Dear Mom and Dad and dogs of course,

We are coming to the end of Week 4. This has by far been my favorite week, like our counselors warned us everyone usually loves Design Week and I can see why. We have been able to use creative outlets to design funky and unique images.

First we learned about a new(ish) thing called “Creative Commons” its basically copyright with adjustments. There motto is instead of all rights reserved “some rights reserved.” Which is true! People upload creative work of any kind and can slap on a Creative Commons copy right. Its totally free (and legal) in which people can decide how limited they want their work to be to the public. I experimented with this license on some of my images. (All found on FLICKR) I allowed some of my images to be accessible and edited by other people but just not 100% theirs. I still have ownership of all my work. I wrote a blog on this new idea of Creative Commons and the different outlets I used to research it!

Our two main projects consisted of doing design. The first big one was like last week were we had to earn AT LEAST 10 stars of design assignments. However we were assigned three mandatory ones and could pick two of them. I decided to do an image for advertising Creative Commons. The second one was a blog review of one of the top DS106 design assignments that was submitted. I chose one about Valentines Day… and how more its like Single Awareness day.

The second big project was to take pictures of elements of designs (at least four) and blog about how they are important. I decided to work with color, typography, metaphors, forms, minimalism, and rhythm.

I learned different elements that go into design, something that I just never thought about. Some of these elements that I worked with were, color, typography, Metaphors, forms, functions, minimalism, rhythm, and dominance. They all play important roles into what a design is made up of.

I finally got involved in Mine Craft and wow am I having trouble with it. I never knew a computer game could be so difficult. I am trying to building a house but failing a little bit. Hopefully over the next few weeks I will get the hang of it and have a little castle to live in.

Our long term project that we have coming up is making a tutorial and making our own assignments to add to the DS106 page. I wont lie… I have no ideas right now for what I’m going to make as my own assignment but hopefully something will inspire me.

Thats all for now!

Love and miss you both.

Katie