When we arrived home Monday I learned we were beginning our logo design preliminary sketches this week. I’ve done many logo designs over the years, so sketches really don’t bother me. However, I’ve never had a large quantity requirement. As I reviewed the requirements I learned we were required to sketch 100 preliminary thumbnails of our logo ideas. Back during my days as a student at Valencia I recall only being required to do 10 or 20 or enough to show several strong ideas. For me sketching out ideas is always a fun process. However, since I’ve been teaching the last 5+ years I’ve come to realize even more now that sooooo many new students and clients take for granted how valuable the process of logo design really is. It’s not uncommon for many students to complain having to do 10 or 20 rough drafts, let alone 100. I suppose this number seemed a little daunting for me knowing just how many other things I am doing that equally need my attention, but I welcomed the challenge. I decided that today would finally be the day for me to get my sketches out of the way.

Anyhow, after a good 5 or 6 hours of doodling ideas – I thought I’d share ALL 100 thumbnails. I know many of you heard me twittering about my sketches and were curious so I hope you enjoy finally seeing my silly doodles. Keep in mind that when you produce work at a rapid rate it’s far more important to work through ideas than to perfect every idea. For me the quantity reminds me of my photography, I typically take hundreds of photos and only keep a few great ones to share. In time the same will happen with these logo ideas – as I continue to work on this project.

As I approached my final 20 sketches I came to the end of my moleskine notebook and went to grab my other one to finish up. It’s not uncommon for me to allow the kids to doodle in my notebooks. I love to encourage their creativity, it keeps them busy, and well…I love to be surprised by their doodles. While we were visiting Hala’s last weekend I allowed Hope to draw in my notebook while I met with the owner, my teacher, and another classmate. I had seen some of her doodles but tonight was the first time I saw her “supergirl” illustration. How hilarious is this? As I know you all have called me “superwoman” on more than one occasion – I couldn’t resist sharing her illustration and beginning the remainder of my logos right beside her illustration. As I finished all I could think was, “I sure could use some real super powers right now to help me”.

There you have it…100 logo sketches. I welcome you to leave me your thoughts if you wish to share them. I will begin refining my ideas soon and appreciate all the insight you all may have.

First, before I share the photos with you, I felt it pretty important to share with you a brief understanding of the project. The concentration of the project was Visual Rhetoric, meaning we would be expected to use imagery to help represent a specific chosen amount of text that was provided to us. We were given a few options to choose from. Because I had fallen behind from the chaotic moments of last month, I was able to see how frequently some text options were chosen so I tried to go with one that was less used but also the one that left a more emotional impact. Once we selected our text from the options we were given we were to conceptualize and create two images representing the text literally and abstractly. Here’s the provided text I used as the basis for this project:

“And when some months later she contemplated suicide, she decided to drown herself in the open sea so that the vileness of her dead body would be known only to fish, mute fish.

I spoke earlier of a Thomas Mann story: a young man suffering from a mortal illness gets on a train and descends in an unknown town. There is a wardrobe in his room, and every night a painfully beautiful naked woman steps out of it and tells him a long, sweetly sad tale, and that woman and that tale are death.

It is death sweetly bluish, like nonbeing. Because nonbeing is an infinite emptiness and empty space is blue and there is nothing more beautiful and more soothing than blue. Not at all by chance did Novalis, the poet of death, love blue and search for nothing else on his journeys. Death’s sweetness is blue in color.?”—Milan Kundera, The Book of Laugher and Forgetting

After all I’ve been through the last month or so it was easy to relate to the “emptiness” visually. I also found that with fish being a symbol of fertility that it only be fitting to come up with a concept that related to both this text, but also to me personally. Here are the two images together as a diptych.

The first image I elected to keep primarily black and white to set the mood. Yes, me standing at the train tracks – holding a stinky fish at sunrise. To most, they may not instantly see the fish, but I hope that as they do it makes them more curious to know the meaning behind the photo.

Here’s that stinky fish up close. After some color adjustments and other minor alterations to the photo I added in staples to the mouth of the fish to show how it was “mute”. Most may not get why a fish must be left to remain silent. I suppose this fish knows all about the “sad tale” noted in the text.

Yes, this all seems a bit strange, I’m sure…and its definitely far from the typical newborn photos I’m known for but hopefully you all enjoy the conceptual nature of the project.

Yes, I was up at sunrise last week taking these photos. The night before we went out, I mentioned it to Hope and she expressed an interest to come along with me. I was thrilled she had an interest. She got up at 530 in the morning with no problems at all and I have to admit I enjoy the photos of her from that morning just a tad bit more than stinky fish photos.

She insisted on walking on the train tracks.

And yes, I had to apologize to her teachers because though she got up with no problems at all – I could tell by the time I took her to school that she looked a little tired – but she had fun.

We just love Church Street. On the way to the train tracks she swore she saw her buddy Kaiden’s name etched in a brick. I told her we’d come back to check once I finished my fish photos. On the way back we did stop and search for a good five minutes and couldn’t find his name. She still swears she saw it – though something tells me she’s been missing her friends and she was definitely thinking of them that morning.

I told Hope we had to go so that we got her to school on time. She gave me a hard time because she still believed she saw Kaiden’s name.

The light an hour or so after sunrise is great. Every parent should take their kids out at sunrise to explore the world a little more. I must say that our sunrise venture out was a very memorable one and one that we’ll definitely have to do again. Next time without fish!

SOME ARTSY MOMENTS
Jason’s been on 12 hours shifts the last three days so the kids and I have been trying to keep ourselves occupied. And it’s been a whole week since I’ve done a photoshoot – don’t go into shock! Well, today I decided to do some artsy projects with the kids.

While I got things ready to paint I put large paper on the floor for the kids to color. Jaylen had a blast coloring with his big sis.

I’m working on a book cover design project for my typography course and I’m planning for a lot of the design to happen off the computer in a similar style to the children’s book illustrator Eric Carle. So today Hope and I did several paint fields as part of the process so that I can redesign the cover of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom for my class. I thought I’d share a few photos of our fun moments today.

I started out by telling her what I was doing for my project and how I needed to paint.

Of course I let her paint with me today.

We painted LOTS of yellow.

Hope made sure to tell me what the colors reminded her of. We used a few different yellows and one she called macaroni yellow and another she called banana yellow. That makes a lot more sense than cadmium yellow, right?! I’d prefer to refer to color names by what Hope calls them any day. So here I am asking her what color yellow I was painting with. She claims it’s banana yellow.

I’m also about to start using a linoleum block print for part of the design process for this same project. Hope has been working on her & Jaylen’s thank you cards for their birthdays and so I let her try cutting her first linoleum block today. She was very excited to try something new and she’s been carving away at it for quite sometime this evening.

I had to show her how to cut the block, because she did get frustrated at first. I also had to make sure she knew how to hold the block safely, though I made sure to get the safety blades for her to use.

I took turns with her to help get her started. She took the camera remote and had a blast taking photos. She got a little silly.

Then she got super silly.

She was hilarious. I asked her what she was doing and she said “taking lots of pictures like you do to me”. So she acted even sillier. I guess all these silly pictures are payback for me torturing her with the camera.

Okay, I know that’s only a sneak peak – I’m sure I’ll have more to share with you all soon. Lord knows I have a ton of catching up to do. Hope you all enjoyed seeing some creative moments with myself and the kiddos!

A SENSE OF PLACE
This is my first quarter working on my masters in Graphic Design at SCAD and I have to say that if it weren’t for how chaotic last month was, I’d have truly enjoyed my classes. I completed my bachelors this past spring, and I must admit that thus far the masters program is pretty exciting with some challenging and enjoyable projects. A lot more emphasis is placed on conceptual ideas and process. I’m still behind after being out for nearly a month due to the miscarriage and all the complications that followed so I will end up receiving incompletes which will give me a little more time to work my heart out on these remaining projects.

I’m closest to finishing my photography course. I just finished another project tonight that I thought I’d share with you all. For every project we receive a project description that lets us know what the theme of the assignment is. For this project it was “A sense of place”:

You will use the photographic medium to express a sense of place for the city in which you live. This assignment is not designed to capture a selection of tourist images of your town or city, but rather should express your own feelings and thoughts about the place. The images do not need to be recognizable as the place where you live. It is more important to provide an emotive experience for the viewer that describes an almost palpable experience of the environment.

For our project we had to create two final digital images – a collage and a montage. I have to admit it’s a term I’ve easily interchanged as a designer and after focusing so heavily on it with this assignment it’s good to finally be able to discern the difference. I imagine other designers still mix up the two terms. For the purposes of the project, we were given a clear description of each:

A collage is composed of portions or fragments of photographs secured from many different sources. Preprinted magazine images might be combined with actual photographs, drawings, prints, photocopies, or even real world objects/textures to create a rich pattern of textures and imagery. The images are usually sourced prior to deciding the conceptual basis of the image and, in turn, should determine the look and concept of the final piece.

A montage is a composite photograph created when two or more separate photographs are combined to create an illusionary or surreal print. A photomontage is distinguished from a photo-collage in that it is a composite printed exclusively from photo images taken by the artist. A montage is usually based around a central idea which is considered prior to sourcing the imagery. A photographer may then go and shoot the required source photographs to create the finished image.

I thought long and  hard for weeks before and during the time I was going through all the surgeries and time in the hospital. How could I represent a way to give a sense of place for where I live? And then it dawned on me the weekend I had to return to the hospital to stay the entire weekend. After a fourth trip there – the hospital was almost like a temporary “place” I resided that heavily impacted my life last  month. Yes, so much so that during my stay in the hospital I made sure I was armed with my nikon handy every day. I imagine the nurses thought I was crazy to want to take pictures when I really felt so cruddy.

Though I had my camera, and took plenty of photos, I didn’t approach this project until the final day in the hospital. The same day that I got to go home. That morning I was up before sunrise and set up my tripod and took lots of photos using my remote throughout the morning. I was a little annoyed because the light changed so quickly in such a short period of time. It made it tough to control the exposure and it posed problematic a bit when I was montaging. So I just took as many photos as I thought would work for my project and prayed they’d be sufficient, because I had absolutely NO intentions of stepping foot in the hospital again any time soon after that last stay. So here’s the montage of 3 photos that really help give you a glimpse of what it was like in my hospital room…the same “place” that definitely impacted my life.

I was far more excited about the collage portion of the project, because I felt it would allow me to be more creative. I used the outside of the hospital to set the scene. I took the photo the hour before sunset and was disappointed with the sky. I envisioned a darker or more ominous sky. I even went back to reshoot the hospital and a security guard told me I wasn’t allowed to take photos of the hospital. So I had to use what I had already taken. I montaged in the sign on the right, the sky, and then an overlay to create the “rays” and red color. I also used a photo of myself, taken just the day prior to the first surgery. To me it just seems fitting. Seeing it reminds me of why I’m so thankful I am doing the 365 photo project because looking back there’s no way I’d have ever taken that photo (or many others) if it weren’t for my commitment to finish 365.  I did lots of scribbling too – including all the type – it was all scribbled with my wacom tablet. Here’s what I came up with for the collage.

The type on the throughout is ALL rendered by hand using the wacom (except for what is on the signage). Here’s a close up view of the left side in case any of you care to read the words. I have to admit this project was really challenging for me to finish because to be honest, it just brought back so many tough memories.

And one of the finishing touches was to add in this little bit of handwriting that is so important for me not to ever forget.

So that’s it…countless hours later…one more project down…tons more to go. I should have a nice stinky fish photo project to share with you all tomorrow!

Hope you all enjoy a glimpse of my crazy busy work at SCAD!