December 2, 2009

Time passes so fast, today was the second class to the last. Jimmy outlined what we learned during this semester on the board, including how to analyze a project, how to initiate a research, how to develop sources, how to articulate visual concepts with informative and accurate sketches, how to generate different ideas and how to apply those concepts. Wow, I didn’t realize that I had learned that much if without the review. Jimmy also asked us to review the goals we wrote down on a card at the first day of the class, and ask ourselves, did I reach my goals? My goal was to understand the way creating a good idea, and evaluating the ideas. Maybe I’m still a neophyte with immature skills in the field of concept development, but this class gave me a chance to take my first step. As what Jimmy described, this class was a course of creative process, self analyzes, structure, and divergent thinking, I believed it would serve as a foundation for my design career in the future.


Adjectives:
terrific
sabbatical
sacrificial

November 30, 2009

We were required to present three things about ourselves in front of the class in today’s class, two of which should be true, another should be lie. We needed to try our best to fool the class so that no one could tell the truth. It sounded like a game, but actually not too easy for me. I would be nervous even telling the truth in public; how nervous could you imagine if I was lying? The three things I picked were about my background, my job and my family. Maybe my sentences were too short, each of them was believed by half and half of our classmates. The point of this game was confidence. As what Jimmy said, if we were not honest in our presentation, we had to be convincing. If we were not confident for our presentation, how could we convince our audience? Afterward, we were asked to tell a short story about our past weekend. Even though Thanksgivings is a traditional holiday in the US for the families get together, my family is too far away. I didn’t have too much to do except enjoying the after-thanksgivings shopping.

Adjectives:
humanistic
consensual
confidential

November 23

We always had something new in the class, which might be what Jimmy tried to tell us, concept development should not be restricted within a certain frame, just like his class. After we evaluated our posters with the creative briefs by each other, Jimmy asked us to close our eyes, listen to his story and imagine the scene following his story. Jimmy said, we were inside of a cave, then we saw a door with our name, then we opened it…. He stopped right there and asked us to draw down what we saw…. What I saw? Interesting… um… I saw a goddess from the moon! It’s so holy and peaceful, strongly contrary to the dark cave. At the end of the class, we were told that our final project was a visual map describing our creative process. I thought I would need more research about it.

Adjectives:
consecutive
phenomenal
precious

Creative Brief - November 18

Today’s topic was creative brief and design research. Creative briefs generally include project background, objectives and strategies to target audience, which can be reached from a series of simple questions in connection with location, budgets, time frame, etc. In order to make it more interesting, we used lesbian night club as an example for discussion in the class. Obviously, everybody had some general idea about the lesbian night club, but when we were asked to use one single message to catch the attention, we hesitated. Eventually, we came out an idea to iconize a hat, which was used to deliver some message like “women only”, “dress neutral”, “mysterious”, etc. A good single icon is better than multiple ones because it is easy to impress the public and differentiate our client from other clubs.

Creative brief serves as a guideline for the graphic design, under which our creative idea will be more organized.

Adjectives:
iconic
tough
realistic

Monday, November 16, 2009

As usual, I sat at the back, and waited for the class started. But when Jimmy got in, he asked us to sit in alphabetic order by our names. He also required us to sit in different seat every time. It sounded like just a little adjustment, but it actually tried to change our accustomed behaviors. When we got used to certain surroundings, we normally would go back to the same place, either consciously or unconsciously. Such accustomed behaviors were the barriers in creation. Because of the custom, we lost our curiosity about the surroundings; because of the custom, we were afraid of changes; because of the custom, we had no idea how to respond to any unexpectation. However, one of the basic conditions for a good graphic designer is to explore different areas of artwork, to meet new people, to appreciate new ideas, and so on.

Then we started to share what we remembered or what we felt interested in Kim Baer. All of us had different highlight about Kim Baer. I was impressive with her passion for design and her persistence in her career. As what she said, “It's important to renew my job once I have engaged in a career that I plan on staying in.” I believed her success should be attributable to her persistence.

The next subject in the class was to evaluate our sketches by each other. We were required to present our sketches, and pick one for discussion, such as the idea or concept of the sketch, which was graded by the whole class from excellent, good or bad. Even though it was not restricted grading, it was still kind of motivation for me to try my best.

Adjectives:
conscious
intellective
intelligent

Kim Baer

It was nice experience to attend Kim Baer's presentation,
Which was so inspiring to the greener like us in the field
of design. Baer is a well-known designer in Los Angeles
and the founder of a design. Baer is a well-known designer
in Los Angeles and the founder of a design studio called
"KBDA", located in the city of Pasadena. The topic of Baer's
Presentation was "A Lif of Graphic Design: 30 Years of
Fantastic Fourth-Grade Field Trips", during which Baer
shared her knowledge and experience with us, such as
how she reached her goal via hard working, what was
her attitude when encountering the difficulty. It was no
doubt that her success resulted from her passion for
design and her persistence in her career. "It's important
to renew my job once I have engaged ina career that I
plan on staying in."
Similar to most of the designers, Baer's road to success
is not even. But she never gave up in front of the barrier.
As what she said, she never felt regretful about what she
did; she still would make the same decision if she had a
chance to go back into time and made some changes.
During the presentation, Baer used the real cases she had
worked on to bring up 4tips to the future designers: 1.Intensive
Curious; 2. Hard Working; 3. Drawing; and 4.Focus on
Typography. It sounds easy, but how many we can apply
persistently during our whole career?

Adjectives:

fabulous
brilliant
competent

On Wednesday class was movie day, Jimmy had a bunch of
clips from TED and other events for us to watch today. Most
of the speakers were graphic designers that were highly
involved in the field. The first speaker we saw was Scott
McCloud. His explanations of comics and how they are read.
was very enthusiastic. The second speaker was John Maeda.
He also was very entertaining to watch. The free-flowing of his
presentation was smooth. Milton Glaser was the third video
we watched. Milton has been a huge part of the design world
and it was pleasant to hear his opinions on things. The last
speaker we saw was paula scher. She explained her history
and techniques and why she did things certain ways. She has
been such an icon in the design world it was also entertaining
to hear her presentation.

Adjectives:
Enthusiastic: Belief in special revelation of the holy spirit.
Technicolored:
eligible

The Game Of Life

On monday class, the whole class time we played games in

groups. It was interesting to see all the different games that

pelple brought to play. Our group played two games, the first

one was the game of life. I never played before. The game

simulates a person's travels through his life. Go to college,

choose a career, get married, start a family, buya house, and

retire; the player with the highest worth at the end of the

game is the winner. I first time to played this game, but I won.

I think based on luck. The game of life is a fun, engaging game

that can be played by the whole family. Our homework for

wednesday is to map out the game that we played .what is the

experience of the game? What was your experience playing

the game?

Adjectives:

amused

anabolic

neutral

Powers of Ten

We watched two films on Wednsday class. One was called
" Powers of Ten". The filmed was produced in 1968 by
Ray Eames and her husband Charles. The film depicted
the relative size things,distance from earth to the universe
and how big and small things are. It starts with two people
lay on the grass and starting to zoom out the space, than
you can saw the city it becoming smaller, you saw the clouds,
the earth, the planets, the stars, and galaxies etc. Then it
started zooming in into a man's hand and you start seeing
the sikn layers, red and white cells, DNA, modules and
nucleus. It was an interesting film.
The second film was called "Why Man Creates?" This movie
start as a series of steps from 1 to 8, such as The edifice,
Fooling around, The Process, The Judgement, A parable,
Digression, The Search, and The Mark. Afer, we have
dicussed about our assignment that we have to find three
images to tell a story, it was fun seeing what people come
up with.

Adjectives:

creamy
horrible
grand

On Monday class we needed to bring 10 simple pictures to
class. but some people forgot, including me. So professor
decided to split the class into five different groups. Each
group was required to choose one simple picture and come
up with ten words or phrases to change the meaning of
picture. At fist, I thought it is easy assignment. But when
we worked on, actually not easy to come up with ten
different words to change the meaning of the picture.
Maybe it's easy for you to come up with a lot of ideas. But
it's hard to get a great one. This exercise was purposed to
train us using different words to explain our ideas.We have
to do this assignment again for homework.

Adjectives:
bisexual
zany
clownery

Dreams by Akira Kurosawa

Today in class we saw a film by Akira Kurosawa called "Dreams". "Dreams" is perhaps Kurosawa's most beautiful film...fantastic locations,interesting costuming and gorgeous cinematography. The movie consists of eight short stories. Most of which center around the issue of people's relationships whth other elements that make up this world that we live in. The first titled "Sunshine Through The Rain": a young boy is told not to go out on the day when both weather conditions occur,because that's when the foxes hold their weedding procession, which could have fatal consequences for those who witness it. This is the first in a series of eight short dreams that seem to be dealing with various elements of death. In the first movie, there is a choice between death or asking forgiveness. The next segment "The Peach Orchard": the same young boy encounters the spirits of the peach trees that have been cut down by heartlee humans. As a child cries over the loss of the peach blossoms he says: "peaches can be bought, but where can you buy a whole orchard of blossoms"? The firat two films contain magical elements surprise and delight the inner child. The third part "The Blizzard": a team of mountaineers are saved from a blizzard by spiritual intervention. The Blizzard and Avalanche will try your patience at first, but as with many of the films, your patience is well rewarded. Just as we are losing hope. Expect the unexpected in this section. "The Tunnel": a men encounters the ghosts of an army platoon,whose deaths he was responsible for.
The Tunnel brings us to the concept of fearing the unknown or not accepting our death. One of my favorite sections is "Crow's": an art student encounters 'Vincent Van Gogh' and enters the world of his paintings. Crows is much more about visual delight and a surprising ending. "Mount Fuji in Red": nuclear meltdown threatens the devastation of Japan. "The weeping Demon" a portrait of a post-nuclear world populated by human mutations. "Village of the Watermills": a sunny portrait of a village whose population is entirely at one with nature. "mount Fuji in Red" and "The Weeping Demon" are both fantastical cautionary tales about the hazards of nuclear power. Finally the gentle "village of the watermills" brings the film to a quiet, pastoral end. Kurosawa uses childhood memories Japanese traditions, and his own moral views to construct a loosely-connected series of episodes rich in visual imagery. Overall Akira Kurosawa's Dreams is a great movie, it may not be a masterpiece but the enormous amount of artistic contentinvolved, the message which Akira Kurosawa tries to convey to the audience, the visual vibrancy, the Cinematography, the small characters makes Dreams a great film to me. If you have an artistic and like to see how movies can become art, I woukd highly recommend "Dreams"


Adjectives:
Fantastic: Infml extremely good; wonderful.
Traditional: Of or in accordance with tradition.
Nuclear: concerning, or using NUCLEAR ENERGY.

Mind Mapping

On Monday class, the main topic was mind mapping or idea mapping, a mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Professor showed us lots of different types of mind maps. It was very interesting to see other peple presented ideas in a graphical, mind maps encourage a brainstorming approach to planning and organizational tasks.
And then we had to creat our own mind mapping.This was a great exercise, it helps you to get fesh ideas and don't need to worry about analyzing. This idea mapping it is a wonderful way that will help in the future.

Adjectives:
temporary
attemptable
acceptable

The discussion in wednesday class covered concept of time , ideas, colors, photos, and so on. The most interesting topic for me was "time", which reminded me the new movie called "Time Traveler's Wife" It dramatically answers Prof.Moss's question: What if time was simultaneous? No kidding, the guy in the movie keeps traveling back and forth through his lifespan, even goes to the future after his death. He can tell his wife what their daughter looks like 10 years later when his wife is pregnant; he also can make friends with his wife in her childhood. That is so cool. But I have another question, if all the persons from past or from future come to the present, is our earth big enough?

Prof. Moss also showed us some pictures with strong symbolis. The mixed images had greater impact on us than the normal ones. One of the examples was the picture combining Obama with Joker. If you were familiar with Batman movie and Obama's operation, you might figure out the meaning that the artist tried to express. The reason why Prof. Moss showed us the pictures was to bring up the concept of "iconography", which is defined as pictorial illustration of a subject through logo, symbol or icon. As what we knew, "pictures speak thousands of words". Prof. Moss

also used pictures to help us understand the new concept, understand how visual evidence differs from interpretation.

Adjectives:

peaceable

ridiculous

farcical

First day of class

Yesterday was the first day of my class, Art 220 Concept Development. Before taking the class, I had no idea about what I was going to learn in the class. I thought the teacher understood our confusion. He asked us to write down our opinions about what we were going to do in this class and what we would learn. Everybody had different opinions. Even though the opinions were diversified, they finally gave me some idea about the purpose of the class. I believed this class would help us to understand the way to create a good idea, and to evaluate the ideas.
Aflterwards, we were given an apple and requested to tell our classmates what an apple was like . I looked at it, smelled it, touched it; and told my partner my feeling about the apple. It was an interesting practice, which helped us to see things from different angles.

Adjectives:
ironic
excellent
tremendous