End of Semester: Painting Recap

Turned into a hectic semester! Accomplished quite a bit. Picked up an internship that consumed MUCH more of my time than expected. Made a few posters, programs, and other things for music events. Really loved that opportunity. My Brand Identity class had a huge project to brand Downtown Logan City: our client was the head of the Downtown Alliance. Our group did an amazing job, I'm really proud of the outcome. Painting class was great, learned a lot and now really want to paint more! Here's some pics...

Painting 1:cluster of paintings



Favorite: Shoes




My other favorite was the 2nd palette knife painting. It was supposed to be a self portrait. Mine looked like a man, so I went with it. Then my professor said it looked like a dead corpse you might see at that "Body World" exhibit! Lol. It was fitting, being done around Halloween.



Turns out, I love to paint. I'll be doing more in the future :)

Brand Identity Final Project: the MFA

Brand Identity Final Project: The MFA

Recap: Rebrand Downtown Logan.

We gave a 10 minute presentation, including a preface to our project and proposal, a video illustrating our proposal, and question and answer time. I'm really proud of our group. We even pulled an all-nighter at the school, working on this til 6 in the morning. Hard work but it all paid off. During our presentation, we handed this 'swag' to the judges:








Here's a really horrible copy of the video. Figured it was better than nothing. (turn down your speakers...) I don't have the original file, so I recorded it from a burned DVD playing on my laptop LOL. It's a school project, not a professional video. Awfully time consuming but that's just how it is in the creative world! :) It really sweet at 1:53. SO happy with how that turned out.

Painting

A couple paintings from class. We've done about 6 paintings now, I'll post them later :)

The painting on the left was to be predominantly cool colors. The painting on the right was to show a passage from warm colors to cool colors. They need finished, but our professor wants us to bust out lots of paintings without worrying too much about the details. Just get used to mixing color and throw it together on a canvas, basically.

Brand ID: Abstract Mark

Design an abstract mark that visually portrays the core characteristics of a large conglomerate.

Client: "Provenance" a venture capital company.

I'll spare you the mission and positioning statement. If you would like me to post it, let me know and I will! But I will include how the company would like to be percieved==> powerful, supportive, innovative, precise, stealth, intelligent, measured risk-takers, and stable.

Process:



Final:



...critique: It matched the positioning statement. The logo needs smaller/ signature line bigger because the signature line disappears in reduction. Bob said to beware of black. "Black is the absence of color. It gives nothing back."

Final_2:

Brand ID: Word Mark

Group project time! We were to create our own unique software company, develop a mission and positioning statement, along with the name of the company. Then, individually, design it's logo.

My groupies: Tyler Godfrey, Greg Hunsaker, Kirt Larsen, Jeremy Wilkins, Laura Walker, Gabriel Anderson, Molly Critchfield. A total of eight. This made brainstorming and making a final decision a little chaotic, but we finally agreed.

Mission Statement
Gazelle is a comprehensive scheduler that efficiently plans the tasks and activities in your daily life at home or on the road. Gazelle incorporates work and pleasure through it's ability to adapt and personalize your schedule to accommodate your changing needs.

Positioning Statement
Gazelle is a unique software tool that accommodates your customized schedule minute by minute. We want to be perceived as a dynamic, quick, intimate, credible, fun, and trustworthy technology.

Process:



Final:



...critique: "God is in the details." My Professor, Bob (aka Robert Winward), is very critical in critiques. And the phrase "God is in the details" comes up often in our logo designs. Logos are made up of few lines, curves, planes, etc. So every line or curve we put down needs to serve a purpose, and every little detail counts. For my word mark, adding little tags on each of the letters, actually reconstructing some of the letterforms (due to a not-so-good free font I chose.) A huge help to the design was adding a curve on any pointed corner. Looking at it now, I feel there are still some slightly awkward moments in the design and it could use a bit more work..... Details!

PS. If you have any suggestions, on ANYthing, I'd love to hear them!!

The Dreaded Figure Grounnnnnd...

So, before I start explaining this project, I need to rewind and tell you why I dreaded this assignment so much. Like I said, I'm taking Brand Identity for the second time. My most hated project of the entire semester (even year!), was the Figure-Ground project. What was this assignment? A big pile of crap, that's what it was. Oh, you mean, what were we supposed to design? Simple: a figure-ground relationship with your initials. Just throw two letters together, move them around a little, and voila, you should have it! But no, like many projects we (all artists) take on, it was much more involved. I labored day after day, fighting with this thing. The final product was turned in, I was given a pity grade, and into the trash it went. Even after the project was done, I tried to fix it, but decided I was simply given the wrong initials. It was my parents fault. HAHA, ok not really, but I decided I didn't need to stress about it so much, and just move on.

Needless to say, we were assigned this same project my second round in the class. Be open minded, try it out, don't even look at your last attempts. After some good self-pep talk, I went for it. And only a few hours later, fully focused and determined to redeem myself, I found my solution. When I turned the 'S' just so, with that font, and looked at what had just presented itself, I could barely hold in my excitement! This is gonna be good... And it's about freakin time Joni! So now that I have given you more than enough info on this process, without further 'ado, my initials in a figure-ground relationship:



...critique: The class hates me. HAHA not really (although they said it! :P). It just means they liked my work. It's a good thing :) My professor only had one thing to suggest: kerning on my signature line. But the logo itself worked really well. -- I've fixed the kerning, and changed the colors in this image.

This project taught me a lot, and gave me a boost in my design skills. I think the biggest lesson I learned from this project is that with Graphic Design, an open mind is key to being successful. I compare all that was happening in my life when I first attempted this project, also the class. I was not focused on school, had several life-stressers that I just couldn't get my mind off of, but was still expected to create original, creative, really good ideas. Now I do a lot of things to relieve stress, like exercise, play guitar, and not set such crazy, unrealistic expectations. I've found that lifting all that pressure off has helped me deal with all of life's little stresses much better, and has actually improved my design sense.

Back at it!

Well, I'm back in school full-fledged this semester, and it feels good to finally be designing again! I'm taking 4 classes: Painting 1, Intro to Computer Science (nerd alert! 8) ), History of architecture and Interior design, and Brand Identity. Yes, Brand Identity, for the second time. Why would I be taking it again, you ask? To strengthen my portfolio is what it boils down to. I haven't been designing for the last six months or so, but am now able to re-focus and get my portfolio going again! It needs a lot of work, and I'm excited to see how it turns out.

Our first assignments...

Painting

Black and white self-portrait, referencing a mirror, with oil paint. It has been about five years since I've even touched oils, or paint in general, and i now wish I hadn't taken that big of a break from it. I absolutely love this class. It's a time for me to relax, throw color around, get my hands dirty, and paint however I want. There's a lot of freedom in painting, and a feeling of connection with the canvas. Sometimes, working on the computer all day with Graphic Design, it's impossible to feel the intimate experience that you get with "traditional art" (by this I mean NO electronics, just a brush/pen/charcoal/etc, and a blank piece of old-fashioned paper/canvas.) Here's the first painting:



...critique: The painting feels more like an emotion, than a real life depiction. It feels complete with the the background having texture. Some students left the canvas white behind their faces, but on most of them, that felt incomplete. Critique was really easy, being our first project (and in Painting 1)

Brand Identity

Abstraction assignment. Pick any animal and simplify it to it's greatest degree without losing the essence of the animal. I chose a... well, I'll let you guess. Here's the out-come:



...critique: The overall mark works great. It has the essence of (the animal-i won't spoil it for you!) and has a great closed gestault. One suggestion was to make the 3 "swirls" on top of it's head the same shape, but varied size. This would make it more unified but still have the variation I'm looking for. I'm going to try that.

Past work in Brand Identity

Here's a couple logos I did in my first Brand Identity class.
Origin: An investment company
Mythos: A Greek Restaurant

Basic Sculpture

Last semester I took one class, Basic Sculpture. It was fun to build 3 dimensional pieces and learn different sculpting techniques with different materials. I'll do a quick recap of our projects from Basic sculpture!

Project 1: Clay Self-Portrait

Yes. Our first project, in basic sculpture, was to sculpt a bust of ourselves out of clay. Seems pretty basic, right? Riiiight... Many late nights were spent in the sculpture lab, wrestling with this thing. Ha, one saturday I worked on it for a good two hours. I had the nose, and the eyes just about where they needed to be. The following monday, my professor took a knife to it and completely destroyed two hours of work in two seconds. BUT he was right, and I was grateful in the end that he fixed it when he did. All in all, I discovered a new, fun art medium I hope to use again.

The process:



The Final:



Project 2: Abstract Plaster

Carving plaster made me feel like a "real-life sculptor!" I mean, this is what Michaelangelo, Phideas, Myron, and all those ancient Greek and Roman sculptors did. Carving with hammer and chisel, muscling through their artwork. This was a very different medium to work with than clay. Carving is not forgiving. If you chisel off something on accident, you have to work around it and find a new way to make your piece work. For this reason, I was so happy we didn't have to replicate our faces with plaster. Our abstract carvings were much less exact. Through several sketches, I finally decided on the idea I liked, and ran with it. The proportions changed quite a bit when I realized the plaster could break if I had such thin and thick areas. This is the out come:

The process:



The Final:



Project 3: Found Object

Alright. To be honest, one of my least favorite forms of art is Found Object art. Granted, I have seen some really cool pieces of found art, but it's not something I'd just go try out. Unless I was assigned to in a class, of course, then I would really have no choice but try to make something out of some things. I struggled with this project the most out of any in this class. I finally decided to, instead of creating something beautiful or just "nice to look at," I'd go for a message or metaphor. I must have gone to the DI (Deseret Industries) at least six times and bought all types of "stuff" to somehow conglomorate all together. After starting and failing twice, my last try finally succeeded.

I took the idea of a water bucket. When it overflows, all that is spilled is wasted. I feel, in our country as a whole, we as consumers are really excessive and overspend on "junk" (especially compared to other countries.)

The Final:



Project 4: Large-scale Outdoor Sculpture

Our final project of the class was to build a ten foot (or taller) sculpture to be installed outside. We not only needed to think about the aesthetics and concept of this project but it's durability and how well it would survive the elements. Two other girls worked on this project. It was the most time consuming, outlandish project I have done thusfar in college, but one of the most rewarding projects as well. I remember working on it 14 hours straight one saturday. We stayed up until 4 in the morning, out in the FREEZING cold weather, on our hands and knees in the parking lot assembling this beast. Finally we finished it, and what a sweet feeling that was! All of our hard work paid off, and we were able to enjoy our sculpture out in front of the art department for a full week (before we had to completely destroy it and throw it in the dumpster HAHA.) May I present, the Giant Rubiks Cube:

The process:



The Final:



Basic sculpture was a great time in my college career. It was nice to be able to focus solely on that class, and be able to really learn and enjoy creating these pieces. Plus, it was a GREAT break away from the computer!

sketch o' the day

Today is another no-motivation day. Maybe it's this cold weather :} sooo i decided to do a little sketch in flash of a little how im feeling. trying to save the world, tons to do, but no energy to do it all.



I'm trying to get back in the swing of things, hopefully i'll have another website up soon! It's been awhile since I've messed with html, but I'm excited to get back at it :)