John Berger is an art critic, novelist, painter and educator who has written many influential books of fiction and non-fiction, collaborated on many films and has exhibited worldwide. In 1972, his book Ways of Seeing was adapted into a television series by the BBC, and collectively are now considered to be a seminal text for current studies of visual culture and art history.
Please watch all three parts of the first episode and think critically about the concepts discussed. Do you accept or reject them? Does this reveal anything about society? Do you think they have any relevance to your work? Will this affect the way in which you create work in the future? How do you think this applies to our work in creating a portfolio site for our work?
Again! Think critically and contribute to the conversation by leaving a comment on this post. Please read all the other comments as well and reply to any which you feel deserve further consideration. We will discuss this in class on Thursday
Here are some great links you should read through to get your head around the whole idea of branding a little bit more. There is a ton of information here and all of it is useful! Leave a comment about about what you got out of these links (if anything). Make sure to link to which site you are talking about!
- Colors in Corporate Branding and Design
- Logo Design, the Basics
- Design a Logo - the Ultimate Guide
- 56 of the Most Creative Logos
- Logo Inspiration
- Logo Creation Process with Mark Misenheimer
- Logo Creation Process with Angela Ferraro-Fanning
Sorry for the lack of recaps lately.
Recently, we've been talking a lot about how our work translates visually into design elements which we can utilize for our identity. We begun with talking about typography and used an exercise creating a font family to get our brains starting to think about this whole concept.
We examined lots of different fonts as a class and brainstormed about their connotations. Angular, slanted fonts reminded us of speed and motion. Curving, long letters appeared graceful and elegant. Fonts with varying line weight, generally straight lines with subtle curves seemed "techy."
You were then charged with the task of looking through Illustrator's default font set on the computers in the lab and trying to develop a font family that you felt represented you and your work. The first should be identifiable and unique as it will used for extremely important information like your name, studio or company. The second should be line with your first but be very readable - this will be used for category headings, titles and important information. The third is your body content font. It should maintain the visual integrity of the other two (so if you chose a curvy font for the first time, you shouldn't use something angular and sharp for your content font) but readability is key here.We then looked at these fonts paired with your best work and critiqued them individually and in context of one another. Hopefully - this exercise got you thinking critically about your own work and what improvements you will need to make to bring it up to par as well as how your work can be informed by the elements you surround it with.
It is important to note that the font family you developed in this exercise probably SHOULD NOT be your final font. This is only an exercise and many of you used fairly outlandish fonts which would not be appropriate for your final portfolio design. However -even the cra-raziest of the fonts shown all had merit in that they represent on some level you and your work and can help direct you towards making a more appropriate selection.
Please keep working on these and try to find something that will really hit home with your work! Check out these font sites (some free, some not!) to help expand the type faces available to you:
And here are some great blog links about type
Having gotten to know you all fairly well at this point, I am beginning to recognize a commonality: you are afraid of your creativity. As such, I am confident that you will all benefit from this talk.
Please watch, think critically about what Elizabeth Gilbert says and how it affects you in your life and your creative work. Respond in the comments by Thursday so we may discuss in class. To learn more about TED, please click here.
Rhizome is a web based, new media artist community that is affiliated with The New Museum, located in Chelsea, New York City. In their own words:
[Rhizome's] website is a dynamic, interactive platform, rich in historical resources and updated continually with new art and commentary by a vast community. Our programs, realized both on and offline, support art creation, presentation, preservation and interpretation; they include exhibitions & events, commissioning, daily art news and in-depth criticism, and the maintenance of a singularly comprehensive digital art archive.
Their blog is an unmatched resource for information pertaining to new media art and artists, exhibitions, new technology, and opportunities for artists. Recently, they posted an article discussing several artists who have made a social commentary on Web 2.0 technologies and the role and experience of the user within theses networks.Please read this post and leave a comment contributing to the discussion regarding this piece. Think critically about what it means to be social, on the internet and off. How do we use these technologies; are we using them? Or are we being used BY them? Who is controlling who? What do we get out of these networks? What do we put in? Consider the ramifications of the change in the way we define interaction.
Looking forward to your comments. Please leave your comments by Thursday so we can discuss in class.
Auto-tweeting is a great feature. If you have a large network of followers, this makes it really easy and simple to promote your blog, flickr or vimeo (anything with an RSS feed). By tweeting links to this content, you increase the likelihood that your followers will view it. By auto-tweeting it, you only have to worry about uploading or posting your content to its original source and TwitterFeed will take care of the rest! Beautiful!
To begin, go to www.twitterfeed.com and look for the link in the upper right hand corner that says "Login/Register." You are going to login with your Blogger webaddress. To do this, look for the drop down menu to the left of the Login button that looks like a graphic icon. Pull this down and select "Blogger." Then in the input box to the left of that drop down, replace the text with the URL to your blog. Click "Login."
Confirm that you want Twitterfeed to ALWAYS have access to your blog (I am already register with Twitterfeed so I can't see the exact wording in this step. If you are really confused on this step, I will create a bum blog just to recreate this step).
Create a new feed. Enter your Twitter login and password. In another tab, go to your blog and look for the icon or text at the bottom of your blog that says "Subscribe: Posts (Atom)" or "RSS Feed" or something along those lines. If you are having trouble finding your RSS feed, follow these steps to help you find it. Copy the address and paste it into the "RSS Feed URL" input box in the Twitterfeed tab.
You decide with what frequency it wants to check for blog posts. You don't post often so hourly should be fine. If you posted 10-15 times a day, your auto-tweets could get really really annoying if they showed up hourly in all your followers feeds. Make sure you shorten to a TinyUrl and include the link!
Please set up a prefix for your auto tweets. This lets your followers know what the URL may be before they go and click on it. This will increase the likelihood that they will actually click on it.
Consider doing this for your Flickr, Vimeo et cetera!
On Thursday, we discussed Gorden Knox's panel discussion and how web 2.0 will affect all of us in our careers and our lives. To start off with, we had to define what "web 2.0" even means.
According to our class discussion - we defined Web 2.0 as a way in which individuals are utilizing internet technology to create social connections. Wikipedia defines it as such:
The term "Web 2.0" describes the changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aim to enhance creativity, communications, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-culture communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies. The term first became notable after the O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004.[1][2] Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but rather to changes in the ways software developers and end-users utilize the Web.
We discussed a little about what the web was like in the 90s and compared it to today's version. Social networking sites, image and video sharing, user created/customized/generated content, access and input to knowledge, ability to review and critique products directly on the seller's website, the ability to connect with like minded people and share knowledge and skills to collaborate - its all focused on one key aspect - the web is now all about the user!
Even commercial sites like Nike or Mini have to have fun, engaging and interactive content to get users to stay on their sites. There are so many other sites that provide information, entertain or pleasure on the internet - there is no reason to spend anytime on a commercial site unless the company makes the content engaging and allows for the user to customize their experience.
We discussed how this concept of interaction and customization can be seen in other formats as well - specifically in regards to how the television and music industries have been transformed in the past decade. With OnDemand technology and the ability to watch television shows online, combined with the ability to just simply skip over commercials, we questioned what the future of television would be like in the next few years?
We also questioned whether or not the concept of interaction would affect typically passive forms of entertainment like movies and television. Would games, which generally allow for some customization, also be affected?
What would the current generation who is growing up knowing nothing other than the web 2.0 society expect from their content providers in the future? How can we anticipate these demands? How can we participate in directing the course our industries take as they arc through history?
We clearly established that Web 2.0 is not something that only graphic designers and web developers should be concerned with. This is a far reaching, societal movement - it may be based on a computer screen but its reach touches every facet of our existence.
If you are not yet familiar with the concept of web 2.0, please research it further and pay attention to new media and news stories which pertain to this concept!
To start off with - don't think too much about the final concept of your identity. Focus now on this brainstorming activity. Let yourself have fun with this, the freer you are with your answers, the more creative the result will be. Don't be too concern with having your answers pertain to Digital Media.
Lets begin. You're going to make several lists about you. Don't think too long or hard on the answers. Just write the first 5 things that come to your mind for each topic:
- List 5 things that you love to do
- List 5 things that you hate to do
- List 5 things you are proud of in your life
- List 5 things you are good at
- List 5 things that make you unique
- List 5 adjectives that describe you
- List 5 adjectives that describe your work
- List 5 topics your work deals with
- List the media you use in your work
- List the colors that you use most often
- List 5 emotions your work conjures
- List the titles of the work you would like to highlight, if you don't have titles, come up with them now
- List 5 adjectives to describe the kind of company you'll work for
- List 5 adjectives to describe the kind of boss you'd like to have
- List 5 things you will have to do for your job
- List 5 words describing your industry
- List the reasons your job exists
Looking forward to reading what you have to say.
Flickr is an amazing resource for photo hosting, sharing, community building, inspiration, forum for critique and generally just awesome. You can post any 2d material to Flickr and recently, they also added the capability to post 90 sec time based work as well.
Once your photos are on Flickr, tag them with any and all relevant information. Write a description of why you created the work, when it was made, what you hoped to achieve and ask others for their critique. Then search around Flickr and find some relevant groups to join. Add your images to their pool and ask the members there for critique. If allowed, you could post a discussion topic in the group directing the members' attention to your images to expedite the critique process. Commenting on other Flickr members' photos will help you gain recognition and build community.
Please also add your images to the class Group. Click here, then look for the link that says "join this group," and follow the obvious steps to do so. Once enrolled in our group, go back to your photostream, click on your image and look to the buttons located just above it. Find the one that says "Send to group" and select "DMA 250." Click "okay" and you're all set.
Review the other images your classmates are posting and offer CONSTRUCTIVE criticism (this means neither rude, spiteful or nasty remarks as well as 'I liked it,' 'its nice,' or anything wishywashy like that). You are in college and are expected to participate in college level critique.
Please review Flickr's FAQ section before emailing with questions.
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