Hotel Brochure

So for about a week now I have been working on a brochure for the hotel... I personally love it. I think it has a similar feeling as the hotel... comforting, inviting, warm, with a little bit of classic elegance mixed in.

Photography

Photography can play a big role in design, and I've always been interested in it... but I never really took too much time to think about it, and it's impact.  I always looked at photography as a way of finding the beauty in anything, and everything... ranging from a paper-clip to a cliche sunset.  But today has given me another perspective on photography...


Today I heard Ed Kashi talk about his work... and it made me think more in-depth about photography.  He discussed how his photography told untold stories of various groups of people/topics.  There was one story he talked about how he had taken a photo of a under-privileged man, and a lady had seen it and provided education for that man in the photo.  His photo helped to change the life of someone... I never thought of photography as something that powerful.  He had many more stories, and he talked about how some of his projects change him, and make him a better person.


This has just inspired me to think more about a photograph before I snap it... and to think about it's impact.
That's not to say that ALL photographs have to have some deep meaning/subject attached, but it does provide a way of telling a story through photos... something that is an interesting idea to me.

Illustrator Brushes

I've been experimenting with illustrator the last few days... trying to getting better at producing elegant curves/swooshes/lines... I've discovered there is an easier/faster way of doing this besides drawing it out onto a piece of paper, then scanning it, and then finally tracing the entire thing into a vector.

I've discovered that by creating a brush, it makes the task of producing a large amount of curves/swooshes faster, and easier. Right now I am trying to get better at producing brushes to use on those curves. My best one so far is a wing-tipped brush. I think after building more with it, and maybe mixing it with a few different brushes it could turn out awesome.

Through all of this, I have discovered creating a brush is not as easy as it seems. The most difficult part is coming up with the idea for the brush... with brushes you have to remain in a almost a straight line-format, and contain your brush to a thin-rectangular shape... otherwise it may turn out deformed (according to my recent experiments with brushes).

Chautauqua

So I got an internship at Chautauqua Institution... and I am enjoying it a lot.  The people I work with are super nice/awesome, and the just in general the people you run into are nice.  I've been doing a lot of various work that I hadn't done before... and I feel like I have learned a lot in the 4 weeks I've been here (almost more than I have in 3 years of school). 

Here is a poster I just finished working on...


(The photo was one provided by the Institution.)