Thoughts on Class Session May 25th

Today, the class was talking amongst one another while the professor was chatting with one of the students in class. I was talking with one classmate about what classes we were going to take in the Fall quarter and we both noticed that we have to take Art 308 so we were both excited about that. Its nice to take classes with people you get along with and can hang out. Then the professor wrote on the board the last few days of class and told us the breakdown of what time we had left in the class. Since its a holiday on monday, there is no class which leaves June 1st which is the last day of regular class and then our final during the following week. He took the next 10 minutes to talk about our final project and told us how important it is to finish it within a timely manner so that if any problems arise, we will have time to fix it. Then the professor asked us what we wanted to do since the class is ahead of schedule according to the calendar. He then told us we could spend time on our projects but we didn't have to be in the class to do it, so half the class left and I stuck around with Candy for a while.

Its kind of weird that its pretty much the end of the 9th week for me, minus tomorrow since I have one class, but its hard to say whether the quarter went really fast or it went really slow. I am glad though that its almost over. See everyone in a week from now. Don't come to school Monday! Haha.

Thoughts on Class Session May 23rd

The class started with the professor letting us know that he noticed we were extra talkative today than usual. I think it could be a mix of knowing we have two weeks left of the quarter as well as feeling good about the day or something. Then the professor had us move the tables back and sit in a large circle. He then had a block in his hand and had us play a game. The game was much like Telephone but on crack. So, the professor started off and turned to one of the female classmates sitting next to him and said this is a what. Then she had to say A what?. Then the professor stated A What. Then she said Oh a what. Then she turned to the girl next to her and started the whole process again, but then it made its way back to the professor who then reassured the question that it was a what and so on. To be honest, I couldn't get into the rhythm of the game, only because I couldn't tell what statement came up next. When the turn got to me, Hector said this is a what. I then blanked out and didn't have an answer. Some of the class laughed as I did too. I remember telling Margarita and Hector who were sitting next to me that I was sure I was going to mess up and I did. Haha. Finally after several tries and other hiccups by other classmates, we managed to make it all the way around the circle and ended with the professor who started it. It was a great accomplishment. Then, the professor had another challenge for us and he added a second object to the game which was a type of keychain and that was labeled as who. So it was the same premise as the what, but this time both the what and the who would be going through the circle at different parts and the climax would be when both objects met at the same point in the circle. Boy, was it tough. I believe we went through 4 rounds before the professor ended it and we had to move on. It was a really challenging game to play but it was very amusing and enjoyable. If ever I am at a family function, I am going to suggest a game like this for sure.

After the game, we watched a lengthy video on a talk by Sir Ken Robertson. It was very interesting and way more informative than the actual lecture I went to featuring John Coy. In the video, Robertson talked about how the education system in the U.S. is today and how it relates to people. I think it was very interesting, and I have to agree that with so many people obtaining degrees now than in the past, they are going to depreciate in value if not already. So then, it makes you think, if a bachelor's degree is equivalent to a high school diploma 10 years ago, does this mean we are going to need a masters degree to one up the competition? It is bound to happen. If everyone has bachelor degrees, then the next way to weed out potential candidates is to choose those with a masters degree. I am so thankful I am not kid going through elementary right now, they are going to be in for a rough ride as will all of those that aren't in college now. But there is some hope to all this madness. Robertson said the three most important things to have other than a degree is the ability to work well with others, to have great communication skills, and to think differently than others. So as long as you have these three things, you should be good to go... Hopefully. 

2 more class meetings then the final! Woo! :) 

Stage 7: Production Reading Response

The final chapter in the book and quite possibly the most important one is Production. First off let me just say that there was an image in the chapter of a man throwing a fish into a pile of other dead fish and my heart broke. I hate things like that.  Anyway... So, in this final chapter the author wants the the readers to understand that although the design itself it complete, that in the production stage, the work has really just begun. This is the stage where both you as the designer and the production team need to work together in every sense of the word. If the production team doesn't understand something about your design or an issue arises, you have to be available to assist in anyway possible. I assumed this would be the case, and i couldn't imagine myself just running off to go on a vacation like the author states might happen.

The book then goes into prototyping where it lists three different types; concept, throwaway, and evolutionary. Testing is crucial and the last stage during production that allows the designers and production team to see what works best with the design such as fabrics or materials. Its also a good way to test the functional aspects of the design and see how it fits into real world scenarios. I think this is a very crucial aspect to production because testing is important to find weak points in the design itself.

Other important areas of concern when in the production stage is for designers to understand their budget limitations as well as scheduling everything in a timely manner in regards to the design production. Even decisions on materials need to be made. I think reading about these aspects really made me understand how important every last bit of detail is since the production stage is the most important.

The very last bit of advice the author gives is at the end of the reading where he explains the entire process of design one last time. He talks about how designing a new project can be difficult and that it is part of a learning experience for yourself as a designer. I agree, I have no experience with professional designing yet but I am sure that the more i am working in the field, the more experience I will have and be able to use that experience to my advantage when working on similar projects.

Thoughts on Class Session May 18th

On Wednesday, after class started, we all sat in our seats and waited for the professor to start class. He was siting in the back and asked us what we wanted to do. Then he said that he heard about math on the radio in the morning and wrote down 1, 10, 11, 100 on the board and asked us what the next number was in the sequence. After examining it myself, I came to the conclusion that it was 110. Since all the ones that appear in the order are in front of the zero. Then the professor asked us if we wanted to do two or three groups and he decided we do two groups, one group consisting of males and one consisting of females. I wasn't happy about this, but once we got into groups, we started figuring out what the next number was. After about 10 minutes, the professor came back and asked if we were done. Then Astrid went up for the females and explained their thought process and reasonings for picking their number which I believe was 111. Then one of the guys went up to explain our answer and did a terrible job at it. Even I was lost. I thought it was so funny because he was one of the people in the group who was putting so much effort into finding and explaining his answer and yet couldn't explain it to the class. Like the professor said though, it was a language issue. Part of being a designer is knowing how to write and speak. Then the professor had him sit down and had another male student go up and explain our answer. He did a better job but the professor still wasn't convinced, and so Gilbert went up and explained it which I understood the best. Then the professor gave a lecture on how important communication is when it comes to working with clients.

After this, the professor had us sit in a large rectangle and he talked about the John Coy event and asked us our thoughts on it and had each of us share one thing that we took away from the experience. When it was my turn, I mentioned how John Coy said that there is no competition in the working world and that we all will find our own unique spot in the designer world. I thought this was interesting because I always thought that life in general is all about competition but since he is the professional designer with years of experience, I have to believe in what he said that night at the speaker event.

The last part of class, the professor asked us if we had any questions about our final project and told us to start on it, if we haven't already, since we are nearing the finals period of the quarter. I have some ideas for sure and thankfully I have some experience with After Effects so that will help me with my final project.

Thoughts on Class Session May 16th

On Monday I walked in and took my seat and noticed that the computer and projector were also in the room which meant that we were going to watch the movie that the professor had told us about the week before. After we all situated ourselves to the front of the classroom, the professor played a film titled Dreams, by Akira Kurosawa. It turned out to be a collection of 8 dreams. The first one was titled Sunshine Through the Rain, which was very interesting, and wondered to myself what caused this person to dream of something like this. I was wondering to myself, what would my dreams look like if they were made into short films and I got a sense of that as I was watching this movie. The dream that was my favorite was titled The Weeping Demon. I related to this dream the most because most of my dreams consist of a demon or creepy creature. The Weeping Demon was pretty scary at the end when night fell and the creature's demonic voice came out and it scared the man away. It reminded me of my dreams. 

Other dreams in the film included The Peach Orchard, The Blizzard, The Tunnel, Crows, Mount Fuji in Red, and the Village of the Watermill. They were all interesting and all had some type of special metaphor or meaning to them. I really enjoyed the film and would see it again with family and friends. The fact that it was two hours was crazy because it didn't feel like it when the class was watching it. 

After the we viewed the film, the professor talked to us about our homework which was to dream about our final project. We had to lay in bed and right before we dosed off, we had to think about our final project and how we were going to put it together that way when we fell asleep, we would dream about it. 

Stage 6: Communication Reading Response

This stage of the book is one of the more realistic portions that was enjoyable to read. It started off with the three phases of communication which were encoding, message itself, and decoding. I took the encoding to mean the way in which a project is presented to a group of people, while the message itself was the actual project at hand. I believed encoding was the way in which the audience absorbs all the information necessary to understand the project. The type of audience that is concerned with a presentation is a very crucial part for successful communication. The client, corporations, manufacturing, and associates are the most important ones. I took it that associates, or co workers would be the easiest to communicate with since they are most like your peers and the clients would be the hardest to communicate with. That is because of the type of relationship at hand which can be extremely formal and seen as a client vs. designer scenario in most cases.

In regards to the informative part of a presentation, there are four types of information which are statement, concept, detail, and planning. The way I took this was that the statement occurs when one is presenting the beginnings of a new project, whereas the concept of a project may have taken shape in addition to just a statement. The detail is when a project has already become or will become a physical project rather than just being on paper and the planning is the information of how the project will move forward for the final design stage.

The different types of illustration techniques to use in a presentation was also quite interesting. Every kind of medium from markers and color pencil to pens and inks are listed and described accordingly. I have used all of these and it really helped when reading what the pros and cons were for each type of medium. Also, Photoshop and boards were mentioned, with boards having become like second nature for me as a design student. PowerPoint is also something that I am familiar with and I actually enjoy putting presentations together through it.

Even with visual aids and an amazing project at hand, a designer still has to be ready in all aspects possible. The last part of the reading talks about how a designer can prepare for a presentation. These tips include having a motivation, having direction and knowing exactly what to say and when to say it. I really liked this part because it was much like a pep talk right before a very important event. I understood what the author was saying for these various points and I got a sense that he wants all designers to be the best they can be.

GAUGE Presents John Coy Speaker Event

The day started with me waking up at 6am for my 8am class which is Art 181. And ended at 11pm in my bed. Yeah, I know, but let me remind, so after my morning class, I realized that I had 8 hours until the GUAGE event, so I decided to go home and take a nap since I haven't had proper sleep for the last 7 weeks. If I stayed on campus I would have just been napping in the library anyway. Then, around 2pm, I headed back to school and took my laptop with me to work on my projects and other homework. Finally, at around 6:30, I headed to the Music Hall and went inside where John Coy and the president of GUAGE were talking. She told me I had to wait outside until the event started. Thats when I ran into Candy and she informed me that the event was going to be about two to three hours. I thought it was going to be about an hour at most, so we both got the idea to go get a bite to eat since we hadn't eaten in a long time. We came back and there were some people gathered in the waiting area of the hall. After signing in, I was chatting with a lot of my classmates and we were all exchanging laughs. The waiting room was SO freaking hot though and we weren't being allowed inside the theatre due to technical difficulties. I thought, wouldn't all of this be worked out way in advance? Finally around close to 8pm, we were allowed inside to take our seats. I sat next to Sandy, Cheryl, and Candy. 

My first impression of John Coy was that he was going to be a elderly man who was going to literally tell us the code to design, but I was wrong. It was more of a pep talk based on experience and a bunch of slides  showcasing his work as a designer. In the beginning, he asked the audience for questions but I noticed that the questions always related to working as a designer after Cal State LA. The technical issue by the way was that his powerpoint presentation wasn't loading properly to be viewed. There was one thing in particular that John said and that was although we think its all about being competitive in our field, that we have to find what makes each one of us unique and special and go with that. He said that using that to our advantage and looking for the right opportunity will help us in the future in regards to work. John talked a lot of his unique experiences including how he never was fond of the computer at first but then grew to love it for everything one can do on it. I have to agree with him here, knowing that in the beginning, I never liked using computers but then came to like them over time. He was really talking based on experience which makes sense being that he has been a designer for some time now. Its interesting because the first slide he showed was the logo for WaMu which I became familiar with years ago and to know that he designed that added to the wow factor for sure. 

Overall, it was an interesting event to attend and it was nice hearing from an actual professional designer who gave lots of advice. Im glad that the slide show worked too because it was helpful to see just how broad design can be, its not just constricted to an image printed from a computer but can be three dimensional or something you can hold in your hands. The slides were a nice addition to the presentation.  I think he mentioned something about being born before the television but I don't remember. Will definitely attend the next speaker event next quarter. 

Thoughts on Class Session May 11th

I sat in my chair and talked with fellow classmates and noticed that almost everyone was in the class but no professor. Usually the professor is in the class 5 minutes before it starts. One of my classmates joked around with me telling me that she got an email saying that the professor wasn't coming in, and I believed her but then realized it was just a joke. So, once the class filled up, 8AM rolled around and the professor was nowhere to be found. I usually bring a water bottle with me to school but I didn't have one with me and I was extremely thirsty, so I ran down to get one from the student store. And since I didn't have cash on me, I couldn't use the vending machine. When I came back, I heard people talking in the class and when I went in, one of my classmates told me that the professor wasn't coming and that we were discussing the final project. Dustin was standing in the front of the classroom and was writing things down that the class agreed upon for the dynamics of the project. This included the length of time which was between 3 and 5 minutes.

After the class finished discussing the final project which was about 30 minutes or so, we all turned in our creative brief homework and one of my classmates reminded us about the speaker event at 7pm for the next day. I have to say that although the professor wasn't there, the class did a great job at working together on the final project.

Thoughts on Class Session May 9th

When class started the professor told us he was going to lecture for a while and asked us if we were comfortable where we were all sitting. We said yes but then he asked us if we had organized ourselves yet by height. Since we hadn't done that, the professor asked us to sit according to our height with the shortest people in the front and the tallest in the back. We all got up and knowing that I am really tall, I moved toward the back and noticed that I actually didn't have to look down at people since everyone else in the back was closer to my height. After we all figured out the order, we took our seats. It turns out that I am the second tallest person in the class. But just by a hair. *Pun intended*. Haha. It was pretty close but Nathan ended up being the tallest person in the class. The professor than asked us if we were confident that we were in order, and I thought we were but then he made each row stand up and it was a close call for several people that were not in the right order. I think the most difficult row was the middle row, since everyone in that row was the closest in height than the front and back row. For being purely based on height though, this task took the longest than the previous ones we have done in class. It was interesting though, and I also noticed that the front row was female only and the back row was almost males only with the exception of Lauren.

After this activity, the professor went over several creative briefs that were created by actual companies and firms. They obviously sounded very professional as the professor was reading them aloud, compared to the ones we were asked to do for homework. Prior to our homework assignment, I had never written one before in my life so it was nice to hear the professor read ones that actually were written by the pros. There was one in particular that the professor was reading to the class that was about the Winchester Mystery House. As he was reading the brief, it reminded me of the episode of Ghost Adventures on the Travel Channel. I remembered thinking how crazy the woman of the house was for living there but she had her reasons. 

Toward the end of class, the professor asked us what the creative brief of our final project would be. Since we didn't have all the answers for him, he assigned us homework which is to do a creative brief for our final due on Wednesday. 


P.S. I have no clue why the font size decided to go crazy toward the end, tried fixing it... 

Stage 5 Definition/Modeling Reading Response

The 5th stage in the book was a very informative reading. Within this stage of design, it is crucial for designers to understand the idea of what your design is all about and how it will handle in the real world. The book explained this idea of a hierarchy system when planning out the needs of any design. The most important step was functionality. Everything that has been designed into the world was not created equal. It seems that something may look like it functions on the outside, but the interior can tell a whole other story. I have come across lots of things that didn't function like they were supposed to and that is something that the book explains right away which is important for us beginning designers.

Reliability was the next step in the needs of a design. So maybe something works right but can't depend on it for very long. I thought of a motor vehicle in this sense. No, I don't have any bad experiences with cars but you always hear those stories about cars that aren't reliable or last very long before they start giving you problems. The next step was Usability, I thought up of many things that I have come in contact with that were not easy to use. it seems many designers simply ignored it. For example, I remember going to a relatives house and I was going to use their microwave. Well, the microwave itself looked like one should, but it was not an easy one to use like a person would expect it to. I remember going through the various buttons, all of which were labeled with strange symbols and numbers that didnt mean seconds or minutes. I was like, wow, how about just getting a start button and going from there? Once i figured it out, the next thing was the microwave door wouldnt open until the timer ended. So the poor frozen pizza literally melted right before my eyes. It was a mess for sure...

Proficiency was the next step and this one was a very interesting step to read. A design that can actually improve the users lives whether its in learning ability or experiences. Computers, smart phones, software,  video games, all of these things have improved the minds of the users in some way. It was also inspirational to read the example the book had which was on a OLPC laptop which is being used all around the world for an economically affordable price and and is environmentally efficient since it is meant for non industrialized areas of the world. Finally, Creativity is the last step but one of the most crucial. In this step is where innovation of the design and how it changes the world comes into place. Whether its a technique or new skill that the designers learned during the process, this can be applied to the design and things like efficiency take place.

In terms of modeling, there was some simple guides given to insure great modeling techniques. I liked how the book explained that modeling doesn't have to mean this huge project within a project type attitude. Modeling can be as simple as a detailed sketch that shows the basic physical idea of the design. I assume that when I hear or see this word that it means a lot of work. Scale was also explained and its important to know that accuracy of scale is important for both the client and yourself in understanding the size and dimensions. Time management was also touched upon and the author made it very clear to not spend so much time with modeling that it takes away from the overall design. Modeling is something that can be updated and edited, it doesn't have to be one final piece of work before your actual design is produced. I think this stage actually made more sense to me than the previous one. Defining things and what purpose these things have in real world situations is what Im all about and if there isn't clarity, I find myself struggling real quick, so it was nice to read this part of the book.

Thoughts on Class Session May 4th

When the class meeting started, the professor asked us all to put our homework projects on the board. After we put them up, he went through asking us which ones were most successful and least successful. Since no one answered, he asked us to get up from our seats and to take a closer look at them. We all looked at them, and then the professor went through each one and told us what was bad about them. There was one that had tape to hold the images on the board, there were some projects with the edge of the papers coming up from the board or images that were slightly off center. Some projects didn't even have names on them and most of the boards had a sticker on the back which had the barcode and the professor said that we need to remove that for future projects. While I know now to remove it before I turn something in, I would have never thought to do something like that. The one person who had everything the professor liked was considered visually "very boring". I think the assignment was actually meant to be a critique on the quality of work rather than about the actual game idea itself. I was confused by this since I was preparing a speech on how my game would work and how to play it, but its ok.

The professor then went through several of the projects, and one at a time, my classmates went up to the front of the class and explained what their game was all about. We were also told to observe those that went up and to watch their body language and how they presented their game to the class. While doing this activity, I was suddenly sucked into a past experience of a speech class I took and forgot I was in a concept development class. This evaluation of how each classmate presented, eliminated the actual presentation of the game idea for me and I solely concentrated on the way they presented. Therefore, it was not even about the game ideas for me, but making sure I studied the body language of the various presentations. Very interesting. After each person presented their game, the professor asked us what we took away from the presentation and how we perceived that person. If I was up there to be judged, I would have felt very uncomfortable. I give props to everyone that went up. My absolute favorite part for sure was the discussion of assuming every person that crosses their hands are closed off to those around them. I had my arms crossed in the beginning when we were all standing because that's how I stand comfortably for a lengthy period of time. I for one am in no way a closed off type of person. Haha. So far from the truth. In my own experiences, more often than not it has to do with those that are not comfortable enough to be around or near me. And thats with people that I don't associate with on a daily basis. Any of my friends, family, co workers would be the first to tell you how enjoyable I am to be with.

After the presentations and a lengthy time spent on discussing professionalism and presentations, we went back to our seats and watched a short video on Youtube titled Power of Ten. It was an interesting video, and while watching it made me think I was in a physics or math class. After watching it, the professor told us that our homework is to come up with two creative briefs, one which will be for a game, and one for the video. These two briefs are due on Monday. Hope everyone has a good weekend, catch you on Monday if I don't see you before then.