Blog Assignments and Such

Photo: Max Dupain
(I bought this photo recently and wanted to share it with you)

Blog Assignments:

Week One:
Select 5 pieces of your work from the 3000 courses (GrD3000/GrD3150/GrD3200) that you feel was responsible for your acceptance into the graphic design program.

Week Two:
Good and Bad Design. Show your favorite and least favorite Designs. It might be print, film, or mixed media. Give credit to the work.

Week Three:
Find a variety of contemporary trends in graphic design that you have an opinion about.
This might be video, print, multimedia and all faucets of visual communication that could even include stage design, exhibition design, costuming, photography.

Week Four:
Find any type of artistic work that truly inspires you as an artist. There are no limits here.Be specific. It might be work you aspire to or work you find confusing and yet appealing.

Week Five:
“Block of Type” is a project that should encourage further investigation of type in a very limited area. This project in the past has had many names such as “Type Detective” and “Font Hunt.” You are expected to document an area (or a city block) or area thereabouts which is rich with
Typography. Type that has been forgotten or has become part of the environment or is required for the benefit of society. Nothing is off limits in this exercise.

Week Six:
Personal Workspace. A visual of where you work when you leave the classroom. It might be a particular table in a coffee shop or in your room where you’re organized everything around you in order to be creative. It’s wherever you feel most comfortable designing. You should be able to talk about it in class.

Week Seven:
Books, Periodicals, Printed materials that have you have recently read or investigated. Find one moment in those materials which might have inspired you to create a fresh new design for yourself.

Week Eight:
Complete this sentence:
“Each week I feel as though I must check in at/with…….”
This again relates to what are your habits as a designer. It might be someone, someplace or something that keeps you coming back for encouragement or gives your renewed energy to continue creating.
Share those places you feel you must visit every week to stay in touch with art, design, business, etc.

Week Nine:
Day in the Life
Armed with still camera or video camera or even a tape recorder, I want you to document a day in your life that is centered around being creative (every day should be, right?) You can document your personal experiences during that day as it relates to whom you are and what you aspire to be. Length and content is up to you. Presentation to class.

Week Ten:
Archiving Images on Flickr:
Start a Flickr account (which is free) and start archiving images and work on this site suitable for future use in searching for a job or internship. Build weekly on this site and add additional photography and work each week. At the end of the semester we will examine the work together.

Week Eleven:
Best in T-Shirt Design:
Put up some of your favorite T-Shirt designs from your own collection or those you find on the web or in print that you would consider works of art. (your definition of that.)
You might even want to create some designs for yourself with a specific

Week Twelve:
The Graphic Imperative was a show recently at MODA here in Atlanta. It was a select retrospective of forty years of international sociopolitical posters. Themes include dissent, liberation, sexism, human rights, civil rights, environmental and health concerns, AIDS, war, literacy and tolerance, collectively providing a window to an age of great change.
Find your own series of posters that visually communicate an idea that is important which surrounds your life and lifestyle as a young designer and citizen of the world. Newsworthy. Then create one of your own.

Week Thirteen:
Compilation of your favorite Album artwork (CD) and why you love them.

Week Fourteen:
This is what I collect. Demonstrate items that you might collect.
It might be artwork (paintings/drawings) or other items that give you pleasure as a visual artist.
Collecting work and living around that work is important to creating a “creative nest” where you can draw inspiration.

Week Fifteen:
Write a poem and illustrate it or create a series of visual haikus.
-Haiku has been described as a moment in time captured in words that somehow captures more than the words might seem to convey. When the poet and the reader connect and the deeper meaning is seen, it is called an "aha" moment. That moment is what the haiku poet is always trying to find.

A haiku is not a poem, it is not literature; it is a hand beckoning, a door half-opened, a mirror wiped clean. It is a way of returning to nature, to our moon nature, our cherry blossom nature, our falling leaf nature, in short, to our Buddha nature. It is a way in which the cold winter rain, the swallows of evening, even the very day in its hotness, and the length of the night, become truly alive, share in our humanity, speak their own silent and expressive lanugage. --R.H.Blyth~ Haiku, Volume One


Week Sixteen:
Vision Quest:
Dreams and how they affect you as an artist. Write down your dreams and create illustrations or drawings from those as a collection for one week.