Liz Clagett

Freedom to Express

Freedom to Express has me thinking about how many nail art influencers instagram has been serving me lately. I’ve gotten really into nail art on instagram, and the algorithm keeps feeding me more of it. I’ve never been one to paint my nails, let alone have glue on acrylics. But I’m starting to really want to buy a set of these over the top nails. Obviously, this is somewhat the opposite of freedom since I’ve been convinced to buy something I never would have seen had instagram not found a way to capture my attention and make money off me…. But…. I’ve been embracing more over the top cutesy, girly stuff. Which is weird for me. I think its partially a teenage rebellion thing that is arriving late. My mom always looked down on women who were overly feminine. I’ve started embracing some of those things that would drive her crazy, like these totally impractical nails. It’s way more fun than never trying these things out. Anyway, I’ll probably buy a set at some point.

Freedom to Explore

Freedom to Explore makes me think of one of my favorite instagram accounts: @letspainttv. John Kilduff is an artist who makes these awesome low-budget multi media videos. They’re usually of him painting while doing other things and saying inspirational things. In this video I took a still from he’s painting, riding a stationary bike, and saying: “Life will work for you. Life will make sense for you. At some point in time, life will make sense. It doesn’t have to make sense now. It will make sense. It will come to you. Keep going. You’ll figure it out.”

I love his message, and I love the way he treats art making. For him, it’s a necessity but he’s not treating it as too precious. And he’s adding as many additional elements to the process as he can: video, riding a bike, giving a speech, sometimes playing a piano (really poorly). To me he embodies the idea of freedom to explore, and his videos, without being explicit about it, give permission to others to explore as well.

Freedom From Expectation

@webelongseattle: Annya

Freedom from Expectation made me think of a recent gallery show I saw. The show featured photographs of AAPI women holding photos of their younger selves. Each photo was accompanied by a story by the woman photographed of her name and what it means to her and how her name has changed or not changed over the years to either escape the expectations of family, or make it easier for English speaking people to pronounce, or embrace their heritage, or try to branch out on their own, or embrace their gender identity. It was a really fascinating an emotional look at what many AAPI women deal with in learning to claim their own identities through family societal pressure. It was a good reminder, for me, that you don’t know all of the pressures people are dealing with internally, and, for many, finding your own identity can be a painful process.

Seattle Kraken

Here is my solution for a fun mural representing my mother.

My mom is very expressive and goofy. When we went to italy when I was young, my mom loved the facial expressions and hand gestures the Italians made.

Ever since that trip, my mom has loved to do this facial expression where you use your finger to pull down your lower eyelid. It’s something you might do behind another person’s back to say “don’t believe a word of this bullshit.” Or jokingly to a friends face to suggest they’re stretching the truth.

Its sassy and pokes fun in a friendly way. I love that my mom attached to this gesture and it always makes me think of her.

I chose to design a food truck for Bongos because I live near there and I love them for many reasons. First, they have great food. But more importantly, the architecture of bongos is delightful. It’s right on aurora in a spot you wouldn’t think would work for a restaurant, and, until recently the eating area was picnic tables in sand. It just has such weird and fun vibes.

Also, last time I was there I saw they had merch, which I got so excited about, but then I saw they made a terrible logo with a tribal man playing bongos that’s pretty distasteful. I really love what they did with the lettering, though, and I’ve been wishing they had sweatshirts with just the lettering and not the character.

So for designing the food truck, I immediately knew I wanted to use their new lettering. I wanted to incorporate bright colors that they have at the restaurant and evoke the colors of the Caribbean, which is the type of food Bongo’s serves. I also thought it would be fun to incorporate a plantain into the design of the truck since almost every dish there features plantains. It also contrasts nicely with the bright Caribbean teal/blue I chose for the truck and gives it a fun vibe.

I think this design is clean, simple, and modern. It’s not overcrowded with information, yet it makes a strong, memorable statement. The bright blue and the plantain will make the truck memorable as well as playful and will draw people in. The design is in keeping with Bongos’ sense of fun and adventure, as well as mystery. I think among other Seattle food trucks, it would really stand out. I would eat from this food tuck!

I had a lot of fun collaborating with Walker and Dean for our blender video project. This was my first time meeting and talking with either of them and they are both delightful people.

We took a lot of time to brainstorm our story idea which was a very collaborative process. Walker especially was a good editor. I had a lot of ideas but he was good at noticing when a line or story point wasn’t quite right and needed work, which was very helpful.

We had trouble getting past or original idea of having it all be a dream. In the end, though, I think we simplified our story in a way that made it make more sense.

It was really great seeing how Dean’s creative mind worked. He had a lot of ideas off the bat of the tone of our video. He brought the element of unsettling horror to our movie. He had a lot of ideas of how to translate that into lighting and different types of shots. He said editing was his favorite part of the process, which he did a great job at, but I think he’s underselling his abilities as a videographer. He had a strong vision for how he wanted to shoot each shot and what the lighting needed to be. He had a lot of nervous energy about him but I could tell it was from wanting everything to be perfect.

We all had fun building our set and finding outfits for our characters. Walker did a little bit of voiceover work for the event announcer in our movie.

Overall, the project was a lot of work and involved a lot of planning, but it was a really great experience. I’ve never put together a video like this before and I learned a lot from it. And I really enjoyed seeing everyone else’s videos as well. It was also a great way to get to know some visual media students and have a project that played to their strengths. I also tend to freeze up when coming up with ideas out of the blue, so it was really freeing to have our three sticky notes. It felt like the story wrote itself and we were just there to facilitate it.

If I had $25,000 to donate to a local non-profit, I would give it to Coyote Central.

https://coyotecentral.org/

Coyote Central is an arts organization for kids. They run classes and after school/ during break programs for kids and teens year- round.

I think a lot about kids and teens and how they use their free time and what opportunities they have to connect with others. I think after school programs are so important for building connections between kids and give opportunities for kids to have older mentors. They were really important for me growing up. When my family decided I was old enough to stay at home alone and I stopped going to after school programs, I remember it being a really lonely time in my life. Childcare is so expensive, but so important, and organizations like coyote offer kids a third space to make connections and be themselves outside of school and their homes and build individual identities and explore interests. Spaces like this need to be far more accessible for all families. Most Coyote’s programs are “pay what you will,” which allows kids to access their services no matter their economic background. I also am a huge believer in the power of arts to expand minds and help individuals develop into well-rounded human beings.

I had the luck to participate in one coyote workshop as a teen and it was a lot of fun. We all worked on building a treehouse together. We learned carpentry techniques and got to meet a local craftsperson and get to know an elder in our community. It was also a great opportunity to meet other kids from across Seattle of all different backgrounds and work together on a common goal.

A donation of $25,000 would allow Coyote Central to continue offering free and low-cost programs like this to kids in need.

Stanley’s Dog bowl branding takes us back to the early days of the brand, which centered the outdoors and natural colors in the design. The brand will also be dog-forward, with lots of compelling pictures of happy, healthy dogs. The outdoors should be featured prominently, but it should be an accessible vision of the outdoors, such as picnicking and car camping–not an elite form of the outdoors, such as climbing or backpacking, so that the brand may evoke a sense of nature and adventure, without being exclusive to people who may be less familiar with outdoor hobbies.

Three Design systems I looked at: the Guardian, Audi, and MailChimp.

The Guardian:

https://design.theguardian.com/

This was the first one I checked out. It’s interesting to see what a design system looks like. In Erik’s class we’ve been making our own design systems so its interesting to see what it might look like to have a job somewhere that already has a design system in place.

I enjoy how playful the Guardian’s brand is. They have several colors, which are defined in the design system and have several tints for each. I especially like their use of highlight throughout their site, which they have defined colors for.

I’m surprised at how many variations they have for different cards, fonts, and type sizes. It all still looks cohesive, despite the many options they have to mix and match with their cards.

I also enjoyed the ways they indicate different sections of the paper with different colors for each and different rules styles for each.

I’m also just surprised at how open they are about their design systems–down to the number of pixels used to space things. I guess I’m not sure what the downside of sharing so much would be, but it’s pretty cool that they publish how it’s made.

Audi

https://www.audi.com/ci/en/renewed-brand.html

In contrast to The Guardian’s flexibility, Audi’s design site is excited to announce that now there are 3 options for how to display their iconic rings! Clearly they’re not open to much wiggle room in the expression of their logo. They express the rings should be “plain and simple” and as I looked, I saw they never have dimension, drop shadows, or color. Always flat and white or black. They also have very specific directions on how the logo may be cut off and by how much.

Also in contrast to the Guardian, Audi only has three colors–black, white and red, and does not allow tints of the red.

They only have one font, with three variations. And they don’t allow all caps.

It’s interesting contrasting this brand with the Guardian. They seem to have given themselves far fewer variation possibilities, but the site and brand are still very successful. But I guess that makes sense since the Guardian deals with a ton of words and different types of pictures, whereas Audi has a lot of similar imagery and fewer words.

MailChimp

https://ux.mailchimp.com/patterns/color

MailChimp also uses a lot of colors, which makes sense, since the deal with calendars, emails, and notifications.

I thought it was cool that in their Grid section, MailChimp designers include the code that’s used on the back end of their website to make different types of columnar layouts.

And the more I look through their site, the more I’m realizing that maybe this design system/ brand guideline is for the use of anyone who might work for mailchimp or contracts with them to refer to since there’s a lot of code on here.

They have two typefaces, a “brand typeface” and a “supporting font.”