PNNGUYEN

OBJECTIVES

In week one, Andy made us answer a question about our goals and objectives while in this course. I said I wanted to be able to be confident in my abilities as a designer and be proud of my works.

I am very glad to announce that I have achieved my goal. I think I’ve come a long way as a designer from twelve weeks.

DISCOVERY

I have discovered that there are a lot of design movements. But my favourite is probably the Memphis Group and the Swiss Style. Something about their aesthetic is very appealing to me.

I have definitely unlocked the skill of zine making. Three weeks dedicated to a craft will do that to you.

And in terms of concepts or ideas, I really like the idea of design books and technology being used in design. It’s so fresh and sci-fi-esque.

INSPIRATION

I was really inspired by the Guerilla Girls and the United Colors of Benetton campaign that were mentioned in week ten. As a coloured female, it really speaks to me.

Another assignment, another daunting task. The prospect of this sounded really fun, but the idea of reaching out to someone I looked up to and asking them questions was yet another scary aspect. I had so many people I was thinking of that I couldn’t nail it down to five, let alone one, creative. Seeing as the limitations were very vague, it could have been anyone. But I managed to create a list of five individuals;

Michele Feghali; a graphic designer at Rooster Teeth who I really wanted to interview because of this project,

Josiah Brooks; a youtuber,

Baylee Jae; a youtuber,

A friend who’s a make up artist

A friend who’s a cake decorator.

I contacted the top three people through the contact section of their website, but none of them replied. I was a little upset by that because I really wanted to try printing the interview on a shirt for Creative No. 1.

I then reached out to litographs because I was still in love with printing something on a t-shirt. They did reply, but it was a negative response (they don’t have a team of designers who do their designs; they work with freelancers).

So I messaged Cognitive Surplus on tumblr. Didn’t get a response until I was already working on my project, which by then was too late.

The make up artist friend isn’t really someone I talk to all that much, so I felt weird about chatting her up after a few months of silence just to ask for help.

The cake decorator friend had too much going on all at once and I didn’t want to add to that, so I let her be.

I reached out to an internet friend for help, who told me she knew someone who was professional creative.

After asking questions, I found out her name was Maria La Duckworth, and she designs and makes jewellery, which I think it is pretty dang cool.

I asked her the questions, she answered, and then I asked for pictures of the jewellery she makes.

Because her profession is jewellery themed, I decided to stick with that, and go for a jewellery box where I put cards in the box that have pictures of her work on it.

I made a little prototype at home so I could see what it looked like, in terms of dimensions.

After seeing it all put together, I decided I didn’t want the box to be that deep. And I wanted the compartments to hold life sized jewellery in there. So I took my own necklace, found a box that perfectly fit it, and measured that for the necklace compartments. Did the same for the bracelet compartments, and I had a really big box (27 by 28, roughly).

Pretty big, but I did it anyway. It’s only on imgur because it wasn’t uploading to tumblr for some reason.

This first assignment was pretty scary. I had no idea what question to ask seeing as there was just so much freedom with it.

I finally decided on asking the question of: Is Space Needed in Design?

This is due to the fact that a lot of designers either fill up every corner of their canvas with detail, or, they leave it with a nice background, giving the design room to breathe.

Personally, I prefer the white space, but other people say it just looks empty and needs more work.

Now that I had my question, I needed something to do with it.

I went with a play of words thing, where space can be interpreted to mean the thing outside of Earth, where the stars live. Because of this, I used paper stars for my project.

There are 229 of them. There’s another pile that’s called “no”, but they don’t deserve to be on camera there’s 102 of them taunting me.

And it still wasn’t enough. I had to reuse some of the stars which irked seeing as I wanted each star to be different and unique from each other, but I ran out of star paper.

After I put all the stars together to form their letters, I edited them and compiled them so that I could see what they look like. Once I was happy with position, and gave the poster some white space, I added a white fill and set the Blending Mode to Difference because negative and space.

WEEK ELEVEN: What’s Next For Design?

In class, we were introduced to the concept of franken-models, or rapid prototyping. It’s sounds like normal prototyping, or mock ups, but less refined and more experimental I think?.

For the AMA assignment, I was going to interview my friend who decorates cakes and cupcakes. I wanted the questions and answers printed on the cakes and have an origami cake where each slice would have a paragraph.

In the workshop, we learnt how to fold and make zines. We were told what a signature was, and how paper can saddle each other.

It was all very interesting. I remember learning the smaller zine technique in primary school, but I never thought it was a legit technique. Who knew folding zines was so easy?