Category: Uncategorized

These shoes allow the SCCA designer who might be in a homework crunch to slow down time so they can accomplish everything they need to and make themselves and their teachers proud!

I chose my clear glass dishes as the “product.” I like them because they’re fun and colorful and do interesting things with the light. I wanted to surround them with things that made the dishes look as if they were being used in a fun atmosphere with good food, etc. I added my wood cutting board for some texture, as well as a linen napkin, a hunk of crusty bread, and my fruit basket. Plus I scooted my jade plant into the background. And in some of the images I incorporated an orange. I think the overall look is friendly and playful and manages to highlight the dishes. I enjoy the super harsh lighting I was getting in my kitchen just before the sun went down. It was fun to try to work fast to capture an image in that lighting and it helped me to not overthink things too much.

Ads I watched

1. Microsoft Copilot
2. He Gets Us (ad for Jesus?)
3. Etsy “Thank You, France”
4. Paramount Plus “A Mountain of Entertainment”
5. Dunkin Donuts “Dunkings”

Etsy “Thank You France”

summary: France gives the United States the statue of liberty, the United States panics about what to give France back. Someone says they like cheese, and they use Etsy to find a gift to give back–a giant cheeseboard with a tiny amount of cheese on it, which France loves.

pros: Hilarious, plays into our notion of ourselves as a country, shared history, plays on our stereotypes of French people loving cheese

cons: could be seen as mean to French

He Gets Us

summary: AI generated images of people of different backgrounds washing the feet of someone in need, while the background displays moments of conflict including a protest, an abortion center, a greyhound bus

pros: Super interesting that they used AI generated images–allowed them to focus on more conceptual ideas and gave a sense or removal from partisanship by not using real people or places.

Gave a sense of a non-partisan Jesus– catering to LGBTQ people, pregnant women, immigrants, people in distress.

cons: Its confusing to know what the message is. Ultimately, its still an ad for organized religion and the ad doesn’t address the fact that organized religion does not often share the same values as the Jesus figure in the ad

the ad seems to have an anti-conflict stance. It shows people choosing to remove themselves from conflict situations to do the right thing and wash someone’s feet. It’s nice that it shows people connecting despite conflict, but it glosses over the idea that conflict can be necessary in advocating for the right thing.

I would like to get better at making patterns digitally, so I would like to challenge myself to make wrapping paper.

I like to make geometric, quilt-like patterns with markers and paint in my own art. I’d like to try to translate some of these patterns into the digital sphere and get as comfortable making them there as I am with markers.

This project would develop my illustrator skills and familiarity with tools that I’m not great at using at the moment, such as blend, repeat, and envelope distort. I also want to start using more textures in my projects so this would be a good place to start using that.

I also like the idea of finding a way to actually manufacture one of these patterns into wrapping paper. Now that we’re learning more about indesign and printing and spot colors, it feels more possible to try to actually get a product made. Going through the process of talking with a manufacturer would be a huge learning experience.

B I’m proud of my role on a team of fabricators that painted this pixelated mural for artist Leo Berk. This work is part of Sound Transit’s Link Light Rail extension in Redmond, WA. It spans a freeway connecting a new light rail station and the Microsoft campus.

A This was my second large fabrication project as a art fabricator and the first where I was in a managerial position. In addition to many, many hours of painting, this project required a huge deal of organization and tracking of pieces and progress. Each vertical louver has a series of pixels painted on the right, and left. Each piece had tow corresponding computer files attached to it that we projected onto the louver and used this to make sure we were painting the right colors in the right spot. Part of my job involved making sure we had the right file pulled up that not only corresponded with the correct louver, but the correct side, North or South. Once we had each piece painted, North and South, they all needed to be moved to temporary storage to dry for 14 days, then to permanent storage until install.

The project involved a lot of systems thinking. I had to make sure pieces were in the right place so that we could keep work flowing smoothly. And I managed a huge spreadsheet tracking progress on the 1000 louvers and whether they had been painted on each side and placed in storage.

We encountered many issues along they way. Occasionally we painted the South image on the North side of a louver. This required tracking down pieces we thought we were finished with, fishing them out of storage and re-painting them.

We also encountered early problems with the paint. Despite being rated for Navy use, the first batch of paint flaked off too easily and was not going to work for a very public and accessible art piece. It was a great learning lesson for me seeing my boss, Leo, navigate negotiations with the paint manufacturer as well as the company that he had hired to apply the underpainting.

R Ultimately we accomplished the piece with relatively few errors. It took a ton of team work with 3 art fabricators, and the project vastly improved my systems thinking and organizational skills.

One huge take-away for me came from observing Leo’s process. He expanded my idea of what art could be–incorporating technology into the making of the piece, building a room that the louvers could be painted in that contained the paint fumes, designing the geometry of the louvers himself and getting them extruded at an aluminum factory, working with a paint company to use a type of paint that had never been used before, and trusting three young artists to paint and organize the project. I have a lot of admiration for how big Leo thinks. I really appreciated that he dug into his large budget from sound transit and took big risks with huge material orders and contracts, and it really paid off.

This project gave me the confidence to take on more organizational tasks moving forward, and made me a better systems thinker.

Islanders is a really lovely, relaxing game that I got into a couple years ago.

Every time you start the game, you get landed onto a different type of island. You slowly build up your island with houses, breweries, temples, and other buildings. Each building has a base score that it will add to your total and a list of buildings that it gets additional points for being near.

There are often also buildings that certain other buildings do not like being near. For example, in the picture above, you can see that huts get extra points for being near to a city center, a statue, a shaman, a fisher, or a seaweed farm, and they get negative points for being near a sawmill, a lumberjack, a warehouse, brickyard, mill, or mason. Each building type has a small radius and you can move the pieces around the island to see how many points it would get you in different locations before you comitt.

The game requires a bit of strategy. Usually you want to find the exact spot on the board where a building can add most to your points and help you progress to the next island. But sometimes you want to get fewer points on one turn because it will allow space for a building it doesn’t get along with to be outside of its radius. The game gets trickier as you progress because you need a certain number of points to unlock more buildings, and if you don’t get enough points from the placement of your buildings, the game is over.

There are a couple things I really love about this game:

1. It’s simple, and there are no adversaries
2. It’s beautifully designed with different types of islands, flowers, tress, and rocks
3. The game encourages your mind to wander. As I’m playing I find myself thinking about the village I’m building. I think about why a circus tent gets points for being near houses, but negative points for being near mansions. I think about the separation of industry from my town centers. I think about why the shamans enjoy being close to flowers.

I think I might be the ideal target audience for this game… Clearly there’s not a lot of action, and no characters, so it seems more adult than many other games. This game is maybe an artsy cousin inside the “cozy game” universe. It’s also very easy to learn and very intuitive, with minimal instruction needed to get going, so it works well for people who aren’t as well versed in computer and video games. It also appeals to me as a millennial who grew up playing world-building games like zoo tycoon and rollercoaster tycoon. And it suits where millennials are at in life now –looking for ways to relax and zone out from responsibility and work.

Islanders is not only a fun escape, it’s actively soothing. It’s not overstimulating and it has a calm soundtrack with soft music and bird calls. Somehow I feel a lot less guilty playing this game than others. It feels like I’m still doing something productive.

Love this game, would recommend!

Tools I need for my Graphic Design Career

Tools I Have:

• Undergraduate degree
• Supportive partner and family
• Home and work area at home
• People skills (always in development)
• Adobe Suite
• Fine Art fabrication experience
• Connection with Seattle Artists
  • Possible networking w/ design firms
• Cloud Storage
• Color sense (always development)
• Experience in Non-profit and for-profit companies

Tools I have that Need Development:

• Presentation skills
• Working in teams
• File organization
• Business card
• Illustrator wizardry
• In Design
• Salary negotiation skills
• Confidence in my graphic design skills
• Web design skillz
• Figma Wizardry
• Email/ Correspondence
• Experience working with AI/ Incorporating AI
• Time management
• Overall healthfulness– exercise and eating well
• Illustration skills

Tools I Don’t Have Yet that I Need:

• Packaging knowledge
• Professional clothes
• Graphic design professional connections
• Website
• Portfolio
• AA in Graphic Design
• Photoshop Skills
• AI Subscription
• Video Skills
  • After Effects, etc.

Category: Pet-friendly Interstellar Vacation

Sketch of image I was aiming for:

First three on DeepAI.org with the “Fantasy World Generator”

First Prompt: spaceship with a human and a dog onboard traveling through space toward a planet with rings

Second Prompt: close-up of a spaceship with a dog and a human inside

Third Prompt: A happy dog inside a spaceship

This was my first time using an AI image generator and I had a lot of fun. I don’t have any AI subscriptions so did a quick google for free AI image generators and deepAI.org was one of the first results.

The biggest impediment to achieving a specific image with deep AI is the way it has organized it’s styles into distinct categories. My first three images were made with the “Fantasy World Generator.” I really struggled to get it to show a dog at all. After my first three images, I continued generating images; first changing the prompt and using the same generator category, and then trying the same prompt over several of the other “generator” categories.

Each generator had limitations that prevented me from being able to achieve a specific image. Many were clearly designed to only return images within a narrow range. For example, the “Romantic Art Generator” only every wanted to make a portrait of a human.

Ultimately, I found this site to be really fun for experimenting with different styles of images but I wouldn’t recommend it for trying to generate a specific scene in terms of components and layout. As a first foray into AI image generation, I was happy with the wide variety of dogs and spaceships I got and I recommend deepAI for just messing around.

Further Experimentations:

A happy dog and a human inside a spaceship:

A happy dog and a human in a spaceship

Craiyon.com AI image generator:

The tech I’m most interested in right now is an iPad. Being able to sketch easily using procreate in a way that could easily connect with Illustraor would allow my designs to have more of a hand-made feel, which can be hard to achieve in illustrator. I’m also interested in using an iPad to design furniture with sketchup. The iPad has lidar technology that I am interested in learning, especially as it comes to furniture design and home remodeling. I also think an iPad would be very useful as a second screen for watching tutorials and working alongside at the same time, and also for reading Ebooks. I can also see myself using it for recipies in the kitchen or watching TV.

iPad Pros:

iPad offers more flexibility of location when working–I can see myself doodling with it on the couch. This is especially nice compared with a wacom tablet or similar product which are large and need to be flat on a table with several cords to work.

Easily transfer handmade sketches into Illustrator w/o dealing with cleaning up a photo

Easier to add a handmade element to my designs

Good for adding texture

iPad Cons:

$799 for big screen

Stuck in the apple verse

Procreate Pros:

$10 one time

Best app out there for digitally sketching

Procreate Cons:

Textures and Brushes are expensive

Maybe making digital sketches won’t end up being “my thing.”

Having an iPad would give me another tool in my design pallette to draw upon when I need more textrues/brushes, or a handmade look.

I also think it would aid in developing my design skills because the iPad/Procreate lends itself to easy experimentation, without having to be at a table with a mouse.

I come from a strongly matriarchal family with deep roots in Washington State. My grandmother grew up farming in the Yakima Valley and raised her three kids in Olympia. My grandmother, my mother, and my two aunts have always been at the center of my large extended family. The three of them, along with their younger brother, instilled in all of us a sense that if you wanted something, you could make it yourself. Some of my fondest memories are of my mother, grandmother, aunts, and sister all sewing banners for a party, or making soap and clove oranges. My grandmother built three houses in her lifetime, and she frequently volunteered with habitat for humanity–even into her nineties.

I’m privileged to have been able to attend a small liberal arts college in Eastern WA. While it was a difficult experience for a visually-minded, hands on person, I’m incredibly grateful for the gifts it gave me, including critical thinking, writing, and lasting friendships.

I took a year off from college after my sophomore year. During that time I worked as a caregiver for my godmother who was sick with bone marrow cancer. This was an incredibly emotional experience that taught me so much about how to support others in grief and anger and what my role can be in difficult situations.

I have ten years of experience working for local artists helping them bring their public art projects to life. Through these projects I have learned a wide variety of fabricating techniques. I also know how to work with opinionated creatives to help them realize their vision.

My work with artists led me into a role in construction. For the past three years I have been working with local artists to restore an early 1900s brick storefront and turn it into a coffee shop. Construction experience makes me an excellent problem solver and planner. I learned to think through everything in advance, which is invaluable when applied to graphic design work.