This project was extremely fun for me because George exposed me to some stop-motion masters such as Jan Svankmejer who I became completely enamored with. By watching films by Svankmejer and the like, I saw that it was possible to create something imaginative and fluid with still frames. However, stop-motions are a practice in patience, exactness, and detail. If you want it to look hyper-realistic and fluid, each photo needs to be painstakingly perfect. Overall, I’m quite happy with the outcome of both stopmotions.

For this assignment, we were asked to articulate our route to school in icon form. This was a challenge for me because I was overwhelmed by the complexity of the assignment. I was still struggling with Illustrator at this point, and much preferred Natalie’s Type class because I found InDesign a lot more accessible, so I think this project was a little neglected.

I don’t think that’s an excuse for the quality of my work, but looking back at it now it’s refreshing to see how much I’ve grown since. This project definitely challenged my conceptions of the senses and how to map sensory data, which wasn’t an intuitive concept to me. Process played a huge role in this as well, which facilitated my understanding of craft and generating ideas.

For this assignment we were asked to create an infographic of some sort that would articulate what our morning ritual was. Before I could even begin, I had to decide how to articulate a variety of different elements such as time, senses, colors, and space which was seemingly impossible at the time.

In my process sketches I think I had a better idea of what I wanted to do, but did not yet have the technical skills to hone them. I think Tuan recognized this in me, because I was the only minor in my class and my Illustrator pen-tool skills and knowledge of layers was still elementary. Luckily, Tuan was very patient with me, but the outcome of this project was far from what I had envisioned.

For this assignment, we were asked to design a map of our route to school. I had an idea of what I wanted for this project, but in retrospect, it was not executed well. I think around this time I was still very much uncomfortable with Illustrator and was too afraid to ask for help when my peers seemingly were experts in Illustrator. However, this project did force me to think critically about certain design aspects such as positioning and user-friendliness.

This project centered around a certain period in art in which most of us were unfamiliar with. We studied some interesting Russian propaganda posters and dissected their colors and messages. After this, we were told to animate one of our own, and to try and encapsulate the mood of the time.

This was the first time I was exposed to keyframes in After Effects which was extremely hard in the beginning. Even more difficult was the fact that I had never used Photoshop before, so basic knowledge of separating layers and importing them to After Effects was a challenge.

Animating each layer was a nightmare. For such a seemingly simple outcome, this project was labored over. It taught me a lot about the finnicky nature of animation as well as a lot about patience.

This activity was fun in that it forced me to think about type in a way I never had before. For this assignment, we were asked to make a letter out of some organic material. I chose flowers and cucumbers. The true challenge was creating a sequence in which a discernible letterform would be the end goal. This was possibly the first time we were introduced to After Effects and that in and of itself was a frightful task. I had never edited video before, so this was a great introductory project to expose me to a variety of thinks such as sequencing, video animation, video editing, process, and imagination.

This project was not only conceptual but technical and very process-oriented. As someone who had never before used Adobe illustrator, this was an especially daunting task. Most of my time was spent generating ideas before actually iterating anything digitally. Countless mindmaps and drawings were made until I finally arrived at something that conveyed my conception of happiness.

My ultimate challenge was differentiating between an icon and a symbol, between the literal and the stylized. I don’t think I fully articulated what Tuan wanted me to, but this project definitely got me closer to understanding certain aspects of process and thinking critically about design.

This exercise was intended to expose us to a different form of expression. What I took away from this project was that art doesn’t necessarily have to be something entirely original because perhaps that is an unrealistic approach. With Dada, you work off of pre-existing ideas and imagery which is not only fun but exciting in that something old can be turned anew.

I spent a lot of time flipping through old magazines and digging through trash in the art department to find items to put on my collage. When organizing the collage, I found myself subconsciously thinking about the principles of design and how they would play out in my collage. This exercise taught me to think outside the box and be resourceful.

This project was designed to facilitate our understanding of the design principles with an added challenge of continuity. We had to take a photo of something that featured one of the design principles (ie: similarity, size, shape) as well as another principle that the following photo would share as well.

This wasn’t so hard to do but my photography skills were a little rusty so it was nice to revisit Photoshop and sharpen my editing and composition skills.

This project is still my favorite project to date. This was my final for Natalie’s Type I class for which we were given specific instructions to create a type specimen book using all of the text from a typography essay of Natalie’s choosing. Not a letter was to be omitted during the layout of this book, which was to be a minimum of 12 pages. This posed a great challenge, as for most of us, myself included, this was the first time we would take on a large-scale project with a great amount of design autonomy.

I spent a great deal of time on this project just laying out the type itself, void of any design elements. I poured over various type specimen books Natalie had given me for reference and tried to identify which elements made the books successful and emphatic. I decided that colors should be kept constant throughout, but that positioning could be the one factor in which I had free reign. This way, with some factors kept constant, I was able to make the book appear visually cohesive.

Overall, I’m very proud of the outcome. This project also helped me understand the importance of process, as countless hours were spent attempting to make my deliverable perfect.