Don’t Overthink It: Everything Has Some Kind Of Design

Don’t Overthink It: Everything Has Some Kind Of Design

by @V20Kai

| designblitz, Syndicated, Week 6
February 21, 2020

When I first looked at the Design Blitz assignment, I found it overwhelming and didn’t know what kind of designs I should share, but it wasn’t until today (the last day of Week 6), that I realized just how much I was overthinking this whole assignment. It didn’t have to be posters, it could be […]
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When You Need to Be Motivated to Be Un-Motivated

by @V20Kai

| #DesignAssignments2075, designassignments, Syndicated, Week 6
February 19, 2020

Because of my dry humor, I did not hesitate to do the Contradiction Creation design assignment. I love motivational quotes just as much as the next person, but sometimes they can be a little (no–very) cheesy, and what better to destroy all this positivity than with a dash of pessimistic realism? At first, I wanted […]
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Have You Heard of “Yosakoi”?

by @V20Kai

| designassignments, DesignAssignments2472, Syndicated, Week 6
February 19, 2020

「よさこいを知っていますか？」Do you know yosakoi? I am not–and never will be–tired of bringing in my Japan adventures into my work. When I decided to do my third design assignment on an Event Poster, the first two things that came to mind were bhangra and yosakoi. However, the first actual event that came to mind between those […]
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A Little Less for a Little Mermaid

by @V20Kai

| designassignments, DesignAssignments43, Syndicated, Week 6
February 18, 2020

So far, this design assignment has been the most challenging for me, and I would like to say that this is because I didn’t know how I wanted to approach it. I decided to do a Minimalist TV/Movie Poster for Disney’s The Little Mermaid (1989). What initially came to mind was using a blue gradient […]
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Can You Guess the 80s Movie?

by @V20Kai

| designassignments, DesignAssignments358, Syndicated, Week 6
February 18, 2020

Now that I finally have a bit of a break in my week, I did my first design assignment, One Story / Four Icons on an 80s movie to tie it to our course theme. All of the icons are plot related, whether they pertain to a specific part of the story, the story as […]
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What Makes Excellent Design?

by @V20Kai

| designthoughts, Syndicated, Week 6
February 16, 2020

Today I read Massimo Vignelli’s The Vignelli Canon and a Brain Pickings article about Chip Kidd and his book on design for children to gain a better understanding of what makes an excellent design. Honestly speaking, there were many things I never considered. In all the times that I have ever “designed” anything, I merely […]
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Are You Listening?

by @V20Kai

| Syndicated, Week 5, WeeklySummary
February 14, 2020

This week’s focus was on audio, which I have mostly dabbled in when it came to making mixes for my PAC pieces, whether it’s cutting a song to fit the allowed time frame or putting different songs together and making sure one songs transitions to the next as fluidly as possible. However, before getting into […]
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Just a Careless Whisper

by @V20Kai

| #AudioAssignments, AudioAssignments1923, Syndicated, Week 5
February 13, 2020

For my third and last audio assignment, I chose to do What A Song Might Mean To You and spoke about a popular 80s song: George Michael’s “Careless Whisper.”
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Let’s Get to Brainstorming

by @V20Kai

| #radioshowideas, Syndicated, Week 5
February 13, 2020

If you’ve read or skimmed through my blog, a few things will be very evident about me: I like video games, dance, and music. The question is how would I relate to or tie one of these ideas into our 80s course theme, and how would I want to approach these ideas for our radio […]
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The Story of “Moon Graffiti”

by @V20Kai

| #audioreflection, Syndicated, Week 5
February 13, 2020

Today I listened to the audio drama “Moon Graffiti,” and I was blown away by its exceptional storytelling. It was like I was watching a movie, but without the visuals, which is essentially what good audio storytelling should strive for. The story opens with the date: July 20, 1969. Immediately, the listeners are thrust right […]
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Just Hum It

by @V20Kai

| #AudioAssignments, AudioAssignments2136, Syndicated, Week 5
February 12, 2020

Today, I settled on doing the Humming Away audio assignment and thought I’d connect it to our 80s theme by humming along to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” because it’s the first 80s song that initially comes to mind for me....
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On the Way Home After a Long Day’s Work

by @V20Kai

| #AudioAssignments, #AudioAssignments70, Syndicated, Week 5
February 11, 2020

For today’s audio assignment, I did a Sound Effects Story. As the title says, it’s a quick story about a person who gets off work and heads home at night–simple as that. If you close your eyes and listen, what do you see? I used a wide variety of sounds from https://freesound.org such as a […]
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Radio Thoughts

by @V20Kai

| ds106radio, Syndicated, Week 5
February 11, 2020

On Monday night, I listened to the ds106 radio and participated in the live “tweet-along.” Although I do not remember the details of that night’s broadcast, there were a few things that stuck out to me that made storytelling more than just a bland “this happened, then that.” The narrator analyzed and compared a film […]
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Bumping Into an Enigmatic Mind

by @V20Kai

| radiobumper, Syndicated, Week 5
February 11, 2020

For my radio bumper, I used an ambient wave mix by Erokia from http://freesound.org for the background “music,” and I recorded my introduction to the radio using the voice recording app on my phone. I then used GarageBand to mix thos...
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Photo Phrenzy

by @V20Kai

| Syndicated, Week 4, WeeklySummary
February 7, 2020

What a week! The tips on Becoming a Better Photographer really got me thinking about being more intentional about the photos I take. Of course, it will be a work in progress. I started out Week 4 with a daily create asking what ice cream flavor we’d be and why. I initially took a quiz […]
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Click, Snap, Watch That Photography Slap

by @V20Kai

| ds106photography, Syndicated, Week 4
February 7, 2020

After reading the key points to Becoming a Better Photographer, I looked through photos from the 1980s that demonstrate each point. This photo of Freddie Mercury during the Magic Tour in Wembley Stadium, England in 1986 made great use of lighting. The way his body frames the light, and the way the light (the sunlight?) […]
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My First and Last School Festival

by @V20Kai

| Syndicated, visualassignments, VisualAssignments2167, Week 4
February 7, 2020

The great thing about studying abroad is that I have plenty of stories to tell, accompanied by a plethora of pictures and videos to tell these stories. The most difficult part is having so many photos that picking 5 to tell even one particular story! Even so, that’s exactly why I choose to challenge myself […]
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Photography Phanatic?

by @V20Kai

| photoreflection, Syndicated, Week 4
February 6, 2020

During high school, I would see my friends post aesthetic photos, but every time I tried to emulate them, they never turned out as well as I’d like. When I went on a trip to Europe with the arts school I attended, I took many pictures of the landscape and towns, but when I look […]
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Blitz Blastin’

by @V20Kai

| #photoblitz, Syndicated, Week 4
February 6, 2020

Today I finally got around to photoblitz, and here is the list of tasks I was assigned to do along with the pictures and my thought process: (1) Fabric: we wear it, sleep on it, decorate with it. An interesting cloth design or texture. For this picture, I did a selfie focusing on the sleeve […]
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Nothing Says Cheap Like Comic Sans and Helvetica

by @V20Kai

| Syndicated, visualassignments, VisualAssignments704, Week 4
February 5, 2020

For my next Visual Assignment, I chose What A Crappy Font Will Do (3.5 stars), and I went with the Cold Stone Creamery logo since this ice cream shop opened in 1988. I used the photo editor on my phone to white out the original logo, and then using the photo editor on my laptop, […]
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Everyday Value

by @V20Kai

| Syndicated, visualassignments, VisualAssignments65, Week 4
February 4, 2020

As I scrolled through my camera roll for this visual assignment (2 stars), I found this picture from my landing flight into Akita, Japan after my 3-day weekend trip to Tokyo in late November. It’s a pretty bad picture, but I thought it caught Akita’s rural beauty just right. I did the best I could […]
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Just a Splash of Color

by @V20Kai

| Syndicated, visualassignments, VisualAssignments518, Week 4
February 3, 2020

Did you know that in Japan (and in some other countries), the sewer covers have unique designs depending what region and city/town you’re in? I encountered this–or at least, actually noticed this–in the summer the weekend before my classes in Japan began. This was en route to the Ōmagari Fireworks Festival. Sadly, I never stopped […]
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Am I Doing This Write?

by @V20Kai

| Syndicated, Week 3, WeeklySummary
January 31, 2020

Week 3 has been a busy and stressful week for me, with my internships and classes picking up, but I worked hard to push through and get my assignments finished. On Friday, I started off with my first Daily Create, which was to draw an animal on a picture of my face. For simplicity’s sake, […]
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My First Detention with The Breakfast Club

by @V20Kai

| Syndicated, Week 3, writingassignments, WritingAssignments1571
January 31, 2020

For my last Writing Assignment for this week, I decided to Write A Movie Review for The Breakfast Club. After watching it for the first time today, I figured I would write about it again after my story analysis. The Breakfast Club (1985) is an iconic American film. If you haven’t heard of it, who […]
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Underneath the Surface

by @V20Kai

| Syndicated, Week 3
January 31, 2020

Today I watched The Breakfast Club (1985) for the very first time, and let me tell you, it was a ride I wasn’t totally expecting—in a good way! After watching it, I thought about how it would relate to the videos and readings for this week about storytelling. Since there was nothing about hyperlinking, the […]
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On a Night When it’s Nice and Cold

by @V20Kai

| Syndicated, Week 3, writingassignments, WritingAssignments2392
January 30, 2020

For this Assignment Bank, I chose to do Another Day (4 stars) to describe the beauty of a snowy night when I was in Akita, Japan for my study abroad. I wanted to describe its beauty because it was the first time I had ever seen snow on my birthday (early December). It was a […]
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Just Some Family in the 80’s

by @V20Kai

| Syndicated, Week 3, writingassignments, WritingAssignments2495
January 28, 2020

For my next Assignment Bank, I chose to do Never Fear — It’s Words of the Year (2 stars), which is very similar–if not, identical–to one of the Daily Creates I did. However, instead of focusing on my birth year, I wanted to tie this one to our 80s theme, and I chose the year […]
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The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel — A Lamentably Underrated Gem

by @V20Kai

| Syndicated, Week 3, writingassignments, WritingAssignments1337
January 28, 2020

As I was reading “I link, therefore I am” by Zacharias Szumer, I came across a particular quote that got me a little fired up (and not in a necessarily positive way): Videogame sales have outstripped box office receipts and home video and theatre earnings for over a decade. The problem is that we often […]
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All Work and All Play

by @V20Kai

| Syndicated, Week 2, WeeklySummary
January 24, 2020

Today marks the end of Week 2 on our DS106 journey for this semester, and now that the semester is slowly kicking into full gear, this old soul is wearing down. That said, this week has helped me to slowly adjust to how we do things in this course. I started my Friday of last […]
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The Sweeter Revenge

by @V20Kai

| #WritingAssignments523, Syndicated, Week 2, writingassignments
January 22, 2020

For my last Assignment Bank for Week 2, I decided to do a writing assignment called Different Point of View — Same Place. After watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I thought that I would do the ending chase scene from the point of view of Ferris’s sister, Jeanie Bueller. It has been a while since […]
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