The doortags for my 50+ residents have successfully passed their first stage of making! The paper weaving turned into a family project with both my mom and brother helping me make the sets. (I think we spent like 60 hours making them all phew….) Hopefully they will stay intact during the journey back- all that’s left now is to add the names. Slowly but surely I think I’m ready for RA training!
And all stacked up!
This week I finished my internship with threewhite. It’s hard to imagine that the summer is over and that school is starting again- time went by so fast! I learned a lot over the last three months- from Japanese typography and editorial design balance, to the many kinds of business language used, to cultural events, and about Tokyo in general too. I’m really lucky to have had this experience. I will miss the morning walks to the office down stylish Aoyama-dori, the yummy lunches and working on all kinds of projects. It’s really interesting to see a project progress from the sketching/ idea formation stage, all the way to the printing stage! The notebook I made at RISD to use for notes is almost completely full. Thank you everyone for a memorable summer!
Last weekend I had the chance to go see the Tamagawa Hanabi with new friends from threewhite and people I met at other gatherings from the summer. The fireworks were very close by and really lit up the sky. It was lovely to be able to spend the last of summer days staying up late, enjoying the show, eating good foods, and talking- lots of fun!
After working on a concert program design for awhile, it was time to think about paper and ink choices. I got to look through many sets of paper sample books in the office so I spent time comparing colors, weights, and textures of each available paper. Once you really start looking, no two whites and no two beiges look the same. I started out with quite a number of possible paper choices and kept going back to narrow it down to the 2 strongest choices- heavy papers that have an unfinished texture and which are close to a snowy white, but have a slight warm glow. After that I looked through color swatches to find the exact color the title text would be printed in. I learned that in Japan, instead of Pantone colors, many printers and designers work with DIC (Dainippon Ink & Chemicals) colors. There are numerous DIC color swatch books in the office so I had a lot of fun browsing all the colors. It was also intersting that there are theme swatch books as well- like traditional Japanese colors, traditional French colors, and so on. It’s really lovely just to look at.
This weekend I’ve been busy making door tags for the residents living on my dorm hall this year. I wanted to hand make them, but because I have some 50+ residents, I didn’t want to make them too complicated either. I also had to think of something both guys and gals might like, and throw in some of my own personality in there as well. After many ideas (including cute monster theme, bird and fish themes, Martha Stewart theme, etc) I settled on abstract color checkerboards. I only have a few done so far but if I make some 5 a day, it shouldn’t be too much work.
The morning glory flowers my dad planted were smiling sweetly today.
