The Converse [Blank] Canvas sneakers make their wearer impervious to creative doubt. As soon as you put them on, you start to believe that you can produce even the most outlandish ideas. Suddenly you’re trying new programs and technologies, anything to realize the images in your head. The shoes are specially tuned filter out nonconstructive criticism, internal or external, replacing it with a fun jingle. Also you can draw on them.
[Blank] Canvas shoes are made of canvas from organic cotton, with recycled rubber soles. They only come in white, so you can decorate them however you want!
My scene was built around this gray Target stoneware that my apartment has a bizarre abundance of. It’s not like we bought a set. I think that different roommates just happened to buy like one gray plate at a time until a collection was formed. My contribution to this collection is the gray mug on top of the book. I tried to choose a background that would compliment the gray, and our dining table seemed to do the trick. For the other objects, I was mostly looking for pops of color that wouldn’t distract from the dishware. Some Bosc pears, a plant, and an old green felt-bound book seemed to provide a nice harmony. The silver ware and towel were the last additions I made to the comp. It was looking a little low-key to me and I thought I could use an object that was brighter but not necessarily more colorful. The white towel balances the dark book, and the silverware reflects a lot of the natural light coming through our dining room windows.
I suppose I was trying to invoke the feeling of our house, which is homey, relaxed, kind of dirty, but charming. It is exactly the kind of house that would have large sets of ill-matched cookware. I didn’t want it to feel high-end or pretentious. I wanted the product to look affordable, simple, and strong.
I shot a few other angles (with my phone) but I liked the high angle one the best.
They followed a trend: using as many celebs as possible in some zany situation. They made something both expected and novel. This commercial wrung a few genuine chuckles from my cold, cynical lips, though afterwards I did have to bury myself in Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo for an hour just to feel normal again. The pacing was good. I was entertained. I liked seeing Zach Braff and Donald Faison back at it again. Absurdist reference humor seems to be the flavor du jour (or maybe la seul saveur), and T Mobile seems to have endorsed this brand of lazy comedy with both thumbs.
What they could’ve done better:
Well they could’ve made a piece of advertising that didn’t assume its audience was a nation of dumb-fucks who can’t see Aquaman without running off to the nearest strip mall to switch service providers. And what exactly was the message here? What does the cast of Scrubs have to do with Duncan Idaho have to do with a mediocre 80’s dance movie have to do with a second-rate cell carrier? What could they have done better? They could have made some thing interesting. They could have made something beautiful. Instead, they made something that no one would have any problem identifying as an advertisement. They think that we are easily fooled. We are not.
Budweiser, horses, etc.
What they did well:
They cast a black person; albeit in a service position, but still, baby steps. I suppose, judging by the opening shot, that they know who their target audience is (or would like to think of themselves as): small-town American folks living somewhere blighted by the loss of some industry, an industry that’s probably not so dissimilar from the one that Anheuser-Busch operates. You can’t argue with the production quality; these are movie-caliber visuals. And The Band.
What they could’ve done better:
I mean, is anyone still entertained by the Clydesdales? I know it’s tradition. But seriously, who gives a shit? Get a new thing. Year after year they try to tell a new story with these animals and it’s never really new. This was the most narrative-oriented commercial I watched, but there wasn’t a whole lot of tension-and-release action here. There were stages of the story that were meant to add tension, which is admirable. But everything moved so fast that it was all just an emotional blur. Maybe this is expecting too much of a Super Bowl commercial. Maybe we should expect more.
An ad/PSA campaign for the Seattle Public Library, “Read and Be Free”
A how-to book about drawing from imagination
A poster campaign for an imagined political movement calling for “Freedom of Attention”
A Bakery Nouveau rebrand (packaging, print, web, business collateral) using Art Nouveau imagery
Learning furniture design, specifically desks, drafting tables, and work surfaces for artists
Character, environment, and accessory designs for an imagined video game
A solo card game for fostering creativity (I already made something like this, but it could be improved)
An Alphonse Mucha inspired poster that illustrates which fruits are in season, with beautiful women symbolizing each of the four seasons (for example, winter would be holding a giant overflowing basket of apples and pears)
Learning to shoot, develop, scan, and touch-up film photography
The idea I chose is:
A how-to book about drawing from imagination
Drawing (or painting, or sculpting, or doing any visually-focused creative work) from imagination is a slippery topic, and one that has fascinated me since I was a kid. Before we can even start talking about putting pencil to paper, we need to clear up what we mean by “imagination,” because neurologists and philosophers agree that there is no such thing as representational imagination in our brains. Yes, it feels like we hold an image of something in our heads. But the fact is that there is no place in your brain where an visual image of a red triangle is stored. Rather, a non-linguistic symbol of a shape is called up by memory and linguistic modifiers like “red,” “shape,” “three sides,” “pointy,” “isosceles,” etc. adorn the symbol until the areas of your brain responsible for processing visual imagery are sufficiently activated and we “see” red triangle. Or something like that happens. I need to do more research. But I think that Dan Dennet has a pretty good idea of what’s going on.
Anyway, I could write about this topic at length, but needless to say it interests me very much. And there aren’t many books out there on how to draw from your imagination, so people might actually want to buy it. But it would also be a great exercise in typesetting and layouts, keeping things consistent between chapters. And I think it would communicate that I’m a designer who prioritizes imaginative work, fostering creativity in himself and others.
I’ve been thinking about this project for a long time, and the structure I’ve settled on is a sort of workbook, where there are exercises on a specific topic that the student is supposed to practice for a week, followed by a chapter that will explain some neurology and give some tips and tricks for accomplishing the exercises, and then the student will spend another week redoing the exercises. I want the book to be cyclical, and a student finishes it, they can take a break or go through the whole book again. Below is a chapter outline (my proof of concept for this book). I also did a quick cover mock-up (at the top of this blog), for which I used Hokusai’s “Mad About Painting” as inspiration.
I decided to create an immersive scmaltz vortex for Valentine’s Day. I figured the expression of this holiday should be at least as nauseating as the holiday itself. I was inspired by a tunnel-like project I saw on Behance, which had a bunch of rings and circles just kind of whirling around. So I wanted the user to walk through this tunnel and trigger certain elements to tell a story, culminating in the interaction that happens at the end of the scene.
I started by making my assets in Illustrator. I kept everything 2D to minimize stress on my computer.
I had to delete my first attempt at the schmaltz vortex after realizing that it was very small, too small for a human to walk through.
It worked better when I scaled up and simplified everything.
It took me a while to get the hang of thinking in this way. For example, I really wanted the hearts to rise out of the surface when the scene started. So I triggered a “move” action along the Y axis. But this meant I would have to hide the rest of the vortex until the heart opened up. So I thought that I’d do a “move” action on all the rest of the elements. You can probably see where this is headed. That’s why my first attempt failed. I had so many movements that this just kind of got lost. But on my second attempt, things went much more smoothly.
So the idea is that you give your sweetheart this underwhelming card…
This was an assignment for our History of Design course last quarter. The assignment was to choose either a book cover, album cover, or poster to redesign. I chose to redesign the cover of one of my favorite books, Julian Jaynes’ The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. The cover design hasn’t been changed since the book was released in 1976. I think that this cover is partly responsible for the book’s general lack of readership.
See what I mean?
What we didn’t know when we chose our media was that we would be redesigning in the theme of an era of design history. The era would be the same one we had studied for a research project earlier in the quarter, which in my case was Art Nouveau.
Luckily for me, this book is partly about the ancient Greeks, mythology, and symbolism, all of which heavily influenced Art Nouveau.
Actions
Gabriel explicitly forbade us from doing anything that would require illustration. Of course, my initial sketches were heavily illustrative.
Under the guidance of my peers, I pared back the illustrative elements and aimed for a style more like the Vienna style of Art Nouveau than the Parisian style. My main influences were Koloman Moser, Gustav Klimpt, and the monograms of the Vienna Succession.
Vienna Succession monogramsPoster design by Gustav KlimptBook cove design by Koloman Moser
I then started sketching in Illustrator, narrowing down themes and colors.
Those colors are being punched up by the export. I designed in CMYK.
The two options that made the cut were these:
I was really leaning toward the first option, the one with Achilles pulling a spear from his heel. But my classmates and instructor took a vote and the second option won the day. I was a little disappointed by this. I was mad at myself for including the second option at all. But I wanted to treat it like a real job, so I buried my pride and started to work on it. I reworked the colors and experimented with a gold foil option.
Result
In the end, I preferred the look of flat colors to the gold effect. Here is the final book cover spread. If this had been a real project, I would have sent it to the printer to have it scored, folded, and bound with the guts. But, since it was just a school project, I printed it on 100# card stock, mounted it on black foam core, and handed it in.
I used to make fun of Settlers of Catan. I called it a “wheat trading” game. I played it once years ago and found it about as fun as actually trading agricultural commodities. So I wasn’t super excited when my roommates invited me to play a game of Catan with them recently. But I decided to give it another shot in the interest of broadening my horizons. Tastes change, and maybe I’d like it better this time around. And it turns out I did.
What did I tell you with the wheat
Oh, and apparently it’s just called “Catan” now.
There is quite a bit of wheat trading in Catan though. The idea is that you and a few of your friends are on this island and you’re each starting a sort of market empire, annexing parts of the island that produce different resources by building roads, towns, and cities. The more resources you produce, the more you can buy and trade. The game is won by accruing a certain amount of victory points, which are earned through different achievements in the game (largest army, longest road, etc.).
Catan is really fun though, once you get into the competitive spirit of the game. The play time is comfortable too; you can get through a campaign in probably about an hour. I lost the campaign against my friends, probably because I was more absorbed in screwing them out of their resources than building up my own assets into cities. The resource gathering element of Catan was way more fun than I had remembered it being; trading resources with other players can be an interesting power trip. And the map is built out of hexagonal tiles and changes with every new game, so it feels like a new experience every time you play.
The bumper sticker that came with our box of Catan exclaims that it’s the “greatest game of our generation.” By “our,” I’m assuming they mean millennials since it came out in 1995. I do think this game will be enjoyed best by older audiences. It’s not quite the party game that Codenames is. I think it’s more at home in the Monopoly-Life-Risk canon of table-top games. It’s sophisticated if subdued.
Here’s an interesting coincidental tid-bit for you: for many years my father worked as on-air talent for RFD Illinois, a down-state AM radio station whose audience consisted mainly of farmers. My father’s job? Reading the price fluctuations of agricultural commodities. Including wheat. Go figure.
For this project, my group decided to look at several branches of the Seattle Public Library. Our panels would consist of library information, history, way-finding, events at the library, and characteristics of the neighborhood. Since I live in Fremont, I chose the Fremont Branch.
I started by designing the panels in Adobe Illustrator.
I chose to make my panels look like the library itself, which has a very distinct Mission-style architecture. The windows inspired the info panels.
I made the animation in Procreate. Fremont has many attractions (the troll, the rocket ship, the bridges, etc.) but I wanted to go with a simple Cherry Blossom tree because that’s what I think of when I think of Fremont.
The animation has 37 total frames. It was much easier to animate than the last project. I thought it turned out pretty good.
Then it was time to arrange everything in EyeJack.
And the last step was just to go to the library and film the AR. The librarians weren’t super thrilled about me doing this, but after I convinced them that I wasn’t trying to film people, just the front of the building, they let me do it.
This was an interesting project. I was a little intimidated at first, but once I got started, it really wasn’t so bad.
Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. I was able to develop these skills working at Sky Printing. There’s always more to discover, but I feel pretty confident about them.
Drawing. I love to sketch, and I have a good eye for it. I need to get better at finishing my drawings though.
Work ethic. This is probably the only benefit of being bored by social outings.
Attention. I love to read. I have developed a long attention span by reading books.
Tools that need work:
Motion design: I recently made my first animation in our AR module and I am really bad at it.
Working with groups: This is a tough one for me. On the one hand, I love how huge tasks become manageable in a group. On the other hand, I hate when people change things that I’m proud of.
Finishing stuff: It’s not that I lose interest in things that I start, although that can happen. It’s that I hate the way it looks when I start to refine it. For example, sketches seem so alive in my sketchbook, but as soon as I ink them or try to turn them into a finished thing, they look dead and bad.
Self-confidence: We all lack it.
Tools I don’t have:
Screen printing: I think this is a skill worth developing. Not only is it awesome, but it seems like there will be steady, if moderately-paying, work for screen printers.
3D: I don’t know anything about designing in 3D.
Photo/video: I don’t know anything about taking photos or editing video.
Lettering: This just seems like a fun skill. I know I’d use it in my poster designs.
Painting: I’m trying to find skills that would set me apart from everyone else, and I think the ability to paint would change my skill set for the better. I’m thinking about Andrew Loomis, JC Leyendecker, and Norman Rockwell, those guys were more designers than fine artists. I don’t want to ape their style, I just want to understand form like they did. And it seems like painting is a big part of that.
Social media: I hate social media, but I know that my hatred of it limits my opportunities.
Schmoozing: It embarrasses me to to fawn over people I admire. It embarrasses me because if I were the one being fawned over, I would be embarrassed. So whenever we have guest speakers, I usually don’t go up and talk to them. I imagine that this will also limit my professional opportunities.
That was the one I chose to do. I imagined a low angle shot of a cat leaping up to catch the frisbee. I wanted to capture that sort of whiplashing motion that dogs sometimes do in mid air, and I thought that shape would be a good counter to the shape of the frisbee. I also imagined a person in the background whose pose reflects a just-hurled object. Here’s the sketch I did
I used the Bing Image Creator (which I’m pretty sure is just Dalle 3) and my first prompt was
Cat catching a frisbee on a sunny day, man in the distance throwing; low angle
And here’s what I got:
Not bad except that the cat seems to have two left arms. My second prompt was a little more specific, and I wanted to change the style:
Man and cat playing frisbee in the park on a sunny day; low angle; in the style of 80’s anime; warm color palette
And here’s what that prompt returned:
My final prompt was the most specific of all:
A cat jumping up to catch a frisbee; man in the background who just threw the frisbee; low angle; cat heading towards the camera; sunny day in a park; in the style of 80’s anime; green color palette with blue accents
And this is probably the most engaging image:
I don’t have to point out the technical flaws in this picture. My experience with this image generator is basically the same as my experience with AI more broadly: curiosity followed by absurdity followed by boredom. But after last week’s speaker, I’m starting to come around to how useful AI could be in rendering the more tedious parts of an image-based project. Like let’s say you were designing a wall-paper in the style of William Morris. You could render individual flower bulbs, leaves, geckos or whatever, scan them, and then feed those to an AI saying, “make me a repeated pattern using only these elements on a maroon background; 6 inches by 12 feet.” Or maybe the New York Times commissions you to do an illustration and you think it would be cool to render an areal view of a busy New York street. You could just make and color the background in one file, make a few drawings of people and cars, and tell the AI to populate the street with people in the style of those you already drew. Or even better, the AI could render the building windows, which is always such an ungodly pain in the ass. There are possibilities.
