Kismet Arts Tangent

This is me drinking coffee at the Panera Bread across the street from the school before class. I needed it. It turns out my Graphic Design History class is none other than a teacher lecturing in front of  a class, putting together words like “shaman” and “cuneiform” into a narrative we can all relate to… sort of.  It’s going to be a long quarter, hopefully broken up by some fire drills or classmates’ seizures. But, considering the subject matter, I can definitely stay awake and perhaps get inspired by the past.

My idea is to put my webby notes together into a massive poster at the end of the quarter and hang it up somewhere in my house to remind me what I learned for a mere $350. (I did some guessy-math on that number.)

Project Penway Challenge 2 (Due Week 5): an 11”x17” informational poster of Peter Behrens. I have been toying with the idea of making it out of pipe cleaners (a medium I successfully executed on a mask in the ninth grade). I should research this guy before getting stoked about creating a colorful and furry collage of nostagia.

This is me on my way out the door at 8:41 in the morning for my first class this decade. Does my face express the simultaneous uncertainty and optimism that I was feeling? I have a school schedule containing the following classes: Drawing 1, graphic production 1, History of Graphic Design 1 and New Media.

As per some strange school ritual, first-years were grouped off and led by second-years for a tour around the facility. The lovely Jaime Patneaude showed me around the school and told me of the epic Mama’s pizza, the place to get pizza, and Stumptown, one of her main haunts, which is down the street.

Drawing inspiration from Armin Hoffman, a class exercise involved black sharpie-made shapes against a 2x2inch square piece of paper. Going around the classroom, admiring other people’s shapes, their crisp lines and cohesive collection of interesting zigs and jags and blobs that seemed to swim off the paper, I felt like a fish in a small pond of potentially amazing designers. Hard to say from the well-executed squiggles, but I was intimidated.

Project Penway is afoot. My first challenge is to take one of the shapes I made this morning and using “the ideas of balance, tension, rhythm, pattern and overall shape” (see syllabus) I must create a 10x10in. composition. I am intrigued and inspired.