Last Year, Last Semester: Week 7

This was reading week and there were no scheduled classes. It’s a balancing act between taking a nice little holiday before the final push and getting enough work done so I don’t feel behind when I get back. I say that with regret because it would be nice to step away for a few days without any of the accompanying guilt. I found that to be especially true with it being the last break before I graduate.

It was a nice coincidence that a winner of the Listserve lottery shared a poem by Robert Frost I hadn’t heard since elementary school. I’ve grown a lot since then so it has a different meaning for me now. You’ll recognize this stanza:

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, 
​But I have promises to keep, 
​And miles to go before I sleep, 
​And miles to go before I sleep.

I only have to look up from my screen to see the post-it note above my desk that reminds me this last semester is a marathon. It won’t be over quick and it requires continuous effort and pacing to make it. If I put too much effort in too early I’ll be burnt out by the end. If I take it too easy I’ll be struggling to catch up.

In the spirit of reading week I've started On Photography by Susan Sontag at the suggestion of my teacher Mitch Kern (to whom I say thank you). It’s hard to believe it was written in 1977 because everything in there is just as relevant to what’s happening now with cell phone cameras and Instagram (among other social networks).

Of particular note is this part where she talks about photographs in books and how there is no way to regulate the speed in which they are consumed. I thought this was really interesting. Imagine someone flicking through their Instagram feed. How long does a user spend looking at each photo before scrolling to the next? 10 seconds? 5 seconds? 2 seconds? Perhaps even less? And then I thought about Vine and how things are a bit different. Instead, you are required to watch for a specific amount of time up to a maximum six seconds, based on the medium’s limitations. This structure that requires you to consider something for longer than normal could “increase visual legibility and emotional impact” according to Sontag.

A few other good bits I snagged out of the essays:

• Photography is not practiced by most people as art. It is mainly a social rite, a defence against anxiety, and a tool of power.
  

• Dependence on the camera, as the device that makes real what one is experiencing, doesn't fade when people travel more.

This all seemed to culminate in my visit to Canmore this week (my little bit of vacation time away from schoolwork). I brought my camera and made some pictures but I always had the essays in the back of my mind and this question of “Why? Why am I doing this?” (in the voice of Dieter Rams from the Objectified documentary, no less) Perhaps it will be answered later on in the essays. Perhaps I am totally doomed to question the activity from now on.

A small teaser of what’s to come: Laura Sand, Nikki Stephens and I have teamed up with Nicole Edmond, a print media major, to work on a project. We were in the print studio this week to screen print some artwork onto cardboard. It was a nice throwback to the print class I took in first year and I’m looking forward to doing more stuff like this once I’ve graduated. Here’s some photos from the printing session.

Startup Weekend Calgary 2013

For three days in February I attended Startup Weekend here in Calgary. According to the official website:

“Startup Weekends are 54-hour events where developers, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch startups.”

It was a time of learning, making, and eating (mostly pizza and Subway).

On opening night we checked in and ate some dinner before sharing ideas and forming teams. If you have an idea you can take one minute to explain it and rally support from the group. Everyone votes for their favourite idea and the long list becomes a short list. From there you can join one of these super ideas. I was particularly attracted to this “performance management made simple” idea and the team I joined spent the rest of Friday night meeting each other and sketching out a plan for the weekend. That night we left at 10:30pm.

Our whiteboard

The next day started at 9:00am with a mostly sugary breakfast. Our team opted out and group leader Anette went out to pick up some nice breakfast sandwiches with feta and spinach in them. They were pretty great. Our team-imposed goal was to have an email sign-up and splash page live by noon but we just missed that deadline with the release happening at 1:00pm instead. We took a short break for lunch and then got back to work.

Our idea started to take shape as group leader Anette explained to us that the current performance management market was full of expensive or complicated tools and that we were going to build the perfect software for small businesses that are about 10–100 employees large. We called it Parley.

For the rest of the day my buddy Steven and I worked on the interface for the web application. We had this side-by-side back-and-forth workflow where I could make a quick module in Photoshop and he could have it coded in a few minutes and vice-versa.  After the weekend was over I realized just how great this setup was. Meanwhile, the developers were setting up the back-end and our two business people were coming up with the business model. Dinner arrived which meant a short break before settling in to our workstations for the evening. Every once in a while some coaches would drop in and we would explain our idea to them. They provided feedback and helped us stay on the right track. Having to explain your idea repeatedly and concisely really highlighted all the areas that needed our consideration. That night we left at 10:00pm.

An equally sugary breakfast was served Sunday morning but I managed to find some cheese croissants tucked away in a forgotten corner. Thankfully, they were not stale. We finished the rest of the interface work for the screenshots and demo before mid-morning break. In total, we built an email sign-up and three pages that showed off the core features of our product. Steven and I used this service called PowToon to make a quick video demonstration of the application before lunch and then the team as a whole spent the afternoon making our presentation for Sunday night’s judging round look great.

Presentations were limited to four minutes with an extra two minutes allocated for questions from the judges. Teams presented the ideas after dinner and it was great to see where they started at the beginning of the weekend and where they ended up.

Our team was feeling confident. We had located a significant market opportunity, validated the need for better performance management software and our demo looked good and worked well. Regardless of confidence It still came as a surprise when they announced we were taking home first place. A healthy amount of photos and handshakes followed and the team had a little huddle before we went our separate ways. I was exhausted by the end of the weekend so I drove home shortly after the winners were announced.

Team Parley

I went into the weekend with simple expectations, namely, hoping to learn something. To put it simply: goal exceeded. Every person I met at the Startup Weekend had their own specialties and something unique to teach me. Some of the biggest educational takeaways were Twitter Bootstrap, the pitch deck that AirBnB (then called AirBedandBreakfast) used to sell their business and 12 questions to answer in a startup pitch. However, much of what I learned over the weekend isn't as tangible as those couple things I listed above, not to mention the experience I gained by working as fast as I could. I went into it a little scared and a little nervous but came out with a great experience.

And I was very fortunate to work with some very talented team members.

Last Year, Last Semester: Week 6

View from the studio

I started the week by reading an article from the New York Times about John E. Karlin. He was a researcher at Bell Labs who made the telephone easier to use. It was a great read but I pulled this particular section about human-factors engineering out.

“Human-factors studies are different from market research and other kinds of studies in that we observe people’s behavior and record it, systematically and without bias,” Mr. Israelski said. “The hallmark of human-factors studies is they involve the actual observation of people doing things.”

They go on to explain that human-factors engineering aims to ease the awkward, often ill-considered marriage between man and machine and I thought they put best when they said it’s the cognitive counterpart of ergonomics.

I like this human-factors engineering approach much more than the market research I do for class. Perhaps I’m just not very good at market research but I always feel I’m making generalizations and assumptions about a target audience. It’s like I never truly know them. This is something I could work on.

Later in the week I came across We’re Not Unhappy, We’re Designers by Morgan Knutson. I pulled this out of it:

“Our discontent is the basis for wanting to improve the things we observe. Next time someone says designers are unhappy people, explain that you'd be happier if the world didn't need so much improving.”

But I wasn’t quite content with this so I went searching. I found this discussion on Branch and the people there make some good counter points, particularly this one by Cemre Güngör:

“Is it an ego thing? I feel like pointing out flaws gives one the impression that they know better, and the designer ego feeds off of it.”

So I’m stuck in the middle of these two opposites. I wonder if it comes down to a deliberate attempt to make things better instead of just pointing out everything that’s wrong in the world.

Stepping back from all that stuff and back into the classroom, we’ve started a new project in illustration class called Illustrated Type and as an introductory exercise we were asked to illustrate our name with objects. (3 different variations of illustrate in that sentence!) I used a random noun generator to get the word procedure and found some objects that related. I’m happy with the result and I’m looking forward to where this project will end up. For this week we leave our names behind and go out in search of some phrases.

Last Year, Last Semester: Week 5

On Monday night after photography class I met up with my friend Kristen Foran in her studio at the school. She had this giant bucket of pompom balls and she told me to put my hand in it. And it’s just a moment of pure happiness because there’s all these soft and fuzzy colourful puffballs and you’re wrist deep in them. Pictured above.

On Tuesday I found a window on the fifth floor that lets nice light in at a certain time. It aligns with this door tucked in the corner of the hallway and I made a photograph with my silhouette.

Wednesday was a fun day with the photoshoot. I rented a lighting kit from the school and was playing around with that for a good five hours or so. My brother Levi was the subject and he was very patient with everything. It was nice to work in a controlled environment after the unpredictable elements of the prior photography project with the Bow building.

The highlight of the week was the gallery opening of Illustrated Patterns and it was great to see all the work up on the walls. Earlier that day we had our critique of the illustration projects and it went well. The class produced some amazing work and I’m really fortunate to be surrounded my so many talented people. The things the illustrators can produce are, in some cases, quite mind-blowing. Brittany made this photograph of me standing beside my pattern in the gallery. I was really happy.

There was more “research” done for my branding class Sushi project during lunch on Friday. I was really conscious of the buying experience and how people were selecting their sushi at the storefront. I also made sure to consider the experience of eating it too. And it was really tasty.

Saturday morning I was driving on the highway near my house right around the morning magic hour and the shadows were long and it was surreal when all of this was combined with the long sight lines of a highway. Vast expanses of space with near-impossibly long shadows. Unfortunately I don’t have a photo to share because I was driving. But I wish you could have seen it.

Last Year, Last Semester: Week 4

I’m starting to take notice of light a bit more now that I have four photography classes down. This week we had the first part of a workshop on lighting. I've seen some of the equipment involved and the amount of time and effort that goes into a well-lit photograph. It’s like two hours of setup before you even take your first photograph.

The magazine project hasn't quite captured my attention or interest yet. There’s interesting subject matter abound but it’s just not at the front of my mind. My partner Chris Turner and I have been working on cover concepts to help dictate the personality of the magazine.

The quick deadline of my illustration project has kept me nimble in my other classes. Compared to where I started on the project my pattern has evolved a ton and I'm happy with the outcome. On Thursday February 7 my instructor is having a gallery opening at Art Central with all the patterns made by my classmates and myself.

Opening postcard

The sushi project has been exciting. And research is fun and tasty. The class has really taught me how to present an idea clearly and quickly and that skill has applications outside of school too. I forget who said it or where I heard it but if something can't be explained in two or three sentences it's probably too complex. That's a pretty broad statement that could be disproven quite quickly but when it comes to communicating an idea quickly it seems to work.

“Research”

After class on Friday Brittany and I visited the Glenbow Museum to see Fred Herzog’s photography exhibit. I admired his use of colour in street photography and was amazed at how he isolated subjects from a cluttered background. And then there were some great lines used in the advertisements he photographed such as:

• Time tunnel

• Sacrifice price (this was a sign on a sledgehammer)

• Special value

• Best value

• Pontiac: for the best of everything

• 7up your thirst away (imagine this line if it said Coke instead)

• Army and navy: where the masses shop

Brittany admiring a photograph

Homework is starting to pile up and most of my hours have been dedicated to school. I can't deny I'm looking forward to the days when I can be lazy on a Sunday. But I still reflect on those words I heard at the start of the semester about this thing being a marathon. Keep running.

Last Year, Last Semester: Week 3

This was an exciting week for taking photos. I took on an architectural photography project for class and I learned very quickly that there are issues when photographing private spaces; I’ll admit right now I was pretty naive to it all. When I went scouting I got a few looks from security guards without really understanding why and as one guard made her way over I got spooked, gave up and walked away. Totally distraught, (not really) I did a little research and it didn’t take long to find the photographer vs. security guard stories. Thankfully, on shoot day the one security that approached me was a total gem and had no problems if I only took photos of the exterior of the building. I learned a lesson about private property and my rights as photographer though.

In illustration, my teacher brought in a few practicing comic book artists and they had a panel discussion about the process in front of a nice, big and engaged audience. I’m not that interested in comic books but it was exciting to see the curtain pulled back on the industry and hear about all the writers and editors and artists that work together with the goal of telling a story.

Two of my classmates, Laura Sand and Nikki Stephens, and myself are working on a packaging project for a client. We’ve been chopping rough cuts out of cardboard and pasting them back together to make an exciting unboxing experience. In illustration I pulled out the paint brush and acrylics and did a little mark-making for a a pattern project. I repeat it a lot but it’s refreshing to take a break from the mouse and computer and work with real life tools that are not pencils, sharpies and highlighters. I should be doing this more often.

This coming week I’ve got a little personal goal to take my camera around everywhere and get some street photography shots. I’m still uncomfortable taking photos of people but I’m making an attempt at combating it.

Lastly, this very fun service called Vine launched. It’s Instagram for videos (and to be fair some would probably argue against that)  but the important part is that it’s all about easily editing together a quick, approximately 6 second video. It’s like a GIF with sound. I really like thinking about how you could tell stories with it that would be more difficult – but not impossible – to tell in a single photograph.