Last Year, Last Semester: Week 11

We’re on the other side of the vernal equinox and graduation is getting closer. Chris and I started to take big steps toward finishing the magazine, the illustrated typography project was due in illustration class and I learned the story of the bork. This week was brought to you by a big effort to get eight hours of sleep every night.

Progress on the magazine

Chris and myself are well underway developing the features of our magazine project. One of the features involves your data and what happens to it once you die. It’s in the spirit of this article. We’ve been taking JPGs, opening them up in text editors and then messing around with the code inside; cutting a few things here and pasting extra characters over there. The whole process is unpredictable and it makes for some nice surprises. For another one of our features we needed some scratchy letters for headlines and subheads. We found some black acrylic and scratched an alphabet into it. All this experimentation has kindled some excitement for the project in us.

Chris and I took both days over the weekend and went into school to work on the magazine. We called the event the Editorial extrava-bonanza-thon and we know there will be at least one sequel. Both of us brought snacks (yogurt covered raisins and Miss Vickie's chips mostly) and pop and went out for lunch to keep spirits high. The most important part was that we set timers and had to complete one spread per hour. They turned out scrappy and pretty rough but it’s an early version and there’s still lots of time left to refine what we’ve done. It’s clear to us now that up until the extrava-bonanza-thon we were spending too much time at once on each spread.

A glitched imaged

​The alphabet for the scratch font we made

Illustration critique

The illustrated type project finished up this week and I tried my hardest to step outside my comfort zone. After the critique was over I could tell I treaded too far into unfamiliar territory and should’ve taken some steps back. It’s a bit funny that despite illustrating the phrase “Done is better than perfect” I spent a little too much time pushing and pulling things in an effort to get it just right. Thankfully I was able to pull the project back just by getting rid of the colour. Few other mistakes are fixed that easily but it was a lesson learned regardless.

​The mistake and the fix

Purchases

Pitch Regular and Pitch Regular Italic are now in my collection of fonts. It also marks the first font I’ve bought (of hopefully many) from Kilm Type Foundry. My friend Laura Sand also picked it up for her branding project.

​Type specimen for Pitch

The story of the bork

I subscribe to the Listserve and I pulled this story out of one of the emails I received from a guy named Chris Morrison.

When I was a kid, my dad used to pick up rocks when I wasn’t looking and hurl them into the forest, where they would crash-crash-crash through dry leaves down a hill. “Do you hear that? It’s the bork!” What a bork was, he left to my imagination. Even at that tender age, I didn’t quite believe in the bork, but I never fully came to disbelieve it either. Today, when I look out into a peaceful forest, I imagine the lumpy form of the bork there: the world’s most mysteriously awkward monster.”

I’ll be thinking of that Bork every time I take walks in the forest now. Here’s another takeaway from his email:

“Human imagination works that way: leave a blank space, and given a starter seed, imagination grows and incorporates fresh details.”

I like that.

Second a Day (Year One)

The fans in my computer are whirring. The video I’ve been working on for the past year is going through its final render. I’ve been recording video every day since March 10 2012 after I watched Cesar Kuriyama’s 1 Second Everyday video. Much like Cesar, of all the videos I’ve recorded I’ve been selecting one second a day and editing them together to create a six minute movie of the past year.

You can watch it below.​

Update: This video is long gone. You can watch the three year version instead.

Last Year, Last Semester: Week 10

Week 10 featured the creation of my first font, a talk from two ACAD alumni, the big artwork reveal at Centennial Place and a surprise visit from a goat.

On Sunday I created outlines for the letters A–Z for the sushi project. I wanted to actually use it as a functioning typeface so I used some software my buddy Steven showed me some over the summer called Glyphs. It took a bit of work to understand the software but it was worth the time investment; the typeface works great and it’s way faster than copying and pasting letters to make headlines.

The alphabet in Illustrator.​

​The letter A in Glyphs.

Illustration class is a always wonderful and Thursday was no different. My instructor Mike brought in two former students (Josh Holinaty and Genevieve Simms) and they gave us a little talk. They shared their work and their process and gave us a few tips too. Josh showed us this great default brush in Photoshop that gives you some nice texture. Here’s a little explosion of colour I threw together with the newfound brush.

The real highlight of the week was the Centennial Place × Oxford Properties art unveiling. Another ACAD alumni, Christian Eckart, was commissioned for a large art piece that’s now installed in the public area of the building. The evening was one of the fanciest things I’ve ever been too and the whole design team looked especially great. Laura Sand, Nicole Edmond, Nikki Stephens and my previous instructor Naoko Masuda joined me. The whole team was happy with how our small part of the project turned out. The previous posts that have included photos of screen printing and box making are related to this project. Oxford Properties approached the school to create 35 glass sculptures to commemorate the unveiling of Christian’s piece. The glass sculptures needed to be packaged so they collaborated with the visual communications department. We needed help with printing so we contacted the print media department. It was a wonderful cross-disciplinary project and something I hope to see more of at ACAD.

​One of the parts of the sculpture created by Christian.

​The design team reflected in Christian's piece.

My classmate Michael Kohlweg brought a goat into class to end the week. It was for an Advertising stunt he was working on. 30% of the photos uploaded and tagged at the college that day were of the goat. It looks like it was an overwhelming success and I’m excited to see how the whole thing turns out. He’s got some great footage to edit together.

​The goat's handler and my instructor, Rik Zak.

Last Year, Last Semester: Week 9

“If it's not possible to sleep all day, then do the closest possible equivalent. Resting is crucial, your unconscious needs the day.”

The week started with this screenshot posted by Jack Cheng that came to him through an email from Miranda July. I thought the way it flipped what some of us normally do (pack the day full and sleep in the leftover time) was pretty clever. In this case the day should be packed full of resting with the leftover time spent working. That wouldn’t always work but it makes for some nice, challenging thinking.

On Thursday I was reading Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling. I quite like 8 and 9:

8. Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.

9. When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

Number 8 relates to my illustration class right now. I’m taking the saying around Facebook that “Done is better than perfect” and illustrating the typography. See, it’s not about making a ton of low-quality stuff (or what my teacher, Xerxes Irani, calls “green goo”), instead it’s about actually finishing things; not just having an idea, starting it and then abandoning it halfway because what you're making “isn't good enough”. And Number 9 just seems like a great way to get rid of a creative block.

​GIF from the photo shoot

Thursday night was a photo shoot for photography class with my friend Kristen Foran. She has an interesting practice that spans a bunch of media and I wanted to capture her in her studio space before she graduates and moves out. This is a fun little GIF of her dropping pompoms everywhere.

I was on the other side of the camera this time.

On Friday I was on the other side of the camera for a photo shoot. Some friends of mine needed a model for their magazine project and I happily accepted. In addition to it being quite fun I tried to observe the lighting setup the photographer was using. Maybe I'll be able to try it out on one of my projects?

Today also marks a very exciting anniversary of a project I’m working on. But more about that next week. For now, a teaser of what’s to come.

Last Year, Last Semester: Week 8

Reading break is completed. The final stretch begins.

The train was great this whole week and on Thursday I didn't listen to any music – I just focused on the sounds. When I thought about everyone looking in a mirror that morning to get ready I couldn't help but smile. It’s a shared ritual that I think we all forget we do. It's also that time of year when the sun is rising right as I'm riding the train. There’s lots of soft light spilling everywhere.

The creative director of a local agency called Foundry, Zahra Al-harazi, talked to the fourth year advertising class and I was able to sneak in (since I’m taking illustration that day). She shared her perspective of the design industry and it was great to have a female speaker come in (most of the speakers I’ve seen up until this point have been men). What really stood out was this statistic she brought up: only 3% of creative directors are women. I did a bit more research and Kathy Delaney, chief creative officer of Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness says that a lot of brilliant women “are forced to make that choice [between family and work]”. It’s unfortunate that agencies can’t strike a better work/life balance to retain those women. Their perspective couldn’t be more valuable when women control 80% of consumer spending.

The assembly line of box production was operating at peak efficiency this week. Nikki, Laura and myself cut them, scored them, folded them and glued them. Then we moved onto the sleeves which required more cutting and scoring. Nikki went out to pick up the stamp for the sleeves and came back with stories and some ink and the stamp. It worked wonders and better than I expected (white ink on black paper; I thought it might be tough).

Some extras bits:

I grabbed this paragraph about interaction design from this site. It might be a bit narrow and limiting but I liked it:

“While graphic design is meant to be observed, interaction design helps humans experience or manipulate software or interface with screen-based hardware in order to achieve specific goals – checking email, withdrawing money from an ATM, or "Liking" a webpage…”

I’ve been following Kevin Russ on Instagram for a while and he mentioned an application called avgcampro. I tried it out and I wanted to share a test image. Basically it takes multiple pictures and calculates the average picture out of them and normalizes the result so the lightest pixel become white. It’s great if you need low noise photographs that are taken in low light but I found it also has some nice experimental uses.

Averaged photo of my closet.

I’m still reading On Photography by Susan Sontag. This part that I'm quoting pokes a bunch of holes in what I was thinking about last week with Vine. Vine isn’t TV but it is a moving image.

“Photographs may be more memorable than moving images, because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow. Television is a stream of underselected images, each of which cancels its predecessor.”

​Snagged this photo from the bands website. Used without permission.

The soundtrack to this past week was the album Dream Island Laughing Language by Lucky Dragons and the song Gyroscope by Boards of Canada. In both cases it’s music from a faraway land.

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.