2011 CSULA Senior Projects Exhibition

So what did you guys think of this years senior show? I was pretty impressed with the caliber of work that was produced this year, in every department. Even though I come from a graphics design background I'd have to say that I am a fan of performance art, and if you guys haven't been to the exhibit yet I don't want to spoil it for you, but it's along the lines of a blossoming butterfly, from my impression at least. It was a bit strange but I was oddly drawn to it over and over again. Other than that I honestly think the Graphic Design exhibit had the strongest work, not because i'm biased but it's my honest opinion. An illustration major even told me that. I thought we had the most variety of work throughout the whole exhibit, granted there were beautiful models rotating on their pedestals every 5 minutes adorned in revealing clothing, but that's besides the point. From board games to Alice In Wonderland packaging to interactive websites to knitted posters it was quite enjoyable. The students work really expressed a lot of their personality into there work, which is why I thought it was sort of fun. Even though the work had a graphic design foundation, the students still managed to add a touch of their own self into their piece. Each project felt so personal which made me appreciate the work that much more. Rock on class of 2011!

See you guys on stage..

Art In The Streets

This past Thursday I went to go see the Art In The Streets exhibit at The Geffen Contemporary in downtown LA. Just an FYI, every Thursday after 5pm its free until 8. I thought this exhibit was awesome. Being born and raised in Chicago I was always surrounded by graffiti growing up. Back then that's when it was considered vandalism. Granted it may still be illegal today but depending on who the artist is, they'll preserve it on the wall now. Who would of thought that in the distant future graffiti would become mainstream? I've heard of some places in LA that are now offering graffiti classes. But just like art, graffiti has come a long way. It's been a sub-culture for sometime now and its just beginning to surface.
This exhibit covers everything from cholo graffiti to Dogtown skateboard culture to the infamous Banksy. From traditional graffiti to appropriation art graffiti just about every influential artist was represented. I wasn't surprised to even see work by Keith Haring, also one of my favorites. Every square inch of every wall in this exhibit felt like it was covered in spray paint. Some of the "pieces" were so beautiful and massive stretching from one end of the wall to the other from the floor to ceiling, and some of them I couldn't even read.
It just amazes me how graffiti has been influenced my so many different cultures from all over the world. Banksy's exhibit was nonetheless the star of the show. Having seen a lot of his work, the pieces he had on display were okay, mostly some of his older pieces. Rumor has it, Banksy changes his exhibit every week. I'll have to go again this Thursday to find out. The only drawback I would say is that since it's free on Thursday after 5, it gets pretty crowded. But how often do you get to see a section of a typical NY inner-city neighborhood inside a building, for free?
My suggestion, check it out! You won't be disappointed, but you might be tired of graffiti by the time you leave.

Advertising...it's not for everyone

I've never been so challenged as a designer until I took an advertising class (Art 445). In the 9 short weeks i've been taking Art 445, I am now armed with an appreciation for advertising that i've never had before Whenever I now come across effective ads, I can really appreciate the creativity and cleverness behind them. Just the thought of the time and effort the designers had to put in for ads I can't even imagine. We're only given a few weeks to come up with ads in class, I wonder what kind of time there working with, and is it just one designer or a team of designers. Anyhow, I find advertising a very challenging field which I probably won't get into, but when executed properly it amazes me. Kudos to advertisers.

I love this ad, its so simple and direct, yet clever.

(I could of thought of that!)

Living Social Commercials

I don't know if any of you guys have seen these commercials but I think they are very clever.
Coming from a theatre and design background I can appreciate the creativity they put into them. I love the continuous movement and effortless transisitions from scene to scene. It's definitely one of those rare commercials you can appreciate. Though I would have liked to seen more typographic and motion graphic elements incorporated into them. Either way, it's a pretty cool commercial thats visually eye catching and memorable. Because of these commercials I ended up becoming a member of Living Social. Great advertising, check it out on YouTube. I tried posting the link but it's not coming up.

Gauge presents John Coy

John Coy Lecture

On May 12, 2011 I attended the John Coy lecture in the Music Hall at CSULA. I had high expectations prior to attending the lecture. I had spoken to Michael Lejeune, the Creative Director at Metro Design Studio, if he knew about John Coy, and he mentioned that John probably wouldn't know him but he definitely knew John. He also mentioned that John was just recently awarded the AIGA/LA fellowship. So with that in mind I was pretty excited to attend the lecture. 

Aside from the technical difficulties during the first half of the lecture, John was pretty casual, as with most of the speakers. I found it interesting that it sort of became a question and answer session because of the technical issues. For about the first hour of the show before they got the projector to work I was getting a little anxious, borderline bored. I felt like some of the issues they were talking about were issues that I already understood. They were having conversations that I wasn't really interested in, but It was probably because that wasn't planned so something had to happen. What I was really interested in learning about was John and his career, which I feel we really didn't get a chance to discuss. When the projector finally started working he did show us some of his work. The first image he showed us was the Washington Mutual logo. That really woke me up and caught me off guard. I had no idea that John was the person responsible for designing the Washington Mutual logo. The logo is so recognizable all over the country and he designed it. I thought that was pretty cool. Other than that I wasn't really impressed by his work. He did create some interesting pieces but for the most part, his work was pretty decent. Another one of his pieces that I thought was pretty interesting was when he took images of flowers and scanned them, and created some interesting mirror images that looked like animal faces. It looked experimental but I thought it was interesting.

Overall my expectations were not well met. After the lecture I walked away feeling that I was given information that I already knew rather than getting inspired. Don't get me wrong, John comes across a very friendly down to earth person, and I'm sure he's accomplished a lot in his career, but I wish I saw more of his accomplishments. I wanted to discover his design thinking and find out what makes him love what he does. For a designer whose been in the field for so long I expected to see and learn more, however I feel like I didn't. On top of that I feel like his presentation wasn't that great, like he just  put together a bunch of photos for a slide show. But I do appreciate how he interacted with the audience and spoke to us about all issues design related.

Found this is Comm Arts

I came across this article in Comm Arts a couple of months ago. I thought it was pretty interesting. Living in LA it's pretty hard to miss these billboards, there all over the buses and the side of the freeways. At first I thought it was a pretty simple and clever campaign, and to the point. Now that I work as an intern for Metro Design Studio, this campaign is 9 years in the making. With Michael Lejuene as Creative Director,  which he was appointed in 2002, he's responsible for changing the face of Metro. With no change to the operation of the buses and rails, but because of Lejuene's re-branding, Metro's ridership increased to over 70%. This just goes to show the power of good simple design. It's great to be a part of. If any of you have seen Metro's "haiku" billboards, how do you guys feel about it?