mmccarthygd-i

[mmccarthygd-i]

Blog 11/final blog

I have reached the end of the 2024 spring semester which means I have also reached the end of Process and Systems. I feel like I learned more in this class because of the fact that there weren't really any instructions. For every project I was able to do whatever I wanted which meant that I was able to struggle and fail and then try again. And even though doing presentations is my number one enemy I do feel like I have gotten slightly better at explaining my projects in front of people due to the sheer amount of times I had to do it throughout this class. This class also allowed me to dive into a subject (anxiety) that there isn't much design work/ resources for even though it is one of the most common disorders that people deal with. Overall this class was really fun, difficult, but fun.

[mmccarthygd-i]

Blog 10

I have officially reached the end of Strategic Creativity. Even though I don't particularly enjoy sitting down and reading assigned text I thought that this book was pretty good overall. I feel like it had a lot of odd things throughout it to keep the reader interested (like that one fun fact about Nike). This week we read chapters 7 and 8. I feel like the beginning of chapter 7 slightly explains what process and systems was as a class, because we could choose whatever we wanted to do for the projects, in a way they were all kind of passion projects. We picked things that we were interested and we ran with it. Chapter 8 was "Building a Culture for Results" and I feel like that sums up all of my SVAD classes in general. I feel like it is always an environment where you can experiment and try anything and that is the way you get good results in design or art in general.

[mmccarthygd-i]

Blog 9

Chapter 6 of Strategic Creativity speaks about the importance of branding. How the branding that a company is putting out needs to align with how the company is actually being run. Branding needs to be inclusive and align with what people want, it also has to kind of guess at what people might want in the future so that it can continue to be successful. Also the fact that the Nike tagline came from a prisoner that was about to be executed is absolutely crazy to me and I would have never known that unless I had read this book. I simply assumed that it was just a phrase that the company made up for its advertising but they had taken the last quote from a death row inmate and shifted it into their brands tagline…which is insane.

[mmccarthygd-i]

Blog 8

Chapter five of Strategic Creativity is about design. And starting off with a first paragraph, I have been called out because every time I go to a book store or a grocery store I am distracted and pulled in by the things that have pretty designs on them. This chapter then goes into all the elements that make up design like visual hierarchy and typography, which are things that are all painstakingly chosen but a lot of people don’t think about. Normal people that don’t look at color schemes and grid layouts and typefaces all day usually walk by something with a design on it that they like and don’t think about all the things that have to go into it and all the strategic choices that that designer had to make in order for it to catch that persons attention.

[mmccarthygd-i]

Blog 7

This week I am working on logos for my final project. ChatGPT oh so kindly provided me with the name Anxiety Allies after a very long time of asking it to give me a different name. In general I want to have a symbol that would represent the brand and also a word mark. I want to include little stars within the logo because it has a personal aspect to it along with the fact that I think they look similar enough to A’s that it could work with the name of the brand. I am however struggling with the typeface choices and may just have to end up using hand drawn type so that it looks like it goes together.

This week we also read chapters 3+4 of Robin Landa’s book Strategic Creativity. These chapters cover some ways to make your work memorable and also good. If it looks like everything else then it will most likely just be skimmed over, it has to stand out, but it can’t stand out too much that it begins to not align with the company or branding that it’s for. Robin says to “kill the pedestrian ideas”. Chapter 4 focuses more on writing which can be difficult at times but you have to remember that a lot of writing for branding is conversational because the personality of it usually catches people’s attention more than something that sounds like a robot typed it up.

[mmccarthygd-i]

Blog 6: 3/15/24

This week we started working on our final project. We had to pitch the concept for our final project (scary) and now we actually have to put in the work, which for me is a lot and also not a lot at the same time. It is a lot because I am essentially mashing all of my inquiries together into one big campaign. And it is not a lot at the same time because I already have a foundation set for a good bit of it that I need to expand upon. Currently one of the hardest aspects of this project is coming up with a name for it because I feel as though the title cannot be “The Anxiety Awareness Website, Zine, Poster Thing” As catchy as that is I think it has to go. 

This week, we also started reading the book Strategic Creativity by Robin Landa, and so far, I find it pretty interesting. Although it does seem like there are an awful lot of acronyms that I am going to have to remember. (ex. C.H.O.I.C.E, S.U.I.T.E.S, and A.L.T.E.R) I really liked the first part of chapter one, where she talks about the residency exam in Romania and compares it to design. Saying that, just like how you wouldn’t want someone treating you for a medical situation when they scored a 36 out of 100, you also wouldn’t want someone designing you something that scores a 36 out of 100 because it probably wouldn’t turn out that good. I feel like people assume that just because design or other creative fields don’t deal with life or death situations like doctors do, that it means that pretty much anyone can do it. (that’s definitely not true). I am also just relatively shocked that the people of Romania don’t go to the doctor. I am no stranger to “Dr. Internet,” but after my rabbit hole Google searching, I usually take myself to the nearest Doctor’s Care. 

[mmccarthygd-i]

Blog 5 pt.2: 3/1/24

Second part of the week consisted of a really cool workshop with Brad Vetter! I’m not going to lie when I first walked into the room I was really stressed because there was so much happening everywhere, but then it ended up being a really cool process. I had worked with print making before but never letter press and I had also worked with the Riso before but I still don’t completely understand the witchcraft that it performs. The posters that Brad showed us were so cool and I would like to cover my room with them, for now I will have to settle for my posters that I made in the workshop. I really enjoyed the hands on process of making the posters and that they didn’t come out completely perfect, it was like a fun little break from staring at my computer screen for hours on end.

[mmccarthygd-i]

Blog 5: 3/1/24

Started this week out with a data sprint. I ended up choosing to collect data from the group chat I have with my sister and our friend because they constantly blow up my phone with messages so I figured I would have enough material for a 11x17 poster. I had never collected data to then turn it into something interesting to look at. I had made many data visuals for my school’s science fair but those were mostly very boring bar graphs and pie charts because we had to present all facts and no fun. I had fun making something with visual data that didn’t have to be so structured and serious.

[mmccarthygd-i]

Blog 4: 2/23/24

For media number 4 we read a chapter from Graphic Design Process: From Problem to Solution 20 Case Studies. It focused on Michael Bierut’s design of the New World Symphony logo. It took us through all the ideas and processes that he had throughout, starting with typographic logos and ending with a more abstract one. We get to see sketches and his general thought process throughout the entire journey and it honestly looks very similar to what we do in school. We have ideas then decide against them and start all over again. I’m also glad to know that the struggle to pick a typeface is a universal experience, I really do scroll through Google Fonts for hours. Also just seeing where the logo started and all of the ideas and inspiration in between that brought us to the final logo is really cool. 

I made it to my final inquiry!!!!! My fourth and final inquiry was a three poster series based on childhood anxiety. I was not diagnosed with an anxiety disorder until I was 18 and going into my second semester of college, but I always struggled with anxiety throughout my entire childhood. While doing research for the project I realized that many children probably go through the same experience that I had because only 9.4% of children are diagnosed with an anxiety disorder meanwhile 19.1% of adults are diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. The posters themselves are based on things that I was always told as a child either by teachers, my parents, or other adults. I wanted the look of the posters to be childlike so that they could get the message across that it is something that affects children, so we have one that looks like a little note that you would pass around in class, one that looks like a child’s drawing on the fridge, and one that looks like a report card. 

[mmccarthygd-i]

Blog 3: 2/16/24

Inquiry 3!!! For inquiry three, I made an itsy bitsy little zine about how to survive a presentation. If I were to move forward with this process, it would end up being a collection of zines titled ‘How to Survive…’, and then they would all have different topics. The zines would, however, be mostly themed around social interactions that neurodivergent people might find difficult (aka things that I find difficult as someone with generalized anxiety disorder!). For example, in my presentation some of my other topic ideas were how to survive interviews, critique, or prolonged eye contact. The zine starts off by explaining the topic and then going through some steps that might make the activity a little bit easier. I also made them small so that you would be able to take them with you and it would not be too overwhelming to read. Originally the idea was to make something that would have helped a younger me get through social interactions. Even as a small child, I struggled a lot with talking in front of people; K5 me really needed a ‘How to survive show and tell’. I always wanted a list of rules or instructions that I could follow on how to do things right. I felt as though if I did something wrong, then it would be perceived as a failure on my part. There also were not a lot of resources when I was younger to help with what I was feeling, so I feel like this project would be well received by elementary me who was told, “You’re just shy, and you’ll grow out of it”. 

This week we listened to the podcast Creative Pep Talk #247. Might I say this class has now forced me to listen to the only podcasts that I have ever listened to. I am typically not a podcast gal because I have some auditory focus issues. While a lot of people are able to put on a podcast and do other things, I simply cannot because the second I start doing something else, I will hear absolutely nothing the podcast is saying. Anyway, back to the review. Throughout the podcast he talks about his creative heroes and the important things that they have taught him. It is all the people that he has had talks with and have somehow shaped the way his career is today. I think at this point in my life, my creative heroes would be my professors and classmates. They all have different views and are able to help me along my creative path. My other creative heroes are the people from all of these podcasts because it feels rude not to include them after listening to them talk about design and illustration for about an hour. 

[mmccarthygd-i]

Blog 2: 2/2/24

For inquiry 2, I created Procrast, a set of planners that is meant to fight procrastination. I personally struggle with procrastination a lot, and I have never successfully been able to use calendars or planners. I always get them and then end up using them for about a month, and then they are never to be seen again. And because I don’t use calendars or planners, I end up procrastinating my projects a lot, thinking I have more time than I actually do. Procrast is a set of three zine-style planners that only last for a month and are intended to be project-specific. The first planner starts off at a month, and you are able to write out what your project is and how long you think it will take. The second planner is set to one week before your project is due and gives you helpful advice on how to complete it, along with checklists to make sure that everything is getting done. The third and final planner is set to the day before your project is due and has checklists so that you can make sure everything is done correctly before you hit submit. Another issue I have with planners is that once you are done using them, what do you do with them? It seems wasteful to me to just throw them away but there isn’t really a reason to keep them either. With Procrast, once you are done with each planner, they fold out into posters that you can hang up wherever you like. 

This week we were supposed to listen to the podcast Design Matters by Debbie Millman. Debbie was interviewing Ping Zhu, who is an illustrator. I found the beginning of the podcast to be quite relatable because she didn’t start doing art with the thought that it would one day be her career. She started doing art because she wanted to socialize and hang out with friends. I started doing art because I didn’t want to do PE in middle school, and my art teacher continuously wrote notes for me to get me out of it. Ping also mentioned that she didn’t have many friends in high school and, in general, didn’t know what she wanted to do in the future but applied to art schools anyway. I never knew what I wanted to do for a future career but it was not an option for me to not go to college, so I applied to one school, got accepted, and majored in Art Studio. 

[mmccarthygd-i]

Blog 1: 1/19/24

My first process inquiry is Create Cars, a brand that started with a five dollar toy built from hardware supplies. While I was wondering the aisles of an Ace Hardware I remembered that when I was in middle school I was in STEM classes (they didn’t have the STEAM acronym when I was in middle school much to my dismay) and in one of the classes we made little wind up cars out of popsicle sticks and rubber bands. This led me to make my paint swatch car for this project that was made out of three paint swatch cards, 6 pieces of dowel rod, 4 furniture caps, and one rubber band. I entitled the brand Create Cars because the name of the paint color on the swatches is Create. Create Cars is a STEAM project kit for kids that ultimately results in a toy when they are done. It includes an instructional booklet on how to assemble the car that would also teach you the reasons why the process is educational. I am unsure if I will continue with this process or not, but I think if I do, then younger me would be really excited about it because I loved my STEM classes. And younger me would love even more that the acronym is now STEAM.

I would like to start off by saying that I had never heard of a longbox until now. I assumed that CD’s had always come in those little plastic cases, it never occurred to me that they would have had any other packaging. And it really would not have occurred to me that they were such a big deal. But now that I do know that they exist, I also know that I definitely would have kept them because I tend to collect cool boxes like a little pack rat. I also wasn’t aware that the government was so involved in the censorship of music. I knew that the parental advisory stickers were put on CD’s and records that were deemed “inappropriate” but I never put much thought into who was deeming it inappropriate (it is a really cool design though 10/10). I think that it’s pretty cool that a simple design change (along with a general dislike of the government from young people) to add a rock the vote letter that people could mail in made such a big impact. A design on the back of a CD longbox caused a bill to be passed and it caused more young people to vote for what they wanted. So I would say that it was a design success. 

[mmccarthygd-i]

Blog 6: 10/6/23

This week’s reading introduces you to a physical aspect of design. It talks about how things don’t always have to be designed within the grids on your computer. Contrary to popular belief, we are actually allowed to leave our computers and do things with our hands. I don’t often do that but I know it can be done. Looking at things in the physical world can help us to better understand the things that we are trying to decide. Using alternative and unconventional tools is also something that I don’t typically do because almost all of my work is done digitally, so when I need something to be textured I usually figure out a way to make the texture digitally even though it could be a lot easier to just make the texture with my own two hands and then scan it in. My brain typically finds the hardest way to do something and then I go with that.

This week I have reworked my first two spreads for my magazine and printed them. I like the direction that my spreads are going in design wise but I feel like I need to work on the printing aspect more. To show them in class I just printed them on regular copy paper but I feel like I want to get slightly thicker tan paper to print them on. Either that or I want to get paper and then tea stain it so that it has an older vintage feel. I’m also thinking about making the main “Piercing Shoppe” sign bigger and then moving the other two signs down to the windows, kind of like how shops sometimes have signs painted onto windows. I think it would be cool that when I eventually make the building pop up that the windows would actually be see through and then have the words printed onto the see through material.

[mmccarthygd-i]

Blog 5: 9/29/23

This week's reading has moved on from the thinking stage of design and shifted into the beginning stages of actually putting those ideas to use. I feel as though the sprinting technique really correlates with the magazine project that we are doing currently. We have all been taught the basics of design and what you should and should not do. Where columns should be set up and to stick to a grid so that everything is uniformly displayed. However when you get a creative project where the limits should be pushed it can be difficult to break out of the routine that we were taught. I think that the sprinting exercise could be beneficial to helping students think about different ways they could set up a magazine layout. 

This week I am working on redoing my first magazine spreads. I have done some rough draft sketches that greatly need improving. My layout is also currently not the most interesting. It essentially is images and two large blocks of text (as seen above) and I feel like I could make it a lot more interesting to look at. After researching Victorian style magazines I have seen that a lot of them have very extravagant illustrations, but the text is generally in large blocks with rather small text that I would most definitely never read. And even though my magazine is supposed to be from that era, it doesn’t exactly have to be historically accurate, especially since the topic of my magazine is not.

[mmccarthygd-i]

Blog 4: 9/22/23

This week's reading included more ways to obtain ideas for design. Before reading this book and doing these blog posts I was not aware that there were so many different ways to come up with ideas for something. Typically my way of coming up with ideas is staring into space for a prolonged period of time and waiting for my brain to produce any amount of knowledge. Some of the ways of coming up with ideas in this week's reading involved working together with people and keeping a visual diary. These are things I typically wouldn’t do but it never hurts to try. It explained that working together on a project sometimes fails because it looks like a mash up of individual work and I feel like I would agree because often I’m working on things by myself and haven’t really had to design with other people much. And then with the visual diary thing I feel like I wouldn’t remember to keep up with it, similarly to how I get planners and then forget to use the planner and it is never seen again.

This week I rewrote my magazine essay. I have decided that instead of having a modern time magazine that I want my magazine to be for people that were living in the Victorian times. I want it to be a small magazine because I have done extensive research about english victorian magazines and a popular one called Once a Week was 9 3/4x7 inches, which is a rather odd size but I guess it would have been more convenient to carry and also cheaper to print because it took let paper. Even though I have decided this is a magazine for people in Victorian times, I am still contemplating between sticking with a piercing theme or making it into a Victorian gossip magazine for rich wives. The image above is a mood board that I put together for what I want the vibes of the magazine to be like. 

[mmccarthygd-i]

Blog 3: 9/15/23

This week's reading was essentially about combining things. We start the reading with visual brain dumping which is when you make a bunch of sketches from the idea that you had and often several of the sketches end up being combined because you are able to see all of them and figure out which elements would work best together. Then we get into forced connections which is when you take two concepts and smash them together, like a print shop and a coffee shop which is an example that the book gave. Something added to another to make the overall experience more appealing. Then we get into action verbs which is a type of brainstorming that combines your imagery with an action to turn it into something else. The section everything from everywhere combines your ideas that you have from ordinary things around you that you don’t usually think about like patterns outside and grid structures that you can find in city layouts. 

This week we went to a professional printer to see how things work when all of your things aren’t printed in the McMaster output center. It was a lot bigger and a lot noisier than I thought it would be. I did not realise that printers were capable of making that much noise. I have also never seen so much paper in one place in my life. They had some art pieces in the client space that they had printed off for the immersive Van Gogh experience which I thought was pretty cool because I really want to go see it. They also talked to us about how files have to be packaged and formatted in certain ways to be able to print and now I feel bad for all the people that have had to print my work in the output center because I probably don’t send my files correctly. 

[mmccarthygd-i]

Blog 2: 9/8/23

In this week’s reading, we learned about Brand Matrix, Brand Books, Site Research, and Refining the Creative Brief. The brand matrix can basically be thought of as a graph in math. You compare what your product is like compared to all the others that are on the same or similar plane, or some that might be on an opposite plane. Brand books seem almost similar to mood boards that you would make for a project but on a larger scale. They tell you the overall vibe of the brand and what kind of feel the company is going for with the project. Site research is one of the rare moments when a designer ventures into the outdoors and looks at a physical environment that they might be designing a project for, like signs or posters or billboards. Refining the creative brief is similar to what we do when we have progress critiques in classes. It shows you the work in progress and how the project is progressing overall. 

This week, I have been thinking about what topic I want for my magazine. I ultimately landed on piercings because I thought that it would be pretty cool. I want it to focus mainly on facial and ear piercings and the types of anatomy that you have to have for each of them. I was thinking about having some illustrations that look like the really old anatomy drawings that are always done in pencil on cream-colored paper. I want it to be informative on what types of piercings you could get and what types of piercings would best suit a person’s features. I would include all the names of the piercings and where they go, and what gauge needle is typically used for each. I am also thinking about having a piercings dos and don’ts list similar to what they have in magazines for teens. The picture shown above is of some of the magazine pages that I brutally ripped apart during my magazine research.