Storytelling Within the Web “ you will be intervening in the code and design of a website of your choice to tell a story. You are not to photoshop the design of the site, but rather intervene in the actual html and CSS of the site—though you can photoshop particular images on the site. Essentially you alter the content of a web page (content, images) to make it tell a new story.” For this assignment I made a google search about cooking up kittens. Before you think I’m totally crazy.. there is a story. I got a kitten this summer, 8 weeks old and all of 2 lbs on a fat day. … Continue reading →

Google Map Trip “Use Google Maps to tell a story! It can be the story of a trip you took, a trip you would like to take, a strange occurrence, a war, anything you like!” This is a story of the trip I took to Italy last Spring. I started by flying into “A” Munich International Airport. I went with a friend who had cousins there, so they picked us up from the airport and showed us around Munich. They lived about an hr outside the city in “B” Augsburg, Germany. We spent a day there then took the train to “C” Venice, Italy, where we were dyinggg to eat … Continue reading →

What They Might Have Done in Social Media “Use theFakebook tool to make a Facebook profile for a historical figure and make a fake tweet for the same character using the Twister tool. “ Here are the screen shots of Amelia Earhart’s Facebook: I love the idea of this assignment. Not being a history buff at all I see how using these fake social media sites could make it fun for younger children learning about not so interesting historical figures. I made my site by going to Fakebook.com, and inserting the information I found on this bio site about Amelia Earhart. It is a bit scary how social media has taken over … Continue reading →

In the past 2 weeks I did 6 daily creates: First, draw an emotion with your non dominant hand: drawing with my non dominant hand makes me angry haha, i guess this is what kindergarten feels like. Then, take a picture of something you do in the morning: Oh its only 9:10? I can leave in 5 more minutes… (and only be 5 minutes late) Then, a YouTube video of water: Teddy is very interest in where this water is coming from, and how he’s going to play with his ice cube around it?! A picture of a wall or fence: A wall in the Colosseum, I love the way … Continue reading →

On my Design Safari I found five examples that include design elements we learned about this week: color typography metaphors/symbols minimalism & use of space form/function/message balance rhythm proportion dominance unity My first example is and advertisement for Obama 2012: This design purposefully choose the colors red, white and blue, to represent America, mainly blue for the Democratic party. The typography is simple and clear and the 0 is a well known symbol representing Obama. The main message, Vote for Obama 2012 is dominant and other information is smaller. Next I have the cubby for the fridge in my apartment: This is a bad design. The cubbies function is to … Continue reading →

Last but not least this week I did the assignment Greetings from DS106: “Tell us where you are, where you’re from, or simply where you’d rather be and build a greeting card.” I LOVE going to the lake. My family has a cabin on a lake in Canada that I wish I could get to more, and then of course Lake Anna right down the road will do too. To me the Lake is everything I could ever want; its relaxing to sit on the dock watching the calm water and the boats driving by, its refreshing to jump in the cool (shark-free) water, and it’s exciting to go tubing … Continue reading →

For the assignment Venn Pop Culture, “Design a Venn diagram of three circles, each representing an attribute, where each overlap defines a figure from popular culture.” I created a Venn Diagram of Bart Simpson’s characteristics: When I saw this assignment I was still in the mindset of cartoons from the light switch assignment. The cartoon I grew up watching (to my mothers dismay) and still watch today is the Simpsons. Therefore, my main character in this Venn Diagram is Bart  Simpsons. THe first three characteristics I could think of for Bart are that he’s obviously a cartoon, going on my theme, he’s yellow and he’s male. Then I was about … Continue reading →

I decided to make a bumper sticker for ds106 Radio “Come up with an aesthetic for ds106 radio. If you were to create a shirt, bumper sticker, poster, etc.” I made a bumper stick for DS106 radio. I drew it, cut it out and scanned it in. I don’t have many design applications on my computer, not even paint.. so drawing and scanning works best for me. I think the minimal use of color and the use of “white space” (which is gray in this case) make it eye catching. I also really enjoy typography, I think this typography is simple and easy to read which is the best for … Continue reading →

This week I did 4 daily creates: World Vegetarian Day: Look mom I do eat vegetables! Imagine your own personal font: I really liked this daily create, typography is very structured yet can be very creative and I like that balance. From memory draw t...

I did the letters in your surrounding assignment this week “Create your name from objects in your environment. Use either Creative Commons images, ones of your own, or a combination of both to find the letters of your name hidden in your surroundings. ” For this assignment I decided to give myself a theme: Bridges. I really enjoy traveling and I think this photo portrays that, I’ve actually seen at least on of these bridges, maybe more. I used photos of bridges I found through a search on the creative commons site, saved them to my computer, opened them in powerpoint and then took a screenshot of the photos lined up. This probably … Continue reading →

A design assignment I really liked was Design the Cover of Your Autobiography “Design the cover of your autobiography. What pictures would you include? What would you title it? “ My autobiography would be titled “All Things Must Change” and the cover picture is a photo of changing leaves in the fall that I found through the creative commons site. I like that the photo is focused in front and blurry in the back, which to me symbolizes not knowing what’s coming next. My autobiography would be a story of change. In the past few years my life has completely changed in ways I did and didn’t expect, and I … Continue reading →

Lightswitch Art “Create a work of art that incorporates the switch into the art.” I think of light switch art as something you would see in a child’s room, after that thought I remembered the Daily Create last week where we had to draw our favorite animal, I drew an Elephant, which was more difficult than I thought it would be. So, for this project I decided to look up how to draw a cartoon elephant. I think it turned out well, It would look great in a zoo themed child’s room.  

Bald is beautiful, photograph of the egghead in your life: I don’t hang out with too many babies these days, but my neighbor had this photo up on their facebook, I really like looking back at old photos and the changed styles and even places. This is taken in my backyard at home, which looks completely different now. An abstract drawing of your favorite animal: I love elephants, they just look so majestic, like they are from a different world.   and you can never have  too much yellow: the prompt said you can never have too much yellow. I disagree, yellow isn’t the most flattering color, but I managed to ...

  This assignment was to take a series of pictures of: Make an ordinary object look more interesting, almost supernatural. Take a photo that makes use of converging lines. Take a photo dominated by a single color Take a photo of something at an unusual angle Take a photo of two things that do not belong together. Take a photo that represents the idea of “openness” Take a photo that expresses a human emotion Make a photo that is abstract, that would make someone ask, “Is that a photograph?” Take a photo of an interesting shadow. Take a photo of someone else’s hand (or paw) …in 20 minutes. I choose ...

My final assignment from the bank this week was Newspaper Blackout Poetry: “Grab a marker and today’s morning edition and start blacking out sections to create a new story. It could be a poem, a picture, or a novella, all drawn from the words of the latest news.” Fredericksburg chickens unanimously passed two ordinances that allow beehives to petition in support of bees in residential neighborhoods. This is just a little nonsensical story. The original text stuck out to me because the title was about chickens, a front page story about chickens? Did I move to the midwest over night? At first this story was about Fredericksburg residents voting that ...

I found an assignment in the visual assignment bank called Stories Written In Windows Media Player: “Write a sentence (preferably somewhat coherent, yet on the nonsensical side), a poem, or a quick story using the titles of songs you have in your Windows Media Player (iTunes may possibly work as well).” I used Itunes… My story is about a couple breaking up, because of the gender usage in the songs it’s hard to tell the dynamic, but I’ll leave that to the imagination. The Dumper says “Alright, I’m moving on. I gotta feeling as if she likes me for me, so sorry it’s over even if it breaks your heart ...

I decided to try the Optical Illusion visual assignment this week: “Take a photo that manipulates distance to create an optical illusion.” My photo is a picture of me and the leaning tower of Pisa! I choose this assignment because I already had the perfect picture from my trip to Italy last spring. It could tell a story about me saving a precious world monument, but really I think there is no saving this one. I read those big white signs you can see in the background next to the tower, and most of the leaning tower of pisa has already been replaced or reinforced to try to keep it ...

The first assignment I did was Animated Pet. “Take a picture of your pet, and make an animated GIF from the photo.”   make animated gifs like this at MakeAGif I choose this assignment because it seemed like a good warm up for the week, Teddy is my most willing photo subject and I already knew how to make a GIF from a few weeks ago when I made an Uptown Girls GIF. The story is just about my sleepy cat, who apparently can be comfortable in any position. He can fall asleep in a weird pose and then 30 seconds later, he will be jumping off the walls, playing ...

This week was all about listening to and creating audio projects. I wrote a reflection about Audio Storytelling, tip from the experts. As well as a review of the audio story “Eat Cake”. Then I did 3 daily creates: The theme 3: The seriousness of mini golf: An unlikely merger: …followed by listening to #ds106radio #ds106 — Amelia Lord (@amlordd) September 23, 2012 …and writing a reflection,   and lastly two audio assignments: Making a bumper for DS106radio- and creating a sound effect story-   Woo, a nose dive into audio this week. Audio is a little intimidating, just because I think hearing yourself speak sounds weird, do I really sound ...