Art 220 Final - Creative Process Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjmDJ8THGxE

Blog Post 20

Wednesday’s class was bittersweet. On one hand, I’m glad that class is over, but on the other it made me realize that I learned a lot. When we were discussing the positives and negatives of the class, I was actually surprised that I withstood all 19 classes of concept development. I remember walking in the very first day and dreading it.

I personally thought the game board presentation was the most interesting activity we did in class because it gave us the opportunity to practice our design skills, presentation, and brain storming process in a classroom which will help benefit us when we actually make presentations in the real world. I really do wish we had more opportunities like this in class, but I still have another year at CSULA to practice these skills!

I was not a huge fan of the book because I didn’t learn much from it, nor did I enjoy reading it. The readings were boring, the content was repetitive because it was all common sense, and it felt more like a chore than a learning experience. I was also not a huge fan of the blogs… I didn’t gain much learning experience from the blog and on rare occasions found them to be dreadful and tedious.

Personally, I found this class to be one of the most interesting classes I have taken so far. I learned more than what I was expecting and I also learned a lot about design. I have met many friends in this class and I am grateful for the experience I had with everyone. Best wishes to you all and good luck with the rest of your career!

Blog Post 19

Monday was a holiday and boy was I glad to take a little break from school! The only downside of a holiday is going back to school (especially when it’s the last week of class). I pretty much just stayed home and worked on my creative process video. Sadly, even on my holiday I’m doing work. I can’t wait for this quarter to be over… School is just overwhelming this quarter!

Blog Post 18

Wednesday’s class was rather short, and I was definitely glad it was because it gave me time to think about my final project. For a while now it’s been something that I have been dreading because I have not yet figured out what I want to do or how I would want to present it. I feel my creative thought process is random and for me it depends on the day and mood for my ideas to start flowing. I spent the rest of the class to watch the other presentations from students of past quarters and I was quite surprised as to what I saw. A lot of the videos I watched were interesting, some were rather lengthy and wordy, but others got their message across and were an overall good presentation.

I feel that time is going by really fast and it was just yesterday I was complaining about having the quarter end on the very first day of class. It’s really interesting what I have learned so far and I anticipate seeing what we will learn with the remainder of class.

Blog Post 17

We did an exercise in class on Monday about the importance of listening and how, as designers, we should consult things with the person making the decision as opposed to having things spread around by word of mouth. The exercise was a little frustrating, but after I cleared my mind and just focused on listening, it got a little easier. It’s always fun and interesting to do something interactive in a class rather than being taught at by someone, forcing us to listen to a boring lecture. Any form of interactive learning is something that I wish my other classes would do because I tend to retain information better and it helps with getting messages across.

After the exercise, we watched a presentation by Sir Ken Robinson and his presentation was hilarious, yet informative. Although it was very hard for me to decipher some of the words he said (partly because of his British accent), I was inspired by his quote about how finding our passion changes everything. It really got me thinking about why I got into the graphic design program. I’m not that great when it comes to designs or drawing, but something about the field really interests me.

Robinson also mentions that a degree gets devalued as it gets older and it really got me thinking about the job market after college. I am not sure about what others think, but I’m getting slightly paranoid about what to do after college. The job market is really tough, and finding a job is going to be even harder. As of now, I feel I should take more classes and possibly stay even longer at CSULA to gain more knowledge in another field besides art, even though I’m dreading that option since my main goal is goal is to be finished with school. I do believe, though, it’s time for me to just try not thinking too much about what lies ahead of me and just see what happens.

Reading 9

IT’S THE FINAL STAGE! I don’t remember ever being so happy about finishing a textbook before in my life. Either because this is the last stage of the reading, or because there won’t being anymore dreadful stages to read, I am extremely glad the book has come to an end. Seeing the first header of the section, “It’s a Wrap” made me feel a lot better about reading this textbook because I am very close to the finish line.

Like most portions of the book, I have once again read about things I have already learned in the past. I was anticipating something more from the last stage and I was thinking that the author would go out with a bang. The entire first portion of the reading dealt with working in teams and how we should collaboratively work together to better succeed with design. As far as I’m concerned, working with others has its ups and downs.

The positive sides about working in a team are that we get different perspectives form others and we aren’t just restricted to our own personal thoughts. Although some of us may think we are the best designers in the world, in actuality, we are not because there is always room for improvement. It is physically impossible for us to know absolutely everything about the world, and therefore, getting a different perspective on things helps us collaboratively learn things through constructive learning.

In my personal opinion, I would prefer not to work in a group because I tend to do most of the work. Very rarely have I been in a group where all my teammates have worked together and we created something interesting truly amazing. On most occasions, I somehow always get more than 1 slacker to work with me and I tend to do more of his/her work than I should. There is a feeling of failure that I cannot accept into myself. I will always try my best to revert from failure.

Feedback is probably one of the best things I have learned in my life to this day. Although it’s nice to have someone comment on your work and say why they like it or not, I feel these comments are useless in making me a better designer. I crave negative feedback because it proves to me that the work I’m doing is horrible and I use it as a stepping stone to get better. I feel having critiques in my art classes, as uncomfortable as they may be, is the best way to learn something because not only will it help an artist get better, but he/she given a different perspective from someone else which they can then apply to their own artwork.

I was reading the scheduling portion of the book and I can’t help but notice that there are different types of handwriting used in the calendar on page 179. Even though there’s probably some reasoning behind this, I feel that with the advice this book is supposed to be supplying in relation to this image implies we should share our calendars with others. I now understand why it is very important to effectively communicate our ideas because little details, such as the different forms of writing, can create a whole new message than what we actually intended.

Overall I feel that this book has provided with some new material that I thought was mildly interesting. I felt I struggled with trying to read this book because the material I have learned were things I have learned already and some are just common sense. Now that it’s over, I want to search for something different and that has more useful material. Although I finished reading about the design process, I feel the journey has just begun…

Blog Post 16

Wednesday’s class was interesting and made me realize that we all think differently. Jimmy supplied us with a problem and, in a battle of the sexes fashion, we split up by gender and tried to find out what the next answer would be in the following sequence of numbers:

1
10
11
100
?????

My first instinct was binary code which is a way of representing text in a computer processor through the use of 0s and 1s. Essentially, if one were to follow a logical pattern in the following sequence provided, it would be the next set of finite numbers that consist of only 1s, 0s, or both 1s and 0s (in this case 101). Although in my opinion we somewhat complicated our reasoning as to why the answer was 101, I felt that as a group we provided enough justification to get our message across.

The girls said the next answer was 111, and in a visual pattern this will work. Even if it wasn’t from a visual standpoint, the evidence they showed would still give us reason to believe that their answer could as well be correct. There is no geometric sequence in the following series, and therefore, a formula that’s easy to read using a₁r^n-1 would not be successful. The exercise made me realize that persuading a client is important in design and it is something that should not be taken lightly, as well as elevated vocabulary and effective communication.

After, we discussed our thoughts about John Coy’s presentation. Although we went around the room and talked about what we enjoyed most about the presentation and got a different perspective about it, my opinion still stands that his presentation was not interesting. His content, however, was great but his lack of planning clearly showed when it came down to the actual presentation. I did learn that the lack of planning really does make a difference and, like in the exercise we did today, communication is everything.