PDX Parks Progress

-The guy who is doing the Chicago Neighborhoods branding (one of my inspirations for this project) followed PDXParks on Twitter and liked it on Facebook. Also, Mayor Sam Adams followed the Twitter (although he just follows everybody).

-Little Friends of Printmaking gave a great non-Portland perspective on the project. They said that they wanted to see pictures of the parks. Which I totally agree with. The logos and blurbs are cool, but connecting them to the real parks would be nice! So I’m trying to figure out how I could incorporate real photographs.

-Seven logos down! Twenty-three to go for the thesis, two-hundred and seventy-three for the rest of the project.

Luck!

This is crazy!

So apparently the domain pdxparks.com was available. What? Seriously? pdxparks.org redirects to Portland Parks & Rec’s website, why wouldn’t they grab pdxparks.com as well? So weird. I’m not complaining, because I bought it, so now I have this super simple & accessibly named website to host all my logos.

Reading Response 7: Modularity

Those MEBOXes are wonderful. The mystery behind some of these projects is pretty fascinating. Paying thousands of people ten cents to re-create a small piece of artwork, keeping them in the dark that they’re building a small section of a larger-than-life $100 bill. It must have been a pretty great feeling for all the contributors to see the final piece and know that they had a small hand in its creation. It reminds me of this manifesto Michel Gondry wrote after he made Be Kind Rewind called You’ll Like This Film Because You’re In It.

In it he talks about how we should all try to make our own movies with friends, family, and community, because even if it’s bad, like laughably bad, there’s still a sense of pride and togetherness that you’ll feel about having completed it. I think that that applies to all forms of art. So that’s why modularity in these large projects is such a great thing, because massive amounts of people can get that feeling.

First Tentative Schedule

I think I’ve settled on posting logos up on the website (soon to come) on Monday through Friday only. That’ll leave the weekends open for me to do sketching and prepare for the upcoming week of mark-making. So here’s the schedule I’m mulling over:

WEEK 5: Basic website up. Five logos.

WEEK 6: Website 100% finished. Ten logos.

WEEK 7: Infographics of process. Fifteen logos.

WEEK 8: Rough draft of book due. Lots of placeholders.
Twenty logos.

WEEK 9: 2nd draft of book due. 25 logos.
Jury presentation.

WEEK 10: 30 logos. Screenprinting & buttonmaking.
Finalize book layout & create book.

WEEK 11: Everything due! Summertime.

View high resolution

Made my first park logo today! I’m not officially starting the project yet; I still need to figure out a style to present all of these. Do I want to have them over images? Over simple color gradients? Do I want to bring in texture? I’ll be doing more research this weekend and try to lock down a style.

But yeah, Overlook Park. This park is close to where I live, and it’s right on the bluffs overlooking Swan Island and Downtown Portland, so that’s why I it has that baseline curving down on the left side, to recall the bluffs. I don’t love it, and I don’t hate it. And I feel pretty great about that. With all the logos I’m gonna make, I can’t get bogged down on trying to make every one perfect. I just need to execute the idea and move on to the next one.

Your Favorite Film Wrap-Up

This project was quite fun! What began as me wanting to draw all the movies at Target, Jason Polan style, became a more intimate look at the favorite film that people owned physical copies of. I had seven participants, which I originally thought wouldn’t be enough to make an interesting final, but it ended up being the perfect amount. I think Rad and Darjeeling Limited were the most fun to draw out and color.

The best part of the project was handing off the zine to all the participants when it was finished. The people who got one were super excited to check it out, and I think a lot of people who didn’t participate wished that they would have.

I’m also very glad that this project got me thinking about my thesis project enough and pushed me to scrap my idea and go with a new one.

New cover!

Thesis Ideas

1. DVD/Blu-Ray Cover Re-Designs
   +Make a website where people can download & print new, pretty DVD/Blu-Ray covers.
   +Bring nice art to an area in your home that is being overcome by lazy design.
   +Area to submit your own covers & find nice design resources.
   -Had this idea a while ago, but now it sort of goes against what I’m discovering with this first project.
   
   
2. Branding Project: Portland Parks
   +All 279 some-odd parks in the city.
   +Ongoing branding project; one-a-day, or something.
   +Provide unique identity to something lacking it.
   +Make a nice site to house the project.
   -Not sure what the participatory element would be?
   
   
3. Continue Project One: Draw Yo’ Fave Movie
   +Keep drawing covers.
   +Open submissions to the internet.
   +Explore why we keep certain movies in the face of digitalization?
   +Make some sort of memento/tribute to the vanishing era of tangible media?
   
   
4. Draw Your Favorite Thing?
   +Explore connections we have with objects.
   +Open submissions.
   +Challenge-based? One-a-day?
   
   
5.  Other Thing!
   +Super exciting.
   -Not very clear.

PROJECT TWO: Narrowing Focus

1. Nicole Meyer // Branding 10,000 Lakes
   She just keeps going and it’s still so good. I’m really attracted to branding projects. This and the Chicago Neighborhoods are my favorite things right now. The dedication and speed in which they’re working is amazing to me.
   
   
   
   
2. Mikey Burton // Recovered Books
   Can’t move on from this. It’s been my most favorite thing since being first introduced to it last year. I love all the colors, how he takes multiple clichéd ideas and combines them to make something totally new and fresh, and how heavily he relied on a combination analog/IRL techniques and digital creation to make these.
   
   
   
   
3. Dmitri Siegel & Edward Morris // Green Patriot Posters
   There are a lot of bad posters that get uploaded to this site, where anyone can upload a protest poster, but that’s kind of the point. It’s getting people to MAKE THINGS and put them out there. It’s wonderful.
   
   

Reading Response 6

Limitations are great! When you have a universe of possibilities staring you in the face, calling you out, daring you to do something, it can be a little intimidating. But a nice, attractive set of rules and limitations can take the pressure off, in my eyes. It removes so much stuff that you don’t have to worry about and helps narrow your focus. But it makes things challenging, too! The two go hand-in-hand. It intensifies your view and makes you think harder about what you’re doing. I couldn’t begin to tell you about my struggles with twitter and text messages. Trying to squish my thoughts into a set number of characters, while still trying to maintain proper grammar and punctuation. But it forces me to be more succinct and to the point in my communication.

The ambiguity of Twitter is also a nice thing to think about. That one of the largest forms of social networking running today really has no set, definitive purpose. That even with their strict limitations on how you format your messages, there are many different guiding forces behind the content of your tweets and your reason for sending them out.