me because i'm not into photoshop tricks and such. it's a mystery why i would even attempt to enter this type of battle ground.

because, ultimately, concept is king.
and, there you have it.

here's a link to the contest. if you roll over the right side of the photo, there's a green thumbs up - use it to rank my cover. make a comment on it too! shoot, you could even rate it with 5 stars...

topic statement (sorta, not really).

2008-10-23T12:18:00.000-07:00

but, this is where the research begins...

flow
_i want to distill / discover
__the feeling / the stimulus
___obtained / created
____when forming / brainstorming
_____a subject / poetry

then
_take those pieces / matter
__rearrange them / scatter
___duplicate them / better
____chaos vs. form / extremes
_____abstract vs. structure / methodologies

process
_define something concrete / the context
__models of has-beens / analyze examples
___visual evidence / case studies
____research history / backstory
_____experiment / development

thesis.

matching the parallels / attracting the differences
dive into poetry / splash out graphic disciplines

topic outline (proposal).

2008-10-22T09:13:00.000-07:00

i've been writing down a lot of ideas and im not sure they make sense... yet. i plan on continuing to write and read and rewrite and eventually find something solid to chew on for the next stage of my life. so far, it looks like i'll explore poetry paradigm (from previous blog), i just have to find a new name for it because i'm finding that people are turned off by the word poetry.

- - - - -

here is rough outline as a basis for my thinking, step two of the refining process: topic outline (very rough initial thought).

topic summary and rationale -
creative outlets are inevetibly bound for reincarnaiton, creating and leading to some kind of formula. formulas require a process and, in time, the formation of a process is recorded. this will be a graphic design experiment. can the formulas that make great written poetry make up a new dicipline when applied to design?

I. resistance (the pre-research required) -
A. define poetry. define design. define graphic design.
B. what forms of poetry are worthy of experiment?
C. who accepts a formal style of poetry into the classification of literature?
1. as with design, in visual communication?
D. what renders a formal style of poetry to be noted worthy/unworthy?
1. who translates it?
E. how far back does poetry go? how about design?
F. what are the similarities between poetry and design?
1. the differences?

II. delimitations -
A. this is not a literary experiment — poetic paradigms will researched, referenced and used as a process template.
B. writing new or extending the field of poetry is not included.
C. designing poetry is irrelevant.

III. antecedents/precedents -
A. as of now, i cannot recall this ever being done before. with initial research, the following knowledge with come:
1. experimental – dada, perhaps?
2. theoretical – notions behind literary and design movements?
3. authoritative – socially driven?

IV. experiments -
A. define procedures within formal poetry.
1. i’m defining formal poetry as established styles/forms that have been repeated throughout history.
B. apply exact techiques step by step.
C. combine and apply different techiques creating new procedures.
D. record everything (people/books/places) including the steps, with explanations, of all procedures.

projected conclusion -
poetry is more than words and design is more than images. there are methods of order, structure and expression behind each work and shared by both genres. but what will be discovered is the synergy between each creative outlet’s structure with one another. and ultimately a new design dicipline. for better. or worse.

- - - - -

i know this needs to be taken a few steps further, so i will be meeting with my advisors this week as well as some other faculty related to the subject to discuss if i'm even coming close to something worthy of study. i just hope i can pull it off. fingers crossed.

topic time.

2008-10-21T20:27:00.000-07:00

i've been in grad school now for ten months and i finally sat down for couple hours to gather all my crazy ideas. my topic is huge, like life-huge, and i'll have to delve into it over the next 2 1/2 years until death, most likely.

- - - - -

so now for the refining process, step one: topic possibilities.

in the commercialism and advertising arena.
how deep are brands engraved into our lives. “too bad there’s a million of me out there.”

call for bedrooms - submit photos of your bedroom (teen-aged). spot where commercialism had infiltrated into our most private areas.

logo language - ask 3 and 4 year-old kids (who can’t read) to read the names of products by holding up flash cards with logos and without telling them the brand. create a sentence with logos only.

product placement - brands dictate the script. give brands a star in hollywood, not people. call for a separation between entertainment and advertising.

look for signs - find unexpected meanings and reasons for existing signs in our culture. find ways to provoke thought in public areas. do signs really work? or do we need human direction/assistance? lookforsigns.org

anti-advertising - defend humanity. create an ad campaign encouraging people to think before they buy. assist viewer in a process to make a decision based on rationale, not impulse. tell consumers that they really don’t need “it.” the largest commodity one can have is nothing.

in the literary arena.
for centuries, writers have been expressing. (period) “words don’t have brands on them the way cattle do.”

welcome to... - create a new vernacular that cannot be described in words. using symbols, braille, a constanant test, concrete/shape poetry. having no legend or key, just decifering the message by feeling or mood in which the graphic language presents. aim for provoking areas such as healing, positivity, anger and hurting.

silence - experiment with sound and how the senses react with eachother. verbal, visual as one. adding sound and touch creates another dynamic. conduct a voting pole consisting of same verbal/visual but with different sounds.

poetry paradigm - scientist come up with formulas so they can test an experiment over and over. what is the process to create a certain type of poem? what is it about a particular poem that others want to create one with the same exact format. can we design with that formula? will the same processes work with visual elements having the same viral results?

- - - - -

after all was said and done, i only found one that is personally worthy of any attention. and it's a subject that many graphic designers would shun from: literature.

i think that that's it though. the poetry paradigm... i can see myself interested in this topic for many years to come. i have a few months before i take my thesis writing class which will give me plently of time to really wrap my head around it.

delimitations: this is not designing poetry, not calligrammes, not concrete, not even writing poetry. it is the capture of the formal/informal techniques/feelings in written poetry translated into a discipline for design.
far-fetched, right?
perfect.

history of graphic design: essay three.

2008-10-18T10:48:00.000-07:00

i'm in between soccer games right now. i'm the coach for one of my son's teams, betcha didn't know that. with that said, it's been a very busy week, and somehow i managed to squeeze in time for my history class. our third essay, "Fighting the Image Wars," by steven heller kind of threw me for a loop. i'm not sure what his intentions were, but more than anything, i felt i was reading a world history report. perhaps that was his purpose. in the end, i agree with his position and admire his place in graphic design criticism, but in my paper, i'm pretty sure i came off too negative. perhaps i was searching for the relation to graphic design too closely or maybe it was the fact that i didn't sleep the night before (ok, maybe an hour catnap) or maybe it was that i wrote it while eating breakfast at Denny's by myself early thursday morning. i don't know why i always have to order the sausage. bleh.

in summary, the essay is about whether or not the people should be restricted by our government to view certain images from sensitive arenas (such as war). and if gov't has control over it in the first place. and is it the editor's responsibility for what gets filtered to the people? are they hiding the truth... for the people's sake? for the government's sake? or just for grotesque's sake? i got caught up on the title, questioning his term, "Image War." to me, it's more about a revelation than a war. more times than not, the truth hurts. how long can one be protected from that.

my pdf write-up is attached //:here. i apologize if it comes off negative. i'm really not that grumpy.

credit card art: and fraud.

2008-10-10T14:01:00.000-07:00

tuesday evening was a little shocking to say the least. i received a call from the bank saying that the primate design bank account was a victim of fraud in new york. i knew that i was certainly not in new york earlier that day pumping gas, so they told me to shred the card as they canceled it on the spot.

for therapeutic calming, i gladly cut the card.

and displayed it nicely on the shelf.

i'm grateful for banking with such a great institution. they already took care of the mess and issued a new card with new number. all i needed was a little art to pass the time.

483A logo. round 4. semi-finalized.

2008-10-08T23:15:00.000-07:00

today we turned in our process books for the logo and some clean final prints of our best. next project is packaging, but i'll be doing a direct mail piece about the olympics because i wanted to continue my theme. i will, however, make it 3-d in some sort by way of it opening into a pop-up or with creating an element of surprise by unfolding, pulling, etc...

below are pics of my final mid-semester logo work. i was encouraged to continue refining my mark, so down the road i'm sure i'll blog the final for this project. the direction i got was to simplify some of the clutter in my deconstructive logos...

here are 80 logos that didn't make my final four cut.

here are my final four.

here's my process book with everything.

the process book covers approx. a month's worth of work.

everything from my indexical list to experimental brush strokes and textures.

i'll blog later about our next project. we already started the brainstorm process. again, we use words as a starting point to concept the design. i'm beginning to like this because i love words and always found myself concepting that way when i lived my agency life.

483A logo. round 3. color studies.

2008-10-01T23:55:00.000-07:00

here it is. the project that seems to be ending my life. but, at least i'm having fun in my sleep deprivation. i really enjoyed exploring color with these logos. i'm not sure how far i can stray from the original olympic "rainbow" palette, but i was turned on by Kuler, the free online color theme creator through Adobe. you can upload a picture and it will pull the colors that compliment each other. there are also themes you can browse. it's rad.

my color studies.
first i wanted to find a theme similar to the Olympic spectrum, but just varied. brighter. more muted. slightly tweaked hue. basically more flavor. then i uploaded some pictures that i felt were relevant to chicago. people. city at night. the sears tower. inside a convention. it's cityscape. even a map of the chicago area — i really liked the blues and oranges. it gave me a sea and land feeling, which seems appropriate. from there i create 5-color palettes to play with my already-designed comps and i also stumbled upon a few new ones. overall, this round (3) was in the name of color exploration and was really fun.

i know i'll be using Kuler for projects in the future.

this is one of my favorite color combos. very soft and natural. i love the blue, lime and pale yellow with orange and brown accents. may be a stretch for the olympics, but it was worth the experiment.

i really started to like my deconstructed version of Jay Pritzker Pavilion. these colors are pretty cool too, but i found myself deleting the red from these comps except in the 2"C/0"16 thingy.

this is what i mean by sticking to the spectrum, just muted. this scheme seems like a winner to me. now i just have to get the mark.

deep colors, but worth the exploration. the new marks aren't cuttin it.

softer version of the previous. based off of people in blue jeans. i like.

city nights. this feels warm, yet cool. i'm liking this classic feel.

these were the colors pulled from an existing map. and, as i'm sure the creator of the map probably used a pretty general color key, i felt the oranges and blues said chicago to me. the motion-looking one in upper-right is actually the two antennas of the sears tower, just repeated. and again the Pritzker Pavilion. diggin all of these.

a lighter, brighter version of the map colors. i like these even better than the previous. i'm also a softy for natural papers.

just more random experiments. the "O" feels too Obama... but guess where he's from?

here i tried to recreate my water color comps from round 2, but this time in vector format. they don't feel as soft and nice. next...

these final two are back to the super primary spectrum. ehh. except the two on the right are pretty cool. i like the abstract rings (but it reminds me of London 2012's logo) and the flame/towers are growing on me.

not liking the "small world" comps. dancing runner looks more like a marathon logo... next. oh, there are no more. help me decide on a mark!

for previous Chicago 2016 logo comps, click > round 1 > round 2.

su blackwell: book-cut sculpture.

2008-09-30T23:45:00.000-07:00

in light of my recent visit to an artists' book show in claremont and just plain-out being exposed to the book-making world in my artists books class, i came across su blackwell, an artist out of england. she has a wonderful way with paper. her work is phenomenal.

here are a few samples of cut-books, but i encourage anyone to check all of her work out ://here.

su blackwell

history of graphic design: essay two.

2008-09-26T17:09:00.000-07:00

i turned in write-up number two (of six) from selected essays out of Looking Closer Five this week. "The Beauty Part," by Rick Poynor was vague, yet it provoked a lot of thought. ...maybe that was the point. i'm not sure beauty can be defined very well by academia-types because it is so much bigger than a definition, but i appreciate the observations he makes. i've seen his name a few times online and in eye magazine and have nothing but respect for his design-critiques. my reaction to his essay left me a bit blank and after re-reading it three times i sort of spewed out some prose. and i turned that in for my second write up. here it is:

also, you can grab the pdf //:here.

483A logo. round 2.

2008-09-25T18:09:00.000-07:00

CHICAGO 2016. this is a continuation from the logo round 1 blog. i explored a few more techniques and popped out a few more concepts. this time was nowhere near (close to) a million thumbnails, but i feel i have some solid direction now. round 3 will be difficult narrowing the comps down, yet enlightening because i'll do color studies to give the logo a better sense of feeling rather than the current "rainbow" colors taken from the rings...

in round 2 i focused on 3 types of logos drawn from round 1: wind-related, torch flame/skyline, and architecture (millennium park's Jay Pritzker Pavilion, in particular). i experimented with deconstructivism for the first time and with watercolor and cut paper — a technique i never would have used for a logo, maybe only a background for a brochure or something, and i actually think they came out the best. mainly because the colors were soft and that made the marks feel more real.

in the end, i'm not sure watercolor will work as a vector that can be placed on everything from outdoor boards to coke cans. but i discovered some new concepts nonetheless:

448: artists' book show

2008-09-21T20:21:00.000-07:00

instead of going to book class on friday, we visited the Williamson Gallery at Claremont Scripps for an artists' book show, "Performing the Book." It was pretty darn fantastic. check it out below:

in the front lobby, we watched a performance from susan joy share on an iMac... apparently she performed for the opening a week prior.

(H) here is the work of the famous johanna drucker.

susan joy share

susan joy share

susan joy share

sam winston

sam winston

sam winston

and finally, some random dude on our walk to lunch...

483A logo. round 1.

2008-09-18T14:13:00.000-07:00

(close to) a million thumbnails for the 2016 Olympics in Chicago Applicant City logo. after getting into different concepts and techniques for the logo, i found myself in a tornado of ideas with no more time. i didn't create as many thumbnails as i was supposed to due to time running away shamelessly, but the process opened up a lot of doors in which i plan on refining for round 2 (coming next week).

below is a gang of ideas that, quite frankly, did not derive from my indexical list (from my first blog post on this logo ://here.), but just evolved out of my thoughts about the subject. i plan on taking the good information from the indexical list and my musings from this round 1 and creating another (close to) million thumbs.

first, this is the existing logo. the one to beat.

other than sketching out pencil thumbnails, the techniques i used varied. from exploring scanned texture like denim, because i feel there is a working-class, factory-based history in chicago, to experimenting with ink — blots, spats, strokes, and tested different textures with "olympic-" color guaches. in round 1 i also show some researched architecture elements. my next round will include some destructivist design of the famous landmarks in milliennium park. for now, here is round 1:

i told you there were close to a million...

artists books: altered book thing-a-ma-object.

2008-09-13T18:48:00.001-07:00

art 448: artists books is all free-range. i love how everyone is just able to express themselves and their art through a medium that lasts forever (mostly) — a book. our first assignment was meant to be a quickie. an altered book. or book object. simple enough... i started with an old Black Book Creative Directory from 2004 and gutted it. since it's completely useless now, i figured it was a good place to start. it led into my theme: connection/communication, so i took a stack of old business cards that were doing absolutely no good and spray mounted them to multiple pages cut out of a telephone book.

i found out that i broke the number one rule to artists books: no spray mount. i was slapped on the hand and have since moved on.

i reinforced the cards on each page with clear packing tape and left the back sides as the raw uncoated telephone book pages. then i trimmed each page to fit the size of the hard cover.

i even discovered a work of art in my page-trimmings...

my ultimate goal was to take these trimmed pages and bind them into the Black Book hard cover.

i also used glossy plastic business card sleeves to protect the front and back of the book.

well, the hard cover idea wasn't gonna work out so pretty so i decided to do a rolling treatment to the left end and rubber band the pages together. the top page is all business cards that i've had from jobs over the last 10 years.

the juxtaposition of each spread is nice with telephone listings on one side and colorful business cards on the other.

i'm pretty happy with the way it turned out and decided to leave the black book cover off and keep it as it is. sometimes too much is just too much.
viola. the contact book!

next friday we have class in claremont at scripps college. they are having an artists books exhibit at Williamson Gallery. check it out //:here.

history of graphic design: essay one.

2008-09-13T18:03:00.000-07:00

this week we turned in our first write-up (of six) from selected essays out of Looking Closer Five. "The Birth of the User," by Ellen Lupton was very brief, but very interesting. She raised great points about how our world is changing in regards to reading/viewing and writing/designing. She states that the User replaces each of those traditional roles... A lot of her observations reflected much of what i learned in the Edward Tufte course a few weeks ago. Especially the difference in attention span with printed paper (hi res) vs. the screen (lo res). A main, thought provoking point that i pulled from Lupton's essay is with all the control we have as we navigate through a "screaming-grab-your-attention" web site, the reality is that the technology behind this "freedom-to-move-about-the-pages," is actually tracking our moves, thus controlling us.

i've attached my quickie one-page write up //:here.

a logo. it's process. and 483A.

2008-09-08T12:28:00.000-07:00

a logo.
in special studies our first assignment is a logo. i believe i may be the only grad student in this class but the professor feels i should go along with the regular projects that the course offers. and i'm cool with that. most students seem to be brainstorming self-identity marks, while i feel like i'm working towards a goal that is way out-of-reach: a mark for a 2016 Olympic Host City Candidate, Chicago.

it's process.
we were asked to review the numerous logos in Color Management for Logos and jot down the many many techniques used to create these logos. i stumbled upon 100 or so, mostly b.s. techniques like "shape, collage, and continuous-tone" and a few solid techniques like "gestault, substitution, and typographic anatomy." we are to apply these techniques to a list of the subject's attributes based on three categories: icon, symbol, and index.

features/characteristics/techniques...

process? this is a sneak peak inside my head.

defining the three categories.

483A.
i've never gone through a process like this before to create a logo and it's my hope that, once everything is said and done, i will have a unique mark that doesn't look anything like the many many logos i reviewed in the before mentioned book. in addition to this assignment, i've enjoyed the recent article in GD USA magazine regarding the latest trends in logo design //:here.

the next step is to take my matched up techniques and attributes and create close-to-a-million sketches. coming soon...

amazon anxiety.

2008-09-05T00:46:00.000-07:00

it's friday.
ordered six books on amazon
last friday. yet, no door bell ring.
ordered one hundred bucks of book-
making supplies from dick blick
on tuesday. one-day shipping.
with the arrival of nothing.
so unprepared. so behind. so it is.
what it is. and this outlet
of expression
just gained
me

another gray hair.

the beginning of Fall 2008.

2008-08-31T10:04:00.000-07:00

as i finish the first week of my second semester, i feel confident that this semester will provide me with much of the tools i need to refine a topic for my thesis, which is at the moment, still undetermined. i'm only taking three classes, but will have plenty of reading and researching and writing and therefore i am thankful for the extra time to accomplish it all and to accomplish it well as i wrap up 2008. my bibliography grows quickly in the right column of this blog, as i will add my texts for this semester:

the relax project: A Permanent Artwork Proposal

2008-08-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

"an idea so big, that only two eucalyptus trees can hold it up." that's how i started my long-shot-of-a proposal, the relax project, yesterday. in short, i officially submitted a proposal to erect a 36-foot hammock on the corner of st. college blvd. and arts dr. between two eucalyptus trees. it would act as a friendly reminder that life's gonna be OK. afterall, art is supposed to provoke emotion, right?

the complete proposal is below:

28 August 2008
TO: Jerry Samuelson, Dean
CC: Mike McGee, Cal State Fullerton Art Alliance, Jackie Reynolds

the relax project A Permanent Artwork Proposal

OVERVIEW
The Relax Project seeks to erect a permanent sculpture, a 36-foot hammock, in an unused space between the Visual Arts department and the Nutwood parking structure.

OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this project, other than it’s bigger-than-life presence and impact, is to trigger a sense of relaxation and promote subconscious thought within a society of high-anxiety students, and the general public alike, as they enter or exit the campus, in a bigger-than-life way.

BACKGROUND
As a student, assignments, tests and an inconsistent schedule are all big concerns that come with a great deal of stress. It’s very rare that a student is encouraged to take a little “R&R” during a semester. The Relax Project is a reminder that "everything will be OK.” It is a deep breath. It’s a sigh. An AHH! This project, if nothing else, will put a smile on the viewer’s face.

This work of art is designed to be a confrontation, without the confrontation. Internal, but external too. It’s taking a stand, not for laziness, but for one of the most important ingredients to a student’s health: rest.

WORKING TITLES
AH-HA!
AHH!
It’s Due Next Week.
See You Next Week.
Western Zen.

TIMEFRAME Upon approval — further concepting is required before it meets fruition, approx. 6 months. Determining mechanical specifications, approx. 3 months. Construction, 12 months.

MATERIALS AND COST
A lot of rope, estimated 6 200-foot spools.
(5/8” dia. x 200’ length Manila spool = $100 ea.)
A lot of wood, estimated 10 2”x6”x10’ lumber.
(2”x6”x10’ Hemlock Fir Treated Lumber = $10 ea.)
Miscellaneous hardware, carabiners and straps.
Estimated total = $1,000. Private sponsors can be arranged.

FREQUENTLY ASKED
Q. Will people be able to lay in it?
A. Technically, a large van is able, but it will be high enough in the air to where it cannot be disturbed.

Q. What will be beneath the giant hammock?
A. Quicksand.
Just kidding. Currently there is dirt. This will evolve as the concepting becomes real. It can be anything from sand to artificial turf. It can even have a putting green beneath it. Or maybe artificial turf painted sky-blue with airbrushed clouds.

Q. How does this relate to your major?
A. It doesn’t. It relates to life. Mine and yours.

Q. Are you serious?
A. Academic-anxiety raises many concerns and should not be taken lightly. Smile more. Yes.

As it may seem out-of-place for an MFA student studying Graphic Design to dream this up, it really hits home with Everyone. Attached are rough simulations displaying scale to bring this project a little closer to real life.

Thank you for your time and consideration of this proposal and it’s attributions to CSUF. Most importantly, thank you for considering an idea so big, that only two eucalyptus trees can hold it up.

Sincerely,
brianprince

MFA candidate, 2011-ish
projectartschool.com

project artschool Time Clock.

2008-08-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

summer just disappeared this week, but not on a sour note by any means. i had a sweet summer filled with adventure, rest and rejuvenation. today i go back to school for my second semester.

this summer i decided, amongst other outlandish things, that i am going to track my hours spent in the MFA program. i have posted at the top of this blog an ongoing count of the hours spent towards schoolwork and research, school-related functions and meetings, and extra-curricular activities that further the goal towards my MFA.

i am tracking more detailed use of the hours spent and will save that for some interesting tufte-style graphing towards the end of my grad school journey, roughly some time in 2011. also in the works is the project artschool Expense Report, which will essentially track similar details as my time, but in the dollars i've spent. i'm not sure what will make me faint sooner, but both time and money are valuable resources that i'm lending to this program.

and since, once again, this is the journal of my journey i must add my schedule for this semester Fall 2008: Wed_ 483A Special Studies with Drew, Thurs_ 480T History of Graphic Design with Roche, and Fri_ 448 Artists Books with Connie Sasso.

stay tuned for posts on my projects and research for this coming semester, it's gonna be a busy one. and for the final wrap-ups for 2 of my summer projects, olympictograms.com and the relax project proposal.

a day of Edward Tufte.

2008-08-22T23:22:00.000-07:00

well i managed to make it to the all day course, "presenting data and information" on wednesday and i can't stop thinking about all the simple, yet complicated theories mr. tufte (pronounced TUFF TEE) rattled off. even though it was hard to cough up the fee since "my employer" doesn't pay for these things anymore, i still enjoyed every minute of it. having a "student ID" saved me $180 and i continue not to regret that i am my own employer.

beyond that, i was accompanied by the famous alex "ajax" jackson. we got there pretty much the minute it started and found ourselves walking into a packed ballroom. fortunately we found two seats next to each other, in the front row! i was fascinated with everything – from 10am, when i received my four free edward tufte books, to the minute we got into the 45-minute-parking-structure-exit at 4:30pm. it was hard to label the crowd taking this course. mostly looked like sales people or middle-management of some sort. i noticed some people didn't blink to tufte's wisdom, while others allowed their ego to roll their eyes into a hollow head. all in all, i physically felt out of place amongst the dress shirts as i wore my shorts and slippers but was totally engaged mentally.

i took seven and a half pages of notes in my handy 2008 journal.

tufte managed to continually bag on PC users and microsoft — powerpoint, in particular — which was to my great delight. and he has a fairly crass attitude in general with the occasional self-indulged joke, but who can argue with the man, he's a genius. he explained 6 major principles of analytical design from his book, Beautiful Evidence (pg. 124), that are the highlights in my notes and are clearly something that i will take away and utilize as i pursue this glamorous (twisted) field of graphic design. he starts the chapter off with the ingenious and gorgeous map that Minard created to communicate napoleon's invasion on russia.

ajax and i each got one of our books signed.
here he is waiting patiently to have a question answered.

and here he is trying to grab Tufte's wrist watch. shady, i tell you. :)

i'm excited to dive into my new books including a book his mother wrote, "artful sentences: syntax as style."

gebrauchsgraphikers.

2008-08-14T16:40:00.000-07:00

i just came across the word Gebrauchsgraphikers today and i thought it was cool. it's german for commercial artists. i stumbled upon it in steven heller's design literacy (continued) for the third time right around the essay on Ludwig Hohlwein.
that's all.

Edward Tufte course: presenting data and information.

2008-08-06T15:22:00.000-07:00

Edward Tufte peoples! This one-day course is taught entirely by Edward Tufte himself. i'm thinking of attending the Wednesday, August 20th course at the Sheraton Universal City.

Edward Tufte is the king of analytical design. you can find a load of info on him and his books here: edwardtufte.com

font conference.

2008-08-05T11:48:00.000-07:00

one funny video here. that is if you are a font freak like myself.
font conference (click)

amy caterina: this used to be real estate...

2008-07-30T11:09:00.001-07:00

yesterday (after the earthquake) i visited the grand central art center project room in santa ana to see amy caterina's installation: "this used to be real estate, now it's only fields and trees." the entire environment is knitted, including the ground, in shades of nature... and there is a projected cloud-scape sky with an ocassional bird flying through. there are sounds of nature chirping through-out. i love how her concept brought nature into an unnatural setting. her web site is freerangeknitting.com for more information. below are some pics...

viewers are allowed to walk in the environment after putting on surgical shoe coverings.

freerangeknitting.com

ralph caplan: thank you for not smoking

2008-07-28T01:32:00.000-07:00

i stumbled upon this interestingly funny article about signage.

"When CBS headquarters in New York was being built, design director Lou Dorfsman’s what-to-do-in-case-of-a-fire sign was rejected by the Fire Commission because the type was too small to meet specifications. Dorfsman retaliated by designing a sign that did satisfy all the Commission’s criteria for height and width, but that he had shrewdly rendered illegible—his point being that Gradgrindian measurements did not in themselves guarantee the desired result."

check it out here.

look mom, i'm in grad school.

2008-07-17T11:23:00.000-07:00

the 'redefining the call box' project (lookforsigns.org) is coming along well. when i return from hawaii in a couple weeks, i will have a month of summer left to tackle 2 more projects: olympictograms.com (coming soon: hopefully right around the olympics 8/8/08), and a proposal for the 'relax' project. and before i know it, fall 2008 will be here. stick around...

politics are hot.

2008-07-15T23:11:00.000-07:00

even in the design world. steven heller proposed, "Since Mr. Obama promotes himself as the candidate of change, maybe he should start wearing a different kind of lapel pin that signals his patriotism as well as other values he wants to communicate. To provide him with options, I asked some illustrators and designers to suggest alternatives..."

check out some responses...
{click - nytimes.com}

LOOKFORSIGNS.ORG

2008-07-10T08:19:00.000-07:00

see what happens when i get a weekend of relaxation and no homework. i start devising strange plans and creating artist organizations. kristy and i had this idea running as we drove the mountain roads last weekend. i think it's a pretty cool concept, i just don't know where it will go. i'm getting into it more and more each day and i'm beginning to believe i can think this entire project all the way through.

stay posted at http://www.lookforsigns.org and watch the ideas unfold... if the call box idea doesn't fly, i know i have more "sign" related concepts up my sleeve. but, i feel the Redefined Call Box is a pretty sweet start.

don't miss it.

pull.

2008-07-09T13:25:00.000-07:00

in light of the design for the world proposal, i stumbled upon this last weekend outside the cabin we rented in lake arrowhead. (prev. post)

things like this make me happy.

(to see the previous post regarding the proposal, click here.)

480T final. summer school has ended.

2008-07-08T11:16:00.000-07:00

our final presentation was on Wed, Jul 2 and it went extremely well. i didn't sleep the three days leading to it, but in the end, i'm very pleased with the outcome. i have to give it up for the awesome group that i was in. and all the hours were paid for with a little r&r last weekend in lake arrowhead.

along with the final presentation on Mary Kelly, i also had my final paper due. it too, was on Mary Kelly, titled, "Influences: A Choice or Not. Thoughts after a thirty-day study of Mary Kelly." the pdf is attached here.

i'll somehow try to configure the final presentation to upload onto youtube so i can share it here. it's approximately 30 mins. i did all the music for it and jessica ku created the animated flash for it. it takes a peek into some of Mary Kelly's most famous works.

and now the real summer is here — until august 25, when the fall semester begins. in the meantime, i have a couple extra-curricular projects going on that i will keep updated on this blog.

480T update. second brief.

2008-06-26T09:11:00.000-07:00

mary kelly. a local, conceptual contemporary artist that i've been embroiled in these last few weeks is really starting to fascinate me. i just wish her work stimulated me visually. however, her ideas are def worth noting. she's clearly a feminist, but more than a feminist, she has the ability to call to attention political issues in a very poetic kind of way. i like that.

my second brief has to do with one of her shows that is a complete departure from her normal, feminist work: masculinity. it's titled Gloria Patri (Glory be to the Father).

here is the detail on one of the shields. mary kelly is an excellent writer and unless you read her work, you can easily be lead astray of her concepts.

her concepts came from watching the persian gulf war on television and journaling in her sketchbook in the early 90's. here's the pdf of my paper.

a lot of the research that was found came from Postmasters Art Gallery. [ http://www.postmastersart.com/ ]

we will be presenting our research next wednesday. i will try to figure a way to post it here.

everyone's doing it.

2008-06-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

yesterday, we started a blog for primate design. now there are officially three blogs in my life – one for every aspect. school. life. and now... work.
check it out: primatedesign.com

design for the world : push/pull proposal

2008-06-17T13:07:00.000-07:00

push and pull — pictograms in need.
to save the world – probably not.

i've always said i wanted to save the world. but i presume it will just have to wait a few years. proposals, sketches and ideas we're recently accepted by the organization, Design for the World in Barcelona, to solve the push/pull problem.

"Nowadays many different cultures share equal or similar codified systems of pictograms, but none of them express the “push-pull” function. In order to illustrate which way a door opens it is necessary to use words, even written in different alphabets, which vary according to the language of a given country.

Our intention as the NGO Design for the World, and in accordance with the aim expressed by our name, is to offer the world a new pictogram which would fill this gap. This is the reason why we ask the Design community for a voluntary contribution of ideas, sketches or formal proposals which would show how designers see the push-pull pictogram."

it was mid may when i received an email from my professor chen wang regarding this problem. i got really excited and everywhere i went, i noticed that it was true.

i began by researching sign language (aslpro.com)

and braille (afb.org)

as well as current international pictograms that we see in public places such as airports, restaurants, the olympics, etc...

my conclusions are far from concluded and the june 15 deadline already belongs to the past, but i sent four comps just for giggles (at midnight 6/15/08)...

one question that still bothers me is — if we, whether right or left handed, use a particular hand to complete this function? and as i see it in my part of the world, most doors are hinged on the left, therefore require action on the right. what hand do you use? and as the "hand" might be a graphic solution to this problem, i avoided it all together because i feel it almost always needs a modifier and stands weak as a symbol alone (unless it's STOP, but then again, STOP can be confused for HIGH 5). peace...

this one seemed like the obvious one to me and most influenced by "airport" pictograms, and might work well if not on a door or in another context. but the problem at hand is literally at hand - and on the door in front of you.

simulated in an environment.

here is a revision of the above to reflect less of 'up and down' and more 'in and out.' i think it works well on the door, however it feels a bit dingbat-ish.

simulated in an environment.

this is my favorite, but as reminded by my son, it looks more like bite marks rather than grip impressions. the idea here is to show where your hand would go on the door in order to complete the function. i also like that the shapes are similar, yet can be differentiated from a distance because of their orientation.

simulated in an environment.

another way, more literal as to where your fingers impress, would look like this, yet from a distance they might be confused with one another.

and finally, a solution that would require some training, but nonetheless, would be effective. i'm aware that the triangle symbol means caution, but if trained to relate to pulling when applied to it's medium (the door), i feel this set would be the minimalist solution in our confusing/sign infested world.

simulated in an environment.

here's an alternate if the problem of the "caution" triangle arose.

OK, how about this? eliminating the letters that are in common. "lowest common denominator... numerator? whatever" HA! i got rid of the PU and to me, this is very identifiable no matter what language you speak. a little training for the end user is in order, but i believe it's effective. too bad, i never sent this one in...

here was my intro letter trying to explain my reasoning...

15 June 2008

Hello Design for the World:

PUSH/PULL. Ideally, the final mark should not have to be explained and in the end, should stand on it’s own. However, this is not the end and some problems just need to be worked through.

BRIEF EXPLANATION. My first inclination tells me that this mark needs to be accompanied by it’s respective words written in the language of the given country—for the first five years... at minimum. Whether that’s good or not, I believe people have to be trained, especially in a complex problem like this.

PROBLEM SOLVING. As I began thinking of this problem, I immediately realized the need of a shape-difference recognition. Although the end user will be literally arm’s distance when interacting with the mark, I feel each, the push, and the pull, need to be recognized from afar with a sense of immediacy. They require a bold difference, whether in shape, orientation or symbolism, yet still need to be congruent and display as a couple, even though they are separated. For example, a vertical rectangle and horizontal rectangle — much different, but still similar with the difference and similarity easily recognizable at a glance.

Attached are 4 ideas, push on the left, pull on the right, followed by an environment simulation. If you feel there is any potential in these given comps, I would love the opportunity to work with this problem further. Thank you for your consideration.

Genuinely,

brian prince
00-1-714-336-6170

deadlines 101.

2008-06-15T22:38:00.000-07:00

it seems that my working life is dictated by deadlines lately. some inevitable. most self-imposed. i guess it's a way to meet progress.

mental list of things due:
JUN 15 : design for the world's push/pull proposal (today)
JUN 16 : CUP's making public policy (tomorrow)
JUN 17 : cordelia knott's fall catalog to print.
JUN 20 : eikon's summer ad to newspaper.
JUN 21 : 480T, csuf grand central art center 2pm.
JUN 23 : 480T, mary kelly paper#2 due. (gloria patri)
JUN 24 : logo comps to seoul enterprises.
JUN 27 : create awards 2008
JUN 27 : free people's shopping bag contest
JUN 30 : logo lounge volume 5
JUN 30 : print magazine's 2009 student cover competition
JUN 30 : american graphic design awards
JUL 1 : pd blog launched.
JUL 1 : rent to landlord.

if making just one of these deadlines means progress, then i'm in good hands. and if i don't meet progress, well, then i'll be on the street, cuz rent is due.

balance 101.

2008-06-13T12:31:00.001-07:00

between the family, primate design, little league, summer school, writing and the NBA FINALS, i haven't had much time to update project artschool. i know. i know. "no one said it was going to be easy." but, i say, why not? there are a lot of things coming down the pipe. a lot of pressure building up. and the summer is looking shorter and shorter by every late sunset. but lately i've had the opportunity to step outside of my life and look in, and man, it can't get any better. praise God for all the goodness amongst the chaos. as i see it right now, if my life wasn't so grand, i wouldn't have this ability to stop and acknowledge it — peeping in at every angle, appreciating every blessing before me. i came to this realization this morning in the dentist chair as the hygienist picked my brain. life may be full and up-to-my-neck busy, but that's because i'm always loungin'.

one thing accomplished however, is that i managed to shorten the URL to access this blog. so, welcome to www.projectartschool.com. word up.

480T update. first brief.

2008-06-12T22:36:00.000-07:00

Southern California Contemporary Art is coming along. i am now in a group of 8 and we are to articulate a 30 minute-ish presentation on Mary Kelly, a now-local contemporary artist that weighs in heavy on feminism in the conceptual division. our final is due july 2 and statistically, it looks impossible. but, optimistically, we can do anything.

here is a bio of Mary Kelly. and here is my first paper/part of the group's research: Criticisms of Mary Kelly. (unfortunately, it's only negative but i'm drawn to find some more positive reviews because i know it's out there.)

dan havel and dean ruck: inversion.

2008-06-05T10:51:00.000-07:00

Houston sculptors Dan Havel and Dean Ruck sculpturally altered two buildings in a Montrose neighborhood.

The project Inversion transformed two Art League houses on the corner of Montrose Boulevard and Willard Street. The Art League offered Havel and Ruck the old studio buildings before they were demolished this spring making way for a new Art League building.

The adjacent houses have been used for exhibition space and art classes for over thirty years. Havel and Ruck created a large funnel-like vortex beginning from the west wall adjacent to Montrose Blvd. The exterior skin of the houses was peeled off and used to create the narrowing spiral as it progresses eastward through the small central hallway connecting the two buildings and exiting through a small hole into an adjacent courtyard.

Photo credit: Brother O'Mara

Photo credit: Brother O'Mara

Photo credit: Brother O'Mara

Photo credit: Brother O'Mara

pretty freakin' rad. Thanks to Kevin O'Mara for the use of his images.

benjamin verdonck: nest rotterdam

2008-06-03T08:47:00.000-07:00

this belgian birdman gets outrageously cozy. for seven days, a giant nest 50 meters up one side of the Weena Tower in Rotterdam has been home for artist benjamin verdonck.

read more at nest-rotterdam.nl/

480T Southern California Contemporary Art

2008-06-02T00:08:00.000-07:00

summer school is here. already. it wasn't even june and i found myself sitting in a lecture hall consuming a trail mix bar and a presentation of art history as we know it. art history, as in, all of art's history — since the beginning of documented art, to now. pretty fascinating. pretty quick.

this course will be heavy on group and light on lecture. which is an o.k. diet as long as your group is good. we have a questionnaire to fill out so the prof can determine well-balanced groups. i like that. besides getting an overview (well-needed) of art history, we will focus this summer on a southern Californian artist. we have 8 to choose from: rubén ortiz torres, georgeanne deen, liz mcgrath, susan silton, kenny scharf, jason rhodes, mary kelly, or shepard fairy. in the end, our group will give a 40-50 minute presentation on our selected artist or topic related to the artist. the questionnaire asks to list your top 3. i have yet to choose.

i have no idea why i scanned the questionnaire, but here it is.

483A (logo and letterhead...)

2008-05-27T16:46:00.000-07:00

the last project in special studies was to solve an identity problem for an acupuncture/fertility center in arizona. i researched a bit and explored using dots in the logomark to signify the pressure points used during acupuncture, but it wasn't really working.

that's when i realized i just needed a clean type face. i combo'd some marks and type to still realize that i wasn't solving the problem. i was enjoying the "drip/flame" mark but the idea in my head wasn't reading well on paper. and the "flower" mark represents sperm surrounding an egg by using a series of the letter "i" in a circle. it seemed too feminine if the center wanted to attract more than fertility clientele. i chose to go with a more subtle, relaxing feel.

after laying out my third round of stationery i feel i'm almost there, but i still have some work...

here's the LATEST logo treatment. i think i'm starting to like it. the "u" can be interpreted in many different ways. i like that it's embracing the "body-shaped wave" but it can also signify the penetration of this therapy. i chose soft colors because it's medical and mainly fertility-based. i avoided using any needles and as an end result, i feel it displays a calm, cool and inviting atmosphere.

AIGA: get out the vote...

2008-05-26T17:19:00.000-07:00

recently i submitted a poster to AIGA: Get Out the Vote 2008 titled, mama's voice. currently it's in the second row, third from the left.

i wrote it with the conscious we all have in the back of our minds (our mother's). and i designed it to feel like the constitution (from our forefathers). without all the splashiness, i wanted this poster to provoke thought in new voters minds.

(click it to enlarge)