Cooper Hewitt Museum: Post-Visit

I had never been to the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum prior to this trip. I had only initially known it existed because I had happened to walk by it in the summer. After spotting it, I fully intended to go, I just never planned when, until now.

 

Staircase Model (France), Mid–Late 19th Century

It was very interesting to see the range of items they had. When thinking and studying design, I’ve only thought of it in terms of a digital realm. It’s easy to forget that design isn’t just about posters and web logos. It also has to do with more physical things, such as houses, furniture, and technology.

 

Concept Art, Bear Cubs, Brave, 2012

My favorite exhibit was the Pixar one. I love cartoons and knowing how much time and effort goes into each one of Pixar’s movies, it was interesting to see concept sketches for characters and how the ideas, trial runs and outside inspirations got them to what we know them as today.

 

Salzhaus by Felix Pfäffli

Another image I saw at the exhibit that caught my eye was a poster, Salzhaus by Felix Pfäffli. While I appreciate the interesting combo use of colors, the closeness of the letters (tension) made it uncomfortable to read. According to it’s webpage on the Cooper Hewitt site, the poster was “intended to ‘distort, warp and disassemble.'” I believe Pfäffli was very successful in designing his piece.

Project #2: Song Book

Songbook

In this project, the goal was to explore movement.

First, we had to choose a song that inspired us. Unable to choose just one initially, I created a playlist of songs on my iPod. The song I ended up choosing was “Very Loud” by Shout Out Loud. We were to listen to our chosen song and create thumbnails of movement in relation to the music we were listening to. We then had to narrow it down and choose two contrasting movements to recreate in our “song books.”

What I learned in doing this assignment is that visually implied movement is best created with diagonals, but can also be done with simple shapes rearranged in a space as well. Also, figure ground relationship with the latter is very important to keep in mind when creating design.

MoMA Visit

Making Music Modern: Design for Ear and Eye
Making Music Modern: Design for Ear and Eye

Visiting the “Making Music Modern” exhibit at the MoMA let me see how implied movement with sound can help increase the images’s ability to seem as if it were moving. There was one video that had a few images moving, one of which was static, but since it popped up on the screen and was paired with music caused it to successfully be seen as having movement. If the image was by itself, with no sound, the implied movement may not  have been so clear.

It was also interesting to see how a few shapes placed together, whether it be through layering, transparency, spacing, and scale could help imply movement in a non-moving image.

My favorite pieces within the exhibit were the ones using lines. It’s easy and simple to use a line to imply movement. The eye can easily follow the line of implied movement. This just reminds me how simple versus complex can be just as effective when creating designs, which is something people tend to forget because everyone wants to  be unique and stand out.

Project #1: Negative & Positive Space

Project1

In this project, we were to explore the relationship between the foreground and background using positive and negative space.

 

By placing simple geographic shapes within the frame, it was easier to see how both the black shapes (positive space) and the shapes formed by the background (negative space) can manage to compliment each other.

Once the four different windows were filled, one window was chosen to help create a pattern. The window in the top right corner is the one I chose to use.

 

Just by looking at it, it may not be so easily seen how that image managed to create the pattern in the middle. By rotation it every so often, the images pieced together to produce the pattern seen above. Being that the image originally had a reversal-ground relationship, it , maintained that relationship and causes the viewer to not only see the black inking as positive space, but also the white space as the potential positive space.

Spatial Depth & Layering Success

Three examples I found of spatial depth are:

This one is successful in showing spatial depth because of their use of diagonal lines and pairing light and dark colored counterparts together on each square.

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This one is successful in depicting spatial depth due to the swirling circles formed. The fact that there is a source point of the seemingly swirling picture helps to give the imagination a point of origin, letting the viewer follow the trail of the swirls.

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This one is successful in showing spatial depth thanks too its use of scale with the hills and the sun being in the distance. The hills proceed to get smaller and smaller the closer the viewer’s eye gets to the spot in the image where the sun lies.

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Three examples of layering are:

This image’s use of layering was successful because it gives the illusion that the letters are stacked in front of each other despite the fact that is a simple flat image. The use of different colors also helps the letters seem to be standing different distances from each other.

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This image’s use of different colors and spacing of the person in the picture gives the illusion that there are three girls standing in a diagonal row adjacent to each other, thus making its use of layering successful.

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The use of diagonals, spacing between the shapes and shadowing help the use of layering here successful.

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Music Inspo

When it comes to music and inspiration, it usually sparks creativity in writing for me versus design. When it comes to designing, being that I’m a very visual person, I get inspiration from things around the world that I see and happen to come across. However, if listening to music when creating something, I usually like to listen to songs that are energetic and have an upbeat temp or a really good beat. Here’s a list of a few of the songs I have on my iPod:

  • Dear Boy – Avicii
  • Blood On Our Hands (Justice Remix) – Death from Above 1979
  • Blue Jeans (RAC Remix) – Lana Del Rey
  • Very Loud – Shout Out Louds
  • After Hours – We Are Scientists
  • Elevate – St. Lucia
  • First Date – Blink 182
  • Just A Girl – No Doubt
  • Punching In A Dream – The Naked and Famous
  • Ready to Go (Get Me Out of My Mind) – Panic! At The Disco
  • A Sky Full of Stars (Robin Schulz Edit) – Coldplay

Student Inspiration 2015

I was searching the web trying to find other current students within the design field, which wasn’t as easy as I hoped t would be. Alternatively, I turned to Instagram and looked through tags and such to find people. One person I found, and whose work I liked, was a girl studying in Australia named Jasmine Reyes.

The link to her online portfolio can be found here.

She has a few design items up and has not only a Facebook where she’s posted her works, but also an Instagram and a Pintrest account where she posts things that inspire her.

I like her designs because there isn’t a lot of the same stuff. What I mean by this is that she seems to be open to different concepts and ideas to create, and it’s always important to be versatile when wanting to create something. It can help show how open minded a person can be, which can help them not limit themselves. I also like how simple her designs have been thus far. It’s sometimes easy to forget how nice it is to look at something that’s simple and clean versus something that has a lot going on.