This Design Assignment can be found here: http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/one-story-four-icons/ Meaning? For this assignment, we were asked to tell a story using only four minimalist icons that related to our character dossier. As stated in my previous posts, my character’s name is Sterling James. The tornado icon represents all of the disasters that have happened in Sterling’s life, … Continue reading Minimalist Icons →

This daily create challenges you to make some form of jewelry or clothing with food. I took a taco bowl and made a crown. Two candy canes made up the earrings. Last was a candy wand that my daughter held. She liked posing for the picture and thought it...

This week was focused on design. I took to the streets Monday night to complete the “designblitz” and captured some examples of effective and less-than-effective signage. Then I read through and thought about the Vignelli Cannon, a sort of design guidebook written by a master in the field. We watched some movies that showed the range of genres capable of… Read more →

Here is the Minimalist Poster assignment that is 3 1/2 points. I wanted to do a poster about my

  The first assignment I did this week was called one story/four icons. It was worth 2.5 stars and the assignment page can be found here. The icons above represent a certain movie. The first icon is a camera. It is rather old fashioned, and has a big bulb that attaches to the top of… Read More

Wooh! What a week! This week has been incredibly busy! I guess that’s just how my semester is going to be considering I am taking 6 classes and I have a job. I guess I’ll accept the fact that this is how it is going to be. I really enjoyed this week being a design […]

This week, we had to review and reflect on several resources relating to copyright and the creative commons initiative that has sprung up as a response to copyright law. We were assigned to do the following things: Read “A Brief History of Copyright” Watch Larry Lessig’s TED talk, “Laws that Choke Creativity” Watch “A Fair(y) Use Tale” […]

We were asked to watch one of three movies this week: Double Indemnity, The Big Lebowski, or Blade Runner and to think about how built environment helps frame the design and style of noir. I wasn’t sure what to do, seeing as how I watched Double Indemnity the first week of class, Blade Runner a little while ago, and have… Read more →

four stars: Illustrate a favorite lyric “The thought that life could be better/ is woven indelibly/ into our hearts/ and our brains.” Is my favorite line from a song by Paul Simon called Train in the Distance. I thought also about how so frequently in noir characters are drawn into trouble by the impulse Simon is describing, either stemming from… Read more →

four stars: This assignment asked us to create a ds106 wallpaper, such as  one might make a poster out of or use as a desktop background. I used photoshop and combination of appropriated images and a photograph of my own. I made it a little dark, in honor of this year’s noir focus. Read more →

This is the Business Card assignment that is two points. I thought it would be fun to expand on my character’s universe. I chose to discuss the business that ultimately runs his life. They are called Aquia Maxius. I explain a little more about this in my word post. Background: The company is anonymous but...

This week was all about design. Other then the work that I have done for this class I have had zero experience with digital design and photo editing. I have had experience with sound editing but after reading the information on the noir website about this weeks work I could tell that the design we … Continue reading Weekly Summary

two stars:     (I think it should be more) This assignment was to create a genre themed or compilation album cover and playlist. I put together Down in the Mountains, a compilation of country/blues songs. The name (in case you’re confused) stems from the genre; “in the mountains” because its music you might expect to hear there and “down” because… Read more →

Here is the Word assignment that is two points. I thought that it would be fun to illustrate a part of my character’s story using words and fonts. We were supposed to not use colors or graphical elements. I wanted to use the project as a way to introduce a aspect of my character’s story....

two stars: This simple design assignment called for us to, without the aid of any other visual cues, not even color, choose a word and communicate it in a single typeface. The only thing you could use was size and shape. I chose a fance font that I thought looked like something from a storybook about knights to represent “knight”.… Read more →

I have never sat down and thought extensively about copyright laws before and certainly never considered some of the things talked about in the readings and videos. Copyrights to my have always just been something lumped together with trademarks, and siting sources. I had never considered how much copyrights can actually limit the creative process. … Continue reading Copyrights

This assignment was my four star assignment for the week. I had a lot of fun with this assignment and learned a lot from it. I wanted to dedicate this assignment to my noir character so I started out with a picture of a place that I imagined my character would live. I then started … Continue reading DS106 Wallpaper!

This three star assignment kind of explains itself. I have a lot of friends who enjoy playing online video games like call of duty but I cannot stand it. Whenever I hear them playing it sounds like they are playing exclusively with a bunch of little kids. For this assignment I had to focus mainly … Continue reading Honest video game cover

This assignment was two stars and fairly easy to do. I wanted to make this assignment somewhat dedicated to my noir character. My character does not live in a time where there were laptops so I had to imagine him in a setting where laptops existed. From there I decided he would like a pale … Continue reading Laptop Lingo

For three of my twelve stars I chose to do the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Here I took a image of both logo’s and placed them over each other. I had to cut around the chic-fil-a logo with a tool. Then I matched the color of the KFC background and used a blurring tool to … Continue reading Wolf in sheep’s clothing assignment

For my daily creates this week I chose to do the food jewelry assignment and the old fashion radio broadcast assignment. I also chose to do the make a video of the arcade game assignment but after trying to get the arcade game to work for over an hour I had to give up and … Continue reading Daily Creates

For my design blitz, I chose to take pictures of design elements that I found around downtown Fredericksburg I thought that this Sign for Carl’s ice cream was a good example of form/function/message. The sign is clearly custom for the establishment and uses a fancy font and and image of an ice cream cone in … Continue reading Design Blitz

For one of my week five assignments, I chose to do the assignment, Word that was submitted by Rabia Aman. The assignment is to, “Pick one word. Select one single typeface, and communicate your word. Do not use colors or any other graphical elements. The goal is to select a type face that represents the […]

For one of my week five assignments, I chose to do the assignment, Create Your Own Business Card that was submitted by Lauren Brumfield. The assignment is to,” create your own business card to advertise who you are.” The assignment is worth 2 points. I picked this assignment because I thought it would be fun to […]

This week was a whirlwind. With midterms coming up and the start of my senior project, I barely knew where to begin with this weeks work. I started on with the three daily creates. I completed the creative hands, creative family tree, and food jewelry daily creates. I had a lot of fun doing all…

This week we were asked to think about copyright and the creative commons movement. We were given some resources to look over to help us reflect upon these things. As an artist, copyright has always been something of importance. My general knowledge of it prior to these readings and videos was that if you are…

This isn’t food but it’s close. This was the only thing in my room that was remotely jewelry like. I found that using the ties could make an interesting bracelet.

My design blitz started with me reading through some of the posts from each category. I thought Karen Kavett’s videos on design were really helpful in deciphering what each category meant and were the elements are usually seen. It really helped my search for photos this week. The first on I found was the color...

For my movie choice I chose to watch The Big Lebowski. I had seen the movie once already and thought it would be fun to watch again while looking for elements of noir. I really liked the prompt for this assignment because one thing that has stood out to me while learning about noir is … Continue reading The Big Lebowski and Noir

This week was much better, and much more relaxed for me than last wee. I’d say my favorite part of the week was doing the Design Assignments. But we’ll get to that later. I started backwards this week, educating myself about Copyrights. The issue about copyrights runs so much deeper than plagiarism, and this little … Continue reading Week 5 Already?!