Author Archives: dpadill1

End o da Semester Wrap Up

End o da Semester Wrap Up

Here’s a link to the map I made, which basically outlines everything that I typically talk to myself about in terms of the SOURCE project and designing in general, complete with a little acronym that I made up for how I think about concepts on a regular basis. Since all of this is off the top of my head and based on what I usually do, it might not be communicated 100%, so feel free to ask for clarification.

“Write about something you think I’m wondering about you and why you think I think it’s worthwhile for me to be wondering about you.”

Wow, that’s a little intense…

Hmm, well, I’d have to say that you might be wondering what the heck I’ve been doing all semester, in a good way, I’d hope. It’s been really interesting, even if it is difficult. I’ve had some interesting experience that I think have made me grow as a person a bit. I’ve been having to spend a lot of time at the local skate park for Jimmy’s class, and I’ve also made a new friend because of that, not to mention met some of the regulars, as I’ve had to stop and ask them if I can film them. I think normally this wouldn’t be a big feat or anything, but I’m incredibly shy, as you are aware, and I really had to get out of my shell to talk to these people, and at first I couldn’t even do it. So I think in that respect, I’ve grown somewhat. I think even though I’m constantly afraid of failure and the consequences that follow, it keeps me on my toes and going strong, and I’ve also managed to gain some confidence this semester because of the fear and stress and the fact that I’m still alive and doing my best.

I think I’ve always had an issue with confidence, and one thing you might wonder is why I’ve been asking for so much help all of a sudden, and I think I honestly just got disoriented at some point, couldn’t grasp my own concepts, and then became desperate for help and understanding. However, I found time to recenter, and I feel more in tune with myself than I ever have. I feel determined, excited, and overall like myself again. I think I honestly struggled with my purpose this semester, and I’ve made a few adjustments (which you should ask me about) and I’ve learned a lot about myself, and I feel better about myself. I feel alive.

I think that, up until now, it hadn’t hit me that my father had left me and my mom for broke. Yes, he’s not here. Yes, he’s not helping us at all. Yes, he’s a total jerk to me and my mom. But, somehow, I think I repressed it since I needed to do well in school and help my mom get through everything. However, I think it just kinda came crashing down on me this semester, and that’s why I became afraid of failure. I think, in general, while I don’t want to put my mother and I in a situation where we’re homeless and starving since I don’t have a scholarship for school, I also don’t want to be like my father. Really and truly, he was an awful guy, but he was also a total failure. Went to school for accounting and couldn’t even handle it well enough to get a job or do well in his classes. I don’t want to be anything like him. I might not be top of my class, but I want to be up there, if I can be. I want to get more involved. I want to do more. I want to be more than anyone in my entire family has been. My father and my relatives like him totally tarnished our family name, and if you haven’t noticed, I stopped using my second last name (even though it’s on the roster). Arenivar was his name, not my mom’s. However, I feel like I might pick it up again. I think I wanted to distance myself from him so bad that I tried to cut that out, but I think the best thing to do is to make that name something great. Not for him, but for myself. Anyhow, that’s my little update on who I am and who I’m growing up to be, and why I think that is. Needless to say, I’m not afraid of the future anymore. I want this for myself, and I’m going to get it.

Weather Report

Weather Report

The goal of the Weather Report project was to present data from four locations across a weekend (Friday through Sunday) in three LATCH structures (Location, Alphabetical, Time, Category, Hierarchy), all while keeping the data on the screen at all times.

The Weather Report was a real challenge for me. I was not particularly experienced with After Effects, so it was a real task to try and animate a whole weather reporting program in After Effects. The end result took an incredibly long time to produce, composed of hundreds of layers of elements all moving around the screen at just the right time to make things flow well. The data consisted of temperatures and weather conditions from four different countries over the course of a weekend. I used a blocky, condensed typeface to try and highlight the futuristic look without sacrificing legibility, and the icons followed a similar style to keep things unified. The animations started out by sorting the data by location, then by days of the week, and finally by weather types. All the icons and graphical elements were designed with a futuristic, modular system in mind that could easily shift around to represent different data structures. Similarly, all the animations are tailored to match this system, with the modules splitting into sections to be rearranged, or the data itself moving along the shape of the modules to get where it needs to go. Overall, the end result is a meaningful composition with attention to detail and a futuristic appearance, all meant to reflect the weather in several countries along the course of a weekend.

 

Visual Identity: Mark

Visual Identity: Mark

For the finished mark, I was trying to create a visual identity that could express the mood and attitude of the heath Eiland and Morgan Moss BMX and Skate Park. I saw the location as aggressive, fun, and energetic, so I tried to match that in the form. The sharp and tapered lines suggest the aggressive and energetic nature of the park, with all the motion involved in the various tricks and grinds that the skaters perform. The round and not-so-accurate form of the skateboard also suggest something fun and family-friendly, which is a big part of what makes the park unique as a space. Yet the same time, the clash between these two different forms really highlights the fact that the park is for thrill-seekers and casual participants alike, and that is really the core of the park’s message. I think overall the entire design is a living, changing thing, but in its current state it was something exciting and interesting, and I believe that everything from the forms used to the colors chosen seems to amplify the idea of the park’s duality and its tone.

GDES II Process Work/Research

GDES II Process Work/Research

 

Link to Creative Writing Sample

 

Out of all the process work I did to analyze my space, the Heath Eiland and Morgan Moss BMX Skate Park, the creative writing sample and the photography were by far the most beneficial and interesting.

As far as the writing sample goes, I was trying to capture the feelings and surroundings of the park, so a good amount of my writing spends time looking at what I felt in that space, my interactions with others, and what I saw around me. I discussed the history of the park, the on-site functional art pieces by Chris Levack, and what makes the park’s conception so incredible. It really allowed me to get my ideas down on paper and cement the identity of the park in my own mind.

Similarly, the photographs I took were very telling of the community and the mood of the space. With the set of images I’ve curated for this post, we can see a man helping a couple of kids recover from a harsh crash on the top-left, an action shot of a young man attempting a jump at the top a ramp in the top-right, another young man preforming tricks on his bike in the bottom-left, and a small boy preparing to go down a ramp on the bottom-right. These are all different images in the sense that they represent diverse groups within the park; the young and old, the experienced and the enthusiasts, the hardcore and the fun-loving – it is all there. Photos like these really opened my eyes to how dynamic this space and its community is.

Interface Lesson

Interface Lesson

 

The goal of the interface project was to create a 30-second mock animation for a portfolio mobile app that showcased a launch screen, project page, project description, and navigation menu. For my own animation, I created a portfolio app that used tiles to navigate to projects, as well as buttons along the bottom of the app, and used a simple left-and-right swiping motion to navigate between photos of a project. I also decided to feature a “About Me” page to add to the immersion of the app. The design of the app mostly relies on squares and circles and features a color palate that uses RGB red as a base color, then incorporates different shades of red for all the elements. Given that most of the elements are based on a UI kit that was provided to students, most of the work here is in the layout, such as where I have used a background color to highlight the area where the project description is, and the attention to how much space there is between elements. The launch screen, however, is composed of a self-made silhouette of my own head, along with a loading animation and my initials. Overall, it is a very basic design that serves to mainly call attention to the artwork and descriptions rather than the app itself.

Plotter Lesson

Plotter Lesson

 

The plotter project was by far one of the most interesting projects I had in Image Methodology. For this project, I had to come up with a series of rules that were then going to be executed in order to create 12 different plotter drawings. What I got out of my instructions were drawings I honestly could never have expected. The rules were as follows:

  1. Start with two intersecting lines, it does not matter how they intersect.
  2. bend one line into a curve, then add to the shape with 2-3 curves. Make it as elaborate as you want.
  3. Take the other line and bend it slightly, making a smooth curve. Take this curve and duplicate it across the surface of the first shape, moving in a straight line. Make sure there’s an even number of copies and they are equidistant. You can even reflect the curves or alternate the orientation of them, if you desire.
  4. Take the duplicates and use pathfinder to unite them. It should make a closed shape. Try to fit this shape so the 8 is within it. Make sure the 8 is sent to the back, while the new shape is in the front.
  5. Make an envelope distort using the top shape, then expand its appearance. Take this shape and duplicate it, reflecting it horizontally. Take this result and reflect it vertically. Take this result and rotate a new copy of it by 90 degrees.
  6. Group this end result, duplicate it, enlarge it from the center, then use the unite it with a copy of the smaller version using the Unite button in Pathfinder. Center this on the smaller version as a frame.

Needless to say, the end result was incredibly interesting. Since they were all so delicate in composition, I used various gel pens to draw all the plotter images so that the line intricacies were not lost. All of the drawings remind me somewhat of Rorschach tests, which are usually composed of symmetrical ink blots. Some of the designs are geometric even, but most don’t include any straight lines and are instead a bundle of curves; some of the lines can even look akin to that of an audio wave. By far the most unexpected one was the image resembling a cross. It was completely unplanned, and the fact it exists was pretty baffling given the round nature of the other drawings. The cross drawing is the most delicate, almost resembling a doily. Overall, these drawings were incredible to watch unfold, yet I think their complexity probably stems from the complexity of my instructions. These images speak for themselves, and I am always impressed by how they turned out.

Zine Lesson

Zine Lesson

The Zine project was one of the more interesting project from Image Methodology. It was a project that was all about experimentation with layout and form, but it all still needed to be united somehow. The basis of the project was that I was to come up with a truism, in this case “there is always a reason”, and layout that text in an interesting way, with practically no limits other than it needed to be printed on a risograph printer using no more than two colors. For my design, I used an emulated chromatic/wood typeface made specifically for the letters in the truism, then overlaid the two base colors to create the colors you see now. The background is the blending and swirling of images and textures from photos I’ve taken of the South Congress area, with a filter applied to give it a glassier or hand-painted look. All of the letters in the composition have been warped using envelope distort, and the accents present in each letter’s fill are composed of overlapping and united hexagons with a gradient flowing through them. Overall, it is a very interesting design that I think really emphasizes the disorienting nature of life, as well as the mysticism that events can have when we find reasons for our trials and tribulations later in our lives.

Style Lesson

Style Lesson

For the style lesson, I was paired with another student and assigned the task of taking photos of one another in two styles, representing one style each based on research, then combing the two styles in a hybrid wardrobe for the last photo. The first wardrobe style – chosen by us – was the 80’s.

First of all, the first picture is a normal shot that depicts how I normally dress, for comparison.

I pulled off the 80’s look by sporting a puffed vest and button-down flannel shirt, accompanied by Converse sneakers and jeans, as well as my own attempt at a mullet, which was done by a professional hairdresser. I have always been heavily interested in the past, whether it be in terms of technology, pop culture, or fashion. For me, this 80’s look was relatively accurate, and the research that I found online approved of the decisions I made. I also tried to look into primary sources like movies from the time period, such as Back to the Future, as well as relatives that grew up during that time, and it all seemed to align well. I had originally also intended to include a pair of aviator sunglasses, but those photos did not make the cut in the end.

The final look was a hybrid of the 80’s and the preppy styles. Yenifer kept the concept of a sweater from the preppy look and added a jacket to the mix, yet both refer back to the 80’s with their bright pastel colors, her rolled jeans and low-top sneakers only emphasizing the mix between the preppy style and the casual mood of the 80’s. Similarly, I tried to mix the two styles by wearing a button-down dress shirt, jeans, sneakers, and a varsity jacket with a Star Wars logo on it. Both wardrobes are a very 50/50 split between the preppy and 80’s styles and mix the two seamlessly into a single hybrid wardrobe that encapsulates the best of both worlds.

Object Lesson

Object Lesson

For the matchbook project, I needed to create a design for a matchbook that would exist within the set or world of the Spike Jonze film Her. Upon watching the film, I noticed that a lot of the movie’s interfaces and design work is related to very simple shapes such as circles, squares, and triangles. I also did a little research and found information from an interview with the lead designer for the film about how the interior design and interface design was carried out. Using that information, I stuck with their 70’s color palate, created a logo for a fictional matchbook company, Onno, and included the word “matches” in both Chinese and English, as those two languages were featured in almost every form of signage in the movie. From there, I used the color palate and simple shapes to set the composition and created two separate versions that have all the same information with different color schemes and shapes. Both matchbooks were printed on premium matte inkjet paper and were folded using a bone folder to ensure that crease lines were straight and solid. The design of both matchbooks combines the best elements of the film’s design work and combines them in a single artifact, truly encapsulating the essence of the film’s look and feel.

Cognitive Map

Cognitive Map

For the cognitive map, I was instructed to create a map that could represent any kind of personal thought process. For my map, I decided to use the format of a flow chart to represent my thought process to decide what I should do with my free time. Since this map is more personal, I could use any kind of graphic style that seemed to match my own personality, so I decided to use a typeface similar to that used on the first monochrome CRT monitors, as most of my hobbies and interests involve computers. Apart from that, I focused on a color palate and creating black-and-white illustrations for each of the possible choices. The possible paths are broken up based on the amount of free time I have, as well as the category of activity. For instance, if I have less than 30 minutes to spare, I could spend time drawing, recording a video, or playing video games, yet there are also a few choices within each of those activities. Keeping with the computer theme, the flow chart is organized in such a way that it resembles a network tree diagram, with rectangles and thin lines being the dominant characteristics. There is also a background pattern that consists of minimalistic clocks at different positions, which helps reinforce the idea that this chart is about time, not just activities.