This week was the midterm for what I consider my most difficult class, so I spent the majority of my time studying for that. DS106 took a bit of a back seat because of that, so here I am again on Sunday night, failing to meet last week’s goal. On the other hand, at least it’s not going to be late, so there’s that!

I completed three daily creates this week, but I don’t feel that any of them were really that exciting.  You can see my work here!

We did a design safari this week and had to find examples of different elements of design in objects and advertisements as we went about our daily schedules.  Due to the above-mentioned studying, my pictures are almost all from things I found inside my house.  The elements I chose to work with were use of space, typography, color, and unity.  I honestly chose the examples I did based on what I had around me and what I could find in them instead of having certain elements I wanted to look for and spotting examples of them.  My favorite was “unity,” which I found on a pint glass from a brewery I visited in North Carolina:

I really liked the way that the sketch of the woman, the colors, and the shape the words were arranged in all came together in this one. Great job, Mother Earth Brewing!

We also had to choose fifteen stars worth of assignments from the design bank.  The five I chose were a post card for a movie, a bumper sticker, a four-symbol summary of a movie, a playing card for a movie, and a six-word memoir.  For three of the five, I used the movie Domino (2005) by New Line Cinema, and I did individual assignments for the bumper sticker and the memoir.

The funnest one was the memoir because I got to sketch (I traced it first, to be honest, but the sketch actually ended up being better) my favorite animal and I felt like it was a funny choice for the assignment.

Our groups for our radio shows also had to come up with a topic for our show.  My group consists of @cogdog @kristenlamb2 @tsharpie07 @kyledex22 and @teldridge3, and we are the Dot.Commers!  Our radio show will be about social issues, though we haven’t nailed down yet which one(s) specifically.  It will be a discussion based show though, rather than an interview or something of the sort.

Coffee, Dogs, and Activism:

Last week was depressing.  This week too.  Sorry ’bout it!

The lovely governor of our beloved Virginia is the fan of a bill that has passed through both the house and the senate that will allow a religious or political campus organization to not allow people to run for office in the club or even to be a member of it if those people are deemed to not be “committed to the organization’s mission.”  This essentially allows clubs to bypass anti-discrimination policies if it is for ‘religious’ or ‘political’ purposes.  This is problematic for several reasons, one of which is that discrimination tends to be problematic. The other is that I don’t know of any political or religious organizations who could successfully argue for the exclusion of members of a certain ethnic background or with disabilities or who are racial minorities.  Sexual orientation and gender identity, however, are already heavily scrutinized by religious and political groups as it is, not to mention that neither of those is even included in Virginia’s anti-discrimination policy as it is (Thanks, Ken and Bob!).  It’s not too far of a stretch to assume that people will take advantage of this at more conservative schools (I wouldn’t consider UMW to be conservative) in the state.

Womp.  Anyhow, enjoy your week!