Viz Renderings of My Sisters' House

My Sister's House animation

I had to do a lower resolution video because my video was too large, but hopefully this gives you a good view.

My Sister's House Sketch Up Assignment

VOTE!

Styles in Graphic Design

Bauhaus
Herbert Bayer's Bauhaus Dessau poster. Simple. Angular. Reductive in color and line, yet employs photograph. New way of seeing and representing things. Balance and harmony rule the composition.


Pop
Atlantis Runner, Peter Max, seriagraph, 1973. Cosmic look. Bold background, pastelle forground. Whimsical feel. Colors in motion. Psychadelic. Playful. Curvilinear contours filled with solid color or small iconographic images (puffy stars and rainbows.)



New Pop



Retro Modern
Nerd Bird, Craig Sheldon, for Threadless. Argyle is cool again! Lively patterns. Simplicity. Playful. Straight-laced fun rather than full-out groovy. High contrast graphics with minimal subtle detail. Studious and cute.


Nostalgia Remix
Cliff's Tattoos, Andrea Vander Kooij, 2004, applique and embroidery on vintage bed linens. Embroidered tats! Flat graphic style composed of contours and fills in a limited palette juxtaposed with organic patterns. Moody. Ironic.

IAR 212 - in the subway

The DC Metro - the coffered ceiling is incredibly interesting- so I focused on it and other repeating elements, and then gave the whole thing an updated color palette.

IAR 212 - Parallels

Here's a graphic that I produced in imitation of the sony ad, comparing a natural object to a man-made object. Here, I chose two objects that related formally to one another, then I created a convention, the form of a flower, to relate the two together again. I repeated the element spinning in space to add dynamism, and then brought everything to a close with a visual punctuation mark in the form of the small pistachio in the foreground.

IAR 212- Ads that Work

What I love about this ad is it's sheer simplicity. The black background becomes powerful in relation to most of the other ads and spreads in the magazine. It's also an appripriate choice for an ad about technology - it's sleek and provides high contrast between the text and the playful, brightly colored logos spilling across the page. This contrast only cements the concept of High Definition by bringing each visual element, whether graphic or textual, into a crisp clarity.



This is always my favorite page in my CRAFT magazine, and it's an advertisement! It just makes me happy seeing the smiling girl in her kitchy-crafty, anti-glam house. The method here is perfect for a craft magazine, imitating paper collage in the retro/rockabilly/mod style. There is an enormous amount of texture and pattern here that has been brilliantly balanced mostly through the use of solid white blocks, creating resting places for the eye. The text is as equally creative and loose without looking unplanned or messy.



This DisneyParks ad appeals to my imagination. They've used very sophisticated photography to create the illusion of bringing a storybook character to life. There is a dreamy, supernatural quality to the light in the way they have taken the beams of light and brought them into the foreground. In reality the tree and its branches would probably have been completely backlit. There is slightly sinister mood created here with the juxtoposition of the innocence of Snow White and the baby forest animals and the dark, lush forest that surrounds her, recalling the thread that ties all Disney movies together: the battle between good and evil. The other Disney Parks ads are just as successful at showing this play between dark and light, taking a contemporary look at fantasy that appeals to adults who have grown up with these tales, even more so than their children.

IAR 212 - Moods

The idea here was to create an image that caused the viewer to feel confused by combining elements from three different images and melding them together. My images were: a campfire, lava, and red ice.

IAR 212 - Pattern Perception

The Valencia Museum transformed into a mesmerizing spiral.

IAR 212 - Computing in Architectural Design

Assigment: Discuss the roles of computing in design today, speculating what it could be in the future

Required reading: Reference: "Computing in Architectural Design”, Architecture’s New Media by Yehuda Kalay

The article presents one example in which the product of computer aided design is not merely only as good as the designer who operates it, but, on the contrary, is highly reliant on the sophisticated computations only feasibly performed by a computer whose “brain” is infinitely more equipped than that of a human’s to handle millions of variables.


I become suspicious when researchers start talking about intelligent computers because I think that idea that computers are infallible holds no credibility. It’s only because I’ve experienced too many instances where data is lost or where as a designer, I am trained to create graphics that are limited by my understanding of the software, or the limitations of the software itself. I hope there’s a day when computers become more interactive and when they truly become an environment (“place”) where ideas and concepts may be crafted and realized in real time without being inhibited by too many codes, rules, and prescribed fixes. Those, I believe, should be left to the human brain.

I like to imagine the growth of networks and the development of highly interactive interfaces where we can talk to computers, use touch screens where our fingers become our tools, not necessarily light pens or other instruments, a design environment that becomes more sensory than ever. I like to imagine the disappearance of the computer lab. Instead computers are always there, wherever we need them, but infinitely more robust than the average laptop. An interior designer shows up at a job site, gets out of her car and grabs her blue print tube out of the backseat. Instead of reaching in to retrieve a set of plans, she pulls out a soft roll of what looks like black rubber, lays it out flat on the table, where we realize it is an interactive touchpad, a high-res screen and computer all in one, capable of linking into a network, a remote hard drive/power source where all power and information is all transferred over airwaves.

Fantasies aside, my fear is living in a world where we think computers can do our jobs for us. I am recalling to mind a time recently when I went to Starbucks with a friend and ordered two coffees and two waters. After the cashier printed labels for our drinks, after the barista lost them and refused for twenty minutes to fill our order since there was no ticket for it, and after a manager tried to assuage us by offering us coupons for free drinks instead of listening to my criticism of their obviously fallible, “automated” system that encourages employees not to think for themselves, I walked away wondering, (at the young age of 28, mind you) “What is the world coming to?”

As computers and networks become more sophisticated, instructors and managers must become ever more adamant about teaching students to use their most valuable tool and design environment: their mind.