Revisions - that's about it

It's already Wednesday and my first blog since last week. Don't know about anyone else, but I'm knee-deep (if not deeper) in revisions — not only for this class, but for Typography as well. A frenetic and insightful week.

This semester...no, this class...if nothing else in life, really turned me out, tuned me in, challenged me beyond what I expected, almost to a tragic breaking point. New city, first semester in grad school, working in a new medium, telling new stories, even working in familiar mediums, but in new, imaginative ways: I swear I'm a new woman.

My sister, who has two Master's degree and months away from her Ph.D., who knows my perils so, so well, sent me an article (sort of Grad School Do's and Don'ts or Grad School Fears 101) that helped soothe me a bit.

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I see you bubbling all over the place -- you're yeasty, and I think it's grand!

More on storybooks

For years I have been trying to remember a book series that, as a young child, I was in love with. Deeply. I've never been able to recall the series name, but my sister and I would sit around and talk about how we loved those "Mr." and "Litte Miss" characters, crudely drawn and hilariously fun. I always said that I'd buy a huge stock of the books if I could ever get my hands on them. If the memory ever came back to me.

And now here I am, working with Nick in the background, and what pops up? The Mr. Men Show! Ah-ha!



I love the books mostly because of the cute illustrations, but also the stories, at least at that age, seemed well-constructed, highly entertaining, and the characters and their emotions and tribulations felt real. I felt annoyed that my faded memory prevented me from originally presenting this as my Show and Tell, but now I'm all smiles.

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I see you bubbling all over the place -- you're yeasty, and I think it's grand!

A smattering of thoughts about the flash movie

(Better title than "I don't have anything to write about and I'm blogging for time/date stamp sake.")

So, first things first...a part of why I haven't blogged in a few days is that I'm still a little stunned about my movie—disappointed I guess. My film wasn't unsuccessful, but it also got a chillier reception than I had anticipated. Wondering if I bit off more than I could chew.

I wanted to do something different, unique, but also something that speaks to my interests. Typography is my thing. So I figured: I had this great story with which I wanted to do more. I broke it out and did a lot of rework, mostly in that I wrote it as a story to read, not to watch. A point I make in the story (which I cover in the very last five seconds - or less - of the movie) is that text and other generic representations don't do justice in trying to understand the experience of HIV. I thought I'd really illustrate that point with a silent text movie.

But it is a movie?

I still don't know. Stephanie asked me in class why I had to have a text-heavy movie and my answer was "blah, blah, blah." Truthfully, I was a little annoyed to have to explain something to her that I had done previously that week. But truthfully, I don't need a text-heavy movie, but because I feel it supports my idea, it's a concept a hard to relinquish. I'd rather try to make it work than start from scratch. I was glad that, at least, my typography got good reviews from Allison. At least I didn't fail in that area.

I'm hoping the final draft will be more satisfying: in the sense of meeting the assignment and also satisfying an audience.

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I see you bubbling all over the place -- you're yeasty, and I think it's grand!

Designer DVD Series

Sucks that I can't remember the specific title, but I needed to devote a short entry to the film the class watched yesterday (please comment with the title if you remember). I enjoyed seeing the film and found it worth having to buy and eat a Subway sandwich for lunch.

The timeliness of the film struck me the most. I love how it was done and it gave me motivation, inspiration, and hope for my Flash project. Motion art, if you will. The Pentagram segment was done particularly well. I loved the voiceover coupled with the image of the designer just staring at the camera.

The other striking aspect of the film was that none of the designers looked like me. Plainly stated, none of them were black. In general, the graphic arts industry lacks a visible black presence, certainly validated in this program, which lacks black professors (to the program's defense, at least those who are featured on the program website — I don't know each faculty member, of course).



I know black artists exist in this country. I'm well read on the traditions and history of black art, from its inception in Africa to its migration and transformation in America. But why aren't they more prominent? This lack of presence makes me glad I'm in the field; hopefully I'll somehow, someday, rouse young black artists to come out of the shadows; maybe I'll be or do something to which they can aspire. However, the lack of presence disappoints me. While racial composition of the field wouldn't steer my choice to be a designer either way, it's just nice to see, to have a sense of camaraderie, to have a reason to not feel concerned if my bodies of work throughout the course of this program and in life seem ethnocentric, just for the sake of "why not."

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I see you bubbling all over the place -- you're yeasty, and I think it's grand!

The Lazy Designer

I have to stop being a lazy designer. I drafted the following three paragraphs before this one, and just as I was about to conclude the blog entry, I realized: damn, I don't think it's that I can't be a good self-editor (although to an extent, it is true)—I just need to stop being lazy. A lazy designer. That almost seems like an oxymoron. I mean, design is all about details. How can I expect to compete, innovate, and land that all important high-paying technical job without effective effort and energy? It's not like design doesn't rouse me, so I need to bury the laziness once and for all. And after all, I'm getting a Master's degree—this isn't the Art Institute and I'm not just going for a design certificate. It's all about hard work and push myself out of my comfort zone.

So back to the original starting point of this blog:

I love editing...that is, editing other people's work. I guess it's my critical, overanalytical, perceptive nature at play. Sometimes those qualities are bad, like when something doesn't go perfectly at work or in a relationship. Other times, it's for good, like reviewing and critiquing someone's work, whether it's writing or design—especially if it's writing or design. When the good times roll, I make a fierce "wordsmither," grammarian, and type expert. When the bad times roll, I can be hard on myself and others...

I've never been a good self-editor, though. I mean, I'm sure at some, or many, points of our careers, we've said to ourselves and to each other these buzz words: fresh eyes, a second pair of eyes, triple-check, and so on. I say those words ALL the time because, as nitpicky as I can be able other people's work, I can't always see my own stuff. And so what ends up happening is that I get frustrated with trying to correct my own work such that the editing process tends to feel like an afterthought—a quick thing I do before I hit print.

Words & Images, and particularly this classification assignment, challenges me to ressurrect, or construct, that self-editor. Granted, in the beginning of the course, I had to force myself into phase four. When editing feels like an obligatory afterthought, having to revisit and revise feels like torture. That's the "old" me. I realized an hour ago that I, willingly and without force, stayed up all Wednesday night to tweak my classification piece, despite being happy with my original draft, and continuing work as even my work e-mail notification harasses, taunts, and begs for attention. And now comparing the two drafts and I'm saying "WOW!" I get it now.


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I see you bubbling all over the place -- you're yeasty, and I think it's grand!