Blux DVD Packaging || Blux.la intro || The door || The Killing || Blux Reality Maps
Blux Research Presentation || Communication Design One
Blux DVD Packaging
M4 || Fall 2006 || Super Studio Documentation
As part of the documentation process for the Blux project, I created DVDs containing the website and additional material for distribution. The packaging is experienced in three phases. First the outer cardboard sleeve. Each DVD has one of four possible sleeves, these sleeves are photographs I took of the interior of our persona boxes. The persona boxes where character shrines depicting a persona's bedroom. The photography and placement on the sleeve dont' reveal much but serve to intrigue the viewer. The sleeves have cut outs revealing the words Research, Concept and Development. After removing the sleeve, the DVD case is revealed. The case was designed as a systematic representation of the Blux.LA site and the contents of the DVD. It is purposely cool, reflecting on the archival nature of DVD. After opening the case the third level is revealed. There is an explosion of colors, faces, and textures. Portraits of the boys, a bright plastic green DVD, and stickers of boy objects all confront the user.
Blux.la intro
M3 || Summer 2006 || Super Studio Documentation
Blux.LA is a website documenting the 2005-2006 Media Design Program’s Super Studio class. Super Studio is a year long, research and innovation centered course that all first year MDP grad students take together. It is a massive collaborative project. This thorough website covers all aspects of what, why, and how Super Studio happened. The full site is has 100+ pages and can be overwhelming. I designed the site’s intro sequence, which also works as an alternative to the full site (which was built by other members of the team). By distilling a years worth of work into “Ten Things” visitors have quick take aways if they choose not to dive too deeply into the full site. The “Ten Things” also sets up trends and threads that the visitor can follow through out the rest of the work. The quick read intro was my original idea. A team of us worked on brainstorming the ten things, then I did the majority of the writting, editing, and re-writing, before building the intro in flash. Blux.la
The Door
M2 || Spring 2006 || Narrative Structures
A multi-threaed, palandromic comic strip interpretation of "The Door" by EB White. The reader can move up and down, forwards and backwards through the crossword puzzle like layout of the comic strip. "The Door" uses circular, repetitious patterns of phrases and points of view that swirl about the reader. When transformed to a visual medium the work is usually depicted in psychological terms, not physical as I have done. This project was a great learning process for me. In-order to deal with the complicated text I broke it into individual sentences and dealt with each one of them visually first. Then I choose the most compelling of those visual exercises to combine together in this final piece. It was not until the final panel was placed that I knew what the piece would look like, or even what size it would be. By focusing on individual steps instead of an overall project I was able to create something interesting and new that even surprised me, its creator.
The Killing
M2 || Spring 2006 || Narrative Structures
A psychological approach to portray the hopelessness of Ole Andersons fate in the next to final scene in Hemmingway's The Killing. While "The Door" is a psychological work I choose to represent physically, "The Killing" is a pure physical description with no emotional content I choose to depict psychologically.
Blux Reality Maps
M1 || Fall 2005 || Super Studio
As a class we built a room as a an open-ended learning tool. It was not meant to be a static representation of what we had learned but rather a human scaled tool for exploring the lives of 6-year-old boys. One wall of that room was these Reality Maps, that show the exterior influences on the boys from their Moms, Dads, and the media. The research for the content was conducted by other students, I was responsible for the design. This meant developing a visual system for what the cards represented (who was speaking and if what they where saying was positive or negative) as well as the physical design of their size and placement in the room, consideration for what the cards communicated individually and as a whole, plus consideration for how they could be moved about in the room and still be able to find their way back home. More+++
Blux Research Presentation
M1 || Fall 2005 || Super Studio
Hannah and I wrote and designed the presentation of our classes research together. At the end of the Fall 2005 term I gave the presentation to the Art Center community. In the spring of 2006 the contents of the presentation where recycled into our final presenation of our project. That summer Hannah gave the research presentation to undergrad Industrial Design students and in the fall of 2006 we both presented it to the incoming MDP class.
Communication Design One
M1 || Fall 2005 || Communication Design One
The terms Hybridity and Remediation explored through several media (image only, text only, image and text, sound only, motion only....)
