We Feel Fine

This is wicked:

www.wefeelfine.org

Laurie showed this to us in class today. It's a website that generates blogs that contain the fragment "I feel" or "I am feeling" and takes a census of their location, city, emotion, etc, and organizes them under different categories. It organizes them in representation of graphs, colored dots, mounds, weather and the list goes on. Play around with it. Discover all the links. It is one of the most graphic, interactive art pieces I've ever come across. It's more than just how cool and mind boggling the technology it requires to create the piece, but it's about what the artist is trying to convey.

I am in some shape, way, feeling or form, connected to someone on the planet Earth. I have never met this person and I probably never will. I think about how everybody walks around in their every day life, masks on, putting a front, afraid to share their truest feelings. Yet we share them anyway. To an unknown or known audience in the cyber world. We are not necessarily aware that those feelings are being generated, collectively, to unite people. We are all human. We all share that in common. We all experience every possible feeling a human can feel at least once in our life. Why are we afraid to just be ourselves? Especially when everyone is the same?

Yes, every one is unique. Yes, people are all different. We are only different on varying degrees. The make up of who we are as a species is exactly the same.

We are all connected. We all can relate. We all can find common ground.

Knowing this alone, makes me feel the extreme of my humanness. It makes me feel connected to myself, and the world.

SO Wicked.

Aw, C.R.A.P

An ironic acronym to describe four main principles for design. Contrast. Repetition. Alignment. And of course, Proximity.

Need a little more clarity as to what I'm talking about?

Check this out:

Which one is this, you ask?

Yep, you guessed it. CONTRAST. Nothing contrasts more than black and white. I love the equal usage of black and white on both the upper and lower parts of the poster. It's classic. Anything looks good in these two shades.

Next:

This one is really interesting. I love it! For one thing, it embodies the CONTRAST principle as well as this other principle I have in mind. Just take note of the harsh black and popping green placed with each other. Now, the other principle I had in mind was REPETITION. We see this from the use of the little bird silhouette, the fonts and the use of the same colors. Keeping things consistent like this makes for a great flyer.

Alrighty. Let's open up door number three!

This poster best represents ALIGNMENT. The text in this picture is in the upper left corner, and the rest of the space that's creating shape around the text are all eye catching horizontal colored rectangles. It's pretty. It's different.

Lastly.

This one is showcases PROXIMITY. By this, I mean, items on the project that are grouped together. Here, you can see that the majority of the text is organized onto the left side of this poster. The drawings are situated mainly on the middle and center of the poster.

Technically, all these posters represent more than one of each principle in the C.R.A.P. design principles. I think that's what makes for a really nice piece.

I think these principles are great for a guideline as to what is considered to look esthetically pleasing. I don't believe there are really any shortcomings to having such a guide. I mean, we could look at it like anything that didn't embody one of these key elements, would be considered ugly. That's not true. "Ugly" and "Beautiful" is a way of perceiving things that has been coined by society. They set the standard of what that looks like. So very easily, we can reset that standard. All of a sudden, something that doesn't fit under the C.R.A.P. mould, could be considered incredible in terms of design.

Some really good things to think about and be inspired by when it comes to creating my poster. Word.

I've spoken my piece.

Peace.

Look, Ma!

The beginnings of my Photoshop savvy-ness. Sell that for a dollar each and I can pay my way through school soon enough. Lol. Enjoy!

So we're not just talkin' Photoshop?

Prior to the first Digital Media lecture of the semester, my impression of what that was did not surpass printed advertisements or web graphics. Living in this day and age where our culture consists of various forms of technology, I didn't realize how integral digital media's role is to our society. Everything from graphics on my T-shirt to animations on a commercial for yogurt -- we live in an era where we no longer need to do things manually by hand.

Learning this gave me a greater respect for the evolution of technology, much more, a deeper fascination for the human capabilities to develop such advancements.

I'm actually really excited that I'll be learning more about this, especially going into the radio and television industry, because digital media plays such a big role in both. I mean, I only know this right now from a very, very surface level. I'm a video artist. I can film, edit and produce something that is visually, mentally and emotionally pleasing. Something as little as typography, graphics and animation are things that are incorporated to enhance my videos. Unfortunately for me, it has never been my strong suit, that is, being "techie-savvy" with programs such as Photoshop and etc. Fortunately, this class is designed for digital media dummies like myself. I want to soak up and apply as much as I can with all the new programs we'll be learning to use in the near future.

With that being said, man, I can't wait to tap those brand new imacs. It's like a 24 hour booty call that I have access to.

I've spoken my piece.

Peace.