Candy Depew you are the rock star of the art world

Lecture 9 /21/2010

While I have a massive amount more respect for Candy Depew than I do for party going, jet setting, unproductive and talented rock stars, I would still argue that Candy lives the life. During this lecture she ooozed cool and the slides of her work more than backed up her general attitude. The nonchalance of sentences describing her travels, who she's worked with, and all-in-all her life would probably put her in Andy Warhol's factory had he still been alive. But, now that I think of it, they probably wouldn't roll in the same crew. She's a little more BA than Andy.

This lecture was by far one of the coolest and more inspiring. I want to go over seas and work with a bunch of really cool people and then come back and help other people do the same. I have complete respect for and wish more people practiced the apprenticeship program that Candy very strongly believes in. As artists, we sometimes need a support system, a tribe of people with elders and leaders who guide you to where you need to be and, in return, you guide others. The art / creative world can be a cold and lonely place. I wish there were more people like Candy.

i heart Helvetica

I'm a huge font nerd and like any other type of nerd - from comics books to rock bands - there's one that made you the nerd you are. And, like many other font lovers, mine is Helvetica. It is my hero, helvetica is my hero... wow. This documentary was the best thing to happen to my defense when asked why helvetica is so great. I especially enjoy the arguments posed by the non-helvetica loving interviewees because it allows you to question if helvetica is so popular because it's, well, popular, or if it changed the way people thought about the visual culture of text around them for the first time. More importantly, it confirmed that my childhood aspiration of becoming a typographer wasn't so strange. Some of the people interviewed in this documentary are my heros and I am not afraid to admit it. Hey, if it wasn't for them, then I probably wouldn't have discovered my love for design.

David Carson

David Carson is my new favorite man. Perhaps an idol.

Hide your kids, hide your wife

Photo creds

The internet is a very scary place.

It was not created for good and we, as a society, have been unable to contain its powers of evil. As it grows, it becomes better and better at masking its evil ways under the disguise of social networking, therefore taping into human vanity to distract us from what is truly happening.

And if it wasn’t bad enough that the internet is evil, corporate America has jumped on the bandwagon of social networking because they want to be your friend too!

When I found out about the Australian company that stole an innocent young lady’s snapshot off of the internet and used it for their ad campaign, I was simultaneously ashamed to be a graphic designer and ashamed to have been among the generation that made Facebook cool, therefore making it a target for advertising. We have created a monster, and unlike the BFG (that’s the Big Friendly Giant) the internet and the companies that target consumers through their human instinct to want to use the internet, have absolutely no moral compass!

This is not to say that the young lady who posted the picture on the internet in the first place is completely innocent. Nope. She probably did not read the fine print before pressing ok. If she had read the fine print she would have realized that by placing this picture on the internet, she has signed away her identity to any and everyone who wants it. I don’t mean identity in terms of social security and phone numbers, but, rather, identity in terms of what the internet has shaped the word to mean: the face value of a snapshot in which the user has carefully selected and constructed how they look and who they think this image makes them.

I blame the ad team. Since I can’t blame the internet (it’s just too big and powerful, there would be no point) and I can’t blame the young lady (power in numbers… if everyone’s doing it why should I assume that anything is going to happen to me?) Then the only one left to blame is the individual or groups of individuals who thought it was totally justifiable to exploit a) this young lady and b) the lawlessness of the internet to create an image of their brand that makes them young, hip and cool (because they’re internet savy). WHO LET THIS ONE FLY?

It’s unreasonable to assume that regulation of the internet and what takes place on it will every be able to tackle the small individual instances that occur daily. However, I believe that large corporations should be held to a different standard. A standard that prohibits internet identity theft.

Unfortunately, this day will not come until someone does something about the tangled web of laws that supposedly rule the internet.

Photoshop does not the designer make

Is anyone who has access and a reasonable understanding of Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator and ect, able to call themselves an artist or a designer? If these applications make digital production so universal and accessible, are we actively altering the role of a designer? I taught myself how to use Photoshop at a very young age. Through trial and error and free time (I don’t even know what that is anymore!) I provided myself with the tools to develop myself as a designer. However, being proficient in Photoshop does not make me a designer.

I believe this was the message this weeks lecture speaker was trying to express to a population of students like myself who have grown up playing around with and learning through experience the technologies that have and will continue to change our roles as artists and designers in the future. However, I believe it is a very important distinction that needs to be made and reinforced not only to ourselves but to the people who view our work with little understanding of the work that is put into developing our mental abilities to think like artists.

If you were to take my computer – and therefore my Adobe design sweet – away from me, could I still do the job I was hired to do?

The answer is and always will be YES!

This is because I think like a designer. I always have and I always will. My understanding of form, color, font, visual balance, and composition distinguish me from, say, an accountant. You can give that same accountant lessons on how to use Photoshop, but it would be equivalent to giving him a paintbrush and easel and asking him to paint a masterpiece. He cannot because that is not the way he developed his brain.

So while I believe that is truly amazing that I am able to pack up the entirety of my studio into my backpack and work from anywhere that I can find the internet, I still value the fact that it is my brain producing the ideas and my hand translating them digitally.

Photo creds:

The Laptop Pillow,
Brand: Pepsi Kick
Agency: BBDO Mexico
Executive Creative Director: Hector Fernandez
Creative Director: Antonio Alvarez/Ariel Soto
Art Director: EDGAR RIOS
Copywriter: Irene Preciado

island sanctuary: project preserve

How do you capture the beauty of nature in a single snap shot? Is it even possible? How do you market a 500-acre piece of paradise when its value cannot be measured in dollars? When one person sees the perfect location for a plot of houses and one person see one of the few remaining examples of the native environment, how do you make sure the land ends up in the proper hands?

With the help of a conservation easement, luckily the last question has been answered: no one can, nor will they ever, be able to ruin this plot of land with the carless construction seen throughout this country. Armed with a camera, boots, bug net, and patience I, along with my good friend and film major Lionel, set out for a weekend of attempting the impossible.

We were attempting to capture the beauty and demonstrate it to prospective buyers via a small and uncomplicated website. What we began to realize was that, not only is 500 acres an unbelievably huge amount of space to cover, capturing the beauty of nature is impossible. It is impossible because the most important message we were trying to convey was the emotion that being on such a beautiful piece of land creates in you. It’s not so much the color of the sunset (although they were unbelievable), or the wildlife you encounter, or the satisfaction of seeing that wildlife after sitting silently in a squatted position for what feels like forever… It’s the feeling of space. The feeling of being so far away from anyone else that you really feel like your in your own world.

As a city girl raised by a father whose job it is to protect such pieces of land, I often find myself feeling claustrophobic and almost unable to breathe. I was reaching one of these points around the time when we packed up to head off to this assignment. After stepping outside of the car, I quickly realized that sometimes all you need is to find a large, open field as far away from any sign of human life, and 15 minutes worth of silence to quickly counteract months of city living.