Day 37 or 59 or something

This post was started on October 2nd. That’s right, three weeks ago. Gosh darnit I KNEW it’d be like this! I guess this isn’t really a secret, but I’m terrible when it comes to any sort of relationship. I mean online ones. Like, ones that require time, loyalty and commitment. Blog-wise. Um. (Side note: Twitter is a different story. I’m much better at keeping up with things in 140 characters or less.)

Anyways… happy reading!


(Written during day 37)
Mmmkay. As much as I’d like to recap the last two weeks (sidenote: make that five weeks) it’s getting more difficult to hone in each day’s details, especially since I mostly write these from memory rather than consulting field notes. So what I’ll do for this post is summarize the highlights:

- I visited the letterpress room several times. I mentioned earlier that I’m buddy-buddy with Wim, the letterpress technician, but I actually didn’t know his name until the last time I went. Hahaha. But working with the letterpress was pretty sweet stuff. Well, the first few days I was working very slowly – almost too slowly for Wim I reckon – and as he was going through the tutorial I had several moments of stupidity. By the haste in his voice I could tell it was frustrating for Wim too…

But eventually I got through it all and I typeset my typographic mag cover! Hooray! Actually I was really just winging it with the typographic covers to be honest. In the end I experimented with analog and digital (typesetting the print, then scanning it, then using the copier to print onto the original print, then scanning that again) and it eventually resulted in this huuurrr:

What the hell is this epic suck?

The requirements for the spread was that we did a cover and an ad for a personal magazine (a la Oprah or whatever). The one on the right is an ad for a vinyl toy expo cause I like toys. Hehehe. I wanted to make it look “urban” and concrete like. The one on the left was an experiment of sorts, but I wanted to treat type as an image and do something simplistic, retro and sort of Japanese inspired. The theme I had for the magazine was “multiple identities” (hence the corny subtitles), hence the multiple e’s. But this is more apparent with my photographic one:

Omgah multiple hedz!!

For this one I wanted to make it a bit unconventional and combine the cover with the ad. If you hadn’t noticed before, the fold of the magazine is actually the Asian way rather than Western, and although this was actually an accident (shh my teacher doesn’t need to know!) it ended up complimenting my “multiple identities” concept anyhow. Playing on the whole East-meets-West, I’m a CBC thing.

Personally I like this cover better because of the bolder colour palette, but my teacher preferred the typographic one. Well, what do you think?

Surprisingly, alot of people had good stuff to show. I say surprisingly because my graphic design critique came out underwhelming.

- So for graphic design we were supposed to present 3 A1 sized posters based on the film Rip! A Remix Manifesto – one a traditional film poster and the other two “critical reactions”. I was stressing a bit on where the hell I could print these huge things in a short time but turns out that certain print shops are hella fast! At home, I’m used to booking appointments to my school’s DOC, which is run by an infamously anal-retentive “mean guy” (who’s actually not that bad once you get to know him) and a man I affectionately refer to as the “teddy bear” (because he’s so much nicer and comparatively more bear like), and I always need to do so much prep work coming into the centre. Usually, it’s pretty expensive and the turn around time is a day or two, depending on how busy it is. The school here is supposed to be around two days. Yet, this place did everything in 20 minutes! Granted, I didn’t have much of a choice on what I wanted to print on, but it was sufficient for my needs. A bit pricey though at 35 euros. Well, I’ve paid more for smaller work so I’m not too concerned.

[This is where I'm supposed to put up said images but it's much too burdensome to open and convert them to web files on Podochop so I'll just post the one I already had converted, which is incidentally the one I like best]

Totally just violated a lot of copyright law posting this here. Can I has a copyright infringement lawsuit? Harhar…… um.

(Written during day 59)

Hmmm. Okay. This task of recounting the highlights of something that happened…. 5 weeks ago is starting to get a little hard. How about I just update you on some of the major changes that have happened since then!

- Dutch language course! YEAAAAH where initially I was the only one that paid! (Awkward sentence. Whatever you get the gist.) Well it’s going pretty well, I’ve learned alot of phrases since last month. Now I have:

ik kom uit canada, waar kom je vandaan: i’m from canada, where are you from?
ben je getroud?: are you married?
heb je kinderen?: do you have children?
een biertjes graag: one beer, thanks

…in my arsenal of basic Dutch phrases! Hooray! Though I must say, it was a little odd learning “are you married/do you have kids” before learning how to order or greet someone.

- Silkscreen! Since my time at this institution I’ve been able to use the digital photo studio, the letter press and now the silkscreen facilities with upmost ease. I keep telling everyone this but back at home we can’t access the facilities unless the courses we register for require them (or unless we pay some fees), so it’s really awesome being able to use everything for a relatively low price. For instance, I didn’t even need to buy my own screen – there were TONS of them (from super big to A2 sized) available for use. And same goes for inks! Ooooh my god the amount of pigments/inks they had in stock… the kicker was that they even carried heat sensitive ones! How sick is that! Anyhoo I was only there briefly for a t-shirt project (it was so weird being able to do everything in a single evening; btw a picture of the product is on my twitter feed) so I didn’t have the opportunity to do some exploring. But I will find a way soon!

- Project week! This occurred last week and it was a week where 2nd/3rd year students from all faculties come together to work on projects lead on by instructors or working professionals. There were about 20-30 that we could sign up on, although only 6 of them were in English and hence available to exchange students (unless you didn’t care for the language barrier and signed onto the normal ones like other exchange students did. Sigh).

I have mixed feelings about project week. At first I was brimming with anticipation for my chosen project, as it had something to do with “mapping the senses”. I was hoping it’d be something really cool and interactive and stuff but it was mostly just working individually on infographics based on made up data about air travel. Not really crazy awesome, unlike some of the other projects (doing photoshoots, making zines, building bbqs… sigh). But in the end I got to connect with some of the other exchange students and we made something kind of nice in the end. Even if I had to bash my head against the wall a thousand times along the way.

An infographic about mapping the senses as the fluctuate during air travel. My instructor (Rogerio, a Brazillian designer based in Amsterdam) said it looked sort of 70s ish and had pretty typography, although the thing on the right could’ve been a little more.. how to say, intuitive?

I don’t necessarily regret taking on project week (I know quite a few others that skipped it to go traveling instead..) but I do wish I could’ve spent the time working on motion graphics instead. Which leads me to…

- Motion graphics! I’m certain I left a nasty rant somewhere on the Internet (probably saved as drafts here) but to paraphrase, after having spent several weeks frustrated at the lack of progress in the Typography minor I decided to jump ship and swim to another: motion graphics! It was really spontaneous and I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to but I just wanted to confirm my low possibilities. And so I was pleasantly surprised that I’d be able to make the switch despite my lack of experience and despite the fact that I would be behind five weeks but WHATEVER. Typography, you are now officially DONE WITH. The thing is though, I have to learn how to make a 20-30 second motion graphic on a program I have never used before (After Effects). It’s going…. well, it could be worse I guess.

Okay, cutting this off prematurely but I’ll finish off by updating about my trip to Texel Island/Amsterdam later! Right now I have a motion graphic to finish!

ETA: My mom suggested that I also post how many days I have left til I come home (to Edmonton). Well, as of now it’s 61 days left! Yikes I’m already half way!

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