I am currently pursuing a career in Graphic Design. Back in my last year of highschool, my art class was doing silkscreening and we had to mount the polyester silk on the wooden frames ourselves with a staple gun so we got the right size for our chosen design.
I cut my silk, grabbed my frame and the staple gun and started stapling away. I know the silk has to be VERY tight with no wrinkles for the design to come out right. When I grabbed my frame the teacher (who was the football coach they had given the art teacher position to) yelled across the class “M____, don’t hesitate to let some of the strong boys [football players who were in the class for free marks] help you with the frame!” I assured him he was fine and got to work. I hadn’t gotten three staples in on a 2 foot square frame when the teacher came over, grabbed my frame and proceeded to smirk at my stapling so far with a guy at my table. I grabbed my silk screen back and got two more staples in before the teacher came up again, grabbed my frame and showed the guy again how loose my silk was (WOW YOU DON’T SAY) and then told me “M____, why don’t you go sit and powder your nose and Other Guy and I will finish this for you.”
It’s not like I’ve been crafting and building my entire life.
It’s not like I’ve been using a staple gun to re-upholster furniture for years.
It’s not like the staple gun that the teacher supplied for us was the exact model I had at home,
And it’s not like I had to show the football jocks how to un-jam a staple less than 10 minutes later.
After (loudly) calling him out on his shit, I grabbed my silkscreen back and finished it on my own.
…that includes menus for each table, labels for each table (instead of numbers, each table is called a different band/music artist such as Led Zepplin, Elvis Presley, Ella Fitzgerald, The Who, etc) and 195 “tickets” with the guests names on them and the name of the band/artist so they know which table they’re at. Plus side, they can also rip off part of the ticket (I’m using a perforator blade), fold it in half and use it as a place card (tables are assigned but not specific seats) and keep the “stub” as a souvenir.
Here’s the problem:
The wedding is this Saturday… the bride only FINALLY got together with me to discuss things on Friday… I finished the designs for Monday, showed her them Tuesday and just needed the final guest list/seating chart to start to type in the names of all 195 guests on the tickets, print them, the table labels and the menus out, perforate and cut them. She only got me the guest list LAST NIGHT around 9 pm and didn’t have the seating chart with it as well… so I had all the names, but no idea what ticket to put them all on… I got it around 10, was up almost all night, fell asleep and got up early to finish them, tried sending her pdfs of all of the completed tickets but her inbox was full so it kept kicking them back… I can’t print them until I have her confirm all of the names/spelling is correct… Tonight was supposed to be the night for final printing and cutting. So now if I want to get paid for the materials I need to pretty much pull an all-nighter tomorrow to finish things…
Moral of the story kids:
Write up a contract, get them to sign it, take a 50% deposit, charge rush fees if they don’t adhere to deadlines.
Photo Essay - Photography
North American House-Geisha
For my photography class in my Graphic Design program, we had to take 8 photos of a subject(s) and have them tell a story. I have this sculpture of a Japanese geisha I made in an art class in highschool from a wooden artists’ posing doll. Aside from the doll itself, I made everything by hand including the silk kimono (and the under-kimono), the obi, obi accessories, the handpainted designs on the kimono, attached the hair, hair accesories, etc. I brought her with me to college to sit on my armoir. I had no idea what to do for this project until I was glancing around my room and saw her. I decided to do a Toy Story-esque theme: What would our inanimate objects do throughout the day in our houses when we’re gone?
Photo descriptions:
1: Me leaving the room, geisha sculpture posed on armoir
2. Sculpture checking to see if I had left.
3. Geisha climbing down (using her old obi fyi which she currently used as a mat to sit on. I changed it when I got new material) from the armoir
4. Geisha arranging her hair in my desk mirror that I use when I get ready
5. Geisha watching a movie on my computer on my desk
6. Geisha eating a lunch of sushi (made from Playdough)
7. Geisha reading a graphic novel (extra points to Gryffindor if you can name the graphic novel (;)
8. Geisha climbing back up to the armoir
9. Me walking back in with the geisha looking on
10. Me looking back at the sculpture suspiciously, with her looking all innocent.
Try not to judge too harshly on the image quality. It was my first time using that camera and the previous user had SERIOUSLY messed up the settings.
I post it on my facebook like many of my other classmates, for feedback and recognition but I’ve been hesitant to post them on tumblr. I’ve seen what happens to many of my tumblr-friends’ original creative works once they’re posted on tumblr: images getting reposted instead of reblogged, watermarks removed, credit not given, etc. I have no issue posting a small watermark in a small area on my work, but I can’t stand when I see huge watermarks across an entire document and will not do it with me own.
What do you guys think? To post or not to post?
Hearing Type - Typography
Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes, covered by Marcus Collins
For this project in my typography class for Graphic Design, we had to choose a short section of a song and use type to make the viewer hear the song. We could use any tint variation of two spot colours, typefaces, font size, transparencies, distortion and placement to reflect how the song was sung. We could do background images but they had to be vector made images and had to come second in our hierarchy to the text.
I used Pantone Black and Pantone 235 C as my colours, and 7 different fonts for the text.
For my support images, using guides I separated the document into the number of beats in my clip (shown in the last image) and used black circles to represent the famous background beat of the song. I used light grey impact circles around the black to convey the emphasis of each beat. I chose simple straight and one wavy line to show the flow of the song.
I chose Seven Nation Army because I love the original version by the White Stripes but then heard the Marcus Collins version after I was given this project and automatically started picking out fonts in my head. I was originally going to do Whistle for the Choir by the Fratellis because it is my absolute favourite song and has been for years, but I lost the hours of work I spent on it in a computer glitch and this Seven Nation Army was my backup. It turned out better than expected because I really go inspired once I looked into using the beats and in the end I like it better than my original design.
Created using Adobe InDesign.
*EDIT* I went with the white for my submission to my prof because we had to mount it on a black bainbridge board and I thought the white would stand out more.
You know you’re officially IN the fandom when…
We had to do a duotone newsletter on a topic of our choice in my Digital Applications class in my graphic design course. We could only use two spot colours, had to use at least one photo (yay for screenshots…) and create one vector illustration and do two articles. Thank you to the lovely Kim for suggestions for colours that would go best for a Sherlock themed publication.
Also, I looked through every Pantone Solid Coated colour in CS5, Kim. They, unfortunately, do not have any called iPhone Black or Tobacco Green.
