Sunday, January 30, 2011

JournalEntry1

Summary

Mind map, concept map, free write and a word list all use writing to bring out ideas in creative problem-solving.

The sketchbooks and notebooks of some geniuses such as Da Vinci, Picasso, Einstein, and Darwin show diagrammatic sketching that is similar to mapping methods used today.

Mind map gives visual form to ideas.

Concept maps are similar to mind maps.

Concept Mapping allows for a more thorough investigation and analysis of conceptual relationships and meanings.

Freewriting is a great way to get your ideas on paper. It can be used in the preliminary stage or throughout the whole project.

There are two versions of freewriting, focus and unfocused.

Unfocused allows for you to put words on the paper about a general thought or feeling on a topic.

Brainwriting is the written equivalent to brainstorming.

Brainwirting is more of a collaborative problem solving method.

Word lists can be used to group certain words into categories rather than just writing a bunch of words on one list.

Outlines are structures that help to organize information.

Traditional outlines define content through heading and subheadings.

Critiques allow for outsiders to voice their opinions on your issue at hand.

Taking time writing reflections throughout the process allows for an in-depth analysis of the project, both on micro and macro level.

Having journal or sketchbook allows for you to layout, organize, and better your ideas. You can go back to old ideas and add to them. Use them making keen observations and allows you to draw and/or add photos to visually see the problems and ideas.

Concept Mind

Mind Map

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

3 examples


Simplicity makes this cover successful. The use of the color white gives it the feeling of God. The creator made it so that the word God is in all caps and it bleeds of the cover, which implies the immensity of God. Also the text is placed high on the cover, implication of heaven.

This cover is successful because there is a good use of hierarchy and imagery. The image of Nelson Mandela is the first thing you see which let’s you know that the book will be about him.

This cover is not successful because there is too much SHIT going on. The type chosen, embossed type, terrible placement of type, the different sizes of type on the title, and just overall inconsistency. I have to say I really hate this cover. I’m done talking about it.

This, That.

-Signs are shaped by different societies in different ways.

-We often use consumerist and mechanistic metaphors

-Societies have 2 basic sources of signing: natural and conventional

-Key Semiotic Concept:

-Sender

-Intention

-Message

-Transmission

-Noise

-Receiver

-Destination

-The same signifier can have different signifieds and different signifiers can have the same signifieds

-Symbol is used in a special sense to mean literally any sign where there is an arbitrary relationship between the signifier and signified

-In some cases there are deeper meanings to the message

-Messages are always carried through a medium. The medium may be:

-Presentational

-Representational

-Mechanical

-Non-literal forms of meaning (ex. Sarcasm) enable us to make the familiar seem unfamiliar and the unfamiliar seem familiar.

-The likening of one thing to another is called a simile

-Objects, images, and text can all be used to create metaphors

-Metaphors are often at their most interesting when they link something familiar to something unfamiliar

-Metonyms - when one thing is substituted for another in a piece of communication

-they use indexical relationships to create meanings

-synecdoche – using a part of something to stand for the whole thing, or the whole thing to stand for part.

-Part/Whole is one example there are also:

- between member and class

- species and genus

- an individual and a group

Monday, January 24, 2011

Book Cover Options

1) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

2) Junot Diaz – the author of the short story collection Drown, and his fiction appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories. He was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and raised in New Jersey, he now lives in New York City and is a professor at MIT.

3) Drown, How To Date A Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie (Short Story)

4) The novel is about the life of Oscar. A Dominican kid who has trouble with love.

Throughout his whole life (which it isn’t that long of a life if you can tell by the title). He deals with depression and thoughts of suicide. The thoughts and attempts of suicide aren’t what kill him. Love does. His love for a women name Ybon. She has a boyfriend becomes jealous and this gets Oscar killed.

5) Love, identity, sad, embarrassment, jealousy, depression, realization, poverty, pain, maturity, life, reemergence

6) The main theme or message of the book is love and the problem there is of finding it. Also cultural identity, politics, and poverty are all important themes.

7) Oscar is a kid that goes from being a “ladies man” to a fat virgin. He undergoes many changes in his life and deals with depression.

8) Spoiler Alert: Kills Oscar.

9) “It’s never the changes we want that change everything.”

10) I heard that this was a great book so I decided to use it for this assignment.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Word List

...for each artist


DALI
  • surreal
  • ominous
  • landscape
  • drawers
  • naturalistic
  • illusions
  • non-intense colors
  • sticks
  • melting clocks
  • cubes
  • disintegration
Pollock
  • Abstract
  • Black
  • no drips
  • spattered
  • tossed
  • Large
  • rocks
  • string
  • "runny" paint
  • expressive
Fairey
  • Spray paint
  • Political
  • Stencil
  • sans-serif
  • designs
  • Reds
  • collage
  • overlapping
  • OBEY
  • Modern

3 artists

Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in 1931. Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire includes film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media. Dalí attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes" to a self-styled "Arab lineage," claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors. Dalí was highly imaginative, and also had an affinity for partaking in unusual and grandiose behavior, in order to draw attention to himself. This sometimes irked those who loved his art as much as it annoyed his critics, since his eccentric manner sometimes drew more public attention than his artwork.

Books: DALI, 50 modern Artists you should know

5 Images + Key image






Jackson Pollock

Paul Jackson Pollock, January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, sometimes struggling with alcoholism. In 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career and on his legacy. Pollock died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related car accident."My painting does not come from the easel. I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting." "I continue to get further away from the usual painter's tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc. I prefer sticks, trowels, knives and dripping fluid paint or a heavy impasto with sand, broken glass or other foreign matter added."
Books: Jackson Pollock, 50 modern Artists you should know

5 Images + Key image






Shepard Fairey

Frank Shepard Fairey, born February 15, 1970, is an American contemporary artist, graphic designer, and illustrator who emerged from the skateboarding scene. He first became known for his "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" (…OBEY…) sticker campaign,in which he appropriated images from the comedic super market tabloid Weekly World News His work became more widely known in the 2008 US presidential election, specifically his Barack Obama “HOPE” poster. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston calls him one of today's best known and most influential street atists. His work is included in the collections at The Smithsonian, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.Fairey became involved with art in 1984, when he started to place his drawings on skateboards and T-shirts. In 1988, he graduated from Idyllwild Arts Academy, and in 1992, Fairey graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration.

Book: Obey: Supply and Demand, The Art of Shepard Fairey

5 Images + Key image