"...or maybe they spent 1/3 of a second looking at the ad... yeah, that's all you get for your work, so it'd better be good."

Good news, everyone! I'm not frozen yet!

I am pretty busy with classwork, though. My design classes this semester are Typography 1, Visual Language, and Critical Issues in Design The first two are practical classes where we make things instead of sitting around and listening to professors talk a lot; the last is a lecture... and the prof. does talk a lot. :) I'm also taking Introduction to Psychology, Arts and Ideas (it's a class about how to study art... sort of ...it's required for my degree; all fine arts majors have to take it) and Orchestra.

The York/Sheridan BDes program is basically set up to create an army of young designers who will be able to compete in the professional world right out of college... which is, theoretically, every university program's goal, I guess. That being said, the professors focus a lot on process work - we have turn in bound copies of all of our sketches and process materials with our mounted final products. The theory is that if you can defend your process and how you came to conclusions about your designs, you'll be able to make better pitches when you have a real job. Coupled with that, one of the main focuses of my Critical Issues class is to teach us how to write and think critically about design.

In my Typography class, our first project is to design two monograms and a label to use on all of our projects during our four years of study.


The first monogram design had to show both letterforms completely and contrast them without them touching (in my design, the letters are different fonts and are positioned at a 90-degree angle). For the second design, we had to use one positive (black) and one negative (white) letter integrated together with either one or both of the letterforms incomplete (look - it's an 'e' inside an 'S'! Neither one is complete, however, the viewer can still tell what they are. Thank you, Gestalt.)



In Visual language, we are illustrating visual principles (such as form, texture, and direction) by designing two contrasting blocks for each principle (or multiple principles later in the project) using only one shape (I'm using triangles) and only black and white.


direction - contrast in direction





form - contrast in shape





space - contrast in the figure's relationship to the background





scale - contrast in size of elements





weight - contrast in how much visual space a figure takes up





texture - a two-dimensional representation of a three dimensional tactile sensation



Next week, we have to do 6 sets of contrasts combining different forms (i.e. texture and weight or space and scale). So... I'm going to go work on those. I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse into what I'm working on!