Blog of a Blog Addict
Monday, May 16, 2011
Reasons why I love NYC
Sitting in the kitchen with Kristel, having a midnight snack.
Sound of someone next door sneezing repeatedly floats through our open window. After a few sneezes, out of habit I shout, "Bless you!"
*long pause*
"Thank you!" comes the response from next door
hahaha. small reasons why I love this city
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Under Construction!!
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
New blog in my endless blog list
My good friend Kelsey from my study abroad program in Florence has just started in the Peace Corps. She just arrived in Bulgaria and recently sent out a link to her blog so she can keep people posted on her time there. Since I am constantly looking for new blogs to follow, this is a wonderful addition.
Civil War Pictures
Someone sent me this site of actual pictures taken from the civil war. Pretty incredible. Makes me want to use them in a project. Check it out here
Sketches for fragrance bottle
The Feltron Report
Basically, this guy named Nicholas Felton collects information about his daily life and experiences and creates one giant annual report at the conclusion of each year to map the resulting data. He has his friends and acquaintances fill out questionnaires after each form of contact with him. The concept seems somewhat strange but the ending result is a beautiful collection of maps and information graphics that he calls the Feltron Report
here is his explaination for his 2009 report:
Each day in 2009, I asked every person with whom I had a meaningful encounter to submit a record of this meeting through an online survey. These reports form the heart of the 2009 Annual Report. From parents to old friends, to people I met for the first time, to my dentist… any time I felt that someone had discerned enough of my personality and activities, they were given a card with a URL and unique number to record their experience.
I kept track only of who I gave survey invitations to, the number of the card and where it was given. The surveys answers were submitted via text forms, allowing the respondee to write whatever they desired, and leaving the task of making comparisons between the data up to me. I have used only this information to create the report, however accurate it may be. I have strived to sort and collate the data in a clinical and repeatable manner that could be reproduced by someone looking for the same stories I have selected.
The data set itself was messy and overwhelming, and filled with enough information for several more reports. There are inherent shortcomings (like the unrepresentative amount of water recorded), and endearing strong suits (like the exploration of mood). I used several tools to make this task a more manageable, including Processing, which allowed me to map and explore alternate layouts much more quickly than previously, and Amazon's Mechanical Turk.
Annual Reports
The Southern Invasion of NYC
Found this article while researching for my annual report. I don't think I mentioned, but the company I am designing my annual report for is Sturm, Ruger and Co. which is a producer and seller of firearms. Hence, why I was reading Garden and Gun magazine online. Thought this article was interesting. Would love to move to NYC when I am finished at PC!
BY JESSICA MISCHNER | APRIL/MAY 10 | CITY PORTRAIT
The Southern Invasion of NYC
Southerners have been moving to Manhattan—and then pining for their childhood towns—for as long as they’ve had the means to travel north. James Buchanan Duke expanded his tobacco business from North Carolina to Manhattan in 1884 and became the toast of the town. More recently, Newsweek editor in chief and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jon Meacham (Tennessee), fashion pioneer Geoffrey Beene (Louisiana), and interior designer Charlotte Moss (Virginia) have all made their names—and their homes—in New York City. The list of successes is long, and it inspires even more of us. My own journey to the Big Apple involved a fourteen-hour road trip from my hometown, Camden, South Carolina, to a tiny first-floor apartment in SoHo. My dad drove me up, unpacked my meager belongings, took me to dinner, and left—all in the same day. He figured I’d be starved for Southern culture, but in no time I’d made a network of friends from across the SEC and found a few great soul food restaurants.
Live Music
Vacation plans
However, this summer may entail a slight change in plans. Since I have 2 weeks break in the summer my parents planned our week vacation to be the first week of my break which is mid June. But, unfortunately, the horrible oil spill near Louisiana has created an obstacle in our beach plans. Our week at the beach is set for about a month away and status in the gulf is still so vague and unknown. Because Fort Morgan is in a pretty bad location in regards to the spill, my mom has decided to move our destination 200 miles further east from Ft. Morgan.
Soooo, this year we are going to a different place than the place we have been going for about the last 20 summers of my life! Should be an interesting change. I'm completely heartsick over all of the potential damage and ramifications that could be caused by this spill. That area of the country has always been so important to me since i've been going there for so long. I'm crossing my fingers that some kind of solution is discovered soon. I don't want to see all of those gorgeous beaches ruined.
Anyways, instead of Fort Morgan we are now going to St. Joe Beach, Florida. It is a couple hours further drive for my parents coming from Texas, but the house we got is directly on the water and looks gorgeous:
Blogging slacker
Last quarter was a pretty crazy ride. Design History continued to wreck my brain throughout the entire 11 weeks until the day of my critique. Designing that chair was pretty consuming, considering i rewrote my concept about a million times. I designed 3 wine bottles that ended up being made in NYC and sent to me before my critique. My book projects for design history and type 4 ended up turning out just how i liked them. And I almost went crazy building a teeny tiny model of my retail space for retail branding. Once I get some of my work shot I'll be sure to post pictures on here.
anyways, this quarter I am in 5 classes. Message and Content, Event Branding, Bookmaking, Annual Reports and Fragrance Branding.
In Message and Content we are creating a guerilla marketing campaign, a map or infographic about something in our lives and a triptic poster series based on something from an issue of Good magazine. This is the 4th class I have taken with the instructor of this class so I am pretty used to her teaching style. Right now I am just trying to figure out and nail down my concepts and executions. For my mapping project I am considering doing a map of all of my jewelry so we'll see how that pans out.
Event Branding is a class taught by one of the designers from AIGA. He usually teaches environmental design but he is taking a quarter off to do the branding for Design Week which will be in October. All of the design discipline associations in Atlanta are coming together to create a week of design-centered activities for members of the different associations so they can get to know each other and hopefully collaborate in the future. Our class is doing all the branding for the event: logos, colors, website, templates etc etc
Bookmaking is basically just a workshop but we spend wednesday afternoons learning different bookmaking techniques. Although tedious crafting skills are always quite frustrating to me (i.e. ENFP personality type haha) I actually really enjoy it. So far we've made 3 different types and we're starting on a third. only bummer is that someone at school threw away pieces we'd made for our books and left underneath bricks downstairs.
Annual Reports is another class I am taking with Hank who taught Design History. We're designing an entire annual report for a company we were assigned. I'm pretty excited about this project and probably will dedicate an entire post to the project soon
Fragrance Branding! In fragrance branding we are creating our own unique fragrance brand and scent and designing everything for it: Bottle, packaging, ads, logo etc etc. This class is on Friday mornings and considering the subject matter is an all girls class. It's a lot of fun to design something 3-dimensional and to see all of the creative concepts everyone has come up with. hopefully all of us will have our actual bottles produced by the end of the quarter
anyways, that's it for classes. We're in the swing of things and everything is starting to come together so should be a successful quarter. can't believe I'm getting so close to the end!
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Welcome to 5th Quarter
Most of my classes this quarter require a lot of personal stories and input in order to create the concepts for our projects. For example, in my Type 4 class, we are creating a book that weaves 3 pieces of text along with images to create a narrative on an assigned sense. The majority of the text comes from the book A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman. My assigned sense is sight. Anyways, one of the 3 texts included in our book has to be personally written by us and composed of thoughts we have made about our sense in a 'sense' journal that we are keeping this quarter.
Another class I am taking this quarter is the infamous 'Chair Class' of Portfolio Center, taught by none other than the president of the school, Hank Richardson. The class is about design history but our biggest deliverable of the quarter will be a chair that we design and actually have produced. The concept of the chair must be based on an assigned design style era as well as a personal story of our own. I feel like I can't do a description of this class justice so I am going to include an article written on the class:
examples of former chairs:
Wolff Olins
Wolff Olins is a brand business. From London, New York and Dubai, we work strategically with ambitious organizations around the world. We help them not to predict the future, but to invent it. Not to make small improvements, but fundamental change. We help them to focus, to grow, to perform better, and to connect with customers.
To take three examples, we helped GE become customer-centric. We helped Tate to change the way people see art. And we helped Tata to become a world brand.
We’re 140 people, ambitious for clients, and optimistic for the world.
It wasnt long before Todd broached the topic of the 2012 London Olympic Games logo, which has received a plethora of media coverage, mostly from people who strongly dislike the logo. The logo was created by the London office of Wolf Olins, and some of the feedback from the public is quite hilarious. Todd showed one video of Jon Stewart's reaction on The Daily Show:
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
London Logo | ||||
www.thedailyshow.com | ||||
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Friday, January 8, 2010
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Texas is in the National Championship game!
No. 1 Alabama is coming off a 19-point defeat of unbeaten, formerly top-ranked Florida. The Crimson Tide swept the six computer ratings that participate in the BCS. They received 54 of 59 first-place votes from the coaches' poll used by the BCS, and 58 of 60 first-place votes in the Associated Press poll.
History of Texas vs. Alabama
Texas and Alabama will meet for the ninth time in the BCS National Championship Game. Since their first meeting in 1902, the Longhorns lead the series 7-0-1.
Year | Result | Bowl/Reg. season |
---|---|---|
1902 | Texas 10, Alabama 0 | Reg. season |
1915 | Texas 20, Alabama 0 | Reg. season |
1922 | Texas 19, Alabama 10 | Reg. season |
1947 | No. 5 UT 27, No. 6 Bama 7 | Sugar Bowl |
1960 | UT 3, No. 9 Bama 3 | Bluebonnet Bowl |
1964 | No. 5 UT 21, No. 1 Bama 17 | Orange Bowl |
1972 | No. 7 UT 17, No. 4 Bama 13 | Cotton Bowl |
1981 | No. 6 UT 14, No. 3 Bama 12 | Cotton Bowl |
No. 2 Texas needed a clock mulligan to beat Nebraska in the Game That Offense Forgot. When Hunter Lawrence's 46-yard field goal slipped inside the left upright, Orangebloods across America let out their breath in unison: One Sigh Fits All.
All of which means the Longhorns have the Crimson Tide right where they want them.
This will be the fifth time in 50 seasons that Alabama and Texas have played in a bowl game. In the previous four, the Longhorns came in as the lower-ranked team. Texas earned three victories and a tie. In fact, since the teams first met in 1902 -- around the time that Alabama became associated with crimson and one year before a sportswriter referred to Texas as the Longhorns -- Alabama is 0-7-1 against Texas.
The unveiling of the BCS pairings promises a revival of that 2004 comedy smash, "Three's A Crowd." Cincinnati is playing the role that Auburn made so memorable -- the cuckolded suitor. The Bearcats, No. 4 TCU and No. 6 Boise State may snipe about the injustice of being left out of the BCS Championship Game. And they have a case.
The problem is not new. The BCS Championship Game has only two sidelines. And the teams that will fill them bring not only well-coached talent but history and tradition. Texas will try to win its fifth national championship since the wire-service polls began in 1936. If the Longhorns win, they will still be one title shy of the Crimson Tide.
The coaches are equals. Mack Brown has won at least 10 games for nine consecutive seasons. After Texas slumped its way through the 1990s, Brown came in and restored the Longhorns to greatness. The burnishing has worked both ways. When Brown arrived from North Carolina, he came as a coach who could win but not win it all. No one says that any longer.
Nick Saban looks to become the first coach in the modern era to win national championships at two different schools. After Alabama slumped its way through this decade, Saban arrived and over the last two seasons has restored the Crimson Tide to greatness. After going 6-6 in the 2007 regular season, Saban's first year, Alabama has gone 25-2.
The defenses are equals, and not just statistically. Texas defensive coordinator Will Muschamp held that job under Saban at LSU when the Tigers won the 2003 BCS title. He and Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart worked together on the LSU staff the following year.
The Longhorns and the Crimson Tide rank 1-2 in rushing defense. Alabama is second and Texas third in total defense. Both defenses are ballhawks -- the Tide are plus-16 in turnovers, the Longhorns are plus-12.
Surely the rest of college football would like to see Texas win and deny the Southeastern Conference the bragging rights that would come with an unprecedented fourth consecutive national championship. That would also be five in seven years.
Alabama last played in a January game in the Rose Bowl 64 seasons ago. Before the Big Ten and Pacific-10 made the game their own, the Crimson Tide played in the Rose Bowl six times in 21 years. But the last team to win a national championship in the Arroyo Seco wore burnt orange four years ago.
Both Alabama and Texas, it appears, will be at home.