Locating Place

This project was created to explore how we locate place. In the first part of this project we were to create a minute long motion piece about our first impression of East Austin. My concept behind this piece was hidden beauty throughout the Eastside. I chose to portray this through a poem by Edgar Allen Poe that I felt captured the aesthetic of what I was trying to get across. The text of the poem is inlayed with photos of the textures and hidden treasures that can be found throughout East Austin.

For the second part of this project I chose to focus on the four main sections of central Austin, North, South, East & West. I collected photos, poems, articles and song lyrics to try and recreate the aesthetic and general feeling that you get while visiting each part of Austin. As you move through the book the reader has to flip it to reflect the orientation of each part of Austin; i.e. to read the "South" section the reader must flip the book upside down.

Research Paper: Gdes History

This is the research paper I wrote and laid out for graphic design history. It is about the origin of the phrase "form follows function" and how it applies to design today. I chose minimal designing because the point of the phrase is to convey information as effectively as possible.
Form and Function

Image Analysis

For Image Analysis we were instructed to find anything that was created within the last year or two and analyze it for all possible graphic design references. I have always had an interest in wine packaging design because the design not only directly impacts a buyer's choice but the designs are usually very interesting. I analyzed the wine label for "Strong Arms" and found upwards of ten references. Instead of doing a poster I chose to create wine charms to describe the references to graphic design history. Each reference was labeled with a letter that corresponded to one of the wine charms.

GDES History Presentation

This is my presentation for Graphic Design history. I was assigned Swiss Style and spent weeks researching the movement and preparing for this presentation. I chose to create my presentation in InDesign and then pdf it. This presentation was type-set in Helvetica and reflects Swiss Style in its strict grid structure and asymmetry. I also handed out gridded paper that allowed my classmates to design something Swiss-like during my presentation.
Swiss Style

Activity Booklet

For this project we were given all the text for a child's activity booklet about fair trade chocolate. The goal was to make it engaging while using only basic copy paper and a maximum of 2 spot colors.

Identity Series

For this project we were instructed to pick a movement and make a series of buttons and a poster for the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas. I chose to base my series on the days that the Blanton is open. The image for each button was created by making one larger piece based on the Dada movement and crop part of the image for each of the 6 buttons. Each button image includes a letter to represent each day of the week ("T" for Tuesday, ect.). I chose to make a collectible set with the buttons attaching to the poster. The idea is that a person could buy a poster and then collect and attach the buttons to complete the image.

Instructional Design: How to Make a Paper Airplane

For this project the goal was to create an innovative and graphically interesting solution to instructional design geared toward a specific audience. My project was based on how to make a paper airplane. The solution I reached for this project was a set of trading cards with instructions on how to make six different paper airplanes. I chose elementary age boys as my target audience and felt that trading cards were something a boy that age could easily carry and use. There are a total of 7 cards in the set (6 airplanes; 1 instruction card) as well as packaging.

Weather Report

The purpose of this assignment was to create a motion piece in After Effects that effectively displays the weather reports for 4 cities over one weekend. We were also required to portray these weather reports in 3 different typographical systems based on the concept of LATCH (location, alphabet, time, category, and hierarchy). I first organized my weather reports by location, then reorganized it by time. In the reorganization I chose to keep a pink color as the highlight. This pink not only emphasizes the days of the week in the second section, but also draws attention to the names being alphabetized in the third. The third section is based on the LATCH system of alphabetizing and the information reorganizes accordingly.

Kitchen of Meaning

This poster was created for a fictional design exhibition called the Kitchen of Meaning. We all picked a word from an assigned list and then had to create a poster that is performative of the word. We were required to include the name and information of the exhibition as well as the names of everyone in the class. The word I picked was metonymy. The definition of metonymy I worked from was; "the act of naming something by one of its attributes." I used images printed on velum to simulate the action of naming. I pulled one significant attribute from each person, vectorized it and printed it on the velum. I also labeled each section of type with one of its attributes. For example the section with the female names are labeled with "chicks" and "skirts."

Black Squares

This is a smaller motion project leading up to the larger motion project depicting weather reports. For this project we were to pick 3 words from a list and depict them using the motion of 4 black squares. My words (in order of appearance) were playful, tension and order.

Blue Squares

This is an exercise that we did in advance type as a way to practice basic motion skills in After Effects. This exercise was a basis for our larger motion project involving weather reports.

Cognitive Map

This is the last in the series of maps depicting my route to school. The cognitive map is based on the thoughts that normally occur during my trip to school. I chose to do a stream of consciousness like representation of type and image.

Interface

This project was created in conjunction with the critical mass postcards. The assignment was to create a web interface that helped to show off our postcards. They had to complement the them and communicate clearly the subject of the postcards as well as the forward and back buttons.

Perceptual Map

This is the second in a series of maps based on our trip to campus in the morning. The perceptual map is based on what I see, taste, hear, touch and smell from the time I wake up to the time I reach the classroom. I decided to break my morning down into 5 minute intervals and provided vector images of what was most prevalent to each sense during those 5 minutes.

Critical Mass

For this project we had to base our images around either one of the first ten amendments or one of the seven deadly sins. After researching further into these topics I chose to represent pride in my images. I chose this topic because I thought it would be a challenging and interesting topic. I narrowed my images down to attributes of pride. From top to bottom the postcards represent: superiority, humility, ego and vanity.

Artifact Map

This map is the first of a series of maps based on our trip to campus. The artifact map is a basic geological representation of my trip to school, starting on Crossing Place and ending at St. Edward's.