make: your way

A few weeks ago, I put up my BFA show, and took it down last week. Overall, I'm pretty pleased!

Here's a little about it.

Our perception of the structure surrounding us is hugely influenced by how we experience it. Whether it be a city, a building, or a wide open wilderness, the act of finding our way through an unfamiliar space triggers a highly complex process in our subconscious. At first thought, many would not regard the act of trying not to be lost as particularly creative, but the piecing together of random stimuli, thoughts, feelings and observed information brings into existence a very useful tool. Researchers have termed this tool a cognitive map. These maps——inner perceptions of the structure or organization of our surroundings——evolve from linear to spacial as we become more familiar with a space.

The goal of this show is to create a tangible experience to represent these intangible, cognitive creations.





Floor Maze: As you enter the room, the lone line of the maze represents a strictly linear understanding of a space. You know only the path given to you. When you arrive to the body of the maze, your mind opens up to the possibility of many choices, and begins to create its own path through the space.






Table One: These books are called maze books, in that they create a path as you manipulate the pages. This first set represents the random stimuli you may experience while finding a path through a new environment. This is a world of passive glances and quick observations. Your mind uses these imperfect, fragmented, exaggerated snippets of information to make sense of where you are.









Table Two: Once you are familiar with an environment, your mind is able to create a more accurate and useful tool for use in your wayfinding endeavors. This book encourages you to follow the graphic paths in an effort to arrive at the final configuration.

make: your way from Analisa estrada on Vimeo.

Thanks so much to everyone who helped put the show up. My dad made the tables, friends Ayumi and Brandi helped tape down the maze, and my wonderful James was AMAZING and helped fill in all the gaps.




I used images from the following Flickr members, under the Creative Commons license.

_unlikely
Andrew Turner
everydaylifemodern
healthserviceglasses
jamison
lucasmascaro
ManitobaHistoricalMaps
nicolasnova
RuiOrnelas
VeloSteve

Thanks!

gold

I just noticed today that I'm a Graphis Gold Award Winner for the 2010 New Talent Annual. They don't post pictures of the Gold work, but my name is there! That means my Cycle branding project will be in the next New Talent Annual. I can't wait to see it!

Also, the TFF5 titles have been getting good reviews all over the web from some very exciting places. Here's a few:

Motionographer (!)
The Font Feed

fleurs

I would very much like to know how to make these. And to be French. Thank you.

TFF5

The following is a large portion of my summer:

Typophile Film Festival 5 Opening Titles from Brent Barson on Vimeo.

All done with video footage and stop motion. I helped write, storyboard, construct, animate, edit, and my hands are even in there for a fraction of a second. Teacher Brent was the creative director and was such a great mentor to us, helping us stick it out through the entire process.

My most proud moments:





I designed and animated the swashy Beauty with the help of Brent and Meg.



We had to redo this take probably 5 times, but it was totally worth it.




I art directed this table arrangement. The table cloth flip seemed really daunting, but we pulled it off!




See my hand? I loved this furry lockup. I can't even describe how beautiful it was in person. Kudos to Deven for setting it so carefully.



And yes, I was the skilled foam-core-manipulator who revealed the Typophile Film Festival lockup. One of the many hidden talents we discovered during this project.

The "scent" scene was absolutely my favorite, animated by Wynn and Meg.




The project overall was just an amazing experience. Working with physical objects and actual footage is where it's at.

The festival premiered last week in Portland, and is currently on the schedule for Typ09 Mexico City in October.

a little inspiration

Every once in awhile I see an idea or project that is so inspiring and touches me so deeply that I urgingly wish I could have been a part of it in some way. I recently came across wee see, a collection of short videos designed for infants to help "introduce" them to the visual world. Their website is super, and you can watch a few samples.



I don't even know where to start explaining how much I adore everything about this. the concept. the simplicity. the music. and especially what it teaches. During my freshman year of college, I was considering going into art education, and I completed a research paper on "art" as an integral part of the development of children into fully functioning cognitive and emotional beings. For me, these videos are an amazingly beautiful way to introduce visual thinking and expression to young minds, and to set a foundation for their creativity.

Among principles and elements like composition, shape, direction, symmetry/asymmetry, pattern, motif, etc., I was especially impressed with the animator's use of figure-ground relationships. I may make it a regular routine to watch one of these whenever I sit down to design a logo. :) Oh, and did I mention the music/sound is adorable and genius as well? It is.

While I'm on the topic of kiddie stuff, I got pretty into children's fashion while I was working on my redesign of Milk, and I'm super stoked to see this collection when it's released. And I was delighted by the beautiful surprise Hello on their website. "Feminine minus the frilly and pretty without the precious." yup.

Milk

Magazine redesign for Milk, a children's fashion magazine.

smashbox

Packaging project!! For summer packaging class, we worked with Brett Traylor from ThinkSo. He gave the assignment specifications and then traveled down here to meet with us and critique our work. We were even on their news page. Super fun.

My client, Smashbox Cosmetics, is a company based out of LA. They began as a photo studio (and still are) and started manufacturing consumer cosmetics developed by their in-house makeup artists. I drew a new logo and developed the packaging for a line of basics.

Thanks so much to Jessica for photographing these. They look beautiful!