Homework 7: Using Design To Make Ideas New

Although he was almost annoyingly halting and soft-spoken in the beginning, I appreciated Milton Glaser's insights into the process of design, and how sometimes one must go through the necessary process of breaking down their own conceptions and barriers in order to create something bold and lasting. I also appreciated his self-deprecating remarks, his reveal of the process behind one of his challenges, and overall willingness to be vulnerable: in so doing he showed us a unique side of "the artist", who usually tries to hide their imperfections, especially behind their carefully-curated craft. 

As an aside, I was almost hoping he'd go with using his old drawings for the Alexander Pope poster. It would have been incredibly meta, using the "old" art to create the "new" poster.

Untitled Movie Idea

I imagined a sort of feel-good indie comedy with this one. The movie follows the story of a programmer who feels lost in life and like nothing works out despite his best laid plans: very few friends, no significant other, probably still lives with or near his parents, has been at the same dead-end job (or maybe the same dead-end small town) for years. He has difficulty socializing but loves his collection of rubber ducks, which he treats like friends. Much of the movie is told through flashbacks as he talks to his ducks about the myriad ways in which he got to where he is today. Through this process, he is able to start healing and putting his life back together. I got this idea from the programming concept of "rubber duck debugging", where if a person has an unidentified bug in their code they explain the code line-by-line to an inanimate object (traditionally a rubber duck) in the quest to see where the error is.

Homework 6: Everyone Is Altered

I was blown away by how much retouching goes into the movie industry. I understood it was happening on a conceptual level, but not the nitty gritty details. I think it's heartbreaking: in many ways, an actor's own body and face become costumes he wears. This is especially true when you think about how faces and bodies can be swapped with (relative) ease. I thought it was wild that the unnamed actress who was "10 times more famous than Kim Kardashian" got a simple home video of her birthday retouched. A birthday home video not even for the public! I wonder how the mental health of these actors and actresses is, to be constantly seeing their beauty-worked images everywhere but in the mirror they see when they wake up. The pressure to always be young and beautiful must be at Mariana Trench-levels.

Homework 5: Cigarettes and Red Vines

Following Dustin Stanton's career was somewhat interesting. I enjoyed hearing his processes for the making of his movie posters, but I feel like he glossed over most of the challenges. I would have liked to hear more about them, especially as pearls of wisdom for prospective designers (not that I foresee myself going into that field). That being said, Dustin sounds like someone who is in love with his work, which is no doubt why he's as successful as he is, and why he tends to focus on the positives. I do think his advice to constantly be asking whether or not a design works for the product is good, as it keeps the vision for the design tight. I also liked how he likened a teaser trailer to a wedding invite, as I was unsure of the conceptual differences between a teaser and a full-fledged poster.

As a last note, It was eye-opening to read how he tried "a bunch of stuff" for There Will Be Blood, and then to see how many designs were at the end of the article. I'm sure those weren't even all of the initial designs! 

I'm not much of a moviegoer, so I don't have a huge repertoire of movie posters I remember, much less like. However, the movie poster for Dude, Where's My Car is taking up valuable space in my brain. It's as campy and cheesy as I remember the movie being! The designers made liberal use of the complimentary color combo blue and orange - something I noticed with a lot of other movie posters, by the way. In this poster, it's reflected on the middle horizontal line (in the background), the middle vertical line (with the women), and the very title of the movie. I think it was cute that they put the title in a speech bubble coming from Kutcher's head. 

However, I think the poster suffers from a lack of direction: what's the movie really about? Finding the characters' car, sure, but what's with the women? The dog? The steering wheel is still here, so is that the only relic left behind of the car when the movie kicks off? Did Scott's character steal it, since he's got this knowing grin? Also, the extreme camera angles on Kutcher and Scott combined with the inverted trapezoid shape of the frame gives the whole poster a funky, off-kilter feel. I already know immediately it's supposed to be a stoner movie (not that there's anything wrong with that).

In addition to making the Personal Plastic Recycler a more functional product, I tried to make its advertisement more functional too in terms of form, color, and typeface.