Water: Luxury or Necessity?

Art 118 Final Thought/Paper

In choosing to pursue a career that has so much to do with aesthetics, and the idea that things that are pleasing to the eye are expensive, it is hard to feel like you, as a deisgner, are doing something for the greater good. Making things in this world look beautiful and sell well, and executing brilliant advetising campaigns aren't always enough at the end of the day. I personally struggle with feeling a lack of purpose and connection to the greater population of the world. In lecture, Luke Bertus spoke of how we design for only a small percentage of the world's population. What about everyone else?

When I was still mulling this subject over and contemplating this paper in my head, I happened to watch a man (on tv) from a small rural village of China get a partial face transplant. As I watched his long journey from the mountains in China all the way to Beijing, I realized just how big of a world it is out there, how fortunate I am that I don't have to herd cattle in a remote forest and worry about a bear slashing half of my face off. I realized how convenient my life is here, I have nothing to be worrying about.

My thoughts then turned to everyone else in the world and how I could help them. Being a poor (in American standards) student attempting to become a designer, how can I make a difference? Sometimes I want to drop everything, school, work, friends and family and go to some remote corner of the Earth and just help people. Every time I verbalize these thoughts to my friends or family, they recoil and say I should finish school first. Sure, school will give me a degree and supposedly a job... but is that what is needed in this life? I feel I should just worry about the things in life that matter, like the basic needs and lives of others. Then again, making money and having a home is nice I guess.

When I was looking at different projects, I started reading more about what a studio called Work Worth Doing, is in fact, doing. I found their idea of "Shipping Greenland's water to Africa" quite enlightening. The pictures showed a well designed approach to communicating their ideas. The large installation of a physical representation of greenland's receding ice and melting run-off was really interesting to look at and gave viewers a figure to identify with. It also just looked really cool.

The graphic representations were simple and clear, easy to understand. The project was presented in step-by-step form, steps 1 through 9. The problems of both Greenland and Africa were presented and then a solution was suggested that could perhaps help both. All of this was presented in 2004 in Toronto, Denmark, and Venice as part of the 'Too Perfect' project of the Danish Architecture Centre of Copenhagen, Denmark.

The project is presented with the thought in mind that the world's purest water is exported and sold all over to those with the money to buy it. Since when did water become a luxury? It is not fair that only those with money be able to purchase a resource that is necessary for human survival. So many die every day from lack of clean water and stupid consumers are buying all of this bottled water. The American people should just drink our tap water, it is a luxury. If Americans hate how their tap water tastes, they should consider purchasing a water filter instead of spending so much money on bottled water. I'm not even going to start talking about all of the waste that is created as a result of the bottling and shipping of this luxury; bottled water.

I want to become more involved in public awareness, because that is where graphic designers can contribute most towards global causes. We are taught how to reach people, how our brains react to images, colors, and shapes. We are sitting on a goldmine of sorts. Here we sit, atop a mound of knowledge, perfectly able to help so many causes around us, and yet we still sit. We worry about money, getting recognition, doing what we want, when we could be doing so much to help. My question is how do I get involved, being so busy as a student. I need to just take the time to find a cause and do what little I can in my free time to support it. Each of us were given a talent, and if we don't use it, I have a feeling we will eventually lose it. Whether you believe in God(s), or yourself, or in just nothing, this principal is true. Use it or lose it.

Youth Part Deux

In continuing on working with the Oscar Wilde book (which we seem to have no title for at this point...) I rediscovered my love of drawing. I came across a style that I really enjoy and it puts emphasis on the emotion I feel when I am working. I love hair, drawing it, that is...

The series of nine drawings I did were mainly illustraing contrasts in youth and old age in human form. Stay tuned, I will post photos as soon as I recover my files from my dead computer. :(

Where I Went

I have been absent in class recently. I've learned something important about my process, and that is I either have to make my deadlines, or I am so wracked with guilt that I can't even show my face. It is something I need to work on. I just feel awful if I come to class with nothing to show. I feel I have let my peers down, who work so hard to bring something to the table, and also myself. I know what I am capable of, and with the time constraits and all the commitments I have agreed to during this quarter, I have only brough my best to the table once or twice.

This is depressing to me, I have to overcome my feelings of failure and try try again. My computer crashed as well so I can't really post a lot of pictures of what I was working on at this moment. I will as soon as I can get near a scanner. This was a rather depressing post, but it needed to be said.

The Youth

I finally had a day off from school and work so I sat down, determined to understand what Oscar Wilde meant about Youth. His work is surprising to me in some ways. I understand the beauty of youth, I think... But at the same time, I can't help but wonder if one would be as bitter if they had helped others and done good with their beauty. Would you have as many bitter regrets in the end? 

I Want to illustrate themes of selfishness, consumption of beauty, the end of the road as far as beauty goes. The sort of "flame going out" point in someone's life. When youth the beauty of youth is extinguished, what does that look like? What can be seen in that person's eyes? The eyes of a baby are so different from the eyes of a thirty-something person. What happens to us? Do we actually deteriorate or do we become accustomed to the world around us and lose our amazement? What takes place behind those eyes while all of this is happening. 

I think it is wishful thinking that I could understand all of this. Watching children grow seems like the only way to see development. There is a baby on the floor crawling in front of me. He looks outside and smiles up at strangers. Everyone adores him. Inquisitive. The world is his even in his helplessness. If he needs an assuring touch, those around him are there, even in a glance. There is a light in those eyes that you can't find in a twenty-something. We start to become bitter I think. It brings me to tears thinking about it. Even I have lost my youth and I am yet 23. I wonder how much time I have left.

I want to express this in some sort of work. I'm thinking still . . . 

Project No. 5

Continuing the journey working with type and looking at the forms, not to read, but for each form's aesthetic value. I really wanted to work on adding some depth, seeing as most of my work seems kind of flat to me. I really enjoy the forms of the numbers that are a part of Baskerville Oldstyle. 

fig. 1

Fives and threes have always been so beautiful to me so I just started moving those forms around, smaller ones, larger ones, and in-between. I started to see clouds, and I wanted to fence off the space, but not to trap it. The threes began to take shape and pour out of the top of the page in sort of wave-like fashion. All of their effort culminates in a beautiful shape, and an outpouring of color. The backdrop is a very light herringbone pattern to add a little bit of texture to the composition. The empty space feels right. One of my favourite compositions so far.

fig. 2

I feel like I have been stuck in a rut in my color schemes. Everything has been feeling similiar to me and I wanted to break away. I was in my room, frusterated for a while, and I came upstairs to talk to my roommate Danielle. She told me that I should make rainbows out of the letterform of a U and just put it all over. I was joking and showing her how to use Illustrator and I came up with this design. The color scheme was a complete joke to me, but then I ended up loving it. I overlapped some of the Us, linked them together and put them on a diagonal plane. This was completely out of my normal routine. I enjoyed it more than I've enjoyed anything lately. I can make up so many shapes when looking at this, the dimension is very interesting and really makes you think for a little bit. I sincerely liked this composition and that is unusual.

fig. 3

I doodle a lot and I tend to come up with a lot of looping, ribbon-like letterforms and figures. Not many of the margins in my notes for classes escape my drawing. (fig. 4 and fig. 5) This sort of form, stretching into an unruly or of organic ribbon-like figure just permeates most of my thoughts. I think about the extensions of letterforms, ascenders and descenders all the time. This is just a simple, simple rendition of those thoughts. A light pattern in the background to add interest, and lots of space to just get lost in. The simplicity of the forms are easier to appreciate in the free space. I love the simple beauty of this composition. Less is sometimes more. I sometimes worry I appreciate simplicity too much, because Luke started talking in class about how we need to have more complexity in our designs. Our compositions in the future need to have more variation in the size of the content, they need to be able to be large or small and still have enough  variety within themselves. I worry too much. :)

fig. 4

fig. 5

Project No. 4

For project no. 4 I didn't spend as much time conceptually as I would have liked. I was honestly just in a hurry and playing in illustrator. I love lines, type,  and calligraphy. I wanted some very graceful compositions, simple but complex at the same time. I liked some of what I came up with and I would like to take the second concept further in continuing to add strips of color that branch off vertically and follow the curve of the top right stroke as the rest of the colored strips start to do. The first and third compositions are alright, but not my favorites. Not complex or interesting enough.

Project No. 3

When working on this project, I decided to go with the legal size compostion just to shake things up a bit. Plus, I like longer, more vertical pieces when working in composition. Portrait definitely appeals to me more than landscape. Choosing color schemes was a lot of fun on this project. I am a lover of black and white, but I have to admit that it is nice to introduce color into the compositions. It makes them feel more rich and substantial.

As far as my process and working sketches for this and previous projects, I will post those as soon as I can get my hands on a scanner.

Project No. 2

My process tends to be whatever I feel like. Some days I just want to do nothing but create create create! These were my exact feelings while I worked on this second project incorporating greyscale and two colors. I must have gone through three quarters of a notepad, just painting and sketching. Some of it nonsensical, others with form, and still others just plain ugly. This is my room while I was working, pieces of paper with ink and paint, all strewn about haphazardly. Welcome to my world.

Three pieces stood out a little bit from the pile that were all occupying my bedroom floor, so I picked them up and took them to class. The first couple were more calculated, but the last one was just a breeze and so fun to do. The brushstrokes took a lot of concentration but the satisfaction of making such great, smooth strokes just felt amazing. Just ink, a brush and some paper. I could go wild. I did actually and I ended up making this obscure image of a fallen trapeze artist. I didn't turn this one in but I have fun looking at it. There is some sort of flame breathing beast waiting at the bottom for her.

Project No. 1

Having started this class a day late, I had to jump right in and do two assignments in one go. The result was alright in the end. I haven't done anything art/design related for the entire summer and so it has been a little hard for me to get into the mindset. During my first, sort of "warm up" attempts. I ended up wasting a lot of paper and eventually just went back to drawing small thumbnail sketches.

Normally I do a lot of my work on a computer so for this project I decided to do it all by hand. I wanted to free myself from the cold, hard, constrains of computer aided design. This is what I came up with.

The first one feels tired to me. Luke said the word "forced." I agree. It was the first I worked on and I wasn't sure what to do, so it was definitely a bit forced.

This one was more a thought about two objects interacting in a space. It reminds me of Nike for some reason.

This piece is my favourite out of the three, it is more free and has a nice sort of variation. The strokes feel unruly, like pieces of shorn hair on the floor of a barber shop.

Black Mountain College

Black Mountain college, a progressive liberal arts college, was founded in 1933 by Theodore Dreier, John Andrew Rice, and other faculty from Rollins College. The school was small and privately run near Asheville, North Carolina. The teaching style differed in that rather than be constructed of book learning, students were to learn through interaction in real life with other students. This learning style stemmed from the progressive education movement.

The college's unique learning atmosphere housed and nurtured many designers, musicians, writers, helping to further the avant garde movement in America and the explosion of experimental art. Students and professors lived and worked together, sharing all tasks and learning in real life situations.

Instructors at Black Mountain College included Josef and Anni Albers (Joseph was the first art teacher at BMC), Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, John Cage, and many other influential poets, musicians and designers. The school closed in 1957, but it has lived on through the many artists that came there after the post-war era. It has served as a model for other creative alternative schools such as Evergreen State College, Goddard College, University of California and others. There is a museum project dedicated to showing process and products from the Black Mountain College, and also an online archive project with more in depth information.