For this week’ s online class, I asked Shayna on how my zine was progressing and feedback. Shayna said that it’s good that I have expanded out of my comfort zone, and that this was a way better illustration compared to the vector drawing I did before this one. Shayna told me to look at the typography of my zine, and how I would place the text differently. She also told me to look at the hierarchy of the text, so my text wouldn’t just be right or left alligned.

As mentioned in my last post, Shayna suggested me to use watercolour brushes in Photoshop. I wanted to create pieces that have connections with nature, thus the clouds and the sunset. These will be included in the background of my zine, with other pieces as well. This is the first time I’m using photoshop to create pieces replicating actual paint; like watercolour and I think that this experience will be beneficial for me in the future.

So for today’s online class, Shayna wanted to give us feedback on our progress. As seen in the picture above, I wanted to go with a garden-ey feel to my zine because my artist is Claude Monet after all. I used Illustrator to create the background and filled them with pastel colours. However, Shayna suggested that this is quite far from Monet’s style, since he is into impressionism and it’s more to painting instead of illustrated vectors. I feel like this is a good feedback for me, as it can help me create something closer to Monet’s style, instead of focusing on what I’m used to. This is why I feel like constructive criticism is important in design, as it really helps us improve as an artist for the better. Shayna suggested to use watercolour brushes that were easily downloaded from the adobe site. 

For one of the homeworks, Shayna assigned us to make alphabets out of pictures from the magazine. The magazines I used were mostly fashion magazines, thus the makeups and clothes being involved. Overall, this was a fun task to do out of class, to refresh my mind into other ways of representing alphabets. 

For week 11’s lecture, Andy started off by introducing on what he was going to discuss. This week’s topics include What’s next for design, Project 3’s Delivery and creating the Zine. Karren started off by stating that since the advance of technologies, artists can now use different types of technologies to create their art, and she continued with the question of ‘How can design help humanity’. When I saw the video fo the eyewriter, it really reminded me how even when someone can’t express their thoughts by speaking or drawing, the brain is constantly full of ideas. The eyewriter is such a beneficial technology item that can help these people express their ideas. An example of technology that was being discussed in this week’s lecture is the Public Face located in Berlin. What this is is that it reads all of people’s tweets in twitter and it summarises whether how most people are currently feeling at the moment. If most people are writing positive tweets and happy emojis then the face will appear as a smile. This is a really interesting technology because not only is it advanced, but it also shows awareness on how people’s emotions, and if most people are feeling blue, maybe we cam help each other out.  

For week 10’s lecture, Andy started off by introducing on what he was going to discuss. This week’s topics include Why Design, Art & Design Activisms and the Final Project Discussion. Starting of with why design, he introduced that conceptualism started to appear in the early 20th century. Andy showed an example of an art piece by Marcel Duchamp, which was a male urinal and claimed that object into a piece of art. This shows that conceptualism can mean that an artist can claim an artwork, in the sense that ‘it is an outcome of their artistic activity’. This means that through conceptualism, artists does not need to create something that is made from clay, or an original painting and call it art because art is more than that. One of the other examples Andy showed that caught my eye was the piece by Tibor Kalman for Adbusters. The fact that he used the Calvin Klein branding into the chicken packaging as a representation on how some humans are used like objects, is something really interesting for me because I feel like I would never think of something like that. Especially when the phrase ‘Great Legs Nice Breasts’ was part of the label, it kind of represents how a certain body image is rather adored by society.

For today’s class, we started off by going through on what we were going to do today. Then, Shayna said she was going to go one on one with us, to discuss about our designer and the question and answers we made. I was first, as usual because of my name, and so I was put in a breakout group where it was only me and Shayna. I showed Shayna my questions and answers, and she gave me a super reasonable feedback. My question seemed a little bit too straight forward I’d say for an interview, I had to add in things an interviewer would actually ask to an interviewee. Shayna also asked me to show her my graphics but unfortunately I was not ready to show her this step. I’m planning to refine my questions, and will asap work on my graphics because I understand it is also an important part of the brief. 

Since I’m doing Claude Monet for my interview, this is one of my favourite piece from his works. I really like how the water can look really deep just from a painting, and how the lillies look like they are actually floating. One reason why I really like Claude Monet is that whenever I look at his paintings, they give out a peaceful vibe, and I love his colour choices, a lot of pastels and soft tones. 

I was looking at different types of zines, and this was one that caught my eye! Like my previous tumblr posts, I mentioned that I liked pastel colours, and I thought this is a really pretty zine, with interesting choice of colours. It looks like its trying to show a map, and I’m really inspired by it. 

For today’s class, Shayna updated us about our tumblrs, and the requirements that were needed to be found in our tumblrs. Personally, I have been trying my best to reblog, post every time I finish watching a lecture and recapping every online class we have. Then we discussed on how to references different sources, and she reminded us that we have to reference pictures as well. The site ‘Easy Cite’ can help us reference sources the correct way. We then were put into breakout groups, where we discussed our chosen designer and what the questions were. I was in a group with Brad, Jovina, Peter and Xinhan. The designers we chose include Leonardo Da Vinci, Claude Monet, Hokusai and Salvador Dalli. As per usual, Shayna was kind enough to email us our homework for week 10.