Archive for the ‘Providence’ Category

Package Design Competition: Kaffee & Kuchen

Monday, December 21st, 2009

The fall semester of my senior year has quickly come to an end. The last few weeks were really busy with final projects, making process documents, and with RA work. I’m exhausted! Now with the snow storms in New England, my flight home was cancelled so I’m stuck in the city for a few more days. So with this extra time in my dorm room, I decided to enter the Dieline Package Design Contest with one of my projects from the Package Design class. Here are the pictures I sent in.

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The project focused on creating an identity and package design for an imaginary German-style bakery in Boston. The bakery’s name, Kaffee & Kuchen comes from a German tradition of enjoying afternoon coffee and cake around 4 PM, and suggests a cozy and warm gathering with friends. The bakery would sell traditional German cakes, cookies, and offer seasonal baked goods for holidays. In addition, there is a cafe corner inside the store so that visitors may take a break from their busy day and enjoy afternoon coffee and pastries.

For the project I created three types of cookie packages. The largest is a gift box that holds an assortment of cookies. The smaller box with a tapered top would hold individual types of cookies baked fresh in the morning that would then be packaged and sold the same day. The third package would be a small cardboard shopping bag to fill up with any mix of cookies and sweets a customer would choose from behind the counter.

Winter

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

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As fall is transitioning into winter, the days are getting shorter and chillier. The other day, from our studios in the Design Center at school, the sky became a beautiful watercolor paintings of oranges and yellows. Just yesterday, Providence saw the first morning of snow.

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Now with only a week left in the semester, I’m really busy with finals and getting all process work organized. It feels like an endless cycle of building models, sitting by the computer, finishing details, making back up, photographing and staying up late into the nights. Just…a…little….bit….more!

Halloween Midnight Organ Concert

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

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One of the best things about this chilly autumn season is going to see the Halloween Midnight Organ Concert at Brown University. I look forward to it every year. About 20 minutes before midnight, the dark Sayles Hall got crowded with students starting to sit/ lie down with pillows and blankets for the late night musical treat. Many were dressed in costume- I saw a Rubic’s cube and several Where’s Waldos. At the strike of midnight, zombie looking creatures came in though the main doors carrying a coffin- out from which rose Dracula (Mark Steinbach), who laughed menacingly before climbing the stairs to play the organ. What followed was a spooky Halloween- classical concert. In the middle of the event, some of the zombie “tomb kickers” rocked it out, singing the Monster Mash song. This is surely the best part of Halloween!

A Better World by Design Conference

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

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This last weekend I got to participate in a design/innovation conference put together by RISD and Brown students, called A Better World by Design. This conference’s goals included bringing together a global community of innovators to the city of Providence, and to reach across different design fields, different cultures, and different ideas to unite under a common goal of making the world a better place. Spreakers shared inspiring stories, workshops gave helpful informations, and panel sessions opened up discussions.

The conference lasted 3 days, from last Friday to Sunday, and took place between the two school campuses. Speakers included Jan Chipcase, Teddy Cruz, William Drenttel, Vivian Loftness, and John Maeda, among many others. Though I still had classes to attend and homework to get done, I did my best to go to as many events as I could. I enjoyed the panel discussions best, where 4-5 speakers would open a dialogue on a particular subjects. Panel sessions I attended were about Information Design, Graphic Design and Business, and about Design and Activism. Though most of our school lives, we focus on our individual work in our majors, it was inspiring to see and listen to people from all sorts of disciplines. I learned a lot from these sessions, and became inspired to try to help the world with my own skills too. It is really important in this age to address and actively engage in design, technology, and enterprise to reshape our communities and work for our environment.

The following images are from the photo flickr pool for this conference.

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In the auditorium at the first speaker session- I’m near the stairs with the beige and black shirt.

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Design and Activism panel

And we built a city together

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

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Last Saturday, the RISD Museum had their monthly Free For All Saturday event. On the last Saturday of every month, the museum lets you go in for free, and also hosts events for the general community. In response to a new exhibit opening called “Inner Cities,” an installation by Arnie Zimmerman, of ceramic figures building up architectural elements of a city, there was an outdoor event called “And we built a city together.” Children and families were decorating cardboard houses with fun screenprinted stickers of Providence Architecture. Each of the cardboard houses had long strips of paper attached to it where you could write your thoughts on the city. Then the houses were places upon cardboard hills to build up our city of Providence together.

I went with some friends to see the exhibition and we quickly got caught up in making some cardboard houses ourselves. It was fun just to take a break and color, cut,  draw with other children. Here’s by own house on Karin St. below!

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RA Training 2009

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

After coming back to Providence, I’ve been busy at the Resident Assistant training at school. For two weeks several student leaders learned about dealing with tough situations, organizing and implementing community programs, and about activities happening this upcoming year. We made door decorations for students living on our floors and also made bulletin board art.

One of the best parts of training was going to Camp and do fun bonding exercises as a team. We did low and high ropes courses. I was really scared of the high ropes, because I do not have much upper arm strength, but in the end I mustered enough courage to try the easiest course. It was encouraging to have people cheering me on from below. At the end of the course though, I was happy to have my feet on the ground again.