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!
Archive for the ‘Work’ Category
Internship
Thursday, August 27th, 2009Colorful day
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
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.
Door Tags
Sunday, August 16th, 2009
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.
Communicate Information
Thursday, March 12th, 2009This semester I’m really happy to be taking the Mapping Information class with Krzysztof Lenk. We have a class full of energetic and bright people with all kinds of ideas. We have been working on making maps out of associations with the word “Agression” or “Maternity.” Below is Krzysztof giving advice on one of the posters this morning.
Our newest project is to create a map out of anything we are interested in. I’ve been jotting down ideas that have come to mind all day- the list thus far includes
-history of popcorn
-Comparing the cities I have lived in
-statistics of the World Cup Competitons
-statistics of the European Song Contest (the show that made ABBA famous)
-how fireworks are made and work
-what lies on the different layers of the design center
-terminology and mapping of internet terms.
There are pages more, but these are the finalist ideas, so to speak. I’m leaning towards either the World Cup Idea or the Internet terms idea. The World Cup because I love the games, (though I’m no soccer player), and the Internet terms because that would be educational to me. There is so much about the web I need to learn. And I want to learn! I wish I wasnt so burnt out after classes and RA work. One of my “great” ideas is to create an site with mini web experiements just for myself. Maybe that will be a individual summer project….
Let’s see where this goes….
Working on a New Layout
Friday, February 6th, 2009Last time in class I worked on getting this journal to look less like the default Wordpress Journal. Dealing with a pre-made code, especially one that has much php worked into it was daunting. I’m hoping this page doesn’t break in someone’s browser. Originally I was going to make the headers on all the pages of my website look the same- large Rockwell typeface title, a navigational bar, and the color scheme of greys and green. the journal in that color felt cold and distant, so I tried making a related header with ducks and using purples instead of green. That felt really boxed in, so I’m trying this current layout. It’s meant to look like papers sitting on my desk. The green color came back, and the big type is still there, but the header resembles the other pages only by a little bit. I guess since this is a journal, it’s ok to fall away from the grid.
The picture below shows the layout that was up until today.
