OCT 25 - iterative and films

On Monday, everyone in class was really out of it and was very unresponsive. Personally, I did an all nighter and had only 2-3 hours of sleep because of my trip to and from San Francisco. I guess we all were too tired from midterm. Also would have helped if Chomsiri was in class since she's always full of energy. Guess she had to work on the paint project since I saw her in the next class. Good thing that Jimmy was not that strict on us for our half-dead attitude ^_^.

Jimmy gave us the option of which to do first: discussion or videos. We all chose videos, but somehow we did discussion first. Probably because he was into it and we were all tired to point it out until he realized it himself lol. First he started the discussion that we can not say "don't know" as we designers are critical thinkers / problem solvers. We should be able to figure out the problem or explore ways to solve them. So the word "iterative" was introduced to us with the definition of " repetitive actions to have better goals or until successful." As designers the iterative process occurs when revising and evaluating our sketches/designs over and over until it's completed/perfected/approved. Then, Jimmy discusses the experiences of working with clients. Even though the clients are hiring designers (us), the main focus is the audience. Jimmy recommends to create 3 good designs with no personal favoritism among them. Because if the clients chooses one of the non-favorite one, it would be difficult to be active on it and improve the design. There should also be a rationale-based explanation of the strengths and weaknesses for each designs. Designs are not finalized the first time as the clients will give feedbacks/criterion to the designers until they approve.
I can understand the clients and designers relationship since I have had similar experience this last summer. I had an internship with The Rare Orchid as a designing patterns for their merchandises of clip magnets. My contact with the owner was by email. Meredith, the owner, told me what needed to be improved for each of my designs including color variations. It was a fun experience for me, even have one of designs to be finalized in production!!! Still psyche about it! ^_^

MY original design in production!!!

Back to class, there was 2 TED videos to watch. The first was of John Maeda, MIT designer and author of The Love of Simplicity. He was really entertaining and lively. The point was that simplicity is seen everywhere, even when he was taking vacation. Some of the concepts he did as a designers were simple ( drawing with cheetos, mass group of french fries, fries into butterflies = butterfries). Most of his art designs were complex pattens with many geometric shapes and mesmerizing effect. Some of his complex projects were a color patten for makeup company and flash calendars as numbers as leaves falling. Then he pointed out that simple may be good, but sometimes not ideal. Such as if the sky was always the same then there would be no sunset. He believes that simplicity is catching up to complexity, since everyone wants things to be easy/simple. His definition of simplicity is to be living in life and enjoy more. He also have 3 phases of looking at things - observation, analysis and interpretation, exploration through creation. After watching, I started to appreciate how powerful simple concepts can be to designers.
The next video was of Scott McCloud, a cartoonist. His video was very fast paced with quick visual imagery, like comic book style, but he was still very engaging and humorous. His view of vision is different from Maeda's as it follows his dad's blindness. Scott did a quick history background of himself as his dad being blind, originally can see, works in science as military engineer, his siblings follow dad's path, and himself having a drive of being a cartoonist. His ideas of the different types of vision are: on what can't see, already proven, and what can be but unproven. This can be seen in science, personal endeavors, designers, and politics, just have to watch for pattens. His view on comics is that it's a visual medium that embraces everything, including the 5 senses. He points out the sense of time in comics when the scenes change.Comics follow the spacial line to have the flow of being continuous. He then showed the different possibilities of comics on screen as an infinite canvas to adapt to the environment. Unfortunately if it had visual affects of moving pictures, it wouldn't really be comics anymore. After watching the video, it gave me a new perspective on comics and visual images. Especially since Jimmy says our final project was a 5 minute video of us individuals. Eep! I'm not the person behind the lens and never used a camera. Wonder if I can use my old camera phone so I can edit. Hhhmmmm. Can't really do anything though since he was very vague.

On Wednesday, we have game day; all day of playing boardgames. This is to help us for storytelling development. Already have an idea of a game from watching Criminal Mind. ^_^ Can't wait for class, it will be fun!