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Today, close to sunset, I went for a meditation walk across a bridge in Ravenna Park, the neighborhood I live in. During my meditation practice, I bring myself back to the present moment by focusing my mind on an object in nature. As someone whose mind often feels scattered by a long list of priorities and thoughts about the goals I’ve set for myself, I notice myself being shifted to past and future thoughts—or just thoughts about myself and my place in the world.

Noticing my surroundings by focusing on a visual thing, often a tree in passing, helps me shift thoughts away from myself, and get out of my own head. This is relevant to my creative process, because my favorite artistic experiences as a viewer create a similar effect: I feel lost in what the artist has produced and it takes me away from my everyday experiences. I also think about how much of my thoughts in my own head relate to control: setting a goal, being in control of time and responsibilities, creating a specific outcome. 

In opposition to that, in creative pursuits I have always been drawn towards improvisational ways of creating, because the outcomes of these works feel less controlled. As someone who seeks balance in my life, I hope to be able to channel both the controlled and the less controlled parts of myself in my creative and professional endeavors. 

Creating my mood board for Pet Cube, I focused on natural lighting, plants, friendly interactions between pet and owner, and sleek interior design. I intend to create a friendly and inviting tone in depicting interior spaces by balancing the warm tones of wood and sunlight with white and cool tones. Additionally, because the product is high-tech, I see the gradient tones being used in graphic design elements to capture the innovative nature of the work.

The following are my insights about differences between different forms of graphic design employment:

Fulltime: Strengths include potential for health insurance/benefits, employment longevity, stability. Weaknesses include commitment, somewhat less flexibility, could take longer to find work.

Part-time: Strengths include potential for multiple positions, flexibility. Weaknesses are that benefits are less likely, usually doesn’t cover cost of living.

Freelance: Strengths include flexibility, high earning potential, less commitment. Weaknesses include lack of benefits, instability, ebb and flow of income.

Staffing Agency: Strengths include it’s quicker to find work, helps avoid gaps in employment, assists in job search. Weaknesses include the agency taking some of the pay.

Part-time Graphic Designer, Swans, Branding Agency
https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3072913134/?alternateChannel=search&refId=e%2B%2B87jc3DQXF8EGXF6yo1g%3D%3D&trackingId=4yyYvM%2F%2F%2B4P8y1mmAxhQYA%3D%3D

Part-time Graphic Designer, Insight Global, Staffing Agency
https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/3592863185/?alternateChannel=search&refId=3VQT7Sa%2FTk8YNCeDSMrbvA%3D%3D&trackingId=YeULo0%2BAlHMFU%2FzwOxJmzQ%3D%3D

Presentation Designer, McKinley Marketing Partners
https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/search/?currentJobId=3540188348&distance=25&f_JT=P&geoId=103644278&keywords=graphic%20designer&refresh=true

For my Firebirds Jersey concept, I chose to focus on Frank Ocean, one of the headliners for the 2023 festival. I think focusing on one artist for a jersey is a good concept because fans are attached to the musician and would want to collect this memorabilia.

Who am I: painter, designer, creative writer

What do i want to do: I want to create art my whole life and connect with an audience. Find a balance between making a living and making work outside of that. Stay in community with other creative people. Maintain confidence in going against the grain.

Why: I love that art allows people to be vulnerable and confessional in a way that isn’t necessarily accepted elsewhere in society. Also because it doesn’t have any utilitarian value beyond giving people space and time to think. Additionally, I think that choosing to live a creative life sets a good example for younger people who are choosing between creative and more practical career options.

Where do you want to go: I will be careful about choosing workplaces, living situations, and relationships that allow me to be myself and express myself creatively. Also hoping to stay out of debt.

What would you want to say: A big part of my practice is about slowing people down and suspending quick judgements. Creative work allows me to move through subjects I’m interested in—identity, conflict, and social media—without trying to be conclusive. As a creative person, I also want to say that it’s ok to dedicate your life to something that might not be taken seriously by everyone and might lead to any financial gain.

Group project with Joel Stadtmueller and Colten Nelson

For our group project, we chose record stores in Seattle as our point of interest. Once we decided on record stores as topic and chose three for each of us to create panels of, we picked relevant information to give the viewer that would be displayed outside the store when using the AR app. We chose to create one panel with the store hours, another panel with the store logo, and a third panel giving a summary of the kind of music the shop specializes in.

Because our content is text heavy and descriptive, we created our content in Indesign. We exported as static images, keeping our content simple and informative for viewers.

For my social experiment, I would have a student designer in my class rank five classmates from best to work with to worst to work with. Maybe run this experiment with each of the classes in the program. I chose a lower number of participants because I think the experiment could also work for faculty ex: Erik Fadiman ranks Marc over Jason etc.

I think this is an interesting experiment because it resembles the structure of job interviews, where a hiring manager ranks someone as ultimately “the best to work with.” Additionally, one of the guest speakers this quarter talked about how it isn’t a good idea to always say yes to working with friends, and I think it’s interesting to see how people draw those lines between personal friendship and work collaboration.

I reviewed the app Angry Birds AR: Isle of Pigs. I had a positive experience with the app as someone who grew up playing the angry birds game on my phone. This post will explain how the game works and bring up positive features and areas of improvement for the app.

To setup the game, the user tracks a flat space from a 45 degree angle, upon which the target structures for the levels will appear. I like that a green textile pattern of pig noses appears with this. although I had some issues with the app tracking items that weren’t flat, I thought this was successful.

I noticed some hickups in functionality for the app.
At some points, the app would incorrectly read angled surfaces as horizontal. From my subjective perspective, I also thought that instead of rendering some navigation elements in 3D, the app should have just made those a pop up menu.

Although I thought some of the features of the app could be improved, for me the app successfully offers fans of Angry Birds a 3D game with the same visual style and premise. The AR technology of the game worked smoothly and I could see myself playing this again.