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Podcast 12 Response

We are taught that nothing in design should exist without a purpose. In this podcast we are introduced to things that have seemingly no purpose, but are maintained anyway. The truth is, though, that these things originally did have purpose. As the city’s design changed, something had to happen with the old architectural designs. Usually this was withering away, but as all good designs have staying power, so too did these small parts of the city, these thomassons. They somehow even had the ability to make people care about and maintain them. Perhaps it was the original care put in them from their initial creator? Or maybe their original purpose was so important to those who used it they just kept up their care and others continued to do the same? Whatever reason, they have staying power, something we all should strive for in design. Thomassons natural absorptions into the designs surrounding them also mimics the way many logos evolve. To maintain recognizability in a larger, well known corporations, parts of old logos are carried over in redesigns. Thomassons are carried over creating distinct characteristics and recognizability of a city. Even small, seemingly useless parts can be important and interesting.

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Podcast 11 Response

What struck me most in this podcast was the discussion of the quality of mass design. While I feel I sometimes fall into the trap of wanting unnecessary decorative things myself, it’s just as Massimo Vignelli said, “wants instead of needs.” When it’s said like that it definitely sounds like form over function which is the opposite of what we’re taught and for good reason. He mentioned seeing a lot of bad design all over the market because that’s what people think consumers want. Personally this reminds me a lot of children’s cartoons. One channel in particular plays a lot of the same cartoon for hours on end and many people dislike the show. However, the channel claims it as their most popular one because of it’s views. The only reason it seems that people like it is because it’s what’s on. The same is true with Vignelli’s view of mass design. Another example is if you gave a starving person rotting food and nothing else; they’d eat it because it’s what’s available, this does not mean it’s what they want. This issue gives us, the designers of the future, the responsibility to create quality design even if it isn’t necessarily what we’re seeing in the world. As he said, if more people begin to create quality designs, then others will be forced to as well and the whole world gets pulled from the gutter. 

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Updated cover insert based on class feedback. It doesn’t feel quite right yet but it fits somewhat better than before

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Podcast 10 Response

Who doesn’t like emojis to some extent? Personally I don’t use them besides the occasional heart or old punctuation faces with a parentheses. I really enjoyed learning about the process of how they’re created. I can only imagine how insane it was when they first came out and weren’t universal. My boyfriend still has a flip phone and the other day he tried to send emojis and it was just a bunch of random punctuation on my end like they discussed. It’s also really nice to know that when someone sees a need for a certain emoji they can try to make it happen! Sometimes my friends and I are surprised there isn’t an emoji for something like a certain common food. I am often annoyed that since they added color options to the people, there’s a blonde and black haired emoji, but no brown hair with light skin. I definitely appreciate the diversity and having brown hair with darker skin but brown hair and light skin is very common too and I don’t see why we can’t have both. I guess it’s more about skin tone than hair color. I love Rayouf’s emoji for this reason as well. I love seeing all the universal diversity and representation through these tiny cartoon pictures everyone knows. The style conversation reminded me of this meme about rating emojis from each platform and it’s my favorite thing to read when people make one. People are either really nice about all of them and it makes you feel really good about the kindness of humanity, or they’re brutal about not liking them which can be rude but entertaining. The fact that emojis even have such an intensive design and approval process shows the importance of design in even the smallest aspects of the world.

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My experimental type

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Podcast 9 Response “This is the thing that makes me want to get out of bed in the morning more than anything I’ve ever done” This line feels very similar to my own realization that led me from engineering to design. I would often rush through my math (if I could without getting deliriously frustrated) so that I could return to the paintings I was doing at the time. However I’d always known I enjoyed art and creative endeavors more than math and physics. I was trying to get a job more than a life and to do what my parents wanted. Luckily, they later told me they weren’t surprised I wanted to pursue art rather than engineering. Another thing I really related to was the impostor syndrome. I’ve read about it elsewhere as well and researched it myself. I hate it. I always have to keep reminding myself not to compare myself to others and that I do know what I’m doing. Low self confidence and perfectionism and anxiety all combine into the monster so even when you have proof your work is fine, your mind still tells you it’s not good enough. This is why it’s more common in women than men. I always try to remind myself I am good enough and that I’m not actually going to drop dead if it isn’t quite there so the worst case scenario is always off the table.

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Research Spreads for our upcoming project!

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Podcast 8 Response We always hear about the days before the internet and technology. I always try to imagine it but the older I get the harder it is for me to do so since we’ve grown up in a world with it. My parents always say I’ll tell my kids about when phones had cords and I think that’s true. That seems to be one of the last technology shifts I remember. I liked the discussion of phones and connections but it makes me wonder if I were born in a different generation would I be as shy as I am? Back then you had to go out and meet new people and not through a screen. I have done that though, and my shyness usually tends to come through on the internet as well. I use technology to talk to people I already know so I don’t believe it is necessarily caused by technology as some people like to say about our generation. What I don’t understand is the design flaw of social media that leads to bullying. Sure there are flaws, but there have been things put in to help remedy these flaws such as block buttons. People are going to be terrible. We talk about it all the time and how it’s wrong. It would be easier if they didn’t do it in the first place but you can just block them. This is another way I wonder if technology has made us more fearful as a society. We’re afraid of people hacking things, bullying us, all manner of technological terrors. We cannot deny how much it has helped us though; we just have to continue to combat it’s flaws.

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Podcast 7 Response

Paul Frank’s origin story reminds me of a book we read in my freshman english class. It was called Outliers and delve into how successful people had many factors that helped their success such as being born at the right time. The time he was starting his illustration endeavors was on the cusp of everyone having macs and discovering a new world of design and he was the right age to take advantage of it. That isn’t to say, of course, that there weren’t a lot of internal factors that led to his success. His childhood was one of these. Being exposed and interested in little nick knacks inspired him as he said. This is something we should all try to draw from, our internal worlds. They give us our own interests, something unique and something to be passionate about which is another point the podcast touched on; passion and profit. Motivation can of course be both but when you have a passion for something it drives you to get better of your own free will which in the end makes you better than if you were inspired to improve by external factors. In Psychology, the Over-justification Effect says that if you offer to pay someone for something they would have done anyways, it actually makes them less motivated to do it. Paul Frank began out of passion and that made him all the difference. I also enjoyed how he developed personalities and background for his characters. It allows for even more heart and relatability which appeals to people. Heart isn’t something you’ll get as easy if someone is mainly motivated by pay.

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Type Hike Project Reflection I am so glad this project is done. It’s interesting how you can be so excited about something at first and then so done and over it at the end. I feel like I learned a lot of logistical stuff like printing during this project. I thought I understood that already but this is actually the first project I’ve had to cooperate with the printer. Before it was just send them the files and go pick them up. Because of this, I felt a need to explore the idea of FedEx when previously I had only used staples. This proved unnecessary since, while I hear everyone goes to FedEx and doesn’t like Staples, the Staples near my house printed in better color and was half the price of FedEx. Also your paper will get lost in the mail. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Design wise I do wish I had found a bit more creativity to put in my catalog. I was mainly focused on function and while I had some joy in the pages, I wish I had had more joy in the overall design. The compass cover is a bit of an afterthought. While I loved my di-cut, I was afraid it would leave the cover too empty and I had no real idea what to put on it. I wanted to put animal tracks on it to contrast with the road-like dash of my di-cut, however that didn’t feel like it fit with what was already established inside. So instead I modified my northeast and southeast stamps from the small catalog to become a compass.

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Construction in progress

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Podcast 6 Response

They talked about how students always want to redesign things that are already good. It could just be those names are also much more familiar. However, redesigning things that aren’t good gives you more freedom and space to show off what you can do and allows you to understand why the old design was bad.

The book cover issues is like the influence of ads I discussed last week except I take sort of a different stance. Books should definitely have interesting covers. With product advertisements, you can see the product and understand it even if the commercial is trying to be eye-catching or goofy. With a book, though, you don’t get to just know what information is inside it. You have to have an interesting, informative cover to make people want to read the little story blurb and learn more. They’re more interactive than commercials that just want you to buy their product. Here, the product is more unknown.

Writing certainly is design related. I like to write my own stories, but I haven’t for a while (mostly because I’m bad at sitting down and figuring out an entire interesting plot.) The editing comments are the most related, though. I almost always run into copy I want to edit except there are times you can’t. This has always been an issue for me even in a writing class. When you have to peer edit sometimes I honestly don’t understand how some people get A’s on essays because their writing doesn’t flow well at all and it stresses me out. Editing helps with design because it gives you an eye for detail which helps you see more than one possibility for designs.

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A printed color model of the current state of my catalog

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Podcast 5 Response

I think a lot of us were naturally drawn to drawing from a young age. As they said, kids are naturally really creative even if it's not necessarily artistically. They don’t know how to do things quite yet, they don’t have rules of ‘not the right way’ so they see a problem and they find a way to solve it no matter if it isn’t the ‘right way.’ Until we start telling them not to do something, kids are creative. We’re the only stifling them. Which is especially true in this day and age when all the school systems are trying to remove everything art and music related.

I also agree with their discussion of oversharing on blogs. It does depend on how comfortable a person is but also most people don’t usually initially follow blogs for that purpose unless they’re creepers. It’s nice to get to know the person behind the blog, but readers first followed for your other content so there must be a balance. Blogs and the internet in general can be a great resource when used correctly as Tina Eisenberg has. The networking and other opportunities provided to her and her followers through her Creative Mornings program would have never been as widespread had her blog and the internet not existed.

The app her and her studiomate created sounds super interesting too and I may have to check it out if it’s free. Right now I’m just using the default reminders app on my phone and it works sufficiently for me but checking out other things, especially well designed popular ones never hurts. Their process for creating it reminded me of my dad wanting to invent a product. Finding a need and filling it is obviously effective. However they would have been satisfied with just that where my dad is interested in how you can profit from the product. Perhaps that’s his problem, he wants to invent a successful product for the money, not necessarily the simple want of fixing a problem first.

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Last week’s spreads reborn

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Podcast 4 Response

First things first, this really feels like something I should be watching not listening to. I even went to the Instagram page and half the stuff wasn’t there. Other than that it was fun, logos are something I really enjoy. Coffee, however, isn’t exactly. I don’t even coffee unless it’s basically not coffee. I guess most of these shops could have fallen in that category, but anyways.

For some reason this podcast also reminded me of a conversation my friend and I once had though. Perhaps it was because of the discussion at the beginning about what demographics a company wants to reach. My friend and I always see advertising and appreciate it for what it is, such as funny or cute commercials, but we’re not going to buy something just because of that. We care more about prices and logistics. Design of course, helps appeal to people though, which is the overall point and having bad design won’t do anything.

The logos I did get to see on the instagram page were alright. Except the one with the coffee bean dressed up like a pirate? What is that, why? Why? It looks like weird clip art and just why. It freaks me out and it’s just a mess. At least make the type at the bottom more coherent and stable. Maybe less color on the pirate bean. Looking at this in public makes me uncomfortable.

The Philz coffee redesign does feel a lot better. The old/current logo looks more playful and sort of everywhere while the rest of their brand looks like it’s trying to be elegant and high end with the simplicity and warm brown coffee colors. The redesign captures this simpler feel. The drop on the ‘i’ reminds me a bit more of a candle rather than a coffee drop, though.

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A few current spreads in my catalog