Art Collective
A friend asked me to design a flyer for an upcoming dance, leaving room for the DJ’s name on the flyer. I started with word association and I was working on this other project that utilized a mad-lib format (inserting adjectives and nouns in pre-written text) and I thought it was appropriate after trying out some other ideas. Ultimately the flyers were not used due to some administrative problems.
From the Strathmore Creative Cards, Fluorescent White with Deckle, 5″ x 6-7/8″, 50-Pack using Pigma® Micron® 05 Burgundy, Hunter Green (leftovers from the Holiday Cards 2013), I made a birthday card. I love greeting cards. I was surprised by the design I created doodling on this card. So festive! I put it into Adobe Illustrator and edited it a bit (nice thing about computer design is that there is a ctrl-z). I changed the color a bit in Photoshop and voila. Her birthday already passed, but I’m going to print this anyways. It’s one of the best birthday cards I’ve designed, though what good is it if it’s not delivered? Next year, she’ll be tickled to find a 2.0 version of her card!
I was getting a little nostalgic for graphic design school. Where a little over a year ago, I was a part of two brainstorm sessions where we came up with the concept for the promotional video for the portfolio show. The foundation of these sessions were word association techniques. The theme for the portfolio show was “unfold.” At that point, we received some branding from the branding team, a mood board with flat angular triangles and some transparency play.
2-11-13
Out of a word association session, we’ve collectively generated and selected these words associated with “unfold.”
We came up with the following concept threads. Perhaps if we pull on one a video series will come out.
Paper stylized landscape, flags waving, a shoebox diorama with stuff growing, pre-wrinkled, a globe spinning towards it, flat map, landscapes fold out.
A new scene: transitions, movement, a blanket or a curtain folds back to reveal a different time. Time, we are graduating. Remind yourself of that.
Documentary meets surreal. Waking up, fast cuts, vivid sounds, the habits of the morning, making the bed, folding stuff, sealing ziplocs, jarring sounds, dilation.
Create mystery. Magical realism. Sad beagle as a character. Narrator? Unaware of the strangeness unfolding?
The future: white, floating. Something happening several different times, different perspectives, points of view like an artsy Groundhog day.
2-19-13
We started to talk about how the ideas from last brainstorm were of two worlds, the abstract and dreamy surrealist landscape and the documentary-making-the-bed-type-scenario.We noted that the interesting part is where those worlds intersect. Where there is mystery, boundaries blurred. Intro sequences from the 80s.
Ways of intersecting: rips through, somebody walking on a sidewall and falling through into Jill’s grid book. Time speeds up, time dilation, space, rippling pattern. A reference to The Whale Hunt / A storytelling experiment / by Jonathan Harris.
We liked Scott’s video of an animated mask, folding over a video of him running with wings. It was suggested maybe we’d translate an old myth like Icarus. It was then suggested that a simple original story would be better. That moment of making the bed, the morning routine. “A day in the life” doesn’t describe exactly. It’s more like a day’s time passing as a plethora of stories unfold and we have a string tying them together. Multiple perspectives like Slacker (a movie) that follows different people and they come in contact with each other like they are handing off the story. Transferring the story. Each part of the series ending right after the hand-off is made and a new story is just about to be told, the moment of mystery and expectation.
Hand off a physical object? Like that one movie’s title sequence where you’re following a briefcase. (Annie gets the brilliant idea) Hand-off an idea. A shape or something that is floating over the persons head. (Perhaps it looks like a triangle with different things). Dilate, expanding. The idea becomes the story. The idea gets bigger filling the screen, gets physical characteristics akin to a Thanksgiving Day Parade float that grows in size until it needs multiple people to carry it and soon the float envelopes the creators. An idea passing, collaboration, idea forming, path of an idea.
What does an idea look like? A snowball? Paper? But not paper, something ethereal, not quite like anything as we know it. Forming, forming, pans out and submerging. With many sides and colors (forms logo at the end?)
There as a debate as to the origin of the idea-object. Is it passed from one person to another and we are just seeing a small snippet of its journey? Or do we watch the birth of it? Being a small flickering bit of light and then it evolving into something more.
Does it –the visualization of an idea–manifest at the Portfolio Show? Is it like Krispijn’s presentations of light, blurred? Does it show itself as a flickering thing? Like a hologram from StarWars, shifting and fading. Does that mean it’s dying or affected by the crowd of other ideas at the portfolio show? It’s a creature where the surrounding ideas transform it like a Thermin loop. Feedback loop? Kinetic effects, gif, looping, layers of opacity of animations, symbolizing other ideas in the area.
Jump to 5-9-13 Unfold Animation
There was this trend on Facebook going around where you would invite people to make art and in return you’d make art for them. Two people responded and two paintings were sent out into the world. Each included a card that said “Make art.”
Today, I finished updating my graphic design portfolio. I wanted to feature new pieces. I acknowledge that my past defines me, but I also want to show growth and maturation. In this iteration, I’ve simplified the navigation. An experiment: Just a home button with the wordmark part of my logo on it. I’m only showing 12 pieces, ranging from web design to hand-drawn greeting cards. I wanted to show my versatility, and creativity. (The 10 Most Overused Buzzwords on LinkedIn (Infographic) | Entrepreneur.com)
I also simplified the footer. I moved the email address so it would show up on mobile. The thing about the footer in mobile is that it is the same height (and fixed) thus cutting off the social icons (which are kind of useless right now anyways with all the apps going around, the link would open in safari and ask you to login etc. way too complicated.) Changed the social icons from black to a periwinkle. My eyes kept staring at them.
I tested the portfolio site with one person and told him that he was my employer.
So, I made the link a simple CSS button. (CSS Button Generator – Imageless CSS Buttons Simplified.) This is the first time I am linking to code I’ve worked on. This iteration of the portfolio website has four pieces that link to HTML websites.
I’m really proud of my projects because I learned from them. I like seeing them in little capsules and it’s nice to refer back to. So, I modified timemachine.php (the portal to index1) a little. I added a hidden link at the bottom of the landing page for easy yet not obvious access.
Hover over it for a trip to my earlier years of learning graphic design, etc. (Still learning, so you know.) The old website has been kind of beat up because it’s still connected to the updated CSS, but I don’t mind. I think there’s something funny about watching it fall apart as I move on to different conventions.
I would like to play with hidden links more. It’s interesting to have a secret door into a part of the website that I would like people to see, but only if you’re curious enough.
Katarina Countiss. << The Latest and Greatest Portfolio (so far)
I had a phone interview where I had to point the interviewer away from my portfolio site to my blog for “recent work.” So, I realized it was time for an update.
I am not finishing the site today, but what to do in case someone wants to look at it? My solution, timemachine.php. If anyone clicks any of these images on my home page, it goes to a new page. I’ve kept all the files in the same place in the folder for the site, but made one change where the index is now index1.php and I’ve added a page named timemachine inspired by this cool site: Internet Archive: Wayback Machine. I like the idea of being able to see who I was as a designer, just graduated, trying to lure employers with “student work.” And to be fair, I have a lot of student work, but I’m preparing to show some other pieces that make me feel like I’ve grown since then.
Kat-Branding. Check it.
Today, I felt a need for an in-browser clipboard, so I went to find some code. This is after a week of success with using the To Do List I made last week. I’m the kind of person that is always in Tabbed Browsing mode. So, I’d like to make some tools for that kind of user. This Simple Clipboard and the Simple To-Do List are both killed when refreshed (all the text input goes away), so to use these tools, remember, they are as fragile as an etch-a-sketch. It makes it simpler, I think. It also makes the user more cautious with that mouse when hovering over a close button on a broswer window.
Today’s lesson, text field is not really a field, but more of a line, or an urban alleyway converted into a small pop-up park. Textarea, however, is a field (in the way I think of fields). I also learned about the difference between HTML 4.01 and 5. HTML5 has added several new attributes. Check them out at HTML textarea tag.
I found my code here (Forms : Text Field – HTML Tutorial.) and and some variation of last year’s Amazium. At w3schools.com, they have a easy to use in-browser testing area: Tryit Editor v1.8.
Sometimes, your greatest tools aren’t all that complicated.
Clipboard.
I’m working from home today and I wanted to have a simple to do list for display on my second monitor (I don’t have a great space for notebooks on my desk right now and I left my Personal Kanban board at work.) I googled “to do list website” and found apps, not a simple editable to do list for desktop in browser, so I whipped one up. Code from HTML Forms and Input and some variation of last year’s Amazium.
Sometimes, your greatest tools aren’t all that complicated.
To Do List.
Update 2-17-14: I’m really enjoying the to do list. I had one instance where I had a internet cut-out and lost my to do list. Most of the items checked off, so it didn’t feel like a big deal, but I wanted to screen save it. So if there was a screensave option that was quick, I’d love to save these lists as record of things I’ve done. Simple. Must be simple. I’d like to avoid a login situation. If there was a way it would immediately save as picture to desktop…
Kismet Arts Tangent 