I know this whole Berlin thing came as a shock to some of you, especially those of you that were expecting this. But, now that it’s all over and done with, I’ve written a nice little synopsis for the folks over at teachevil. Bear with me, as it is written for an Art Center audience (and if you are one of those audience members, I apologize for the cross posting… but you should probably be used to it by now).

You followed us along our 10 week German excursion, so I thought it would only be fair to do a little recap of the project and what we learned. Unfortunately, as is the case with most sponsored projects, we have a 90-day grace period where we can’t show anything we made. So, for now all I can let you see is our well-decorated studio door (complete with an inward-facing peep hole that we modified to show the Berlin skyline),

and the mess we made outside. (Okay, I think some of the Transportation guys may have contributed to that pile too…)
Hopefully in a few months we’ll be able to share our Piz Buin rebrand, but in the mean time words will have to suffice.

As a recap for anyone not familiar with what the heck we were doing in Germany, Brand Lab Berlin was a studio abroad dedicated to rebranding the Johnson & Johnson-owned Piz Buin (a premium sunscreen brand) to target Millennial Berliners. Fifteen students from the Graphic Design, Environmental, Product and Transportation departments were selected, and we were put into teams of three, then assigned a filter through which to approach the project. These filters were Health & Wellness, Mobility, Sports, Fashion, and Music. We spent 10 weeks in Berlin, researching the city’s culture through our filter, and analyzing the data we collected. Then we all made our way back to Art Center, finishing the term with the tools and resources that being on campus provides. Our final deliverables varied depending on the team, but most consisted of a line of products and packaging, branded environments, and experiences designed to interact with the brand throughout the city.

And now for my own assessment:
If the opportunity ever arises, please, please do a study abroad. In addition to getting to live and work in an AMAZING city, I learned things about my own work habits and design strengths and limitations in a way that simply couldn’t have happened in a regular classroom. Being able to dedicate all of your time to one assignment is something that we don’t usually get to do while at Art Center, and it resulted in a much better researched, analyzed, conceptualized, and executed project. Researching a brand and its audience for 10 weeks before designing anything changes the way you approach an assignment; never again will a google session suffice, because once you have taken the time to fully understand all the pieces of the puzzle, the design falls into place in a much more logical and informed way than the on-screen method could ever rival. At the end of the day, some of the most important lessons I learned personally, came out of not being able to run away from the project, or let it slide in favor of something I liked more—as can sometimes be the case when we get into difficult classroom situations. Working in teams as students is notoriously difficult, but being able to do it in such an open and dedicated environment made it extremely gratifying.

Berlin itself was one of the most amazing places I have ever been. Referred to as “poor but sexy,” there is a resourcefulness to the city that is truly inspiring. It is bustling, but rarely overwhelming. The public transportation works perfectly, and is conducted largely on the honor system. Art openings and music events happened every night of the week, and the unpretentious and spontaneous crowd moves fluidly between venue scales with an almost undetectable distinction between high and low culture. People stay out into the morning (and sometimes even until the next morning after that), and it isn’t scary or dangerous or the least bit uptight.

Whenever the opportunity to learn and work outside of the black box presents itself, I urge you to take it. Art Center is an amazing place to study, and our teachers, facilities, and rigor is unparalleled. But sometimes, every once in a while, it’s important to get some inspiration—and ultimately perspective—from a change of scenery.

(If you haven’t seen photos of our trip, please visit the Brand Lab Berlin section)

FINALLY FINISHED!!!

Okay, almost. Jeez.

Click to make it bigger–more when I finish finish, and when it’s not 3:45am.

Seriously.

For my Editorial (magazine design) class, I’m working on a magazine I named “Covet”. Covet is about obsessions and addictions in a variety of flavors. Articles will range from The Severed Head as a Fetish Object (below), to OCD and hoarding and world domination and consumerism and gambling and drug addictions and and and and…

I was originally going to do a horse magazine, because I thought I had paid my dues with other topics and it was finally time to do a pony project. My very first creative exploits consisted of drawings horses–all told I think I probably made 1000s of them–but at some point in highschool I was told to give the equines a rest, and I did. For a good…plenty of years. Horses would be a fun and easy magazine topic. I would be able to take my own photography and practice the photo retouching skills I’m learning in another class.

But alas, it was not to be. I was bored to tears almost instantly. The thing I forgot–or maybe just didn’t realize in my horse-crazed teenage years–is that magazine about horses are more than a little dry. Not to mention poorly written. When Nik (our department chair) sat down with me for lunch in the cafeteria last week and asked what I was working on this term, “Trot” was not sounding particularly promising, even to me. We tried (rather unsuccessfully) to figure out how to bring this rather unpromising magazine to life, but it turned out I was just beating a dead horse (ahem), as it were. You can lead a boring project to water, but you can’t beat it to death once you get there.

Starting over week 5 (more than 1/4 through the term) is always fun. My first attempt at the feature article about decapitation is below. Yummy. (Click to make them bigger, and please don’t talk about my widows–I haven’t worked on the type yet.)

For my cover I’m going to have a flap of paper covering the main image, to be lifted off for a reveal of the (very understated) masthead/logo. I’ve been playing with some fun imagery to hide, and I’m excited to mock it up.

Typestudies for my new Editorial project.

This weekend I took a little field trip to the famed Rose Bowl Flea Market to get some props for my Editorial project. I’ve been hearing about this monthly event since I moved here, but never thought much of it or had the time. Turns out it’s GIGANTIC. I was on a deadline so I didn’t get to browse like I wanted to, but hopefully next time I’ll get a chance to do some serious treasure hunting.

The flea market is held in the parking lots surrounding the famous stadium. Cars and gates and police officers are everywhere. It’s $8 to get in, but a lot cheaper than a day at Disneyland.

I acquired two plastic steeds to photograph for class (post coming soon), and used the rest of my energy taking pictures of nick nacks.

The collections of weird things were astounding. Here you can see an assortment of scissors of various lengths. Some other highlights included a box of sheriff badges and a whole booth devoted to vintage Playboys.

I want–nay I NEED this gold chair. Doesn’t everyone?

Too bad my house is already decorated to the gills–some of these little chotchkies would fit right in.

*this is not my desktop, it belongs to the library

This Identity Systems project has been eating my RAM

This week has been AWESOME, and next week is promising to be even MORE AWESOMER (yeah, I just used “more awesomer” in a sentence and meant it). I am on my second night (day?) of not sleeping—as in, I haven’t slept since Friday night. It’s pretty cool though. I mean, there are a lot of advantages to never sleeping—like not having to worry about pajamas.. and um… yeah… the pajamas thing for sure.

I have class tomorrow from 8:00am-1:00, 2:00-7:00, and 7:00-10:00pm (13-hours-but-who’s-counting), and I’m having a lot of trouble accepting that it’s Sunday night (ok, Monday morning). Somehow in the course of the day I have to magically make it into the model shop to vacuform completely new packaging (which is an incredibly long and devastating story, but I am choosing to take the high road and not complain to the internet-at-large), start and finish roughly three weeks of Identity Systems homework—which has been on hold while I tried to get my packaging finished for midterms—and do something-or-other for Ocean Science. Oh, and did I mention scholarship review is on Wednesday?

I’ve decided to offer up my workload as a condolence for anyone feeling overwhelmed about their own work. I have come to the very unsettling conclusion that it will be an absolute MIRACLE if I can pull this term off—and I don’t mean normal, Amelia-style pulling it off, I mean having somethinanything to turn in on week 14. I think I have been frustrated / exhausted to tears three times today, and the night is relatively and unfortunately young. It’s not even a question of getting to sleep anymore—it’s about praying to (a TBD) god that I can get enough done to have a chance in (a TBD) hell of getting to sleep tomorrow night. My theory is that it will be terribly difficult to fall asleep standing up—especially while TAing—but my body has been pulling some pretty impressive maneuvers lately. I haven’t been to bed earlier than 3:00am in weeks and weeks, and I can’t remember the last time I got more than four hours of sleep… That’s on the nights I actually GOT to sleep, of course.

Dwayne the bathtub, I’m DWOWWWNING!

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Edit: I just spent 25 minutes trying to figure out why my selection tool in Illustrator wasn’t working… View > show bounding box. How embarrassing. When my Adobe programs seem to have developed minds of their own, it’s probably time to sleep.

Today is one of those days that feels like it’s been going on forever. I have the next 8 hours to work a packaging miracle, and it’s not looking good.

Our midterm is next week, although it is more like a 3/4 term and  a final. Chris Hacker (of J&J) is bringing his whole gang, and Ania, our teacher, loves to invite everyone she can think of. This 3/4/final consists of a printed and bound process book, a 30″x60″ presentation board, and of course the main package and extensions. The problem with the book and the board is that they each have to have photographs of the final forms, but they also each need to be produced by a third party. That means I have to finish my forms and graphics, photograph the packages, and complete the book and boards (in that order) to send off for production in time to get made by Tuesday.

Thus the need to work miracles tonight.

As you can see, my forms are currently in a so-much-potential but so-far-from-finished state. I have to glue the layers of corrugated together (54, in the case of the main package), laser cut the outer pieces, and come up with SOME kind of graphic application–that is to say, the actual design part.

Tonight I will call the computer labs my home.

Falling asleep has been a huge problem for me lately. I’ll get home late and exhausted, with lots of work left to do, and decide I am capable of taking a one-hour power nap. The problem is, when your body is already infuriated with your lack of sleep, your subconscious will do everything in its power to make sure you don’t wake up from that nap. So I lay down, set an alarm (or four), make sure a friend will call me if they don’t hear from me in an hour, and sleep like a dead person. Usually I’ll wake up four hours later, on the couch and in all my clothes.

I’m devastatingly exhausted and failing miserably at burning the midnight oil (or in this case, usually the 3am-9am oil). I haven’t been to bed before 3am in weeks, and I can’t remember the last time I got more than four hours of sleep.

BUT! I have a new tactic: avoid beds completely. If I am not within the proximity of a bed, I can completely ignore the internal attempt to justify sleep.

And that leads me to another seamless segue: Lila and I have decided to add another element to our exciting sharing sessions, current workspace photographs. So here is mine tonight: