thinking red won’t be the best color to use
working on the last mural for the walls in Temple. It will focus on the concepts of fear, inspiration, emotion, and hopefully encourage students to pursue things that are important to them. I have been sketching out ideas and meeting with Scott Sherman fairly regularly to figure out what sort of things should be portrayed through the next piece.
Here is a list of the cosmetic improvements that I’ve made over the past two weeks to areas that had been heavily neglected.
-re-plastered and restored the four nasty overhangs above doors in Temple
-sanded and restored the two studio entrance doors
-repainted parts of a few door frames that were worn
-repainted the walls surrounding the downstairs elevator
-removed various blemishes from the walls from old signs, etc.
7:37 Monday morning
Gutenburg, Caslon, Serifa, Helvetica, and Oakland are all present and accounted for which means that the typographic timeline is complete :)
Oakland is one of the first typefaces ever designed specifically for electronic screens. The typeface is a fixed-sized bitmap font created by the digital type foundry Emigre. Oakland was designed to operate on a pre-Postcript printer called the Apple Imagewriter.
So right now I am working on finishing up the typographic timeline in one of the halls in Temple. Finishing this typographic timeline will bring a fair amount of closure to the first floor, it will also work to balance the looseness of the other pieces in the hall. Hopefully I can finish these typographic pieces up tonight or tomorrow and have them all perfect and shiny for Monday :).
Also, I want to thank Chad Woods for his help in executing this portion of the project, I couldn’t have gotten as far as I have without him. Please check out his tumblr at http://uglyhot.tumblr.com/
So I just got back from a little trip to the VCU Brandcenter, and it was phenomenal :) . For those of you who don’t know, the Brandcenter is a massively creative graduate-level advertising school located in the heart of Richmond, VA. The VCU Brandcenter produces some of the best advertising minds in the country, so they must know a thing or two about good environmental design.
When I arrived at the Brandcenter I was lucky enough meet a bubbly first year student named Cristina Hall who was more than happy to show me around. As Cristina led me through the various parts of the building she gave me some insight into the daily processes of students at the Brandcenter. She described everything from the actual assignments to the unique class environments that are created there. Among the things that I learned was the fact that The Brandcenter building was once a horse stable, long before architect Clive Wilkinson made the site what it is today. I learned a lot about the graduate program and the students that attend the brandcenter, but the most imortant things that I learned tonight had to do with the visual atmosphere of the Brandcenter itself. The environment was a perfect creative environment that came off as relaxed, unobtrusive, and mellow.
Here are some interesting items from my notes that may help to explain why the Brandcenter is so successful at creating a positive environment.
- Well lit, not bleached out like at VCU (different, more even and calm lighting)
- Long whiteboards that foster creativity and provide a great space to work
- Minimal unnecessary visual stimuli (clean appearance)
- Unconventional shapes for tables, lights, stairs, etc. (avoids creating an environment full of common visual stressors for the brain to react to)
- Visually warm and enviting
- Unique textures such as exposed brick and industrial metal
- Emphasis on simple geometric shapes and curves (also heavy use of line)
- The low height of objects (couches, tables, etc.) makes you feel tall, confident, and God-like
- interesting visual interactions of unexpected surfaces like distressed metal and exposed wood beams
- Open, airy feeling
- Eyes are drawn upward in each room
- Each area of the building has a tone that feeds the imagination with visual textures and moods
- Raw and natural textures next to polished, unnatural green floors (visual demonstrations of control and a purposeful lack of control)
-Absolute utility of spaces and objects in spaces (stackable soft chair blocks in conference rooms)
-White-noise effect from cooling ducts adds to calm sensory experience
This information and the rest of my notes should help me narrow my ideas for attacking Temple. Please keep reading as I continue to post the progress of the project :)
-Allen
