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When one encounters with “whoa” in creation of any kind, he or she just experienced lightness of design.
The lightness is accomplished by designers who carry the attitude which demands to create awes in any given project. Any creative piece that adheres intellectually is the one contains the lightness. Not only is the piece carefully processed with deep consideration, also often it is playful or humorous. Lightness is indeed an experience all designers of twenty-first century should aim to create.
Design a work lightly is not an easy task to accomplish. Periodically, a designer is required to arrive at his or her discomfort zone to create. Such is no simple job either. However, only then the very same composition results in lightness. Thus, when a creative manages to continuously woe his or her audiences, one is considered successful.
Kashiwa Sato, one of top contemporary Japanese graphic designers, once created a series of advertisement for Honda’s step wagon. Unlike his ordinary style, Sato decided on a contrary direction to produce an entirely unique campaign. Unexpectedly both Sato and the campaign succeeded and it earned him the present fame. Now Sato’s field of work ranges from full conceptual branding to space design. He has earned the lightness.
Acquiring lightness requires courage, also known as the “can-do” attitude. When a designer is certain of his or her capability in delivery, the lightness is within the reach.
The 21st century—our society is more internationalized than ever; businesses happen at the different parts of the world, designers share ideas and thoughts across the globe, and students have wide options of foreign educations. Borders between countries are increasingly thinner. However, much appreciation including understanding of foreign cultures as well as education for younger generation in such subject is absent.
Though many historical conflicts still exist between countries, designers need to educate themselves about different cultures and affairs include customs and traditions meanwhile carry on respects to others’ design works. Others are people who do not have the same cultural background or the same value with yours and yet create amazing works. Cognitions and notions that were born from these differences should generate much contribution to individual’s work and give contrary dimensions to the same creative conundrums.
On the other hand, as Bonsiepe addresses, “the discussion about Self and Identity, about Presentation and Representation,” in my opinion, each of us needs to recognize what we could offer to others because of who we are with the values we have. The distinctive backgrounds between us are in fact the most valuable assets a designer has to be unique of his or her own. Our work is essentially a representation of our gathered ideations, which illustrates the best solution to a particular design problem. Regardless of what the mainstream culture is, preserve our “own-ness” would bring another delightful dimension to the cultural education we could offer to the others and ourselves.
Virtue 1. Lightness
Virtue 2. Intellectuality
Virtue 3. Public Domain
Virtue 4. Otherness—Respect for Otherness
Virtue 5. Visuality
Virtue 6. Interest in Theory
very interesting article. the more i read, the more i realize how little i know about design and art. sign… need more work on those area…
la jette 1962 french film by chris marker
very interesting, beautiful, confusing, sad film. though too bad it was not a greatest subtitle. white subtitle on black and white film… not the best design decision made. i don’t know if i want to watch 12 monkeys since it’s a kind of horror, but i’d be interested just out of curiosity.
the still shots were beautiful, especially couple of images of the woman under the sun bathing. her expression were just beautiful.
i’d love to see it one more time with a better subtitles.
Yesterday A mentioned that my work needs more emotion because I tend to be very logical and rational. After a night of sleep and some harsh reality check from bf, I realized that my work and my inner self is the total opposite.
I have a lot of emotions going on inside of myself. I can’t keep them. I have to let it out. Somtimes it’s too much for the boys to take. Though, I become much more practical and rational when it comes to creating artwork from my inner emotions; like my love map project. And it lacks of emotions.
So now I’m thinking… how do I bring more of outter rationality in my inner self and bring the emotional inside to my outside?
Bf also mentioned to not have makeup on myself and wants to see the ‘real me’. Quite honestly, I haven’t gone out of house without even a bit of eye brow attach since middle school. I’m totally serious. I went out with NONE makeup last couple of days and I feel completely naked. Self insecurity perhaps? I always tend to think I should look good and present myself in a good manner. I don’t know if it’s a cultural thing or how I was raised by the Japanese pop media. How to carry myself… I don’t know.
I was so inspired by a book Spilling Open by Sabrina He and Harrison that I borrowed from G last week. I love the ink and the free-style writing. I think I need a ink pen and some ink and start doing analog drawing/writing… I placed the collage I created yesterday with magazine cutouts on my wall above the mirror this morning. It’ll be a start point for me.
I was really sad and hurt about the reality check last night. But maybe it’s not so bad after all since I’m trying to face the really hard part of my inner self and trying to understand more of myself.
The song A gave me: I LOVE YOU by Joana Wang, composed by David Tao
After the mid review, I can’t stop thinking about my love map. I started to writing XML in my head while I was sleeping and just picturing it how it will work in a finished form sort to speak.
The previous half of the semester, I had a hard time making sense in the real time how to assemble the information or chunk of code together to make things I want to make. The problem I ran into was not what I want to make, but HOW to make what I want to make. And I couldn’t find the answer anywhere. I think the love map will be able to give me a chance to work with ActionScript 3 and XML to really understand how it works together and make things happen as I intended them to.
It gets more and more exciting!! (>v<)
I had a good discussion with K and prof. J about the research paper last week. What I found was that we tend to narrow the topic really small and in fact, sometimes by discussing about it make things clearer and can view in a bigger picture. Once the relationships of each element had been drawn out, we can then pick the only relative portion of it to continue and deepen our discovery. I thought that was a good way to approach it. Also I have to remind myself to purchase the research book.
Much thanks to D, I have some good information regarding to my research and I have to organize myself for those contacts and events to see if I can attend any of them. Hmmm this is getting more and more interesting. 
Social networking — analog to digital– here I come!
For all the DMI student (especially for the 1st years), hoooooooooooooooraaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!! We survived the first semester review!! Tap on the shoulder for all of us. Whether you think you had a successful review or not, I think it’s all about learning experience so I would say give a high 5 to all of us.
Aside from that on the personal note, I finally feel like I got back to my student mode. It’s hard (in my opinion) to get back to be student once you are out of it for some time. I feel like now since 6 weeks have passed, I gradually learned my own study speed and execution time which was really helpful to me so that now I can plan things accordingly.
I also started to think the direction I want to take for the rest of a year and half. A lot of thinking involved but I realy like the process my brain is taking right now. So we’ll see where it will take me to. The journey should be exciting. =)
We are doing interactive narrative for the second half of the semester. The content for this project is to remake “The Perfect Human” by Jorgen Leth, a Danish film maker. The short film was made in 1967. Then the remake version of this came out on 2003 which is called “5 Obstructions” by Lars von Trier whom asked Leth to remake the original 35 years after its creation. However the remake would have to create under obstructions that are decided by Von Trier on the spot.
It was very interesting to see the film changes through 35 year of time as well as the wide variety of way to express it. I thought the film was controversial as the subject matter was culturally limited and gender oriented. It also suggested comparison in nature and artificiality.
So far I have couple of ideas and I am excited to see how it will develop in my head before I put it down on paper of any sort.
Yes. I have been reluctant to update my DMI blogs. So now I have to make up the time I haven’t been updating.
Studio 1: Mapping “I love you”. I decided to map my own relationship since the data I was trying to gather wasn’t going to help me very much on short term. Now I have a lot of data and the problem is to design a good interface for it. You will see it on mid review. Hopefully I can pull it off… (>_<;)
Seminar1: I’m researching Social Networking on analog to digital. I found numbers of articles in many different aspect of it, but not so much on the identity side of the story which is what I’m interested in. So I think I will focus on the pros and cons of the online social networking on its progression and the new kind of problems that we need to be aware of on its future development.
Design as Experience: First its Pie. Now it’s Rope. We have been given this rope to work on for 15 min everyday for 16 days and to record it. It’s a continuous work. So far, I think it’s going alright. We’ll see where the rope will bring me in a few more days. I have to mention that we took a field trip to Mass MOCA last Monday and it was AWESOME!!! So many great projects and I have especially blown away by Jenny Holzer’s Projections. I will update the photos later but you will have to be there to experience it to believe it. It was AWESOME. I also liked the exhibition “Western artists in CHINA”. It opened up my eyes a lot since I was born in Shanghai. A lot for me to learn and re-learn so to speak.
Elements of Design: We are learning hard core Actionscript3 programming. It is so overwhleming and a lot to dygest in 3 hours of class but I am happy that I’m learning so much of the new things I never knew how to do. It opens up so many doors for future possible projects. But first and far most, I need to understand how it works and want to be able to write these code by my own. I think the second half of the semester will help me a lot on hands on working classes so that I will learn as we work on a real project.
Mid Review: Since I have updated the recent projects now I shall focus on my mid reviews. Work work work time…
