What is so darn special about this tablet? Well, as a beginning designer and illustrator deeply invested in the world of digital art, I believe the Wacom Cintiq 24 Pro stands apart as a potentially game-changing tool that can help redefine boundaries of creative expression for many designers and illustrators out there. Read on for details about the Cintiq 24 Pro’s usage, capabilities, and what sets it apart from other similar products. Lastly, learn why I think this tool could enhance not only my learning and development as an illustrator/designer, but could also benefit many students if added to the SCCA arsenal of gadgetry.
USAGE AND CAPABILITIES
Expansive 24-Inch Display:
The Cintiq 24 Pro comes with a generously sized 24-inch display, offering a sizable canvas for intricate detailing and larger projects. The 4K resolution ensures total clarity, making it a great tool for artists seeking precision and realism in their work.
Pro Pen 2:
This standout feature, with 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity and tilt recognition, provides a natural and fluid drawing/painting experience, similar in motion and appearance to traditional media. Artists can capture subtleties of their vision and style with total precision.
Ergonomic Design:
The Cintiq 24 Pro’s ergonomic design is a crucial consideration for artists who spend extended hours on their work. The adjustable stand allows artists to customize the working angle, providing comfort and reducing physical strain over time. This ergonomic design demonstrates a deep understanding of user experience, of the artist’s needs and perspective.
Etched Glass:
This model uses etched glass, which has tiny cuts on the surface, providing resistance and stopping the stylus from sliding too much – giving the artist greater control. The etched surface of the glass also gives the tablet a matte texture, reducing glare and reflections and allowing the artist to comfortably work in a bright environment.
Expresskey Remote:
Expresskey enables shortcuts like Pan, Zoom, Scroll as well as ability to change the size of the brush and eraser. The Expresskey remote also supports other Shortcut features like Radial Menu and Precision Mode.
What Sets the Cintiq 24 Pro apart?
The precision ( .1mm stylus accuracy) we see with the Pro Pen 2 tech and the color accuracy and high, 4k resolution of the tablet help artists bring their ideas to life much more effectively than most other tools on the market, while the ergonomic design goes even further in setting it apart from its competitors. In today’s landscape, where AI image generators often produce impressive visuals, artificially-made visuals still tend to lack the underlying artistic message, style, and/or emotional depth that artists uniquely bring to their work (using tools such as the Cintiq 24 Pro!). Furthermore, the Pro Pen 2 capabilities, especially pressure sensitivity, allow artists to infuse their work with nuance and individual style. As it stands, AI is incapable of convincingly conveying those elements of artistic vision.
The Cintiq 24 Pro seems to align well with the demands of the industry. Its capabilities are well-suited to address the challenges faced by today’s digital artists.
Why should SCCA consider acquiring this tool?
I can think of a number of reasons, including but not limited to:
attracting top talent with shiny new toys (/demonstrating commitment to providing cutting edge tools for students to use in preparation of joining a highly competitive industry)
fostering collaboration between students through multitouch features, giving them a better sense of the reality of working closely on creative teams
reducing risk of physical strain for students who work long hours on projects
giving students a way to efficiently and beautifully bring their ideas to life, helping them to build strong portfolios, which then reflect favorably on the program
In conclusion, the Wacom Cintiq 24 Pro is not just a piece of hardware. It paves the way for a new era of digital creativity. As an aspiring illustrator and graphic designer, I’m convinced that having it in my toolkit would result in more refined and interesting work. For the SCCA program, investing in the Cintiq 24 Pro would not only benefit individual students, but also elevate the entire program through embracing the latest advancements in digital art tech. It’s an investment in the future of art and design and its practitioners, setting the stage for creativity and excellence within this program and beyond.
BEING A DISRUPTOR- such an interesting and important consideration. When I think about the term “disruptor,” what immediately comes to mind is the image of the passionately outspoken agent of radical (and often uncomfortable for others) change, particularly in social, environmental, or political landscapes. When it comes to design, I think of being a disruptor in terms of breaking away from stylistic stagnation, forging new paths, breaking ground in terms of accessibility, innovation, empathy, sustainability, and creativity. Also drawing upon (often difficult, harrowing, or mind-expanding) lived experiences in order to infuse what one does with a unique style and set of ideas that inspire innovative and/or radical change, or at least, cause others to ponder things in ways they previously had not.
My career and life to this point have equipped me with a unique blend of experiences that I hope to channel into whatever I wind up doing in the creative sphere. My unorthodox path has set me on a somewhat unusual trajectory, having gone from the culinary world, to the NYC music-in-advertising hustle, to life on the anarchist goat farm, to teaching college classes, to an abusive relationship as I care for a young child, to life as a hopelessly misfit mom, to graphic design school! From multi-faceted professional roles to profound personal experiences, my journey has been anything but ordinary.
As a composer and performer in NYC, despite creative contributions that largely matched or exceeded those of my workplace peers, I frequently faced skepticism, patronizing attitudes, lower pay, and inferior treatment compared to male colleagues. I often felt undervalued, in terms of remuneration, accurately credited work, workplace attitudes, etc. This woke me up to the persistence of gender bias in creative fields.
Feeling burned out and seeking a completely different perspective on life, I took a break(-ish, aside from occasional freelance gigs and my own EP project) from music and moved back to the west coast, living and working on a couple communal permaculture farms, in CA and OR. Sharing meals, resources, and ideas with (sometimes very eccentric) strangers and landmates expanded my worldview immensely. In both instances, we grew much of our own food (about 75-80% during harvest seasons) and worked together tirelessly to maintain closed-circuit, small-scale agriculture systems, produce very little waste, and live more or less completely off-grid. Creativity flowed freely through everyday life in community, but I quickly learned that despite my disillusionment with mainstream politics that led me to farm livin’, politics persist in life, anytime people share living spaces and/or responsibilities, no matter how much you may try to distance yourself from such things. Utopian ideals are exactly that- ideals. Not realistic, as long as human fallibility persists. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise. And furthermore, both farming and having babies result in dealing with epic amounts of sh*t, in the most literal, physical sense, in case anyone is curious. Glossy grammable photos of cute goats, veggies, and babies are highly misleading. But anyway, back to the path of disruption…
When it came time to move on from (not-as-idyllic-as-hoped) farm life, my love of music and teaching led me to become a college instructor at PSU. Teaching music lit a passion for education that still motivates me as a teacher and parent, as well as a skepticism of questionable pedagogical methods. I respect teachers and personally aspire to teach in ways that inspire questions, curiosity, growth, and challenging norms, rather than dictating and imparting set ways of doing things.
Outside of work, becoming a mother has been my most profound and life-altering experience. Raising my son as a single parent after surviving significant domestic and emotional abuse showed me depths of pain, courage, strength, and purpose I never imagined. My child is absolutely the driving force behind my determination to forge new paths in my creative career and ways of expressing myself, as well as setting an example for him that models resilience and growth along with adaptation, determination, and OF COURSE- continued disruption.
I’m fully ready to bring a disruptive, human-centered ethos to my career path in design. User empathy will be central to my approach, with a focus on amplifying diverse and historically devalued voices and perspectives. I hope to balance supporting myself and my son with making a socially and creatively impactful difference to whatever work environments my education and future career may hold.
I hope to open doors for women and marginalized groups who are underrepresented in leadership roles. So many of us continue to face barriers or bias as we navigate career and family, and it’s up to us to keep striving for leveling the playing field. Furthermore, those with genuine talent, potential, vision, and drive should be given opportunities to succeed in creative careers, no matter their background. I plan to advocate strongly for empathetic workplace policies benefiting parents, caregivers, women, minorities, and diverse voices of all kinds. The field of design absolutely requires that we continue to pioneer models of diversity and inclusion, disruption and fair representation of people from ALL walks of life.
Ultimately, I hope to uplift others through my work. My experiences equip me to both reach and advocate for people from a huge range of life experiences and backgrounds. As a low-key yet hardcore antiauthoritarian, I’m excited to continually disrupt norms in order to re-center integrity, inclusivity, equity, empathy, health, originality, and true innovation in the design industry. Our collective future depends on it.
For our group project, we chose markets, and I personally chose the Ballard Farmers Market, which has been a favorite weekend destination over the years.
In terms of solving a user problem, I chose the angle of providing more context for the market experience, as most other info (such as hours, location, specific offerings, market navigation, etc) is either fairly typical and straightforward, or irrelevant once shoppers arrive at the market.
More specifically, the entire Ballard neighborhood, including the farmers market, is heavily influenced by maritime and Nordic heritage and culture, which I felt should be added to the AR experience in order to give context to the market experience, alongside some other popular neighborhood destinations that might be interesting to shoppers, tourists, etc, after visiting the market. I kept my focus on family-friendly destination options, keeping in mind that much of the target demographic includes children and families.
I created largely transparent panels, thinking about many of the mostly-blank, light-colored building facades in the area, where the QR code could be easily displayed, perhaps next to a colorful mural, in order for visitors to pull up this panel information before walking through the market itself.
Lu was kind enough to create templates in Illustrator that could be adapted for each project, for the sake of consistency across our group. I used her templates as a jumping off point for my project, incorporating the market logo and various vendor logos, as well as an animated fresh produce gif as my backdrop. Below is an image of my panels, as well as a progress photo, putting everything together in Eyejack.
Lastly, here is a quick video demonstrating the AR experience I created. Unfortunately, I was not able to test it on location, as the market is only open on Sundays.
This week, I tested out the augmented reality coloring app, QuiverVision, to evaluate both user experience and educational value. While the app shows some promise, there were several pain points I noticed, that would be especially impactful for young users.
The onboarding process was confusing for me as an adult, no doubt even more so for children to manage independently. Requiring account registration by email before gaining access added unnecessary complexity compared to most apps targeting 6-10 year olds. Streamlining this process would definitely improve overall approachability.
Concerning educational content, the free version consisted of only a couple vaguely “educational” pages amidst more generic options. Expanding free access to include more substantive educational content would better align with the app’s billing as a learning resource. Ideally, some more free options that include science, history, and math subject matter could provide better enrichment for young learners.
Technically, I found the augmented reality animations in this app to be highly prone to glitching and errors. Frequently needing to re-scan colored pages due to AR failure points to optimization needs. Smoothing AR responsiveness and function, expanding device compatibility, improving tilt tolerance, and solidifying educational concepts behind animations would create a much more seamless experience.
While QuiverVision certainly shows creativity in transforming a typical coloring book activity into an interactive AR experience for kids, the execution falls short. Addressing frictions around registration, educational content, and technical performance could help the app live up to its premise. Furthermore, a focus on optimizing not just for engagement, but also for accessibility, enrichment, and delight for younger users, could really elevate overall user experience.
My letter was I. This letter appears pretty much everywhere. I gave myself the slight added challenge of finding a serif typeface “I” with crossbars on the top and bottom. The most interesting example I found was across the street from campus. See below.
Why Berlin? Though I haven’t spent extensive time here, I’m fascinated by Germany generally, especially through the lens of creativity and the arts, history, culture, and design.
When it comes to design, I think immediately of the Bauhaus movement, modernist architecture, automotive design, and more recently, about Berlin’s role as a leader in sustainable design, in everything from urban planning to product design, to green architecture. Within the (often depressing) landscape of late-stage capitalist corporate culture, it’s refreshing to consider circular design and post-growth capitalism principles- C2C philosophy, extended producer responsibility, and the concept of zero waste, which seem to be central to contemporary design thinking in Germany (see here and here). Berlin is also at the forefront of industry within the realm of UX and interaction design, with both a strong tech industry and a focus on usability and user interaction across a wide array of products and services.
Outside of design, Berlin is, and has been, a major hub for all kinds of creative pursuits, particularly as an incubator of new and exciting ideas, up-and coming creatives, and emerging art forms- all within what strikes me as a very welcoming environment that is willing to embrace and encourage innovation across disciplines.
Lastly, the history of Berlin is intriguing to me in terms of impact and relevance to art, culture, and design. What comes to mind, specifically? Everything from the flourishing arts scene of the Weimar Republic, to the devastating and complicated impact of both World Wars and the Cold War/Berlin Wall, to the reunification and transformation eras that followed, all of which shaped the culture and creative scene immensely.
I chose this particular listing because it seems to tap into the welcoming entrepreneurial spirit that is unique to the city. On a personal level, it relates to my interests in fun UX/UI design with what I imagine would be a high degree of individual artistic liberty. I like the idea of incorporating UI elements, graphics, and animations within the context of game development. Additionally, my fascination with storytelling seems highly applicable to the world of games and world-building.
Oh, and my brother lives in Berlin. He rules. Below are some knife magnets he made.
TL;DR is above, but for anyone who wants all the gruesome details of my life this week, read on. It starts with basic timeline tracking, but by the end, devolves into a full-blown rant, as you will see. I posted it and then deleted it out of embarrassment last night, but the fact is: it came from a (brutally) honest place and deserves to be in this post.
Saturday
Wake up at 7
Guests coming this w/e from Portland, so rush to put new mattresses on guest beds, make guest beds and bake pumpkin muffins+make crm chz frosting for son’s soccer game snacks
Wake Aspen (son) at 8 and make breakfast for 3
Run around Green Lake with Cory from 9-10, shower
Pick up weekend guests (Chelsea and Liam) from King St train station at 11
Head straight home and get Liam and Chelsea situated in rooms, feed them lunch after train ride
Head to soccer game at 1
Home at 3
Visit with Chelsea 3-4:30
4:41 send msg to Barry Sevig, expressing my mild annoyance at him for ghosting me on Friday after he suggested we meet up at the end of the wk, telling him I’d still like to be friends and be able to discuss design, SCCA, work, workflow tips, travels, kids, custody BS, etc
4:45 regret sending msg, oops
Grocery shopping 4:50-4:45
Make dinner until 6
Eat until 7
More visiting, then work on sketches for Jason 8-8:30
Aspen bedtime + reading routine 8:30 – 9:15
Unwind and talk with Chelsea, make sure she and Liam have everything they need for the evening- 9:30- 10:30
Sleep
Sunday
Wake up at 7, stare out the window like a zombie
Collect and start laundry at 7:15
Wake kid and make him quick snack at 7:45
Marie (supervisor) picks up my son for 2-hour supervised visit with his dad 8am (which is the only time he is not in my care- every other week on Sunday)
9am pick up pastries and coffees for brunch with overnight guests from Honore Bakery
9:30 eat breakfast
10am-12:30 drive to teach hour-long piano lesson, then half hour piano lesson (10:30-11:30a, 11:45-12:15p, then guests pick me up, then home), meanwhile, guests take car over to Ballard fmr’s mkt
12:45p lunch of leftovers
1:30p take guests to King St train stn by 2pm, say goodbyes
2:30 zoom call with brother Ben to go over some coding and web design tips and tricks, continually getting interrupted by my son and my partner, both of whom I have been largely neglecting
3-3:45 keep working on website, get bogged down b/c exhaustion and frustrating dead ends
4p start dinner
5:30p change over and fold laundry
6p eat
7p-9p kid bath time, quick room tidy, storytime, bedtime
9-9:30 drink some green tea and ponder the meaning of life
9:45 collab with Kris on web design, VSCode, frequently get stuck
THREE AM- finally go to bed, after completely rabbit-holing on the coding stuff, arguably the most regrettable thing I do all week
Monday
7:15 wake up, shower
7:25-8:15a the usual ABSOLUTE MAD SCRAMBLE to get kid up and dressed and collected and fed and his lunch made and drive him to school and drop him off and back home, get my sh*t together, remember something important after I’m out the door and halfway down the block, run back, then out the door again to catch the light rail, just missing the usual 8:30 train, then forced into running up all the train stn flights of stairs and school flights of stairs to arrive in Erik’s class at the stroke of 9am, feeling extremely groggy and only somewhat prepared to present website project with Kris
9-2 Erik’s class
2-2:30: design history research project
2:30-4: edit restaurant promo video for Friday class, continuing to (trial by fire) teach myself basic proficiency in Premier Pro, hoping that Ben (Masters, not brother) won’t be too let down
4:15 train home, scoop my son from folks’ house (didn’t make it in time for bus stop pickup, obv)
4:30: get home, make snack for Aspen, help him with his reading homework, say yes to playdate with his buddies
4:50-5:30: on duty hosting 2 neighbor kids, halfway working on research proj but also just zoning out staring out the window
5:30 make dinner
6:30 watch half an episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” with my kid, who is obsessed
7:15-8:45 kid bedtime routine
9-11 somewhat more focused work on the design history project and sketches, but still exhausted and distracted by episodes of Gilmore Girls being watched by my partner next to me. Send some more sketches to Jason at 10:35p
11-1:30am try to sleep but can’t, mind racing, weirdly fixated on Caroline Polachek’s performance of “Dang” on the Late Show, as well as Leonor Fini and Margaret McDonald Mackintosh, who I stumbled on while researching Art Deco mvmt, (but of course I went rabbit-holing into prominent women artists in Surrealism, Modernism, Art Nouveau, and other topics), so I read a bunch more about them, then remember there is actually required reading for Gabriel’s class, so I get about halfway through it
Tuesday
7:00-8:25 same as yesterday, ALWAYS AN ANXIETY-INDUCING MAD SCRAMBLE
9-2 Gabriel’s class, during which time I mostly pay attention while freaking out about all the things I have to get done this week
2:15-7 AND HERE’S WHERE IT STARTS TO GET UGLY
Get feedback from Jason on latest sketches, submit to him what I hope are final sketches ready for approval (*about the same time another student submits hers, btw- she is across the rm from me. She almost immediately hears back, receiving approval.)
I do not hear from Jason, so I get started with solutions in Illustrator, staying at school working on them late because I can’t remember a damn thing I have learned in Illustrator and I’d rather act like I’ve never touched it before, apparently.
I print out what I have, am about to finally leave school, and at last I receive msg back from Jason at 6:36pm, stating:
“Getting closer, but I am not completely convinced that Fast and slow is as successful as it could be.”
Quickly becoming infuriated, I decide it’s time to go home, but not before responding to his email with the following:
“Hi Jason, I had to move ahead with the project, as I have specific windows I can dedicate to schoolwork (7 y/o at home, part time work outside of school). Below is where I landed with solutions, but I will go back and work on fast/slow sketches this evening, hopefully hear from you in time to make edits in Illustrator tonight and print prior to class tomorrow.”
[enclosed screenshot of illustrator file]
I submit several more solutions as soon as I return home, but hear nothing from him before class the next day. I complete my second set of solution attempts in Illustrator painfully early the next morning, the work is going slowly and sloppily, with only a glimmer of faint hope that is quickly overshadowed by the sinking feeling that I am continuing to miss the mark and furthermore, that my brain works NOTHING like Jason’s, that our communication styles completely mismatch, and IDK how tf I’m going to survive that class or this program. FULL STOP.
Next day: USUAL MORNING SHITSHOW getting my boy ready for/delivered to school. Inevitably I am running late so I reach out to Kris, hoping he can possibly do me a favor and print my second set of solutions if he’s already at school, which he kindly does (thank you, Kris).
I arrive for class, and am now shaking and crying, exceedingly frustrated, losing it, and finding it impossible to pull myself together for most of the duration of critique and Jason’s class, feeling like if I have to hear him say, “to make ____, SIMPLY _____” one more time, I might actually explode. Also getting frustrated by my perfectly lovely classmates who somehow solved these same word sets using single lines, or simple circles with dashes, a long time ago. Everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong. I don’t get it. I worked with 3 shifting variables, thinking it would be an interesting approach. It seems he only wanted there to be one variable. I wish he would have stated that directly. I failed the exercise. I may well fail the class. I channel my feelings by drawing grumpy looking (but should be cheerful, it’s for an elementary school) marmots due the following day for Jill’s logo project. None are usable, if I’m being honest. But I have at least 20 more to do in the morning, so maybe something magical will happen then.
Turns out I survive the day, but not without a lot of tears and frustration and doubt and wondering wth I’m doing trying to be a mom, a music teacher, a partner- while trying to make it through this program alive.
My partner, who has been picking up way more than his share of slack on the home front, wants me to get groceries and cook dinner, apparently not recognizing that I am a quivering, sobbing mess who is incapable of anything but basic survival for the remainder of the day. He takes my son to soccer practice while I order takeout from Korean Tofu House (highly recommend) and I go pick it up in time for their return from soccer an hour later.
Not hungry, I soon devolve into tears again, finally calling my mom, who tries in vain to be reassuring (*side note, I do legitimately struggle with a mood disorder, and stress/overwhelm affect me differently than many).
Crash hard around 10pm.
I think Wednesday happened somewhere in there but I’m still not sure.
Tomorrow is a new day.
Thursday
Wake up at 5am with the mantra: Today is a new day. Today is a new day. Today is a new day.
I complete as many logo sketches as possible before waking my son at 7 (I wound up with about 27/30, hating 99% of them)
ABSOLUTE SHITSHOW/MAD SCRAMBLE as usual getting my son and myself launched, nonstop action until I show up, out of breath for Jill’s class, at 9:02, having been unable to upload my sketches to her project slideshow.
Sit down and quickly convert .heic photo files into something more compatible. Just in time for group critique. Make it through class but barely.
Complete and send sketch to Jason for next Illustrator project. A very organically-shaped and reflective glass pitcher. Immediately wonder why I chose that object, when I could have picked a can of soup.
More work on Ben’s project after class, communicating to Shayne all the edits that will need to be made to my video and audio sometime tonight, hoping I’m not making him feel like I felt yesterday, BUT ALSO hoping the project gets done in a timely and successful manner.
Write a conclusion for Ben class final project, hoping it is met with grp/teacher approval, but also no longer caring that much.
Marc walks in and tells us all that we shouldn’t exhaust ourselves. We will never make it if we are too tired to do anything well, or to enjoy life.
I am too tired to do anything well or enjoy life.
Sorry guys, but there will be no infographics.
Maybe an excel spread later tonight if I get to it but absolutely no promises.
I have very little good to say about this week or how I navigated it, and I know the expectation is an excel spread or cute infographic, but before I bore you with that in my next post, here are some things that I found interesting/relatable/inspiring/motivating, in no particular order:
What I tried to say: Supercalifragilisticexpiantidisestablishmentarianism. What I should have said: Hi.
I was impressed by Paolo Tosolini’s presentation last Friday, particularly by his ability to conceive of applications for all kinds of emerging technologies, using hybrid approaches tailored to clients’ needs.
Personally, I found the Polycam app a bit glitchy, and it is not a tool that I can see myself using with much frequency in the future…but I’m glad I tried it! A few failed attempts + a few groan-inducing giraffe jokes later (though none as good as this one⤵️) aaaand it’s a wrap! See below.
Bringing a Playful Edge to Capitol Hill Block Party
In my poster design for PinkPantheress’ show at Capitol Hill Block Party, I was inspired by her unique blend of Y2K pop, bedroom production, and tongue-in-cheek lyrics, hoping to communicate what I perceive as a distinctly youthful (yet still evolving!) style.
I drew upon elements of her youtube official visualizer video for “Passion”, which features eye-catching neon hues with vibrant pops of pink, blue, and green, countered by a hint of darkness implied on the left hand side. Animated neon graphics and softly blended edges between shapes and hues guided my poster’s color palette – a hot pink and black, darker and edgier background inspired by the artist name and heavier thematic undertones, featuring the text and hand-drawn panther image in the neon green, soft pink, and electric blue hues sourced from the video, to tie it all together. The goal was to make it exciting and playful, but with an edginess (particularly noticeable in the ominous panther eyes at the bottom-of-page border) true to the artist (example here). I wanted it to be digitally-inspired and youthful, mirroring PinkPantheress’ style (and age). By incorporating graphic shapes, subtle glitch effects, and bold typography with a touch of handmade imperfection (see tail of panther, as an example), I blended digital and DIY sensibilities, hoping for an end result that is something colorful and lively, yet just left-of-center enough to feel true to the artist.
I chose Cinzel Decorative font for the first half of the artist name, as its stylized serifs and fading letterforms inject a trippy, psychedelic effect. For contrast, I went with the strong geometric sans-serif Bebas Neue in all caps for “Pantheress”. As a final touch, I found Anton’s refined yet rounded shape (slightly crystallized) to be just right for the show details. The font trio complements her playfully eclectic style.
Despite some darker undertones, PinkPantheress retains a sense of innocence and cheekiness. I hope this poster captures that balance – vivid fun colors and playful shapes blended with mildly distorted effects and shadowy areas, with an end product that walks the line between light and dark.
