Website Saga

Flash is confusing.

Correction: The Flash tutorials I am doing are confusing. (I think they were written by someone who isn't very familiar with the English language and they skip some key steps. Gotta love free online tutorials.)

So I'm still going to learn it, but not so fervently. In the meantime, I am going to build my website in Dreamweaver. Plus I registered for this cool minicourse called Argumentation: Using Web Sites to Make Your Case for next semester all about building a website, arguing (?), and all that good stuff. It meets on Friday (gah! class on friday! the sacrifices I make for school!) Hopefully it will be more helpful than my joke digital class freshman year.

Web-er-site

I recently began my the re-evolutionary (I may have made that word up) process of making my personal website. For me, it is similar to running around and banging my head against lots of different brick walls, repeatedly. I 'm not making that analogy to show the pain, because it's not painful, it's just annoying. I have all these ideas for websites and I can't just stick to one, I keep starting over and redesigning again and again. HOW DO I STICK TO ONE DESIGN!?

I should have prefaced this by saying that I did not sleep last night. I had the wonderful opportunity to spend the entire night sewing for IPD! I'm wearing the same thing from yesterday, it's great. (Too much information perhaps?)

Anyway, I worked from 9am-12pm today on my website. I'm making some progress, sort of. Going to seek some outside opinions to solidify one of my thousands of ideas.

Also been playing around with making panel things with plastic bags sandwiched between wood/cardboard. Tomorrow I'm learning how to stretch canvas, so then I can try and stretch plastic bags. Tonight or tomorrow, if I ever go home, I also what to experiment with boiling bags, but in order to do that I have to go buy an old pot at Salvation Army or something. One of the GSI's, Sarah, has mentioned it a couple of times and I'm really curious to see what happens.

Stephen Burks

I went to an amazing lecture last night at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Stephen Burks, from Readymade Projects in NYC, came and talked all about his work. He does/did a lot of work in the fragrance market (with Coty and such) but there is a whole other side to his work. He has been doing projects with Artecnica's Design with Conscience, eco-friendly design for the Cappellini Love collection, and Rajboori Fine Silk Textiles in made in India. All these projects are outsourced to under-developed communities and are providing jobs and building the economy. Although this is a controversial issue (going into countries and using their unique crafts into international design objects), Burks believes in design as a means for economic transformation. And one thing that really stuck with me is that brands capatalize on the value of culture. So if you can capture an experience or a part of culture in design, there is truth in the design and people will like it.

Here are some of the things I really liked:

The above was designed by Burks and a local South African artisan, then produced in South Africa. Below, is a table design from Burks that is made from shredded magazines and a non-toxic hardener over a carboard structure and stuffed with more magazines inside to weight it down. (one of my favs)

Midterm Comments

John sent me another sweet link of this company that makes products in conjunction with artisan communities around the world. It was really good to see these scooter tire baskets because it made me consider incorporating other materials with the plastic bags. I had considered this before, and now I want to start experimenting. I thought about stretching the ironed bags to a wooden frame.

I made another envelope this week. I also figured out how to remove the ink from the bags. Lets say I don't want the bag from Marshalls to say "Marshalls" on it, i just rub it with some mineral spirits upstairs in the print room, and wo-baam ink is gone! Oh, and I also made a sole for the plastic bag shoe.

In response to the midterm comment of "what kind of products will you make?": I don't know yet. I'm taking it one product at a time because as I finish one, it will inspire new ideas for the next. I am definitely commited to this project. And I don't really want to change the world by eliminating all the plastic bags from the environment. I just want to inspire people to reuse things creatively.

Final Look

top view












side view














underside

now I just need a rainy day

Ok, so this picture is 1am Monday morning. This is not the final product...but it documents the point when I got excited and made Kristin take pictures because it was resembling an umbrella.


The umbrella is complete! It took me 5 more hours on Sunday to get it almost done. Then a little while today to finish sewing a few spots. I turned it into the the student exhibition and I just hope people don't look too closely at it. I am not proud of the craftsmanship, I see this piece more as practice. I didn't even dare try to close it...I was afraid it would rip into a million pieces and I would cry.

I now realize that I didn't take a picture of the final product...bummerrr. I will go hunt it down tomorrow and do some glamour shots.

Looks like crap

So I worked on the umbrella today for 5 hours because I really wanted to finish it. Unfortunately, I did not finish it.

I started ironing all the panels together into the giant hexagon shape. One of the major problems I ran into was that as you layer more and more plastic together, it gets really stiff. Stiff is not something you want when making an umbrella. So now all the panels are attached and the thing looks pretty much like trash. I'm going to keep on going with it despite its terrible asthetic. Tomorrow I will finish it so I can enter it in the student exhibition on Monday even though it is kind of embarassing. Oh well. Hakuna Matata.

Umbrella, -ella, -ella

The umbrella is underway...I'm about halfway done.


After looking at this, I realize that I'm pretty much using this to get comfortable with the material. The payoff of having a cool umbrella will be great because then I can enter it in the Student Exhibition (by this monday). I shouldn't have a problem finishing it by then.

I need to still work on how I frame my project in my presentation. That seemed to be the professor's biggest complaint. This weekend I will be sleuthing around grocery stores seeing what they do with the bags they are claiming to recycle. I've always wanted to be a detective!

Because I am obligated by my class...I must include that I worked an hour yesterday and two hours this morning on my project.

Inspiration Video, Perhaps?

Found some more inspiration about plastic bags

John sent me a link of this great music video.
Then Mia reminded me of this clip from American Beauty.
Now I might add to my project by editing images and video clips together all about plastic bags. Or maybe edit all my inspiration for the project together in a little movie.

Also here is a picture of the umbrella frame without fabric. Looks like a great weapon to me.

The Beginning of the Umbrella

I worked 3 hours today ironing out bags for my umbrella project.

The umbrella is made up of 8 panels. I decided to go with a yellow, black, and white color scheme with two panels of each solid color and then the 2 remaining panels will be a blend of all three colors. I am not sure how the blend will turn out, but i hope it works!