Art 240, Week 11: Kinetic Typography + Home Sick

Ira Glass Video

Rumble in The Jungle

The professor was in a car crash (thankfully she is okay) and couldn't make it to class today. I also didn't make it to class today because I was sick, (and didn't want to be the guy that make everyone else sick) but I can do the assignment we were given via email from home easily.

We had to watch a bunch of Kinetic Typography movies and pick which two we liked best and why.

http://www.designyourway.net/blog/inspiration/some-of-the-best-kinetic-typography-examples/

I picked the videos with Ira Glass talking about story telling and Muhammad Ali talking about the Rumble in The Jungle. I've linked them at the top of the post. While most of the videos were good, I chose these two because they appealed the most to me visually and phonetically.

Ira Glass: This video was successful in keeping pace with Ira Glass' verbal tics. I enjoyed how it switched up the pace when the dialogue was slow or fast. The typeface was clear and lent itself to Ira's signature annunciation. The various transitions were entertaining and never got so complicated that they took away from what you were reading. The background gave off a bookish feel which went well with the overall "storytelling" theme. The message of the video, while audio in nature, is also something that creative people can learn a lot from.

Rumble in The Jungle: This video was short, but it synced quite well with Ali's legendary rhythmic style of speech. The images (even though in our monologue project we aren't allowed use of them) worked together with the speech to make it even more interesting. The wiggling of the typeface gave visual feeling to the skill Ali had with a microphone. He was quite verbose and the constant movement matches well with the verbal dancing he was famed for. The wiggly movement also conveyed a feeling of the words being beaten down and hitting the canvas of a boxing ring.

Some runners up were the video about Futura's history (it was in French I think) and the It's Gonna be all right video with the sentence morphing.

Art 240, Week 10.1: Monologue Thumbnails

Here are some rough thumbnails for my monologue project. They are all over the place. The professor gave some good advice on not being all cute all the time. You'll get sick of eating cake everyday, so sometimes a bland meal can balance that out.

Art 240, Week 10: Hierarchy Redo (thrice)

So we had to redo our hierarchy projects because we did bad as a class. The first picture is the one I did in class. We all did a bad job AGAIN, so we were assigned to do it one more time. The final picture is my fourth pass on the project. I wonder if we'll just keep doing them throughout the entire semester?

Below is the group of hierarchies I did for the second go round. I still don't know how to save them properly as JPEGs, they always crop weird. I was just too lazy to fix them so they look a bit weird in places.

Art 240, Week 9.1: Aaron Draplin Lecture Write Up OFF CAMPUS EVENT

Here is my write up of the lecture I went to on October 2nd at the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design. 

Michael Pfeffer

Typography 1 Tu Th 3-5:3014

Professor Nancy Mata

Aaron Draplin: Tall Tales from a Large Man

14 Oct. 2014

I attended a lecture at the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design with my classmate Gaby Cohen. Several of our classmates and Professor Mata also attended. Gaby and I sat in the back and were anti social. I was in a semi grumpy grouch mood because I had projects for other classes due and was tired. Luckily the lecture was good and made me realize I was being a bit of a butthead. The lecturer was Aaron Draplin who is a successful graphic designer. I thought he was going to be a huge guy, but he was normal sized man who was just a bit overweight.
He was a positive guy who did clean, bold work. I related to him artistically (we share the same favorite font family, Futura) and I enjoyed all of his work. He talked to us about his life and how he bounced around the country while improving his draftsmanship. Through hard work and his own talent he managed to build his own personal design brand, DDC (Draplin Design Co.), with the mission of making good products for good people. The lecture was done in a simple manner, he just spoke with a powerpoint, but the content was engaging.

Mr. Draplin mainly pushed that if you believe in something and work hard you can make things that people will genuinely enjoy. I liked the laid back tone of the talk and the humor Aaron brought to his own story. You could tell he enjoys design and loves what he does. He showed how you can do good work and get paid, but still put a bit of your soul into it and make it your own. We were told entertaining stories about how he helped his friends with his design skills, situations he got into, and people he met while traveling the country. He values family highly and it was touching to hear him talk about how much he treasured his recently deceased father.

It was great to hear him speak about how excited he was to make a logo for President Barack Obama’s stimulus package. Sometimes I fear I am becoming a cynical jerk, and stories like this just remind me that doing things you enjoy are the reason to live life. At the end of the lecture he showed us pictures of himself with famous people which was good for some hearty laughs. The only part of the lecture I didn’t like was that it didn’t start on time, but what do you expect out of a talk from an artist?  After he concluded his lecture he asked us to spend money on his merch in a polite way and everyone got to talk to him. Seeing how I was being a little wiener face, I didn’t go up and just buy a hat and some of his nice little notebooks like I should have. So I ordered a hat later online because I like to waste money on shipping, and make myself wait for things.

I didn’t really learn much from the lecture (I don’t mean that in a bad way, the lecture was 

good), as most creative types will tell you the best way to make stuff is to just start making stuff, and 

that is what Aaron Draplin touched on here. I did find a new artist to be inspired by and buy things 

from so that is always a positive. I am moving soon so I can use some nice grown up art to put in my 

new place. The lecture also helped me realize to just be positive and try hard,  and good things can 

happy. I hope the second lecture I attend is as good as this one.

Here is a picture of me in my hat. USA #1

Art 240, Week 9 (I haven't been keeping track of the weeks correctly, now its fixed, yay): Monologue Project Begins

We were assigned a project where we have to take a monologue and use type to visually express what is being said. The first step is choosing which monologue we will visually manipulate.

I chose Herman Blume's (played by Bill Murray) opening speech from the movie Rushmore directed by Wes Anderson. 

"You guys have it real easy.

I never had it like this where I grew up. But I send my kids here. Because the fact is: you go to one of the best schools in this country.

Rushmore.

Now for some of you it doesn't matter. You were born rich and you're going to stay rich. But here's my advice to the rest of you: take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in the crosshairs. And take them down.

Just remember: they can buy anything. But they can't buy backbone. Don't let them forget it. Thank you. "

Alright, there we go, blog post finished. See you Thursday!

Art 240, Week 6: Let's make a shirt! Then after you make it do a presentation that isn't that good because you are dumb.

All right, lets make a shirt!

     Here are the materials I gathered. A dark purple shirt, a light pink shirt with a tinge of gray and some patches of fabric. (green, white, and black)












     Here is the beginning of the spider. I decided to make his hair out of paper because the fabric I bought proved too difficult to cut accurately. The mouth is also made out of paper for the same reason. The body and eyes are make of thicker yarn. The legs proved difficult to cut out correctly and I kind of had to just freelance them. On the final spider I put him together a little bit too close together, but it's okay. I used hot glue to hold everything on the shirt together.

     Here is the spider on the shirt I choose to see how it would look with the color composites.

     Here is a picture of the beginning of the web. I used thin fabric for these web strands.

     Here is the shirt with a lot of the text on it. I decided to use paper text because I waited til the last minute and the fabric was proving tricky to cut out properly. With paper I could quickly cut out the letters and have them look like the typeface they were to be representing.

     Here is me wearing the shirt. I wanted to see how it looked. I added more letters on the web after this.

















     Another shirt picture. This time the spider and me have the same face. :D

     This is what my room looked like after all the cutting and hot gluing.

     These are my note cards I used during my presentation. I completely misused my time and didn't make a powerpoint. Some people even wrote a paper, so I think I may have messed that up too. I posted my blog post to the google drive for the class and put some of these images there as well.
     I think my shirt came out really nice. It had a neat mixed media feel to it. I think it wouldn't have came out as nice if I just had it printed, so that is a happy accident that came about because of me not staying on a tight schedule. I will post a better picture of it after Professor Mata takes one for her files. My presentation was lacking and I could have done a much better job. I'm not really giving some of the aspects of this class my all and that has to change if I want a better overall grade.
     I hope I at least got a B overall on the assignment so I can salvage my total class grade in the upcoming 9 weeks of the class.

Art 240, Week 5: Hierarchy Project

Here are my pictures for my Hierarchy project. We were given a vague set of rules and then had to make signs for dance classes at the Kimmel Center. I thought I was going to be all creative and then about 10 minutes after the first one (which is at the bottom) I lost the will to complete the assignment and just made them all centered with different sizes.

We did a bad job as a class and were told to redo our ideas. I didn't use my time well and didn't do a second corrected set. I just handed my crappy first set in. I did not do well on this assignment.

Art 240, Week 4.1: Shirt Design Progress 2

Here is the sketch I brought to class for a progress critique. It got critiqued last and no one really said anything about it. I forgot to keep a crisp illustrator file so this is the image after I got my critique and I doodled on it so its a little rough. I wanted to use four colors, light gray, white, black, and red, and make a clean illustrator image. 

Art 240, Week 4: Shirt Design Progress

This is the sketch I did for first pass on my T-Shirt Design. The spider is Matthew Carter, identified by his trademark white ponytail, on a web made of his font Georgia. This is because georgia was a font made for clarity on computer screens. You are reading it right now!