When Life Gives You Lemons

 

You probably just found lemons, Nicole

Stopping To Turn

And so ends the project.  Alas, I am very happy with the product I have turned out. It is no secret, I am sure, that I love writing.  I love leaving an impression of myself, illustrated in words.  I love the words, I love the letters that form the words and I love the forms that shape the letters.  And this is me.  Never fear, invisible audience, I will not abandon my post.  There are many more a post to write and this world is a never ending story of sights and sounds and feelings that must be conveyed and thought upon.  So this is what I will continue to do, as it is what I hope I have been doing.  As the semester draws to a close I feel myself changing as a person, as a writer, as a designer, and as an observer of this tiny blue-green dot in the universe that we call 'home'.  It is so much more exciting and expansive than I could have ever imagined.

And moving forward from that point, Nicole

Joe, Average: The Readables

It is always fun to point out some everyday people who make awesome things happen.  This time I would like to point out The Readables (a.k.a Priscilla).  The Readables are the collective works of my fellow Canadian Graphic Artist/Book Worm.  Priscilla does online book reviews and lately has been using her creative side to make visual pull quotes from the Harry Potter Series.  On her tumblr account she also picks a song that best represents the book she just read, which I find to be a unique approach to the book review process.  I deeply enjoy her views on books and I think she has a lot of intelligent and thought provoking things to say. 

You can check her out here:
YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/thereadables
Tumblr http://thereadables.tumblr.com/
Good Reads http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4731097-priscilla

Living life with my head stuck in a book, Nicole

Such Manor

Turn your swag on like it's 1799

Just whip it.  Whip it real good, Nicole

Bent Into Shape

If you have not been able to tell (because it's not like I have been short on posts as of late) I have been suffering through a creative slump of serious epicosity.  Yes, so serious that real words can not possibly attempt to describe it properly.  Today was the first day that I felt truly back to my awesome, designer self and part of that is because I allowed myself to step away for a few days, even after having been under the weather (literally and metaphorically speaking) for about 3 weeks for different but nonetheless equally unhelpful reasons. 


Why am I boring you with my life story?

"This is a design related blog isn't it?  Use your personal blog to ramble on about how hard your life is, I came here to get some serious insight on some serious stuff."   

- Overly Critical Bitch

Well, not today, so shut-up random 'overly critical bitch' in my brain. ("And for the children in the audience, we have used these words in a sentence.  I don't care it's still stupid." Smile if you caught the Robin Williams reference) What I have allowed myself to re-realise (because I have realised it many times in the past) is that sometimes you just have to laugh and once you do the world becomes brighter and better in every way. 

So I would like to reference a different Robin (it is the day of Robin's; apparently) and give props where props are due. Robin: thank you for showing me this in class and for contributing to my already good day.  Check Robin out here: http://design-4-change.blogspot.com/

This is "Bent Objects" by Terry Border.  Check Terry out here: http://bentobjects.blogspot.com/

"Modest Pear"


Today I remembered something that I somehow forgot over the last month.  Design is fun.  Design creates awesome things that would other wise be missing from the world, like modest pears and linguist dinosaurs and eggs that think they are birds. 

More importantly I remembered that design is fun and I am good at it.  I know you don't really care that much (anonymous reader), and I am not expecting you to.  But you can't exactly have a blog, and have a great day, and discover something fantastically awesomtackular and not post about it.  Can you? (You won't answer because you are a computer... I am going to continue writing now).

I am the egg on the latter.

I am a tired yet refreshed, awesome design student, clutching the feathery wings of my work ethic and visual nature and perched atop the questionably safe evaluation latter about to leap.  Hopefully the metaphorical red-bull I gulped down today really did give me wings.

Flying high with 25 days until permitted to land, Nicole



I Can Haz Bad Logo?

Yes, apparently you can!

Today is a special day.  Today is the depute of the Design Angles Awards.

If you haven't guessed already, today I will be giving out the Logo Design Failure awards.















Let the crescendo of failure begin!





The award for Stick Figure Fail goes to...

... for bringing us a whole new reason to be afraid to go to the dentist.

The award for Good Font Gone Bad Fail goes to...

The Office of Government Commerce (OGC)

...because just like their logo, the government is only interested in pleasing itself.

 

The award for Legibility Fail goes to...

...because I am fairly sure this is not the message they meant to convey.

 

The award for Product Mascot Fail goes to...

... because a penis juggling fruit does not make me want to buy and drink your product.

 

The award for Illustration Fail goes to...

... because sometimes the secret ingredient should stay secret.

 

The award for Not So Subliminal Message Fail goes to...

Satellite and Antenna Systems

... because we all know dealing with a satellite company is hell, but at least they are honest about it.

 

 

The award for Cultural And/Or Language Barrier Fail goes to...

Locum, a Swedish property management company's Christmas season logo.

... because unless they manage brothels, this is an extreme case of miscommunication.

 

The award for Self Deprecation Fail goes to...

The Pepsi logo as seen by http://www.demilked.com/

You fill in the blanks.

... because if we didn't know Pepsi would make us fat before, we certainly get the picture now.

 

The award for Religious Fail goes to...

The Catholic Church's 'Archdiocesan Youth Commission', 1973

... because this is already a touchy (pun intended) subject, so maybe they shouldn't have illustrated it. 

The award for Ironic Fail goes to...

TGV (Train a Grande Vitesse) is France's high-speed rail service.

... because the snail is defiantly not a symbol of speed and efficiency. Enjoy your commute, France.

Well, there you have it, no shortage of bad logos in the world. 

This award competition is not a legitimate competition and is completely biased to my opinion.  The winners are not compensated or recognized in any way. This competition is sponsored by design.angles.  The Design Angles Awards are ongoing, therefore at any time new winners may be crowned and new categories created.

Check yourself before you wreck yourself, Nicole

Ba Ba Black Sheep... Have You A Mind Of Your Own?

What does this look like to you? 

If you say a beautiful piece of art then this post may not be for you.  I won't take it personally, and I trust that you will react similarly to my opinion.

The first week of February my design-mates and I headed out on the open highway in search of inspiration in the form of New York City. During this trip I witnessed many things, mostly people and how they interact with each other, but I also paid a visit to some artistic museums.  One such museum was The MOMA (museum of modern art).  Here I was faced with one of the most difficult questions to answer in the artistic world. 

Is this art?

The above black square is one such 'piece of art' that I saw.  And, was perhaps the most important one, as it is the one I have been fixated on for the past month. 

The problem most people (artists included) have with modern art is that it can be very hard to define and also very hard to understand.  Since there was a painting of a black square hanging in The MOMA some might think that by default it automatically takes the question away. 

Well if The MOMA thinks that it is art, I should as well. Right?

Wrong. I can not in good conscience call a black square art. 

And, as my friend and I sat on a bench and contemplated whether or not three different coloured rectangles painted with rollers on a giant canvas could pass as art I was struck with a notion. 

People are sheep.  And, in my highly imaginative brain, the room in The MOMA that showcased the black square turned into a petting zoo. 

I like to be optimistic when it comes to modern art.  I don’t want you to misinterpret this post because there are many modern artists that I love.  Some of them include Bauhaus and Jackson Pollock.  So in some cases and with the right context behind it, I can truly love modern art. 

But this was just a black square.

Yet, despite its innate lack of ‘artistic-ness’, it was one of the most popular paintings at the time when my friend and I walked through that room in The MOMA.  There were more people surrounding that black square than any other painting we had seen, and I couldn’t help but raise the point that the multitudes of people standing by and staring at this black square were nothing more than sheep. 

It is human nature to want to be normal, to want to blend in with the crowd.  But I could only imagine that all of these people were standing there looking so intensely at this black square simply because someone else was and they didn't want to openly disagree with the paintings importance.  I stood back, putting as much effort into interpreting the sheep as the sheep were putting into interpreting the black square.  In my mind I could hear their conversation. 

“It must represent death.” One would say. The sheep would non in unison.

“It is a depiction of the emptiness in the depressed soul.” Nodding sheep.

“It is the universe, ever expanding outward.” Nodding sheep. 

The black square succeeded in one aspect.  It made me think about the black square.  Which I suppose is why it was in The MOMA in the first place.

Just thinking outside of the proverbial black square, Nicole.

Post Scriptum,

My father is not an overly artistic man, but he has never been more right than when I was in the ninth grade.  I was furiously working on a paper for my English class, struggling to find the right words, to say exactly what I wanted to say when he told me; “You can stop worrying about it.  It is just a paper.  Write whatever comes to mind.

"Bullshit baffles brains."And I can't help but think that he is right again. 

The black square is bullshit. And the brainless sheep are baffled.

Still, I refrained from posting this immediately. 

I wanted to look into every possible meaning of the black square before I slandered it in a blog post that no one but myself will ever read.   It is a possibility that the painters’ intention with the black square was to have a crowd of sheep surrounding his work in utter confusion.  If this is the case I am still reluctant to call it art, but I will call the painter an artist. 

 

Just thinking out-loud, Nicole.