Playing with Negativity and etc.
Hello everyone,
Posting from Asheville, North Carolina this weekend on the account of my cousin’s wedding. The weather and food are better here. During my weekend I ended up seeing a couple things that reminded me of some of the other projects going on.
As you can imagine, there isn’t a whole lot between towns. I saw these cows and turned them into a postcard for fun and it reminded me of something Rick is doing with Hampton Beach. My advice for you Mr. DeCosta is to use as much sarcasm as possible when working, humor is invaluable.
I saw this at Logan Airport and I thought of Ariel’s project with beer labels. Granted, it has nothing to do with actually making beer but the design for the beer doesn’t always have to be limited to the bottle. It might be something interesting to think about, how your design could be applied elsewhere.
Moving along. Although we discussed on building a vocabulary of thought in class for this project, I thought I would start working in familiar territory.
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Negative thoughts stand out and they stick with you, playing over and over again in your head. I know people who say the only way to make any productive use of negative emotion is to take that energy and turn it into something positive.
Before I had fun with the above images, I had made these lovely little frames to play and arrange as I saw fit. Started with 6 options but witted it down to 5. It’s a different approach to the same idea, only with less emphasis on building.
It’s a start, I need to work more on building a vocabulary rather than just building and that requires more exploration. It might be best to stay away from text and work with abstract imagery to begin “defining emotion.”
4 Responses to “Playing with Negativity and etc.”
John
10/24/2010
Emblems come to mind, their three parts — motto, picture, epigram. The components are akin to molecules, that can be linked to form a compound/thought/proposal.
Can work in a couple of ways: (1) The is missing, and suggests that the sender wishes the recipient were present. (2) Wish is an imperative: You (the recipient) should/please wish that you were here, possibly suggesting
The colors (and perhaps the frames and thin horizontal rules) of the sticker-like sayings give them a political tone; maybe it’s the blue, similar to the Obama campaign blue. These and other motto-like sayings might be attached to just about anything: emblematizing on the fly.
Lindsey
10/24/2010
Jordan,
I absolutely. love. this study. Your use of irony is one thing I constantly applaud you for. For example, your Sugar Busters book in Bookbinding was simple but perfect. You really know how to deliver a punch line without making it overpowering.
I love the direction of this. The Cheer Up exercise, I mean. I agree about the tone that the frames convey, but I don’t read political really, and I’m glad I don’t. To me, it just seems more professional, sort of like, these thoughts are absolute fact. Not to be questioned.
Bill Hanscom
10/24/2010
Wish you were here: I think this is pretty funny, and it doesn’t necessary read to me with as much of a positive spin as John implies. It seems to have the opposite intent than the traditional “sunny beach” wish you were here postcard. I could see pushing it with even more mundane (no offense North Carolina) places or even downright horrible places. They could be almost a punishment more than a compliment. “Wish you were here” with a picture of East St. Louis or Detroit or something…
Cheer Up: It definitely has a board game feel which is a nice twist since those sort of games tend to be lighter. There is an interesting seed there. I think that there should be more, not just 5. A couple dozen perhaps. I feel like there would be a bit more pay off when you get up close to the “Cheer Up” if it wasn’t the same 5 boxes repeated. This brings to mind Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies cards, but with a more melancholy twist which to me makes it funnier. What application do you see for these? A number of possibilities spring to mind.
Layout/Typography-wise: I find the dots/bullets a bit distracting, especially on “I am a talentless hack.”
Jordan
10/24/2010
It’s funny you should mention Detroit, I’m actually going to be stuck there for three hours waiting for a flight. Also, I was also thinking about using more than just five negative thoughts for cheer up, but I felt if there were too many of them then I would run into some issues along the lines of things getting cluttered. I’ll look into playing with more blocks.
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