Brad's Reflections

Week 11 – Workshop (Online)

Group Activity To make a phrase out of the letters we created from the homework. I love how unique everyone else’s fonts were in my group!

Week 11 – Assessment 3 Progress

So I decided due to my time frame, that I wont being doing an animated paint brush and discovered that I can slightly change my interview subject, ever so slightly.

Instead of interviewing ‘One of Leonardo DaVinci’s paint brushes’. I will interview one of his note books!

I was going to film myself writing in the book of blank pages, then (like a Harry Potter movie) the book would write back to me, as per the animated text shown above...but I ran into another timely issue and that is Adobe After Effects is so slow, unless you have a ridiculous amount of ram...

Week 10 - Homework

We were given a task to invent our own fonts from cutting images out of magazines.  I originally started off by going with a block type of font, but finished it off by getting more and more creative with the forms of type for something interesting and more creative.

Week 10 – Workshop (online) 

We further discussed our progress with our “ASK ME ANYTHING” Assignment. We had one on one’s with our delightful teacher, Shayna! She gave me some real solid feedback/advice which as always has helped progress better/further with my assignments which I value a lot.

- In regards to my assignment I’d originally thought of creating an interview with my subject (which is ‘one of Leonardo Da Vinci’s paint brushes’).

I’m planning on doing a video interview of me interviewing the paint brush.

My first and favourite idea is to have some comedic charm about it, by me asking the brush the questions and the brush just doesn’t respond, because it’s just a paint brush. Whilst the interview is professionally filmed from effective camera angles to set the tone and feeling of a professional interview. Then because the brush doesn’t respond to me, I leave the room

There’s a pause…of just the scene showing the paint brush lying still, then the scene turns into a cartoon like format and the brush becomes alive, magically just like the brooms in Disney’s Mickey Mouse, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Fantasia. It writes all the questions and answers on Da Vinci’s papers he left lying around on the table where the scene takes place with the brush.

I have thought of 3 alternate options of how to create the interview:

1. Animated brush writing the answers like the magic brooms in Disney’s ‘Fantasia’

2. The brush can actually respond and you see a paint brush style script as subtitles on screen and I can either mind read as if I can hear the response as the viewer reads the subtitles or even as comedic approach, I can read the subtitles on screen too and break the 3rd wall of the film.

Week 9 – Homework

Respond to one of the Week 7 lecture list of questions our whole class asked.

Week 9 – Workshop (Online)

Today we further discussed Assignment 3 – My main subject of choice to interview is: ‘One of Leonardo DaVinci’s Paint Brushes’.

Some words from DaVinci:

“Asking why is always a better starting point than asking how, understanding the context is a more useful place to understand a problem than the symptoms themselves, and developing a better product starts by understanding what people seek to do with it, rather than what it actually is.”

Week 8 - Workshop (online)

Shapes font - We were each assigned a letter and 15 minutes to many as many forms of the letter, out of cut up shapes. I made cut ups of circles, triangles and went on to make as many forms of the letter ‘B’. It was suggested that we use coloured paper, but I didn’t have any lying around my house, so I coloured in some pages and used those to cut up.

Shayna responded to my design questions from the week 7 lecture.

Week 8 (Online)

Assignment 3

I had selected my top 5 designers of the past, design objects, typography, etc. But then after last week’s class, I decided to change some of my top 5 as the research being discussed briefly about some of them intrigued me, although main subject of choice to be interviewed remained the almost the same. This was Leonardo DaVinci, but to get even more into the spirit of the brief, I decided to interview One of Leonardo DaVinci’s Paint Brushes.

The reason I chose DaVinci and also a paint brush in particular, was for many reasons, one because I love painting and getting into that creative space, myself.

But also because of the creative type that DaVinci is and how his methodologies and design process immensely intrigues me in his pursuit of self-mastery.

My top 5 are:

One of Leonardo DaVinci’s Paint Brushes Leonardo Da Vinci is categorised as the greatest genius ever. He was a man of unquenchable curiosity with a feverishly inventive imagination.

Salvador Dali As an eccentric figure from childhood (much like myself), Dalí loved to push the boundaries—both in his personal and professional life. And he was also a hustler and master of self-promotion.

Andy Warhol Andy was known for his pop art and his work focuses of the crossover between celebrity, advertising and artistic expression.

Osaka Castle It has a rich history, that goes in sync with Japan’s overall history if constantly being burnt down and rebuilding from scratch, several times, but rebuilt even greater and greater every time. It’s story of the designer behind it is truly fascinating.

Week 8 – Lecture

The Futurist Cookbook

I love how they attempted to bring out more senses, than just the taste!

Such as:

Spraying perfume before you enter the room

Playing certain pieces of music to accompany foods, but not to be played while you’re eating, so your palette isn’t distracted and you can purely focus on the food

Ultra Voilet Rays

Ozonisers to liquid and foods the perfume of ozone

Electrilisers

Very mad genius way of thinking, but I love it!

In regards to the Week 7 Lecture we had to come up with questions for  Shayna/Andy.

These are my questions:

- Can you please come up with a sentence with the Gesamtkunstwerk in it, casually and seamlessly?

- Can you please tweak/cater the 'Building site testing design' diagram to a 'Communication Designer or Design Student'?

Assessment 3  The beginning  “Ask me anything!”

We were to discuss this interesting assignment. I was looking forward to this, as I already had an Australian designer in mind who is a big inspiration to me and I was keen to get to know more about him and his working methods and creativity process.

Then…

Andy Popped into the lesson…Honestly it was a nice surprise.

He and Shayna explained that there were changes to the brief and then went on to explain why they were making the changes and went further in depth as to how we are to go about executing this assignment.

My thoughts, these seemingly spur of the moment changes rattled my brain for a moment…Then as Andy and Shayna explained it more, my mind began to understand it and find it very exiting because it’s yet another new perspective and way of thinking about design.

Another reason why I’m loving this course so far. Always full of surprises and new challenges to help us learn and grow as designers.

Week 6 - Workshop (Online)

This time our activity was to find a design object in our home that we thought was ugly, so I found this painting (size about 1x1 metres).

To my surprise a lot of my class mates liked this painting. If only it wasn’t my family’s I would’ve happily sold it to one of you.