Deadline day and the student teams had to present their wayfinding solutions to a panel of nine clients from RCC. Great experience and some nice visual and verbal deliveries. well done to all the teams.
Wayfinding System
Brief: Complete presentation of wayfinding system.
Background: Riverside was able to purchase the former Shrine Theatre (the place where people ‘played in Peoria’ until the 80’s when the Peoria Civic Center was built) for only $550,000! The historic Peoria landmark with seating for close to 1,500 would now become the face of Riverside Community Church in downtown Peoria. With the help of volunteers, the building was transformed from a performance theatre into a place where people could connect with others and most importantly, connect with God.
Editorial Design/Brief #1 Initial Critique
Client: U.S. National Association of the Deaf.
Product: Newspaper insert/stand alone brochure piece to encourage young people to think about hearing protection. As an insert in the weekend newspaper and also handed out at assorted music festivals and gigs.
The campaign line is ‘DON’T LOSE THE MUSIC’
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Summer Session/Methods & Process
A nice group of students for my summer session of Art 206 Methods and Process. Essentially the same course syllabus as the spring semester version but with absolutely no time for the students to actually consider process for any of the projects!
Never the less, some nice pieces came out of the course. Here are a selection from the poster project where each student is assigned a regional company/attraction/organization, then has to create a series of posters promoting it as well as attracting outside companies to relocate to the region – however, each student also has to create in the style of an assigned designer (ranging from famous to less well known).
Creative Process Book
One way to ‘force’ my students to have to put ideas down onto paper before reaching for their beloved computer is to have them produce a Creative Process Book as the final brief of my Editorial Design course. Essentially the content would be all their idea development from the other three projects of the fall semester. They then collate and lay out, editorially, in a clear, hierarchical, creative way. So, simply put – if a student has ‘winged it’ with any of the previous projects (in other words, minimal evidence of thought process), then it comes back to bite them with this one because they will be short of content – consequently, a low grade!
Here are a handful of pretty nice Process Books:
London January 2013 – it’s coming sooner than you think!
It seems an age away, but I am already promoting my London based Creative Strategy (Graphic Design) course for January 2013. Why so soon? Well, deposits (and a commitment) are due in April, so not much time to save up or ‘convince’ whoever is paying that it is going to be the best experience they’ll ever have as a student.
Brainstorming exercises – one class to go
Unfortunately the snow storm really messed up class days, and this course in particular missed out on two valuable face time critique sessions because of it. So with only one week left before the deadline for all ten brainstorming exercises I was quite excited to see what my students were ‘bringing to the table’ today.
Of course I hadn’t allowed for the mass snot fest running rampant through the university right now (that’s what happens when you go sledding in a t shirt at 11 o clock at night in a blizzard, people!), so consequently half the class was off sick and several of those who made it weren’t exactly glowing pictures of health 🙁
Anyway, enough griping. Some great ideas on show and the level of execution was again, pretty nice (remember, the purpose of the exercises is to 1) push creativity beyond the obvious/predictable outcomes and 2) to raise the level of mark making/execution high enough so that the students can then apply it to future graphic design projects instead of presenting initial ideas on scrappy bits of paper with undistinguishable images on them.
Here are a few of today’s brainstorming exercises:
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Art Chantry; The ‘poster boy’ of grunge
We had the absolute pleasure of the company of Art Chantry (and his lovely wife) this past couple of days. Not only was he in town to give a Visual Voices lecture, but he also has an exhibition running in our gallery.
For those of you who have been living under a stone, here’s a very brief outline of Chantry’s design career – his prominence began in the early 80’s when he became the art director of the Rocket, a monthly music magazine. Prior to that he had tried, unsuccessfully, to tout his portfolio around all the usual corporate design offices in the Seattle area. Chantry quickly realized that the only way he was going to ‘make it’ was to keep true to his design beliefs and pretty much establish the style synonymous with the Pacific West Coast single handedly. Almost immediately he emerged as a graphic designer known for quick turnarounds and innovative ideas about production. Chantry is probably best known for expanding on the aesthetic of punk music, in posters and album covers for bands like Nirvana, Hole and the Sonics, as well as some lesser-known groups. Some of his famous techniques include torn-edge collage, taped images, messy script, punch-printed lettering, startling juxtapositions and endless variations on the possibilities of photographic graininess achieved by repeated photocopying. He advocates for a low-tech approach to design whilst keeping in mind the history of art. Art Chantry’s work has been exhibited at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum of Modern Art, Seattle Art Museum, the Smithsonian, the Louvre….. and Bradley University!
