umwsum12 — Camp Magic MacGuffin

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Saturday, June 16th, 2012

Yesterday, Dave & I took a drive from Fredericksburg to Lexington, Va. It was a beautiful day for that scenic drive. On the way back, near sunset, we stopped at one of the established “scenic overlooks” along I-64 near Afton Mountain, outside of Charlottesville. Here we found the VDOT Workers’ Memorial.

This monument, built solely with donations, serves to honor state highway transportation workers who died performing their jobs, many in work-zone accidents. The design of this memorial is an uncomplicated and dignified. Carved in black, white, and gray granite, it depicts three profiles or silhouettes of workers, symbolizing the diversity of the VDOT workforce. A simple, minimalist design, chosen from 41 entries, was submitted by Fredericksburg District Location and Design Engineer Harry Lee and his daughter, Stephanie, a studio arts senior at Mary Washington College at the time. Standing against the majestic scenery of the mountains and valley below, and beautifully landscaped with colorful flowers, this commemorative shrine is a perfect example of the power of minimalist design.

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4 Weekly Letter home week of Design

Saturday, June 16th, 2012

Dear Mom and Dad and dogs of course,

We are coming to the end of Week 4. This has by far been my favorite week, like our counselors warned us everyone usually loves Design Week and I can see why. We have been able to use creative outlets to design funky and unique images.

First we learned about a new(ish) thing called “Creative Commons” its basically copyright with adjustments. There motto is instead of all rights reserved “some rights reserved.” Which is true! People upload creative work of any kind and can slap on a Creative Commons copy right. Its totally free (and legal) in which people can decide how limited they want their work to be to the public. I experimented with this license on some of my images. (All found on FLICKR) I allowed some of my images to be accessible and edited by other people but just not 100% theirs. I still have ownership of all my work. I wrote a blog on this new idea of Creative Commons and the different outlets I used to research it!

Our two main projects consisted of doing design. The first big one was like last week were we had to earn AT LEAST 10 stars of design assignments. However we were assigned three mandatory ones and could pick two of them. I decided to do an image for advertising Creative Commons. The second one was a blog review of one of the top DS106 design assignments that was submitted. I chose one about Valentines Day… and how more its like Single Awareness day.

The second big project was to take pictures of elements of designs (at least four) and blog about how they are important. I decided to work with color, typography, metaphors, forms, minimalism, and rhythm.

I learned different elements that go into design, something that I just never thought about. Some of these elements that I worked with were, color, typography, Metaphors, forms, functions, minimalism, rhythm, and dominance. They all play important roles into what a design is made up of.

I finally got involved in Mine Craft and wow am I having trouble with it. I never knew a computer game could be so difficult. I am trying to building a house but failing a little bit. Hopefully over the next few weeks I will get the hang of it and have a little castle to live in.

Our long term project that we have coming up is making a tutorial and making our own assignments to add to the DS106 page. I wont lie… I have no ideas right now for what I’m going to make as my own assignment but hopefully something will inspire me.

Thats all for now!

Love and miss you both.

Katie

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Design Review… and the Winner is?

Saturday, June 16th, 2012

I would like to start off and say all of them were absolutely AWESOME. The one that stuck out to me the most though was “Palentinesday” http://inspire.ds106.us/palentinesday/

The Artists: Annie Belle Trsulow and Rachel McQuirk

There image found below on FLICKR:

Being a female and have had many “single awareness days” aka “Valentines Day” this is hilarious and relatable. It contains almost all of the elements of designs. Something that a newbie (beginner) like me would have a lot of trouble with. Starting off with COLOR, the artists use three colors, black, white, and red. Black and White are perfect colors for a base. Red on the other hand is bold and stands out especially among whites and blacks. This quickly grabs attention (mine at least) and holds it.

TYPOGRAPHY, the next element, grabbed my attention immediately because of “Fuck”, lets not lie to ourselves anytime anyone hears or sees that word, attention is grabbed. The font is not very professional giving it a humorous feel. The main message is placed right in the middle, for attention purposes which is very effective. Then to add on to it at the bottom right hand corner “happy valentines day” is small and not capitalized to show how this holiday has not much respect from the two artists.

METAPHORS/SYMBOLS

A Wedding ring, the perfect symbol for a Valentines Day hate image. It shows these artists are ironic and have a nice dry sense of humor. Instead of the typical “broken heart” or a fat girl eating ice cream, a wedding ring is supposed to symbolize commitment and love, something these two artists are not rooting for (maybe just temporarily).

MINIMALISM

This Valentine hate image, could not have been simpler. The use of (or lack of) colors helps add to the minimalistic value. A simple image is used with two short phrases. Its quick and to the point. There is no fluff involved which makes the audience of the image focus on the message of what the artists are trying to get across.

DOMINANCE

Though the red font is bold and is the first thing I looked at, the Wedding Ring is the dominated feature of the design. It makes up the background and towers over the font(S). However it balances really well with the “Fuck that shit”, they are good compliments to each other which can be hard to achieve when trying to balance a font/message and a graphic image.

FORM/FUNCTION/MESSAGE

What I took from this image as a message, is don’t take these types of Holidays (well I guess this the only one) too seriously. Have fun with life and don’t tie yourself down to someone just because its what your friends and family is doing. Now maybe I’m knit picking this image too much but then again art is free to interpretation. It depicts the message that love isn’t totally lost just because there isn’t a red circle with a line going through it placed any where.

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Common Everyday Object

Friday, June 15th, 2012

For the Common Everyday Object Visual Assignment, I started off by taking a bunch of pictures around my house. I had a hard time choosing between a photo of a clock and one of a fork and a spoon. As you will see below, I went with the fork and spoon photo! I chose to use the Aviary website again, after learning how to change the colors in photos using the hue and saturation editor through Step 9 of the “Warholizing” tutorial provided by Aviary, which I used for my “Warhol Something” Visual Assignment. I figured this new skill would be helpful in completing the assignment. I was excited to be able to reuse something I just recently learned!

Basically, all I did was experiment with the hue and saturation of my original photo. It was fairly simple, but I think the following picture looks pretty cool!

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Draw It.

Friday, June 15th, 2012

For the “Draw It” assignment, I used the free web-based image editing site, Photoshop Express. It was one of the only sites on the packing list that had a drawing transformation feature. The sites on the packing list have all been very helpful and have liked each of them for different reasons. As I continue to post Visual Assignments, you will see that I work with a variety of imagine editing sites!

I chose to use a picture of an elephant that I photographed at the zoo a few months ago.

(Original photo)

First, I cropped the photo so the focus would be more on the cute, little (well– big) elephant! I edited the photo a bit, by sharpening the lines. I changed the color scheme to black and white and tried to brighten the white spots so they would stand out better. Then, I used the “sketch” effect and got the following result:

Kinda cool, huh?

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Warhol Something

Friday, June 15th, 2012

For this second visual assignment, I “Warholed Something” using the photo editing site called Aviary, mentioned on our camp packing list. Aviary actually provided a tutorial on “Warholizing” an image using their photo editing tools. I chose a picture of my dog, Tux, to “Warhol.” I followed the instructions step-by-step in the tutorial and I think I was fairly successful!

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Lost Mail

Friday, June 15th, 2012

Dear Family of Jolie Thomas,

We, at the pony express, deeply regret that your mail has been delayed in reaching you. The pony that was carrying the letters addressed to you got lost and was only found recently. We hope that these letters find you well and the delay has not caused you any unwarranted worry or concern.

Our sincerest apologies,

The PonyExpress

Dear Mom,

I know that you hated to drop me off at camp. Don’t worry I am excited and everyone is really nice here. It is a bit crazy as everyone is getting settled in here at camp and set up in the bunkhouses. I belong to Bunkhouse #4, just in case you want or need to send something. Something like, the flashlight I forgot to pack. It gets creepy here at night and there is no indoor plumbing (in true camp fashion). Give my love to everyone and make sure that my dearly loved sibling stays out of my room. I set up my domain and cannot wait to learn what we will be doing at camp.

Miss you already,

Jolie

Dear Mom,

This week at camp we learned about story-telling. Simple, you say? Not so dear mother. There many different ways stories can be told, shared, and visualized. Especially, in this new age of everything digital and instantaneous. My favorite lesson this week was the Shape of Stories, the lecture was told by Kurt Vonnegut. He explained how you can show the shape of a story based on the events and plot line of the story. It was a fascinating topic that I truly enjoyed. I can’t wait for next week! I miss you tons. By the way, my bunkhouse is now called Slaughterhouse 4. So, please send me my flashlight. I need it desperately because I got lost on my way back from the mess hall one night and ended up near some toxic waste disposal center. I will have you know that it took me forever to get clean.

Cleanly yours,

Jolie Thomas

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Must the sky be blue?

Friday, June 15th, 2012

Use creative commons licensed images to design a poster about how groovy Creative Commons is!

Using Compfight, I found this photo by Ross Webdale. I added text and the Creative Commons icon in photoshop.

I chose the back ground image because ever since I was a small child, coloring has been a fun and most times therapeutic hobby. I was taught how to color by my grandmother. I remember her sitting me down on the floor with a coloring book and large bucket of crayons. She instructed, “Now, be careful, stay inside the lines.” Yet, the joy of a creative mind is finding ways to purposefully stray outside those lines. Rebel against what is normal. The whole premise of Creative Commons is a community that creates new things and shares their creativity with the world. So why should we color inside the lines, stick to the mainstream notions that the sky is blue, and bottle the creative juices inside?

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Domineering Downtown Dwelling

Friday, June 15th, 2012

Dominance simply sounds like a controlling, authoritative word. In design, it holds the same meaning. Creating dominance in design makes creative use of size, color, density, value, and white space to create the effect of one object being larger than others, hogging the space, begging for attention.

In this image of a building on Princess Anne Street in downtown Fredericksburg, the building and, more specifically the windows in the building, use size and perspective to create the effect of dominance. The building is ruling the lamppost! The post is actually in the foreground. I was standing on the street corner, looking up with the lamppost only an arm’s-length away from me. Perhaps a change of angle to emphasize the lamppost would turn the tables on that building then the lamppost could dominate the building!

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Breaking Down the Creative Commons

Friday, June 15th, 2012

What Is the Creative Commons

a non profit organization that works to increase the amount of creativity
allows the body of the work to be available to the public for free and legal sharing, use, and remixed

Useful Resources

Sharing photos

The ability to get photos off of the web and share them with people without being punished
Remixing photos to make them “my own” without breaking any copyright laws
Already having permission to share the work without having to contact the company

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