AIGA with Lisa Blevins and Grant Little

Trying to come up with a name and tagline for AIGA’s voting event was quite difficult. I’m glad I was able to be part of this experience because our clients, Lisa Blevins and Grant Little, were extremely great observers and offered us great feedback towards our designs. After the name was chosen we were finally able to start working on a logo that would fit the name. Before, my classmates were just designing logos to other potential names.

The name that was chosen was “Volume Through Volume.”

Nekita Harville’s design was the final pick out of all the logo designs that were presented. Lisa added to the Nekita’s design by drawing the shape of a face around the logo with a neck. That was then our template to go with for designing the voting posters.

This whole experience was very helpful for us as we continue to grow in the design field.

6 Panel Project: Heavy and Light.

Each person in my Processes and Materials class was assigned a word pair. Mine was “heavy and light”. With these word pairs, I had to think both conceptually and compositionally in order to take a picture for each given word. Once I had taken both pictures, I had to set up two documents, each being 10″ x 15″. Each document would include 6 panels, which would be the one image taken, set 6 different times. Each picture panel would then be digitally altered, eventually reaching a mixture of your original image and a halftone.

My choice of images contrast against each other. The pictures are of a set of books stacked upon one another and a Bible. The books were to reference the unwinding heaviness that can be put on an individual at times. The Bible, of course, was to represent the lightness that one can feel by reading the scriptures. Even if one does not believe in that particular religion, that doesn’t mean you still cannot feel a sense of calamity. I say this because I have witnessed friends that have experienced this feeling.

National Print Group, Inc. and Retail Merchandising Group.

My Processes and Materials class was able to tour yet again, another printing vendor; this time being called NPG and RMG. We have been extremely lucky with the amount of field trips that we have been able to go on this semester. We learn about different types of printing and how they work, but never officially get to see it during the process. I am more of a visual learner so if your anything like me, you’ll find that the trip I went on was very informative.

My class was able to view one of the largest sheet-fed offset presses in the world, KBA’s Rapida205. This impressive piece of equipment prints 9,000 sheets per hour and with 7 colors plus a UV coater and hybrid ink. While this press is the largest in the world, it is also the only one that has been produced. This press can be viewed below (KBA is on the left side of the image, while an older one is on the right).

The company also has two other lithographic presses that are much older, but work just as efficiently. These two presses print five colors and are still used for projects. This is the press that is paired with the KBA image.

Digital printing is another alternative that NPG offers. They have a variety of printers being used, some being 63″ x 126″ Inca flatbeds (Columbia, Turbo, and Spyder) and 196″ NUR printers ( Expedio and Blueboard). These are only a few of what is used; there is also 8 others.

If being printed digitally, one could print on carpet, fabric, or any object up to an inch thick. That’s AMAZING!

The whole trip was unbelievable and rewarding. I got so much out of the experience and listening to what our tour guides had to say about the processes, while viewing them, made things a little more clearer.

You can view NPG’s website at http://www.tnpg.com/Default.aspx.

Chattanooga Times Free Press: Frank Anthony.

Thursday: January 31, 2008.

My Process and Materials class was lucky enough to tour the Chattanooga Times Free Press with Frank Anthony, Vice President, as our guide. Anthony was very knowledgeable about everything that went on. He had many questions thrown out to him by my class and was able to answer each and every one without hesitation. I’m not sure how many years he’s been with the company, but I know it has been quite some time. It’s so impressive to meet someone who knows his job, as well as other job titles in the workplace, and know every in and out of newspaper process. The trip to Chattanooga Times Free Press was time worth spent.

You can visit Chattanooga Times Free Press at http://www.timesfreepress.com/.

Visiting Artists: [dNASAb], Ryan Wolfe, and Mark Andreas.

Thursday: February 7, 2008.

Ruth Grover, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s curator, was able to bring in three very spectacular artists, who are [dNASAb], Ryan Wolfe, and Mark Andreas. From what I understand, it took her two years to bring in these visual artists. She has worked very hard and the students of UTC thank her for it.

This exhibit that is being shown in the Cress Gallery is by far one of my favorite’s that I have seen displayed. It seems as though each artist used some of the same elements or concepts with their designs.

In my Process and Materials class, we were very privileged to have these artists come in and talk to us. Each artist spoke on why they created what they had made and their reasonings behind it. It’s quite funny how much I related to some of their logic behind their creations. One of my classmates had asked “why do you make, what you make?” Mark Andreas, who works with environmental sculptures, had responded with something along the lines of he really didn’t know the logic behind his makings, but he just came up with a visual image in his mind, and just went with it. That’s mostly what happens with me. I’ll design something and then be asked the same question that Mark was asked and respond the same way. I thought it was only me.

Disney Nasa Borg also talked about how he would get stumped on design ideas for his electronic sculptures and he says when he wakes up, he literally sits there in silence for two hours, just daydreaming. Mark Andreas followed up on this comment about trying to find new ideas and said “when it hits, you know it.”

I can honestly say that the visit we had with these artists, truly was a remarkable experience.

Freitag Design-a-Truck Contest.

Freitag has produced a Design-A-Truck contest for international designers to enter and submit a design in order to try and bring back the endangered, once popular use of truck tarps. The placement of the text, “Transit”, is positioned at the end of the truck to fabricate some type of general direction. The lines that are coming from the word, some being horizontal and others having perspective, is then again referencing the movement of the truck, or rather “Transit”. Also, whosever’s truck is chosen, it will be displayed on trucks across nations for a total of 365 days, which is a year, and also be made into designer bags.