Sunday, November 28, 2010

Some process work

Our final project in Type III is to pick a proverb, and basically do anything with it. They pushed us towards video, since that's what they've been teaching us lately, but we could really take it this project in any direction we saw fit. I did try to work with video. These some of my results.

The proverb I chose was as follows:

(long version)
"A drop of honey attracts more flies than a hog's head of vinegar."

...which basically means, "Honey (which is sweet) attracts more insects than vinegar."

I sought to create physical type inspired by Stefan Sagmeister.

This was probably the 3rd video of vinegar (and baking soda) that I shot:


My teacher didn't like that the vinegar was splashing sporadically onto the scene, and he wanted to be able to read the "vinegar" from the very beginning, all the way through.

So I reshot several times, and eventually started playing with washable marker to get a bleeding effect:



This was the best result I got with the ants and honey part of the proverb.
I've done this about 5 times. I wanted to address some issues, one of them being that the video is in still frame animation, and I wanted it in video.  When I went back to reshoot I wasn't able to find any ants. I did some research, and found that ants go into hibernation in the winter.  Due to this setback, I've had to rethink my concept. I have an idea, and will post that when I'm finished.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Lots of STUFF

I realize that I don't use this blog a lot anymore. The truth is that tumblr is much easier to use and I get a lot more out of it, from other people.  Regardless, I'm gonna catch up on this one, and just post a bunch of stuff that I have been working on recently.

From Typography III

This is a logo I created, based on two randomly assigned initials.  The assignment was to take the two letters, make up a clothing company, and a logotype to go with it, and then use it as a pattern to create a wallpaper for the store.

The store I created was called "Jr." and is a clothing company in Upper east side Manhattan that sells private school uniforms on one side, and casual wear on the other side of the store. One-stop shopping. The target market is boys in grades k-6.  For my concept, I created two wallpapers: one for the casual side of the store (left), and one for the uniform side (right).
 

There's one project I haven't received back yet, and I haven't documented it. It involved hand-lettering.

The next project was a kinetic type video. We had to choose a song, and animate the lyrics in flash. The best way to view it is at www.adammendala.com/indestructible

In Form & Communication III,

One project was to "package the intangible".

The initial concept I was working on was packaging "The Next Big Thing", i.e. big ideas like The Internet, Beanie Babies, Pokemon, Facebook, etc...but as a package containing the next big thing, whatever it may be. This is as far as I got before I decided that I just didn't know what to do with it:

While I was working on this, my friend Amy came into the studio, and said "isn't weird how oranges have such big pores?". This sparked an idea in my head, because it reminded me of an annoying girl complaining about her look or something. I decided to illustrate several fruit complaining about their bodies:

This was originally just a personal project, but then I realized I could make it work for my packaging project, by packaging "insecurity".  I developed them into juice boxes that contain 0% of certain vitamins/chemicals that are usually present in these juices. The absence of them affects your mood/self esteem negatively.




The next project was Book Covers. We were to pick an author who has done at least 3 novels/books, and then create a cover for each one.  I chose Margaret Atwood, who I like and have read 3 of her novels. I would like to print these out and photograph them actually covering the books, but here are the digital files. All of the photography is my own.





As a personal project and a favor for a friend, I redesigned the website for Students for the Environment at UD. I also modified a project in my Interactive Media class to use this for that class as well.

It will hopefully go live by the end of this year.

The project after book covers in F&C III was a social cause poster. I decided to keep the ball rolling with S4E and use them for my social cause. They were working on an oil spill fundraiser at the time, so I used that as a starting point. I referenced 60s Psychadelic type posters. The concept is the oil dirtying the pristine environment.  I screen-printed an edition of 25 and I'm selling them for $10 each with all of the proceeds going to The Solar Electric Light Fund to sustainably rebuild Haiti. I spent $70 of my own money on paper for this, and put a lot of hours into it, so I hope they all sell. So far it's going very well and I expect to be sold out by years end.

More photos and info can be found at www.adammendala.com

Another screen-print I did (I'm taking a screen-printing class) was this little guy. 
I was just brainstorming in class.

That pretty much catches you up with what I've been up to this semester that I hadn't previously posted.