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Friday, August 1, 2003

CDF Week Five Wrap-Up

Hard to believe there is just one more week of class left before summer session is over...

This last week has been fun and an interesting juxtaposition with the previous weeks. The main message of the first four weeks was all about being careful and making deliberate, design-oriented choices. This week's message has been about allowing in the random, the unplanned, the accident.

We spent today applying images to our sketches, black and white via cut up, photocopied photos or in color, via the slide projector. It's amazing I didn't slice the tip of my finger off with my xacto knife. We took photos and I'll try to get them off the server soon and post them.

Next week is information design and I might teach a mini-software-bootcamp session on Dreamweaver and basic HTML. Also next week is when we'll be assembling our Process Books, which collect and make sense of the work we've done over the course of the class. It's what our grade is basically based upon.

Wednesday, July 30, 2003

Planar Construction

We spent today's class making small sculptures ("sketches") out of foamcore and paper rectangles, the dimensions of which were based on the measurements we took of our bodies back on Monday, scaled down to 1/4 size. It's all about how planes relate to each other in space. Not surprisingly, there were a lot of Fallingwater-influenced designs, and quite a few that looked like Frank Gehry leftovers.

It's strange to think of 3D shapes as sketches, able to be changed easily. It was equally strange not to sketch out on paper these sculptures, but just relax and train your mind to move freely about the space. The next step is adding a black-and-white image to the planes of the sculpture. I'll post pictures tomorrow.

Reading: We're also reading Elements of Design, which is a collection of the thoughts and processes of Rowena Reed Kostellow, an influential and innovative design educator.