This week, we moved on from photography to design!  This word has so many meanings in my mind, so I wasn’t too worried about not being able to complete 15 stars worth of design assignments from the ds106 assignment bank.  I figured an assignment could be interpreted various ways and designed several different ways as well.

To start off the week, I reviewed some general concepts of design layed out by Joshua David McClurg-Genevese in his article, The Principle of Design.  To enforce these concepts, I completed a Design Safari in which I represented colour, balance, proportion, dominance, and continuance with photos I had taken.

Once those concepts were embeded in my mind, I moved on to completing my 15 stars worth of design assignments.  I started off the week with my blog post Guess What? in which I represented a movie with 4 icons (2 stars). Can you guess what movie it is?

I moved on to relabeling a WWII Propaganda poster to publicize ds106 (3 stars). I still do not feel strongly that this poster was the best I could have done, but there was so much to do this week, I didn’t have time to dwell.

The next assignment I completed was to create a venn diagram of a pop culture figure (3 stars). In my post Abrakadabragram, Harry Potter was my central figure, with Gandalf, Merlin, and James Bond surrounding him.

To push through this week, I created my own motivational poster (2 stars) using a photo I had taken.  I used my old dog and barn cat to represent Friendship.

Similar to the propaganda poster, Lights, Camera, Action! talks about what I did to redesign a movie poster to push for a ds106 movie (3 stars). I chose Batman to represent the ds106 Knight and a twitter bird as his emblem.

Going off of the idea to use icons to represent a movie in my first assignment, I completed a similar one where I used a photo to represent a song.  Let Me Take You Down (2 stars) describes my process of choosing a photo to depict a particular song. Do you know what song I had in mind?

To lighten my mood, I chose a goofy assignment in which I created a Whatchamacallit creature using 4 animals (2 stars). I used the head of a penguin, the body of a tiger, the dorsal fin of a dolphin, and the tail of a tiger shark to create my new animal.

I ended the week with very easy assignment in which I cartoonized my dog, Alex (1 star).  I used a photo of her on the stairs and edited it to look like a cartoon.

By the end of the week, I had completed 18/15 stars worth of assignments.

Well, on top of all this, we continued our daily create activities.  This week, I was able to complete 3 daily creates.  The first was to take a photo of someone nice and cozy in a blanket.  This one was easy, because all I had to do was go downstairs and find my roommates cat.  She’s always curled up somewhere looking adorable.

The second daily create I completed was to represent your fondest memory in a photo, drawing, or design-do it in a nostalgic style.  I chose an old photo of my sisters and I with Santa. I don’t like people in costumes and perhaps this is where that fear stemmed from! (I’m the baby by the way)

The third and final daily create I completed was to add a caption to a photo that makes it say the opposite of what it looks like it means.  I used a photo from my parent’s wedding day. This caption is sort of morbid, but it’s definitely the opposite of what the photo is trying to portray.

Last week, my radio show group chose a name: Fifth Dimension. We learned that messaging each other via Canvas didn’t work, because some of the group members didn’t receive the message, or we weren’t notified about it.  We decided to stick to Twitter instead.

@caseyragg @l_hampson23 @dylangott1 @rwyrough so what form of communication do you guys think is best? Have some important info to tell yall

— Fairuz Maggio(@fairuzmaggio) February 19, 2013

@caseyragg @dylangott1 @rwyrough so i think only @l_hampson23 and i got the canvas message so let’s discuss the logo via twitter

— Fairuz Maggio(@fairuzmaggio) February 23, 2013

Cole came up with a great logo for our group:

@fairuzmaggio @caseyragg @dylangott1 @l_hampson23 I was just playing around with Gimp and did this twitter.com/rwyrough/statu…

— Richard Wyrough (@rwyrough) February 23, 2013

After some discussion, we decided on doing a twilight zone theme using a Soundscape format.

@fairuzmaggio @rwyrough @dylangott1 @l_hampson23 works for me too

— Casey (@caseyragg) February 24, 2013

@fairuzmaggio @caseyragg @rwyrough @dylangott1 I’m good with Soundscape

— Lara Hampson (@l_hampson23) February 25, 2013

Overall, I enjoyed design week.  I wasn’t as passionate about it as photography week, but I still had fun with it. As I said, I’ll never be as good a designer as John Henry Alvin, who designed posters for E.T., several Disney movies, some Batman movies, Jurassic Park, and the Lord of the Rings Triology, but maybe I’ll be able to apply what I’ve learned to my future jobs!