Liar Liar (week 10)

I was absent for mondays class but I heard it was pretty interesting. I heard that we had to make up and present two lies as well as two truths. I heard we also critiqued those facts.

adjectives:

1. decisive
2. ceaseless
3. capricious

Creative Brief (week 8)

Many creative marketing projects get underway without a clear sense of expectations between a nonprofit's marketing and organizational leadership, and the creative folks (whether in-house or freelance) delivering it. The result? An extended and expensive creative development process with many revisions – not to mention chewed-up nails, bruised egos and depleted momentum.

Taking the time and energy up front to craft a thorough creative brief will save your nonprofit time and money, and ensure you get the fundraising brochure, campaign website or annual report you envisioned. And, in going through this process you may realize that another medium or approach will work better than the one you had in mind.

Your brief should be, well, brief, running no more than two pages. Make it scannable with the use of clear headings and bulleted lists, rather than a narrative form with dense paragraphs.

Here's what your brief should include:

• Overview
  • General project information
  • Goals
  • Measurable Objectives (benchmarks to measure progress towards goals, e.g. increase membership by 20% each year or media coverage
  • Deliverables Needed
    Deliverables can change during the creative process, i.e. the graphic designer might suggest that a blog, rather than an e-newsletter, will do more to address your goals.
• Primary audiences
  Provide enough detail to enhance everyone's understanding of who the audience is. Include some user demographic information if possible.
  • Who are your primary target audiences. Choose a typical audience member or two and profile including occupation, age range, gender, what her day looks like, etc.
  • How will your audiences use this brochure, white paper or website?
  • What should be avoided in talking to these audiences?
• Tone and Image
  • Funny and casual, or formal and buttoned-up, or...
  • What do the audiences believe or think, before you start communicating with them?
  • What tone and imagery should we use to engage them?
  • Specific visual goals?
• Messages: Features, Benefits and Values
  • List top features and/or facts about the program, service or organization, and its value to target audiences
  • How do these stack up against the competition?
  • If you could get one sentence across, what would that be? How would you prove it?
  • Other major points?
• Budget and Schedule
  • Has a budget been approved?
  • When must the message get to the audience for greatest impact (e.g. service introduction date, conference, special event)?
  • What is the due date for the finished work?
• Process
  • Who is the point person (on the nonprofit side)?
  • What is the internal review and approval process?
  • Who needs to sign off on final execution?
• Anything else?
• How many rounds of revisions on your side (be they your's personally, your bosses, or your nonprofit's CEO's) should the writer or designer include in her bid for the job?
• A graphic designer needs to know, for example, whether your mailing house will enclose the brochure by machine or hand, and, if by machine, what kind of fold the machine can handle.

adjectives:

1. stereotyped
2. verdant
3. wicked

Kim Baer (week 7)

Kim Baer, is principal of Los Angeles-based design studio KBDA, which she founded in 1982. The firm's client list ranges from nonprofit organizations, such as the Prostate Cancer Foundation, UCLA, and Chamber Music Los Angeles, to consumer-oriented companies, such as Nike, Nissan, and Hilton Hotels.

Consistently honored by every major design and business organization in the country, KBDA has produced work that has been featured in the Library of Congress and published in numerous design compilations. National design publications, including Communications Arts, Print, Graphis, STEP Inside Design, and HOW, have showcased the firm’s work and methodology.

The GAUGE Speaker Series brings design industry professionals to campus to stimulate discussion, inspire excellence and build community among the design students, alumni, faculty and staff of California State University Los Angeles. Established in the 2006-2007 academic year, GAUGE has brought one speaker each quarter to campus. Past speakers have included: Deborah Sussman, Agustin Garza, Stefan Bucher, Ricardo Cardenas, Michael Hodgson, Noreen Morioka, Yu Tsai, Petrula Vrontikis, and others.

Kim is an AIGA/LA Fellow (2004)

adjectives:

1. eminent
2. ethereal
3. nebulous

Circle of Death (week 7)

I found Monday's exercise to be more difficult than the previous exercises. These exercise involve no only full class participation but focus as well. Each student had to pass an object from one person to the next claiming what it was to that other person and that person had to ask the question of what it was again. This involved two objects for the circle. This process had to travel from opposite ends of the circle towards each other then intersect and pass through to end up where it started. Unfortunately, we weren't successful. Everyone made a mistake once that certain person (ughumm-Paulinee and Rene) kept messing up the intersection of both objects. Well it was a fun experience but I found it to be rather stressful and tiring. The purpose of this exercise was to work on and progress our communication skills as a team and a group. This is of course for developing our future careers.

Another activity we had done for Monday's class was evaluating our homework assignment, the autobiography. Most of the designs were very expensive and interesting. Too bad mine wasnt as creative, I could of put much more effort into creating a much more interesting design. Next project I will do much better.

adjectives:

1. efficacious
2. divergent
3. tawdry

TED.COM (week 6)

Scott McCloud (born Scott McLeod on June 10, 1960) is an American cartoonist and theorist on comics as a distinct literary and artisticnon-linear medium. McCloud was the principal author of the Creator's Bill of Rights, a 1988 document with the stated aim of protecting the rights of comic book creators and help aid against the exploitation of comics artists and writers by corporate work-for-hire practices.The group that adopted the Bill also included artists Kevin Eastman, Dave Sim, and Stephen R. Bissette. The Bill included twelve rights such as "The right to full ownership of what we fully create," and "The right to prompt payment of a fair and equitable share of profits derived from all of our creative work."

John Maeda (born 1966 in Seattle, Washington) is a Japanese-American graphic designer, computer scientist, university professor, and author. He is the current President of the Rhode Island School of Design. His work in design and technology explores the area where the two fields merge.

Maeda was originally a software engineering student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) when he became fascinated with the work of Paul Rand and Muriel Cooper. Cooper was a director of MIT's Visual Language Workshop. After completing his bachelors and masters degrees at MIT, Maeda studied in Japan at Tsukuba University's Institute of Art and Design to complete his Ph.D. in design.

In 1999, he was named one of the 21 most important people in the 21st century by Esquire. In 2001, he received the National Design Awardfor Communication Design in the United States and Japan's Mainichi Design Prize.

Maeda is currently working on SIMPLICITY, a research project to find ways for people to simplify their life in the face of growing complexity. His research has led to the publishing of Laws of Simplicity, his best-selling book to date.

He currently lives with his wife, Kris, and their five daughters, in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Paula Scher (born 1948 in Virginia) is an American graphic designer and artist. Scher studied at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts, and was awarded a Doctor of Fine Arts Honoris Causa by the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington D.C.. In the 1970s she designed album covers for CBS Records and Atlantic Records, before moving into art direction for magazines. She worked at Time Inc. before forming her own design firm, Koppel & Scher. Since 1991, she has been a principal at the New York office of the Pentagram design consultancy.

Scher has been inducted into the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame (1998), received the Chrysler Design Award for Innovation in Design (2000), and a Gold Medal from the American Institute of Graphic Arts (2001). Some of her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Her album designs have earned her four Grammy Award nominations.

As an artist she is known for her large-scale paintings of maps, covered with dense hand-painted labelling and information. She was involved in the planning of a new multi-use "urban center" in the Mount Vernon Square neighborhood of Washington D.C., and teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Scher married designer Seymour Chwast in 1973, divorced him 5 years later, then remarried him in 1989.

Milton Glaser (born June 26, 1929) is a graphic designer, best known for the I Love New York logo, his "Bob Dylan" poster, the "DC bullet" logo used by DC Comics from 1977 to 2005, and the "Brooklyn Brewery" logo. He also founded New York Magazine with Clay Felker in 1968.

adjectives:

1. amuck
2. ceaseless
3. gratis

20 Sketch Game Concept (week 6)

Monday's class was especially interesting and rather time consuming. Each one of us had to present 20 different sketches of a game design(s) which we came up with. Most of us came up 20 different sketches for one game concept, but others, such as me, came up 20 different sketches for 20 different game concepts. Throughout the presentations, I found that not everyone put as much effort and time to their ideas. The games seemed fun and interesting but didn't really make sense. Mine wasn't so great either. Unlike most of the class, I decided to come up with 20 different game concepts instead of one. I found that to be much more interesting and that much more difficult. But I don't think my ideas were as good as most of the other students. My games didn't really focus on the aspects of education and learning, more for just having fun with. These games were named L.A. Life, Hollywood Life, Criminal Escavation, Nutball, X-games Unleashed, Bar Mania, War front-the Conquer, Pocket Tanks, etc. My favorite one was actually my Nutball concept. I believe if this game was actually manufactured and produced, it would rather become rather popular and sell quickly. It sounds like it would be a good investment for the future. I hope no one steals the idea by then.

I think the idea behind the exercise is to expand our minds by brainstorming different ideas to create a interesting design. I am sure the exercise was also for us to broaden our sketching ideas. Jimmy said we will need to start to producing much more sketches in the future for our ideas because 20 sketches is not enough for brainstorming ideas, we would need to produce about 100s. I also believe that these exercise are meant for us to observe, learn, and evaluate other peoples ideas just as our own. It was a fun experience.

adjectives:

1. abhorrent
2. synonymous
3. rhetorical

Influential Speakers (week 5)

Wednesday's class was, again, very interesting. We had watched a couple of videos on these professional speakers who gave us some insight to American inspiration. Two of these speakers I found to be very inspirational; Tony Robbins and Elizabeth Gilbert.

Anthony Robbins is an American self-help writer and professional speaker who has been active for over 30 years. He became well known through his infomercials and bestselling self-help books, Unlimited Power: The New Science Of Personal Achievement andAwaken The Giant Within. The first edition of Unlimited Power was published by Fawcett Columbine (Ballantine Books) in 1987. Robbins writes about subjects such as health and energy, overcoming fears, persuasive communication, and enhancing relationships. He also became well known in America and internationally through infomercials promoting personal development audio programs and motivational seminars. His audio programs, seminars and self-help products featured Neuro-linguistic programming and Ericksonian hypnosis which he studied at the start of his career. Robbins seminars also used firewalking as a metaphor for overcoming fears and limiting beliefs. Later, Robbins combined his skills and techniques with other methods claimed to affect personal change.

Elizabeth M. Gilbert (born July 18, 1969 in Waterbury, Connecticut) is an American novelist, essayist, short story writer, biographer and memoirist. Gilbert has published consistently and always to high praise. Her first book, a collection of short stories called Pilgrims was said by Annie Proulx to be the work of “a young writer of incandescent talent.” That collection, which was a New York Times Notable Book, received the Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Next came Stern Men, a bittersweet novel about lobster fishing territory wars off the coast of Maine, which was also a New York Times Notable book. The Last American Man, her biography of Eustace Conway, an eclectic modern day woodsman, was a finalist in 2002 for both The National Book Award and The National Book Critic’s Circle Award.

Adjectives:

1. parsimonious
2. ubiquitous
3. woebegone

Time to Play the Game (week 5)

Mondays class was especially interesting and extremely fun. For this class session we had to bring in a a game which the class would be able to play and participate in, such as a board game. What I ended up playing was Monopoly, a game which I haven't played in such a long time. This game never really caught my attention but I knew it was a fun game to play, so I choose it. The idea of this game playing is to get into the mind of the creator and observe the different processes needed to create this game. How he/she came up it, What inspired him/her, What were the different steps needed to create the game, Who does it focus on, etc.

Monopoly is a board game published by Parker Brothers, a subsidiary of Hasbro. The game is named after the economic concept ofmonopoly, the domination of a market by a single entity.

Monopoly is the most commercially-successful board game in United States history, with 485 million players worldwide.

According to Hasbro, since Charles Darrow patented the game in 1935, approximately 750 million people have played the game, making it "the most played (commercial) board game in the world."The 1999 Guinness Book of Records cited Hasbro's previous statistic of 500 million people having played Monopoly. Games Magazine has inducted Monopoly into its Hall of Fame. The mascot for the game is a mustachioed man wearing a monocle and morning dress named Rich Uncle Pennybags (often referred to as Mr. Monopoly).

I found these facts about Monopoly to be highly plausible. This game is basically focused on the economic aspects of America and expresses how entrepreneurship is applied in the American business world. This game taught me the economic struggle entrepreneurs would have to deal with marketing. As the game went on, I understood the different processes one would have to struggle with in order to create a game such as this. One would have to first think about the economics of the American society. Then think about America's most high valued attractions and business. Then of course the layout and planning on the actual board game. And most importantly, how would all these aspects would attract young and older players.

This game playing exercise has given me a greater appreciation for board gaming and th process for their creation. I hope we do this every week.

adjectives:

1. garrulous
2. didactic
3. obsolete

adjectives for weds. (week 4)

Cumbersome

Truculent

Ambitious

Powers of Ten (week4)

The two films we watched in class this past Wednesday introduced us to new window of thinking, open us to new horizons.

An interresting aspect mentioned about this film is that when one zooms out into the universe one goes back in time and thus the farthest image, of the whole universe, is really one of the universe at the 'time' of the Big Bang, when it was infinitely small. In this sense, the two extremes come together.

That's not interesting; it's contrived for the sake of parading the French proverb les extrêmes se touchent. The largest scale in Powers of 10 is 10²⁶ m, which is certainly not the 'whole universe'. In a square 10 billion light years on a side, the corners are just 7 billion light years from the center, where the Earth is located. That's just half the age of the universe. Most points in the square are considerably closer.
—Herbee 00:47, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

I wonder if the number 10²⁶ is really correct? The largest scale mentioned on the website is only 10²⁵ m. Pity I haven't seen the film.
—Herbee 01:03, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

I am not sure what you mean with that square and the points in it (how can a point be small? It has no dimensions). The comment was not on the the film specifically, but on the notion of zooming out (and thus going back in time - this might need some more explaining) until you reach the furthest point you can reach (whether the film does this or not is irrelevant - maybe that should be stated too), which corresponds with the Big Bang, just before which (there's a little flaw) the universe was immensely small ('infinitely small' is probably wrong). I don't claim to fully understand this (but then, who does?) but this is the best rendition I can give of what Dijkgraaf said. And I do find it an interresting obsevation, in the spirit of the film (mind-boggling aspects of the universe.)

Why Man Creates expresses a different aspect about human perspective.

The Edifice begins with early humans hunting. They attempt to conquer their prey with stones, but fail, so they begin to use spears and bait. They kill their prey, and it turns into a cave painting, upon which a building begins to be built. Throughout the rest of the section, the camera tracks upward as the edifice grows ever taller.Fooling Around displays a random series of perspectives and the creative ideas which come from them.

The Process displays a man who is making artwork from a series of geometrical figures. Each time he attempts to keep them in place, they move and rearrange themselves. He tries many different approaches to the problem. Finally he accepts a working configuration and calls his wife to look at it. She says, "All it needs is an American flag."

Judgment is a series of reactions, presumably to the creation from The Process. It displays their criticisms of it, such as "It represents the decline of Western culture...", and only a very few support it.

A Parable begins at a ping-pong ball factory. Each ball is made in exactly the same way, and machines test them to get rid of anomalies. As the balls are being tested for their bounce levels, one bounces much higher than the rest. It is placed in a chute which leads to a garbage can outside the factory. It proceeds to bounce across town to a park, where it begins to bounce. Quickly, a cluster of ping-pong balls gather around it. It keeps bouncing higher and higher, until it doesn't come back. It concludes with the comment:
"There are some who say he’s coming back and we have to wait ...
There are some who say he burst up there because ball was not meant to fly ...
And there are some who maintain he landed safely in a place where balls bounce high ..."

Digression is a very short section in which one snail says to another, "Have you ever thought that radical ideas threaten institutions, then become institutions, and in turn reject radical ideas which threaten institutions?" to which the other snail replies "No." and the first says dejectedly, "Gee, for a minute I thought I had something."

The Search shows scientists who have been working for years on projects such as solving world hunger, developing a cure for Cancer, or questioning the origin of the universe. Then it showed a scientist who had worked on a project for 20 years, and it simply didn't work out. He was asked what he would do with himself, and he replied that he didn't know. (Note: each of the scientists shown was working on something which still has not been solved to date, even though each one expected solid results in only a few years. This forwards the concept shown in this session far better than the creators could have known in 1968.) These two films were made in order to broaden our perepctive of creativity and imagination. Two very important aspects about design.

Story Telling (week 4)

I found Monday's class session to be rather interesting than the last class session. Each class session has taught me how to broaden my perspective about concept development. What Jimmy taught us about interpreting images and changing the meaning behind them has really transformed my thinking process. I feel that I am now able to new interpret ideas and new concepts I have never developed before.

The storytelling exercise was especially interesting. This type of exercise had us improvise and evaluate different types of items to create a story. Storytelling is the conveying of events in words, images, and sounds often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture and in every land as a means of entertainment, education, preservation of culture and in order to instill moral values. Crucial elements of stories and storytelling include plotand characters, as well as the narrative point of view.

The art of narrative is by definition a highly aesthetic enterprise, and there are a number of aesthetic elements that typically interact in well-developed stories. Such elements include the essential idea of narrative structure, with identifiable beginnings, middles and ends or exposition-development-climax-resolution-denouement, normally constructed into coherent plot lines; a strong focus on temporality that includes retention of the past, attention to present action, and protention/future anticipation; a substantial focus on characters and characterization which is “arguably the most important single component of the novel” (David Lodge The Art of Fiction 67); a given hetergloss of different voices dialogically at play—“the sound of the human voice, or many voices, speaking in a variety of accents, rhythms and registers” (Lodge The Art of Fiction 97); possesses a narrator or narrator-like voice, which by definition “addresses” and “interacts with” reading audiences (see Reader Response theory); communicates with a Wayne Booth-esque rhetorical thrust, a dialectic process of interpretation, which is at times beneath the surface, conditioning a plotted narrative, and other at other times much more visible, “arguing” for and against various positions; relies substantially on now-standard aesthetic figuration, particularly including the use of metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony (see Hayden White, Metahistory for expansion of this idea); is often enmeshed in intertextuality, with copious connections, references, allusions, similarities, parallels, etc. to other literatures; and commonly demonstrates an effort toward bildingsroman, a description of identity development with an effort to evince becoming in character and community. -wikipedia

This is exactly what Jimmy taught us about storytelling. Just like in the movies, storytelling has to have many different elements to be considered and perceived interesting.

adjectives:

1. divergent -Growing further apart; diverging.
2. habitual- behaving in a regular manner, as a habit.
3. profuse- In great quantity or abundance.

Sir Ken Robinson (week 3)

Sir Ken Robinson was a very motivational speaker, and also funny by the way. His interpretation about the U. S. society, educational system, and economy made perfect sense to me. It brings me to ask many questions I have never really questioned about American society. Why is it that the budget of the educational system is equal to the budget of prison systems? Why is it that Americans in general would rather much focus on other social matters than the important matters of having a excellent education? Why aren't these problems getting any better? It makes me think. Am I able to do something about it? Can there be something done about. Education, to me, should be very important for this country. Other counties such as China, England, and most small countries in Europe and Asia use a strict and harsh educational system. This is why these countries have became rather prosperous in education and economic development. I think the only reason America is well developed is because we have a power military force and strong sense of freedom. That why I think most well educated foreigners come to the U.S. to obtain better work/living opportunities.

Another problem Robinson spoke about which caught my attention was the crisis people have within them selfs, not searching or exploring their true potential/talents. I find this to be very true. People, nowadays, go through life without soul searching to what they really want to do. They do not explore their true talent and end up getting a career they don't enjoy doing. I actually have some friends who are in this type of situation and they tell me they are not happy where they are at right, not one bit. This is why I think education is very important to our society. It helps people learn more about the various fields/subjects available to them. The possibilities are endless. I believe educational exploration is key to this crisis and is the number one solution to the many problems the U.S. has to deal with today.

adjectives:

1. exuberant-Full of unrestrained enthusiasm or joy.
2. cooperative-willing to cooperate; helpful
3. grieving-To cause to be sorrowful; distress