Posted by Melanie on September 4, 2010 – 11:03 pm
The fall semester is in full swing, and I am pretty excited about a brand-new course offered this fall: Letterpress. Our first week of class we got to experience first-hand how to print as we helped our professor finish off some cards for a gallery opening. Our second week—just a couple of days ago—we got to hand-set our first lines of type to print together on the Vandercook press.
Here’s our names laid out on the bed, iPhone photo courtesy of Tanner Glaves. I selected a 24pt Univers for my name, which turned out to give us a bit of exercise. Since there are multiple fonts in each case in our letterpress shop (a font in this case is one set of all the forms in the typeface), and it’s possible that those fonts were cut slightly differently, a particular form can look “off.” As you can see in the photo, my “l” looks a bit larger than the rest of the forms; either a capital “i” was mixed in with the “l”s, or the piece was from a larger point size or a different cut of the typeface.
To fix it, I grabbed another “l” from the case, used tweezers to extract the old one, and inserted the new one. We ran another test print, and it turns out the new “l” printed only a ghostly image—it was too warn down and old. Into the “hell box” that copy went, and I finally found a nice, clean “l” that printed wonderfully.
Posted by Melanie on August 30, 2010 – 6:30 am
“The prairie has a beauty of its own and we should recognize and accentuate this natural beauty, its quiet level. Hence, gently sloping roofs, low proportions, quiet sky lines, suppressed heavy-set chimneys and sheltering overhangs, low terraces and out-reaching walls sequestering private gardens”
— Frank Lloyd Wright, on his prairie-style architecture
Posted by Melanie on August 14, 2010 – 6:13 pm
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the creative process and inertia. As a young designer aware of “Where I’m At” and “Where I Could Be,” improving my creative skills seems like an agonizingly slow process. I’ve heard this sentiment echoed by plenty of other design students: “I’m not getting good enough fast enough.”
I think we need to chill out (and work hard).
All the energy funneled into comparing ourselves to other designers is a waste and something I am entirely guilty of. I call upon all young (or old) designers to quit stalking ffffound/The Die Line/portfolio sites (it’s called procrastination, not inspiration) and think critically about what’s clogging up your head space. How can you be more productive? How can you unhinge your mind-claws from “Being Good” in favor of being a thoughtful observer of the world?
Ideas for freedom, plus links to extra reading »
Posted by Melanie on July 26, 2010 – 5:46 am
This past Friday I attended Front-End Design Conference in St. Pete, Florida with some fellow sharks [that is, Grooveshark employees]. Front-End was actually my first industry conference, and it was great to meet fellow front-end web developers and designers from Florida, to put a face to this community.
Dan Denney—who created the conference a year ago in order to learn more about design—did a great job of gathering 7 talented speakers. I felt that I took away something from each of the people who presented (collectively, 6 pages of notes), but for the sake of brevity,
I’ll post a few interesting points here under the jump »
Posted by Melanie on May 23, 2010 – 7:08 am
Filed under Design, Films
I’ve been holding off on posting about this one because I wasn’t exactly sure what I thought about it. A Clockwork Orange features Alex, a Beethoven fan-boy teen gang leader who wreaks havoc on his dystopian English town. When a night of mischief goes too far and Alex accidentally (or maybe not) kills a woman with her phallic statue, Alex finds himself in prison. In the penitentiary, Alex hears about a procedure that would “cure” him of his evil deeds, a procedure which would allow him to leave a free man…
On the one hand, this film is horribly grotesque, and I am way too Middle America for the violent imagery. However, the film also gives an interesting insight into teen gang violence, and how society reacts to wayward citizens (which is, admittedly, protracted in the dystopian setting). The strange thing is that despite my hatred of Alex and his band of “droogs,” I can’t help but feel a strange sympathy for him at certain moments of the film. What I thought particularly interesting as well was the prison chaplain character. Religious figures in secular films are often depicted as evil, hypocritical, or deluded; in A Clockwork Orange, however, the chaplain holds to the belief that men should have and harness the power of free choice. I could appreciate that deviation from cinema’s cliche character sketches, and it was one of the saving points of this bizarre film.
An aside: I also meant to post tonight on The Godfather, but 10 minutes before the ending, the VHS I rented from the university library gave out. Not to fear: the movie is mainstream enough for a friend to own it, so I will eventually be able to follow up on that film. Sometime this weekend I will also be posting on The Philadelphia Story, so stay tuned.
Posted by Melanie on May 5, 2010 – 10:33 pm
Filed under Design, Films
2001: A Space Odyssey is the second Stanley Kubrick film I’ve ever seen, preceded only by
Dr Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. The film jumps from prehistoric apes to corporate space travel to a sentient computer bent on passive aggressive survival tactics. As an adolescent of the turn of the millennium, my attention span was far too short to pay attention to this film in its entirety, because each movement takes about five minutes to complete. However, there are some intriguing and mysterious points to
2001, such as the jump cut from an ape’s bone spinning in the air to a floating space ship of similar shape, inferring something deep and timeless about human nature despite evolution. What made the greatest impression on me was how quiet this movie was (hence, the above type treatment). Even in the face of danger or mystery or the backdrop of classical music, there is a definite quietness to this film that renders it a bit sinister and uncomfortable.
Posted by Melanie on April 19, 2010 – 9:24 pm
Filed under Design, Films
In terms of cinematic excellence, I was a bit of a sheltered child. While my friends were watching films of “substance,” which were probably a bit too mature for them, I was watching “family friendly” movies (think Airbud). Having never gotten around to seeing must-see or classic films, I decided to undertake viewing all of the 2007 AFI Top 100 Movies. I’ve been chipping away at the list slowly, but I’ve just now started to draw a wordmark—for lack of a better term—for each movie I view.
Recently I rented Tootsie from the university library, which happens to own the vast majority of the Top 100 list. It follows a very similar plot line to Mrs. Doubtfire, and the fact that I have prior knowledge of the latter should be an indicator of just how bad my film history is. I have to say I enjoyed this much more; there is a sincerity in Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal of Michael Dorsey as Dorothy Michaels. At #62 on the list, this is one of the more humorous films and one that I’d probably watch again.
Posted by Melanie on February 11, 2010 – 4:54 am
Above: People beginning to filter into the gallery! Credit: Wendy Tan Lui Chan
This past weekend was Ligature 19, the entirely student-run annual design symposium at UF. Our guests this year were designers Emily CM Anderson and Nikolay Saveliev, as well as AIGA President/Sterling Brands VP Debbie Millman. The weekend included a gallery opening featuring all student design work; presentations from the three designers, which were free & open to the public; and workshops and portfolio reviews for UF graphic design students.
Each designer had a lot to contribute, especially during one-on-one portfolio reviews. Some interesting points, paraphrased:
Emily Anderson:
+ trust your intuition and ideas—sometimes it happens
+ know and understand your audience
+ sketch things for awhile; push things around
+ focus on content you care about
Nikolay Saveliev:
+ Never underestimate the communicative power of humor.
+ Think about the kind of work you want to do; do it for free—you may get paid to do it again
+ it’s good to stop looking at design blogs at some point so that they don’t pollute your ideas
Debbie Millman’s shared in her lecture the research she has been doing on how social constructs/biological tendencies affect design. In her workshop, she divulged 10 things she wished she knew upon graduation. Read More »
Posted by Melanie on January 27, 2010 – 4:19 am
Since the picture of me on my about page is a bit out of date, I thought I’d share with you, the Internet universe, a more recent picture. Steph Davlantes, one of the seniors in my design program, gathered a bunch of us together to photograph the t-shirts she designed and printed for Florida Alternative Breaks. About the shirts Steph says:
“Students brought in their own t-shirts, which I screen printed. By educating the FAB participants on my process, I hope to create awareness about sustainable practices and emphasize the ‘reuse’ portion of “reduce, reuse, recycle.”
Steph did a great job on these t-shirts and the rest of the promotional materials; you can check them out here on her website.