Roni Horn

I found her work to be very intelectual. I liked how everything she did had a very very detailed inspiration and purpose. I liked the simplicity of her work. Whole photos of the surface of water, zoomed in portraits of just a person's face, or a bird, or a room. She breaaks down the simplicity of a scene and allows you the time to sit back and analyze it.

She sid in the interview I just watched that her work is moved or inspired by her surroundings. She likened her experience with photographing water as that most of the time she is pursuing a subject to photograph. Almost hunting that subject. But in the case of the water, it is pursuing her. She is the one being hunted. She also had some instalation and sculpture peices of text and words she wrote. The words never seem to be com[lete thoughts. She doesn't want to tell you exactly what to think she just wants to start the process of thinking. And that she found defined herself. That she was always trying to define unkown concepts with metaphors of words and visuals, but as she defines them she does not want to extinguish the unknown, but she wants to destinguish what is known.

Her work seemed very natural and wether you liked it or not, it is hard to ignore. Something about it sneeks into your mind or subconcious.

Canon Art Museum - Nationl Geographics Portraits

I went to the National Geographic portraits exhibit yesterday. It was a very interesting exhibit. It had many pieces that have become iconic now. The thing that made the biggest impression on me was how the color photos were all from before Photoshop or digital photography, but the colors in the photos were so intense. It was amazing to me how the rich colors of the people and the backgrounds were all captured in real time and with lighting. The photo of the girl in Afghanistan was the most profound. The green and red complementary colors extenuate one another. The motion of the background, her shall, and her hair perfectly framed her face and made the green eyes piercing. Besides being aesthetically brilliant, I am not sure what the meaning of the photo was supposed to be. To capture some sort of emotion the subject was feeling, perhaps? She seems a little scared or apprehensive. She seems anxious, paniked. Like she is hiding perhaps or that she is about to get up and run away.At any rate, the exhibit was very interesting. The black and white that were 100 years old were like having an opportunity to back and time and look at another person from the past in the eyes. Each piece had its own individual, beauty, quality and point of interest that I could go on.

Stefan Sagmeister

I liked the series that the show towards the end that read something like, "Trying to look good limits my life." I find this to be very true. Not everything in the world looks good. This is truly limiting if the only things your designs focus on are the few "good" things out there. I did like how truly seemed to be motivated by a desire to not be bored or to allow his work to seem boring. That the content and the visual appearence were both very important to him. I also appreciated his analogy of the writer that would only use a few words. A story book would not be very interesting if it only contained a few words. So why would subjects of visual design be any different. I also really dig how he was into album covers. I like making those too. Just for freinds and stuff.

Playing with FREE brushes and fonts

SCORE!!! We just found a bunch of really good free brush, vector, and font sites tonight. Usually all of the free stuff is pretty lame, but this stuff is actually good. YAY! Check out the messing around >>>>

David Carson - Part 2

I think the comment he made in this section of the documentary that was most profound to me was: "Sometimes you have to be open to thing like [referencing with his hands to an accetate and tape piece he did with a portrait of a man's face]. Just because you come across things like this doesn't necessarily make them good. But you should be open to them."

I like this idea because I am taking a couple composition classes now and there are a lot of rules to memorize that make things look "good". I find it refreshing that there is still an infinate amount of possibilities out there to try or use even when you do have to observe the rules of "good". :)

David Carson

David Carson is a master at the art of typography. That means he can use fonts and the shapes of words to create an aesthetically pleasing composition. This is an important skill for any aspiring graphic designer to have. Because language and words are used in almost all mediums of graphic communication, knowing how to utilize the form and position and the different fonts as familuarly as David C. is imparitive. Here a few of his pieces that I liked the most.



I like this peice for its simplicity and the sheer ease of the reading.

It demands your attention and at the same time does not irritate.

Starting my narrative accordian card...

I decided to make my narrative piece/accordian card project about something that hits home pretty hard for me. I am documenting my alcohol abuse on the weekends.


It may seem cliche, but it is something I spend allot of my sober time (which is most of my time) thinking about. I ask myself a lot of questions like: why do I feel like this?
Why do I keep coming back to this? Why do I do this nasty thing that is so bad for me? Why do I keep coming back?



I do not want to glorify or glamorize binge drinking at all. Rather it will probably seem more like a cautionary tale. I actually want to tell the story about just how ugly it is.
At the same time, I want to find the answers to the questions I ask myself by documenting the moments that can be joyful.



I already have some theories about why I do it: stress, boredom, addiction, the fear of trying something new, perhaps the people I hang out with and my very close friends. Despite the theories I have already about it, it is my goal to tell the story about how I get there, why I get there, and the ugly after math of what a night of binge drinking does to me. I want it to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. It should be interesting.