So why am I in college? Because I need an education. I'd often catch myself drawing or sketching instead of reading, looking around myself and analyzing how poorly things are constructed or made instead of listening, and enjoying interesting images and nicely designed things online instead of typing papers.
Industrial Design requires no text books, we have no tests or final exams, and lectures are rarely longer than 20 or 30 minutes. For homework, we get really vague, ambiguous assignments and we have to complete them by the next class period. They involve the various elements of design, both on 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional levels. In other words, we have to make things look pretty--both images on paper and models you can pick up and hold. And it took me three years of misery in majors that I hated to find this four year program that I adore. Yes, I still have three more years of it even though I've already done four years of schooling. The timing is my main regret.
So I love my major and I'm super excited to continue on in learning and making tons of projects when summer term starts on Monday. But I still have this incomplete that I took for a class last fall when I was dealing with, well, lots of things. I wanted to finish the incomplete grade and get all those assignments turned in before summer term began, but I just feel stuck--like I can't get creative enough to finish all of the assignments.
The other hold up was that I have to take pictures of all the projects and assignments I do. I lost Bob's camera battery charger around the time that I went to Singapore. So I've been trying to finish assignments and find a good deal on a charger (especially since we literally have zero money to spend ever since I quit my job). I looked online and found the charger for about $25. That's a quarter of $100! Do you have any idea what I can do with $25??? So then I felt a ping of inspiration and looked on Craigslist. No luck. I went to KSL, and just a day earlier someone had posted an ad selling the exact charger I need--plus a battery (which, batteries are expensive!) and transfer cord, all for $10! I LOVE when inspiration comes. We went and picked that up yesterday.
So back to my dilemma of not feeling creative. The assignments I have to do are all 3-D. In other words I have to build things out of card-stock, balsa wood, and foam-core board. I've got one and a half of the 7+ assignments done. So how do I find inspiration to finish the rest of them before August?
I remember getting some ideas from looking at my 2-D assignments for some of my classes. So I found my USB drive that I had them all stored on, and took a look at them again.
I impressed myself. It's been eight or so months since I've looked at them, and I really like some of them! I wish I could print out my favorites, frame them, then hang them around our office so I could inspire myself. However, a lack of money is keeping me from doing that.
So next best thing, I'll post them on here and see how other people feel about them. I'm not really fishing for compliments, just encouragement...
Okay, if you want to call that fishing for compliments, maybe it is. But really, I just need a little reassurance and a pick-me-up.
So to explain a bit on these, I used Adobe Illustrator to create them. There was no right or wrong way to do our projects, as long as we were using our knowledge and understanding of design to do them. And our assignments were extremely vague, which I quickly learned just gave us more freedom in creating them. For example, one assignment from that class was to make a composition using four squares to demonstrate the word 'tension'.
Wait, what?
Exactly.
An assignment on rhythm and emphasis.
Another assignment on emphasis.
Notice how your eye travels as you look at it. I learned to manipulate lines and space to have you look where I want you to without you really knowing it.
Assignment on rhythm and how to make it nice instead of annoyingly repetitive.
Another on emphasis and movement.
(This one was inspire by a photo of sand dunes. Can you tell?)
Inspired by the way fabric moves in the wind (like a flag).
Inspired by stairs.
(It's hard to make it interesting and not boring. You try it!)
I love brick and cobblestone roads and walkways. Can't you tell?
This was a fun assignment! We had to come up with and present a product of limited edition M&Ms in honor of the Olympics. This was mine. I really like it.
An assignment on pattern exploration and presentation.
Can you find the single shape I created the whole thing from?
I highlighted it somewhere.
My final project for that class, called a "Perceptual Painting".
We were to create something that expressed ourselves using all the elements of design that we'd learned so far in the class. This is my explanation of it:
I love sketching, especially with charcoal. I created the squares using lines that resemble the way different sketching mediums look on paper.
I always want to be unique and different. Sometimes I feel like people are expecting me to be this perfect little person, a 'square' just like everyone else. So I do that for a while, but before long I have to break out of it and be me again. Hence, the squares and the one in the background that is being destroyed.
I picked the various shades of brown because it seems like such a boring color to many people, but if you look carefully, it can turn into some of the richest, most warm and comfortable hues you'll ever find. Similarly, I hope that people can see more in me than what first meets the eye.
Lastly, I love literature and poetry, both reading and writing it. With that in mind, I incorporated some favorite lines of a favorite poet. The words leave an open-ended question, because I'm curious to see what others will make of this creation of mine.
That's all I'll post on here. It's kind of a lot, but we had tons of assignments like these. I just included my favorites.
What do you think?
cool! i'm really into fabric right now, so i think most of those would look really cool as fabric. you should sketch some pictures for the boys sometime, they'd love it!
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