Thursday, February 26, 2009

Deceptive



Here's the part where you guess why this flower is deceptive.
I dare you!

Oh alright I can't stand the whining: it's not a flower, it's a glass paperweight.
The Sheridan glassblowing classes had a glass sale, and I couldn't pass this lovely up. Whoever made it (they couldn't tell me who, exactly, was responsible) blew paint into the glass as it was firing. It actually looks a lot like a Morning Glory. And those imperfections - the bubbes - are actually what made me really like it. They ended up looking like water drops.

This was fun to photograph - a lot like those beads from way back in first year.
Only because this was such high quality glass it didn't show any secondary coloring like the beads did.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Comfort? Who needs it!


HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAT!

Congrats!
You're 19! Which, I might add, is moderately terrifying.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Interactivity Design 2 - Project 1


This was a short project. Take a photo of something industrial, make sure it's long enough to make you scroll sideways across the web page, but not long enough that it makes you scroll down.
Cover said image with a pattern you derive from the image itself.

The idea was to make the viewer want to scroll sideways to see the rest of the image.
Since this isn't in a web page format right now you don't get to scroll.
No scroll for you.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Research in Design - Food Project



For Research in Design, one of my lecture courses this year, our final project was to research anything we wanted about: FOOD.
How great a topic is that, anyway?
Other than the fact that it made every last person in the class hungry every minute they were working on it.

I chose cake, because let's face it: I REALLY like cake.
We had to collect our own photos, too. Which meant I got to take a lovely jaunt down Eglington Avenue (an all day jaunt I might ad) to find bakeries and anywhere else that sold cake. Thanks to working at the Delta, I even had wedding cake photos to use.

This is the final print product. It's a teeny little book: only 7 inches long by 5 inches high.
I was also fancy/lazy and did French folding for the pages (that's where you only print on one side of the paper, and just fold it over)

I've also included some of my favorite photos.





Monday, February 16, 2009

Communication Design 1 - Project 3



For once, for ONCE, I love a project outcome from this class.
How do you spell relief?
APPARENTLY you spell it "create a brochure convincing people to donate to a cause"

That's literally all we were instructed to do.
Technically it's supposed to appeal to an older audience, but I feel like mine will work for anyone with female relatives. Maybe that's my ego talking. But the ol' ego hasn't had a chance to stretch it's legs for a while, so I'm just going to let it run rampant for a bit.

Specifications for the project changed a bit because of the strike.
The brochure itself is 8 inches high, 16 inches long. Before the strike messed up our lives we were also supposed to create an envelope for it, as if it was a direct mail piece (you know - those flyers you get in the mail all the time, asking you to donate, or informing you of events you might be interested in)
Class resumption meant less time to get critiques on the project, and hence the scrapping of the envelope.

This one folds a little differently than conventional brochures.
It's kind of like a scroll. The back pages are all folded into one another, and hidden under the cover. It's supposed to entice you to turn the next page. Um...
It's a lot more effective in person. Haha.
Photos and the actual file can only do it so much justice.

It's on nice silky paper, too.
Which is lovely. I got tired of having to print on card stock (I can't seem to mount anything on thinner paper to illustration board without ripping it to shreds... hmmmm...)


I have to really thank Jessica Truscott for this. It's her stock image that I used.
It's actually surprisingly difficult to find GOOD portraits of emotions. Most of them are too over-the-top for my tastes. So props! I love your stock!

Friday, February 13, 2009

Information Design 1 - Project 2


I decided not to bother posting project 1 from this class. It's just a very simple bar graph.

Information design revolves around us learning how to graph data effectively, so that the people looking at what we make understand quickly what we're trying to show. For Project 1 we were given a choice of 3 topics: paper consumption, coffee consumption, or calorie consumption, and had to make a simple graph. We weren't even allowed to look for our own data. You used the data sheets Brian provided, and picked what data out of it that you wanted.
Project 2 got a little more in-depth.
We HAD to involve time as the main subject, and still use one of the three above choices. This time it was up to us to decide how to go about graphing (we weren't limited like on the first project to simple bar, pie, or line graphs) and whether or not we wanted to get more information.

This is what I did. Peak times of day for coffee consumption in Canada.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Alternate Alice Backgrounds




When I was making my type 2 poster with "Alice in Wonderland" as the catchphrase I had a number of different possibilities for backgrounds.
I took a couple big sheets of white paper and dumped gold or blue ink down them, but the scanned images were really wrinkled and gross (the water warped the paper, and it refused to scan flat - much less let me touch it up without ruining the look of the ink)

Instead of fighting with it I used a million filters in my art programs, and these 3 are what happened. My personal favorite, which was sadly too busy to use, is the grainy black one.