Touch the firehose of ds106, the most recent flow of content from all of the blogs syndicated into ds106. As of right now, there have been 92466 posts brought in here going back to December 2010. If you want to be part of the flow, first learn more about ds106. Then, if you are truly ready and up to the task of creating web art, sign up and start doing it.

Sixth Week: Artistic Designs

Posted by
|

This week was one of my favorite weeks of Digital Storytelling because I actually enjoyed completing every assignment. It fit with the types of things that I enjoy with art. Like the feeling of just being able to be free by drawing or designing things instead of doing assignments out of my comfort zone like audio. Due to being so comfortable with this weeks assignments, I felt as if everything seemed easy. Then as an added bonus, I felt as if I learned something that would stick with me for a long time. Here is a recap of my week in artistic designs.

Monday, I didn’t really do that much. All I did was read Massimo Vignelli’s “The Vignelli Canon”, which was the first time that I had read anything that explained the different concepts of design. I also tried to figure out a plan of action on which assignments I would try to complete the rest of the week. Then later during the day I felt like I was being lazy, so I tried to find the perfect assignment that I could do that was more than 4 stars. At that point I came across the design assignment of creating your own cereal box cover and immediately decided on creating a cereal box cover. It didn’t take me long to put together a cereal box as I had a design ready in my head. I had a design ready in my head, because I always wanted a cereal box with an American flag on it that would pay homage to the US military. After that, it was all about creating everything using my favorite Sketchbook app on my computer. 

Tuesday, I did a Daily Create after I got done with classes for the day. Since it was the Daily Create’s 1500th post, I figured the best way to complete the daily create of celebrating this event was to show an explosion of colors that would celebrate the Daily Creates mission of bring creativity to the Digital Storytelling course. After I found a rainbow color explosion, I added a celebratory message. That was the only thing I did that day for Digital Storytelling.

Wednesday, I did another Daily Create of explaining the meaning of life. After reading the assignment, my mind immediately thought of the Circle of Life from the Lion King. Or it was because the Lion King Broadway song came on as I saw the assignment. Either way, I found a great picture which showed the Circle of Life from the Lion King and posted it. With the meaning of life being family, or Lion King’s case he Circle of Life. Then after doing the Daily Create, I decided to complete the Four Icon and Minimalist TV/Movie Poster assignments. With the Four Icon assignment, I didn’t want to make guessing to easy and chose a favorite old movie (Die Hard). It takes place in Christmas time, has a brave man, guns, and explosions for the whole movie. Those were my icon ideas as I found each of the icons using the Noun Project. I made it look pretty, and then kept it saved for later. For the next assignment, I created a TV poster for my favorite TV show (How I Met Your Mother) that made me laugh at a time when I most needed it. The best way to make the poster with a minimalist design was to use an icon that would capture the whole series as a whole, that’s when I thought that the whole series is based on a man explaining how he found his wife with the yellow umbrella. After completing my design, I once again saved it for later.

Thursday, I wanted to finish the Daily Creates. So I found a picture that showed the 2 sides of cloud, which in my interpretation were sides of darkness and light. I wanted a nice picture that incorporated both of these sides, so I figured the only time where I’ve seen both sides is during a sunset. Then I finished writing up and posting the previous assignments I had finished. The next thing I did was complete the assignment “Digital Reflection of Myself”; where I found my Xbox Live Avatar and added him right beside a real picture of me that had the same background using my Sketchbook app. After doing that, I wrote up how I did on the assignment and posted it. 

Friday, it was time to finish all the remaining assignments and posts. So as soon as I got up in the morning, I wrote down my impressions of Vignelli’s short design booklet “The Vignelli Canon” that I had read on Monday and posted it. Then when I got home from all my classes I posted all the pictures I had taken over the course of week onto Flickr for the DesignBlitz assignment. The photos were supposed to capture 4 of the 10 different design concepts, and so I took pictures that used the concepts of Color, Typography, Minimalism/Use of Space, and Dominance. For color, I took a picture of my keyboard that can change colors. For typography, I took a picture of my UMW folder that had a professional font. For minimalism/use of space, I took a photo of my Alienware desktop computer which uses a minimalist design and makes great use of the space it takes up. Then for dominance, I found an old picture I had taken of a bright red flower up against the green leaves of the background. After I uploaded the photos to Flickr, I wrote up a post for the assignment and published it. The last assignment I did before I was writing this weekly summary was write up my thoughts on Western design. For this assignment, I looked up all the examples listed of Western design and used my newfound knowledge of design concepts to come up with my thoughts about what western design is. What I gathered from the examples was that western design uses images of dry land nature, has many similar fonts, and people don’t like to use white space in their movie poster designs.

Overall, this week was filled with great assignments that I hope we come across again in Digital Storytelling this semester. I had fun creating and learning about designs all week. This week is one of the reasons why I love art so much in the world. Design makes art come alive everywhere you look.

Daily Creates:

DesignBlitz/Flickr:

Cold Color Keyboard

UMW Typography

Minimalistic Desktop

Dominant Flower

 

Assignments/Posts:

Heroes Cereal Box

Four Icon Movie

HIMYM Minimalist TV Poster

Digital Reflection of Myself

The Vignelli Canon: Impressions

DesignBlitz

Western Designs

Add a comment

ds106 in[SPIRE]