Going to reconciliation is just a mind-blowing experience for me. As an international student, I did not know about First Nation before. I heard that they have a miserable past, but I did not realize how serious it is before I went to the reconciliation.
I felt very sad when I saw how Frist nation’s land shrinking in just 100 years. When the people represent First Nations who are either dead or murdered step out of the map, I felt so lonely and helpless. I can’t imagine how much they have to go through. The settler which First Nations helped before betrayed them. They took the land from Frist Nation. They tried to erase First Nation’s languages and cultures. The government put First Nation’s children into residential school, leaving endless suffering both physically and mentally.
I think everything will be over when I heard the fact government stop residential school. It turns out the pain passed through generations. When I heard the true story of indigenous people, I realized that First Nation’s bitterly past still haunt over those people. I hope I can do something for them. I want to learn more about Frist Nation.
IDES 244 – Resume
Project 2 is to write my own resume. To be honest I struggled quite a bit with the content of my resume. I do not have many experiences to put on my resume since I have a very different high school experience compare to most of the Canadian students. Writing this resume makes me aware that I still have a long way to go, not only on building my professional skills, but also my volunteering and working experiences.
The company I choose is Bardel Entertainment. They are an animation service provider based in Vancouver. The reason why I choose them is I like animation and game. I am very interest in perusing a job in that industry. I have to go back to China at summer time so I might choose a place similar to Bardel for my summer internship.
For the format of the resume, I choose to do a functional format. I think the functional format is the cleaner than the chronological format. I know that sometimes PR reviewing the resume, they probably do not have that much time to go through everything about my resume; so I make different sections for them to find thing easily. For the same reason, I did not go highly graphic on the resume. I want everything to read well.
For typeface, I choose Century Gothic bold as for title and Bodoni as body copy. I think this match makes the reader feel friendly but not too casual. I used a little bit of colour to bring up the type hierarchy.
I would rate this project an 8/10. I probably still have problems with writing. Type hierarchy and type choice may not be perfect. Personally, I like things are easy to read, but my layout may be too simple for some people. It may be a problem.
IDES 244 – Design Manifesto
Project 1 is to write your own sustainability design manifesto in the form of a poster. The target audience is the future industry employers who may treat this poster as a portfolio piece.
My idea on design manifesto is harmony, because I want to cover all four aspects of the sustainable design: environment, social, cultural and economic. Making them work together harmoniously is my goal as designer. Also for the style of writing, after reading the reference material I decided to do a free style writing which can make my manifesto easier to read.
For the poster part, my idea comes from textile design. Sometimes in textile design you need to combine different pieces together. The challenge is how to keep the whole looks beautiful without cutting off any component. I felt like the idea behind this matches with my manifesto, so I want to use it as my theme for the poster.
For self-evaluation, I give myself 7.5/10, the reason why is that I think I still have problems with writing the manifesto. I probably have grammar error which I did not noticed. I tried to use the grammar checker online but I feel there are still problems around. I think my graphic on the poster is OK. I tried to do it in a more simple and geometric way. At last, I might have problems with typography, which is something I was not good at all the time. I always panic when the time comes for typography. I hope I can improved but right now this is all I can do.
Reference:
http://www.howdesign.com/design-business/design-thinking/sustainability-design-manifesto/
Ides 142- Canadian Design Today
Mau was born in Sudbury, Ontario. He studied at the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto, but did not finish his school in order to join the Fifty Fingers design group in 1980. He stayed there for two years, before crossing the ocean for a shot time at Pentagram in the UK.
Returning to Toronto a year later, he became part of the founding member of Public Good Design and Communications. Soon after, the opportunity to design Zone 1/2 presented itself and he left to establish his own studio, Bruce Mau Design. Zone 1/2: The Contemporary City is a complex compendium of critical thinking about urbanism from philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze and Paul Virilio, architects Rem Koolhaas and Christopher. The firm has produced work for the Andy Warhol Museum, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Gagosian Gallery. Mau remained the design director of Zone Books until 2004.
In 1998, Mau produced a 43-point program called an Incomplete Manifesto for Growth that attempts to help designers and creative folks think about their design process. The manifesto has been widely separated on the web since then. In 2006, he participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions. Since 2009, Mau has served as a Distinguished Fellow of the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University. As of November 19, 2015, Bruce Mau is the Chief Design Officer for Freeman, a brand experience company and service contractor.
His creative talent is not bound to graphic designing but extend to the world of architecture, art and films, conceptual philosophy and eco-environmental design.
Ides 142-Postmodernism in Europe
Ettore Sottsass was an Italian architect and designer of the late 20th century. His designs included furniture, jewelry, glass, lighting and office machine design.
Sottsass was born on 14 September 1917 in Innsbruck, Austria but grew up in Milan, where his father was an architect.
He was educated at the Politecnico di Torino in Turin and graduated with a degree in architecture. He then served in the Italian military and joined World War II. After returning home in 1948, he set up his own architectural and industrial design studio in Milan.
In 1956, Ettore Sottsass began working as a design consultant for Olivetti, designing office equipment, typewriters, and furniture. There Sottsass made his name as a designer who use colour, form and styling to bring office equipment into the realm of popular culture.
Throughout the 1960s, Sottsass traveled in the US and India and designed more products for Olivetti, his design of bright red plastic portable Valentine typewriter in 1970, which became a fashion accessory. Sotsass described the Valentine as “a brio among typewriters.” Compared with the typical drab typewriters of the day, the Valentine was more of a design statement item than an office machine.
While continuing to design for Olivetti in the 1960s, Sottsass developed a range of objects which were expressions of his personal experiences traveling in the United States and India. Around this time, Sottsass said: “I didn’t want to do any more consumerist products, because it was clear that the consumerist attitude was quite dangerous.”. Thus, his work from the late 60s to the 70s was quite experimental and recognized by younger designers such as Superstudio and Archizoom Associati, and later they formed the foundation of Memphis.
In 1981, Sottsass and an international group of young architects and designers formed the Memphis Group. A night of drinking and listening to Bob Dylan’s “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again” gave the group its name.
Memphis was consisted of 40 pieces of furniture, ceramics, lighting, glass and textiles which featured bright colors, slick surfaces, intentionally lop-sided shapes and squiggly laminate patterns.
The group’s colorful, ironic design was one of the most characteristic examples of post-modernism in design and the arts. Sottsass described Memphis in a 1986 Chicago Tribune article: “Memphis is like a very strong drug. You cannot take too much. I don’t think anyone should put only Memphis around: It’s like eating only cake.”
Ides 142_Supergraphics innovators
Barbara Stauffacher Solomon is a San Francisco-based artist, graphic and landscape designer, and writer.
Solomon was a dancer before studying painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1956, Solomon moved to Basel, Switzerland to study graphic design at the Basel Art Institute with Armin Hoffman after the death of her husband. Later, she studied Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley.
She was best known for her Supergraphics design of the 1960s Sea Ranch and her 1991 Ribbon of Light installation at the Embarcadero Promenade in San Francisco, her style is a mix of Swiss Modernism and West Coast Pop, pioneered the look of the California Cool – an important moment in graphic design history.
Her works have been exhibited in galleries around the world from Paris to New York, and is currently on permanent exhibition at SFMOMA. Now in her 80s and still working, Barbara has turned her attention to a smaller canvas, creating pieces that tell not just one story, but many, and make a single page dance well beyond its borders.
Ides 142_Psychedelic Hero
Wes Wilson, who is known as the father of the ’60s conceptual poster, was born on July 15, 1937, in Sacramento, California. Wes Wilson was pioneered what is now known as the psychedelic poster. His uses all the available place with lettering, of creating organic forms made from letters, and using flowing letters to create shapes became the standard that most psychedelic artists followed. It helped put the “psychedelic” in the art.
When he was young, Wilson do not have special interest in art. Instead, he was more interested in nature. In collage, he studied forestry and horticulture. Late on he went to San Francisco and study philosophy.
Wilson’s first poster was self published. It has been named “Are We Next?”. It features a swastika within an American flag motif it suggesting the U. S’s involvement in Vietnam War. It is a clear example of Wilson’s politics, and his willingness to speak out.
The time was late 1965 and early 1966, and the whole San Francisco alternative culture scene was just emerging. Then we have Wes Wilson, who had a natural talent for art and an interest in printing, with Bob Carr, who had formed a small firm called Contact Printing. Carr was in touch with the whole San Francisco beat poetry and jazz scene, which was in the process of transforming itself. Wilson was doing the basic layout design for most of the work. The press also did handbills for the San Francisco Mime Troup fundraising benefits, the so-called ‘Appeal’ parties, as well as for the Merry Prankster Acid Tests. Wilson designed the handbill for the first Trips Festival, now considered one of the seed events of the emerging San Francisco scene. He also attended this event and was deeply moved by what he saw and experienced.
Wilson is also inspired by Alphonse Mucha, Van Gogh, Gustav Klimt, and Egon Schiele. One day, a friend showed him a copy of a 1908 poster done by the Viennese Secessionist artist called Alfred Roller. It contained an alphabet and lettering style quite similar to Wilson’s style had it also marked a direction for him. It helps Wlison to create more and changed the poster scene permanently.
IDES 142_ Advertising Innovator
One of the most famous advertising innovator is Container Cooperation of America. It was founded in 1926. When the company was launched, Herbert Bayer was Art Director for CCA at the time. He commissioned prominent artists, illustrators and designers to illustrate selected quotes. These words were from many great western thoughts that included philosophers, writers, scientists, and politicians, cultural and religious figures. This ad campaign ran well beyond Bayer’s expectation.
The company began to gain the reputation by it “Great Ideas of Western Man” series. Then in the following years, the company keep growing and they have worked for magazines such as Times and Fortune.
In his early years, Bayer was both a student and a teacher at the Bauhaus. He worked through a wide range of medias including painting, sculpture, typography, advertising and architecture. He was studied painting with Kandinsky, but in a short time he was teaching one of the Bauhaus’ first classes on typography.
before he was 28, he created notable amount of work. He spent time teaching at the Bauhaus, working as an Art Director for the Container Corporation and as an architect in both Germany and America.
In between his time at the Bauhaus and his career in America he spent time as the Art Director of Vogue magazine’s Berlin office. He contributed so many to the fields of graphic design, typography and advertising. He designed a typeface that consisted of entirely lowercase letters. Logically, Bayer developed a sans-serif alphabet of lowercase letters titled “Universal”.
IDES 141 – Spread #9 reflection
This week I was doing literature and typography for Lecture #9.
My Group members Courtney and Jack provide some very useful information. I particularly like Courtney’s research on Adventure of TinTin. I like this cartoon. At the planning satge of this spread, I decided to do something related to Tintin.
Also, I gained a lot of ideas form Jan Tschichold’s work. I really enjoy simplicity of his work.
However, it does not mean that his work is simple, his work are very powerful. I found he really have the ability to conduct information effectively.
In this assignment I learned to cut images from another picture do some simple variation to it. Compare to my last spread (Which I think is failed), it actually took my less time to do it. I think it is really important to think the design over and over again before actually executed it. I think I will feel more confident with my work.
IDES 141- Class reflection
Edward McKnight Kauffer was undoubtedly one of the most influential graphic designers of the 20th century. Cubism, Futurism and Surrealism are found in his posters. After the First World War, Kauffer moved from Paris to London where he gained his first project from the London Underground.
During the next 25 years Kauffer also worked for Shell, the Great Western Railway, the Empire Marketing Board and the Post Office. His designs ranged from book covers and illustrations to textiles, but among all of his work the one he did for London Transport posters is the most famous one.
In the 1950s Kauffer continue working, his client including American Airlines. The posters for American Airlines are a sure reminder of Kauffer’s strong achievement throughout his lifetime. He was a true pioneer in the medium he helped define as Poster Art.
Evalyn Zhang 