Geometric Stuff

Well I was talking to one of my friends from back home, online this weekend. And I was telling him some of the cool things that we have been doing in this class and when I was showing him some of my stuff he was telling me that I should try to do some of the stuff ive been doing just in more 3D form. So I collaborated with him and I came up with this low relief piece.

Child Imaginations

This weekend I decided to have "aunt day" And took my two neices and nephew and just have a crazy fun day with them. I wanted to get into the minds of 5 year olds as they are around the age who would be using my product. Their imagination is amazing and saw it as we built an awesome fort, it would have been better but we ran out of blankets. We played dress up, and learned dances and did some arts and crafts. It was a wild day to say the least, but It helped me come with an idea for a new "ad on" for the brand. How about a craft kit that will help kids design their own signs? I think they'd love it. :)

Procrastination

I have noticed that people are prone to procrastination. I find myself in this trap quite a bit. especially school work.

People put off almost everything to the last second, Including health. They put off practice to the last minute, which is not kenpo. Its more selective and requires more time and dedication than the average person is willing to give. So procrastination is more of a filtering mechanism for kenpo. its obvious when you procrastinate.

words of wisdom

today i had the opportunity to visit with my grandmother for awhile before i headed back to cedar. she is the only one out of my grandparents, parents, or aunts and uncles that has studied art in college as well. i have a large family (75 people on my mother's side alone), so that is somewhat surprising.

for today's post, i wanted to ask her advice for myself, or any art student for that matter. i wanted the perspective of someone who has been there, done that, and knows the game. she studied traditional art and a little advertising layout, so the techniques, tools and technology have drastically changed since she was involved but i have found she always still has valuable insight.

her advice was: do it because you like it. and you might not be able to have art as a career, due to marriage, family, children or other circumstances, but don't give it up completely. prioritize if you have to, but don't ever let it all go.



my great grandmother handpainted this entire china set.


my grandmother painted these decorations, along with several others, on the walls of her home.


my grandmother.

hope everyone had a great holiday! see you all tomorrow.

Inquisitiveness

Caught my cousin Sarah playing around on the piano. After noticing that she was making many mistakes trying to figure out a tune, again I started thinking about the way children view the world. As we ourselves get older, do we lose most of our "child-like" inquisitiveness?

Cable Table reDesign.017

Today, I started out by asking other people I knew with chiari how a table could make their lives easier. That idea is taking longer than a day to flush out, so I went to another source of creativity - instructables.com. One of my favorite projects to look for is the modified Altoids tin. People have hundreds of different uses for these little tins, all in the pursuit of making life easier, less boring, or more creative. The first one I'd make is definitely the travel kit, something simply but thorough to throw into a bag at the beginning of the day. Must haves: medications, tape, paper, pen, pencil, scissors, spare change. I also think it'd be cool to try and invent a MySpace Starter Kit: Portable Version (if you've seen my most recent project from Packaging).

Conner...

So this being one of the last days to collaborate Amanda requested I try my hand at doing a sketch of Conner.

The Sincerity of "flamenca"

Today I wanted to choke the falsities and bravado out of a young man. His over rehearsed verbiage and personality was off putting and obnoxious, similar to smoke getting in your eyes. It stings and burns your glands while penetrating your skin and clothing and suffocating your lungs. The plume envelopes you with aggravation and agony. I obviously didn't like this fellow :)

Day: Different Kind of Movie

I was talking with my friends and family about movies and how the word Neverland could be use in about any type of genre of movies. In motion I am working on a spooky movie title called "The Voice," and my family suggested that Neverland could also be a scary movie. So this is what my family and friends came up for the poster *starts to talk in a spooky voice* NEVERLAND.

Freudentisch: Your Brain is On It, Why Aren't You?

I was still collaborating (in a sense) with my mother for this one. I asked her: which parts of the brain would interpret which parts of the brand? She replied, "that's a research project." So I began to research. This is the very rough beginning of a hypothesis about which parts of the brain handle which mental processes when it comes to the brand.

Occipital Lobe: (sense of sight, lesions in this area may produce hallucinations) the entry point. This is where the brand is visually processed.
Temporal Lobe: (processes smell, sound, complex stimuli like facial recognition and scenes) this lobe would interpret the presence of product in the homes of friends, might also be helpful in distinction of face types on table.
Parietal Lobe: (integrates sensory information, manipulation of objects) would determine how product is used. Feel, touch, etc would be combined into cohesive package here. Manipulation (actual use) processed here.
Frontal Lobe: (conscious thought; damage may result in mood changes, see case study of Phineas Gage) this part may be, on some level, responsible for decision to purchase product and/or in deciding optimal placement/use of product in home. Again, this would only be on the conscious level; decisions that would utilize a lower amount of cognitive resources would not be processed here, probably more likely to be processed in parietal or other lobe depending on type of processing and level of awareness. (This is also very likely the part of the brain that is processing these terms.)

With further research I'll specify the particular areas responsible for which process when it comes to the product's mental interpretation. As it is, multiple parts of the brain are responsible for several facets of each action; I'm merely trying to pinpoint the area that is likely to be doing the majority of processing in each instance.

Day 17

After returning to Cedar from home I asked a friend who has seen what I've been doing for branding all semester what she herself thought of a brand, without my influence. I told her she didn't have to respond like I would, just what she herself believed, but she had so much to say she wrote it down.

"What get my attention focused on a brand is mainly this: the simplicity. Bold colors are nice, and good fonts or drastic pictures certainly catch my eye, but the thing that doesn't leave me with a headache is an advertisement that is simple and get to the point. These state confidence in their own ability to sell, saying simply "I am" instead of "oh, please oh, please oh, please buy my product!" I like the brand to be able to stand on its own, to be something that I can rely on, so to speak. Brands that periodically change its logo seem permirance wish-washy, and without a backbone, terrified that no one will like them anymore because they look old fashioned or boring. When that happens, I think "oh no, not again," because their "new" look just looks weird, or familiar, and I am afraid to use the product for a long time, until I get used to their look. So that is what draws me to an advertisement: simplicity, confidence familiarity, and a bit of permanence."

It was interesting to read a response about a brand both in the point of design and advertisement, rather than just one.

love potion

what do you do when you drive for a long period of time? think about branding! on my road trip today, i was noticing things people love. like people love to go walk around at the hoover dam and admire it and they love to take pictures. i put together small collage of things i love and came up with the idea of a love potion. it includes photography, texture, typography, and the potion type of look.

Day 17

I have been watching my Mother and Father this weekend, and I have observed them in their domains and their home. I watch as they have had all sorts of experiences throughout their lives and how that has made them who they are today. They are a living legacy of trials and heartaches, of wonderful days and prosperity. They are who they are because of their willingness to work on specific goals together, instead of giving up and dividing. I am a believer that we are who we are because of the shoulders that we now stand on.

This is a antique toy from about 1900. This is the first edition of the viewfinder. When you look through the lenses your brain interprets the image as a 3d image, thus at the turn of the century it provided hours of entertainment for children and adults alike. I still use my mothers! But what it did was take the fascinating stories about all of these locations around the world and brought them to your home, even your fingertips. Instead of dreaming about seeing the Eiffel tower, you could see it in near reality.

Today we have hand-held computers that don't only take us around the world in a life-like reality, but they let us talk and play them in games and competitions too. We have gone from seeing pictures and letting our dreams live on in them to instantly talking with other people around the world that live in these majestic lands that we have never been to.

It use to be that all you really needed to survive in the world was a spot of land, farming knowledge and a good sturdy back. That is much different today. In order for us to survive, we need money. To get money we need a job. To get a job we need to be educated and for most of us that requires us to go into debt. So while working for this schooling we have other temporary jobs of which we need an automobile to get to and from and there are a number of other costs that you can come up with.

So my observation comes down to this... We live in a time where we are trying to create all of these wonderful time-saving devices and in so doing we are spending all of our extra time working to save up money to get these things. I am not saying that one is better than the other but rather that, I think in our society today, from what I have observed and thought about today, it seems to be easer to expect something now and not be willing to work at it for the long haul. Just as the old adage says, "Good things come in time." Or as my roommate says, "Use it up wear it out, make due or due without." But what are we taught by our society today?

FullGive (day 17)

And now for the finishing touches, the nuts and bolts. Fullgive's grass roots feel is all tied together here with some industrial hardware.

Christopher's Idea

I asked my boyfriend what he thought about my brand and what direction he would go with it. This is what he came up with.

Christopher Cane: What I was thinking about was that your name is natures niche, so it should deal with the niche that nature has in our lives these days. and what I came up with was that natures niche is being that plant in the corner of our living rooms, or the planter box in front of a store, or the median in the middle of the road that has grass and maybe a few trees. natures niche seems to be all about looking good, or making some area that would be bland without a few trees or bushes here and there look better. natures niche these days is all about being aesthetically pleasing and not being in anybodies way, or it gets torn out, and/or replaced. natures niche is whatever is convenient for us.

Myquarium

Today I asked my girlfriend that if Altable were her project, what would she change? I told her that could use or change any of my previous branding, packaging, or product design that she wanted. I handed her the sketchbook and this is what she came up with, a aquarium inside of a table. I think that this is pretty inventive. She even explained to me how the oxygen would circulate and how the owners would feed their pets through a series of hidden doors. Man, I guess my idea wasn't that good since she changed everything, including the name and logo. Haha. I do like the simplicity of the logo though. She also pointed out that the tail of the Q resembles a fish tail. I thought this was pretty darn good for a psychology major! It's always neat to see how others approach design problems.

Let's make music

Every year on Christmas Eve our family gets together to eat drink and be merry

and since many of us play a musical instrument, we often play music together and

have a little talent show. This year my Mother and I are going to do a duet with me on

cello and her on piano. So I thought this would be a fun opportunity to show some

musical collaboration. Music is a partnership— kind of like design collaboration. You

each have to do your part otherwise it's going to sound (or look) terrible. So here is

our visual and musical collaboration (Thanks to my Dad for taking the picture. Next time we

plan to get him on his harmonica).

Well we procrastinated yesterday but today my collaborator and I are on the ball, and now i have two posts pretty much in a row, anyway... Today was Suites Gourmet Confections I thought the name might suit better because its expandable into cakes! Making them i confess is another career dream of mine. And today we made an awesome cake design. the type of cake you might see in my kind of sweets store. This ain't your grandmas homemade cake! its basically cake for cool people. Not that grandmas aren't cool but this is like new styles and designs that make people remember you as that awesome cake shop. I'm thinking it would incorporate new technology as much as possible like machinery and junk to compliment forward designs.