the Creative Process

Have you experienced your own or other people's fear-based reactions to your creative education and career choices?

Definitely. My mom, dad, sisters, friends, acquaintances, you name it. When I was going to GCC, I started off as a Journalism major. Even then my mom was always bothering me about being a nurse or a doctor. She wanted me to chose a career choice that would give me plenty of money in the future. You see, my mom came from a very poor family and then married a man who screwed up over and over and eventually used up all of her money; meanwhile, she had three little girls to support. During that time she worked as a Nurse's aid and then eventually a Housekeeper at Glendale Memorial Hospital. I totally understand why she was worried for me. She had every reason to. But little by little, after I graduated from high school and then was on the verge of getting my AA Degree, she started to back off. After completing all of my GE requirements, she started really listening to me when I would talk about art, reading and writing. Some of my favorite hobbies. I took a few art courses at GCC and thats where I fell in love with design. My mom has seen my work and now she totally supports me. 

I still get really worried whenever I think about life after college. I have a little bit of experience, a few past jobs under my belt, but its still not enough to really prepare me, or make me feel confident about the future. Sometimes I wonder if I'm even good enough, but I squash that down because I know I am. Many of my design teachers have had my back from the start. And I've never been more motivated about anything in my entire life. I work hard and I love every bit of it. Recently I've thought about re-connecting with my previous bosses and teachers, to see if there are any companies hiring. Right now, I'm working with some people who just started a new business. I'm designing a logo for them, some flyers, posters and other advertisements. But this wont last forever. I need to start putting myself out there asap. But first, I need to get over my horrid feer of public speaking. Thats what ART 313 at CSULA should help me with. Well, that and B12 and Valerian root when I need it. 

How have you successfully overcome these reactions?

I have, and I continue to most of the time. I try not to let my negative thoughts scare me away; I'm so close. But I still need to work harder. I need to get out there and stop looking. I've been in school for so long, always thinking about the future and my degree as such a distant thing. But its not so far away anymore; its just around the corner. I think, overall, that's the scariest part. Leaving my comfort zone and starting fresh. Preparing myself for failure or fortune all at once. Taking a chance when I see an opening. Those are situations I've never really felt I had to pay attention to.

What is your concept of your creative process?

To be creative is to come up with something new and imaginative  A process is the series of steps you take to achieve the final product. My idea of a creative process is the steps I take when I am presented with a project or a job; whether its artistic or not. I know that the creative process takes research, study, trial and error, and a lot of patience. 

How do you approach creating, making?

I like to stay fresh and on my toes. I always try new things, especially once I start getting too comfortable with one medium or one idea. When I begin a project, the first thing I do is ask questions, as many questions as I can think of. If there are things about the project that I need to understand or I need to know before I begin, I make sure I'm completely crystal clear on the guidelines and expectations. And then I begin the most important part of my creative process. I start to research. Research, research, research. Who's done it, what have they done, what can I do to make it different, what can I do to make it better? Its not only a way to understand who I'm up against, but its also gives me inspiration. Then I start sketching. I just sketch, anything and everything that comes to mind. I start with contours of things around me; I sketch my room, my desk, my boyfriend, just to loosen me up. And then the ideas start coming, and thats when I start on the real work. I am a slow performer. I need to warm up before I can get my creative juices flowing, I've always been that way. I need time to really think and create before I can begin a project successfully. This is where trial and error comes in to play. I am one of those people who changes their mind over and over and over again. But once I've made a solid decision and I know exactly where I'm going, I go for it, all the way. And most of the time, I produce a successful piece. 

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On another note, I really enjoyed the TedTalks presentation by Elizabeth Gilbert. That is one inspirational woman. I particularly enjoyed everything she was saying about success and the creative "genius." How some people are given a genius rather than being one. And i loved what she said about Tom Waits when she was interviewing him; that, for sure, is one man I'd love to meet one day. Love him! She was really amazing. I'm going to go watch it again and do some more research on her. And... I went out and bought Eat, Prey, Love this afternoon.  :)

Clients, Users, Visualization Exercises

Clients are the marketers who engage a graphic designer's services. The difference between a client (the marketer) and the user (audience) is, the audience are the people who a graphic designer is creating the experiences for. The user's are who will be buying the products, the people who will have an experience when engaging in the products or logo or advertisement the designer is creating.

Yesterday, Jimmy Moss, who I've mentioned in my previous blogs, was trying to express to us, his students, why it is so important to understand the client base, and the different profiles between the client and the user. And during this conversation, he began talking about goals and how I, as a designer, will have to learn how to manage my time wisely and give myself the appropriate deadlines, according to what my client base is, to be able to completely my objectives successfully. I have taken a couple of graphic design classes before, at my community college, and Dana Maiden was one of my teachers. She was the first to introduce me to the importance of time management and why creating deadlines for yourself is so important. She told me that I knew how I work and what it takes for me to get things done, she told me that if I gave myself deadlines, within the deadlines my client gives me, not only would I be able to complete my work on time, but my work would be more successful and much more properly executed, given the extra time cushion. Jimmy expressed this to us as well. He told us that by coming up with our own deadlines, it will prepare us for being able to render our own decisions and develop many different strategies for completing our tasks effectively and sufficiently. Pretty exciting stuff.

Anyway, we had a little exercise yesterday, a Visualization Exercise.
Jimmy told us a little story. He had us close our eyes and visualize the story he was telling us. It was about taking a journey; I got up from bed on a sunny day, I walked through my small town towards a forest on a hill. Climbing through the forest I came to a cliff where I marveled at the beauty around me and then flew on a white birds back across the sky to another small grassy clearing where I saw an inviting cave and entered a door with my name on it. And as he came to a close he asked us to draw what we saw in through the door. Funny enough, I was immediately expecting to see something horrific starring back at me through the darkness, even though the story Jimmy had just told us was sweet and light. I watched a scary movie the night before and images of that demon face came flooding back into my thoughts; I only slept three hours that night. Anyway, I realized as I was drawing, that images in my head of the story Jimmy had told us started flooding back into my mind as I drew, so I began rendering those as well. Its hard for me to concentrate on one thing whenever I work, which is why I constantly take notes on things I see or hear around me all day, every day. So, as I was drawing my dark scary cave, I started drawing the story he told us. Me, the girl, waking up on a sunny day, the thick forest and pretty flowers, the giant white bird and the clouds, the cave. The story was irrelevant to what the initial outcome of what i saw in the cave was, but as I drew, I couldn't help but think of the story, so I drew that too. It was such an awesome way to get your creative juices flowing, artistically and intellectually. It reminded me of when I do blind contour drawings as exercise before I start a project. What was even more awesome was seeing everyones different perspective of what they saw when they entered the door with their name on it. Some people saw happy sunny places, like the beach, or an art studio, while others saw a scene from a horror movie like I did. It was excellent.

This is a picture of what I illustrated:

Group Process & Criteria

Almost anywhere you go, you will see symbols and signs; different forms of cumunicating directions to help you find your way around. Whether its at the local mall or in a parking garage. Over time, the way these signs were created have evolved; sometimes not even for the better.

In my Concept Development class, my classmates and I were given an assignment. We had to analyse last weeks homework, the project where we had to create comic cells based on the 'How I Made It to College' exercise, and come up with a criteria on how we were going to rank each persons final product; from the one of which was best delivered, to the one which was the least successful. We had twenty minutes to complete this exercise. My classmates and I came up with a list of four criterias, to which we would be scoring; 1) Clarity of the Message, 2) Neatness, 3) Creativity, and 4) The use of Color. This assignment was definitely a challenge. We all learned immediately that communication was key to completing the assignment successfully, and we failed. Right off the bat, we all jumped in and tried to take the 'leaders' position. We all bumped heads, stumbled over each others words; it was a mess. We were all talking instead of trying to listen and understand what each of us had to say. It wasn't until over 10 minutes into our time that we finally agreed on a scoring strategy and got to work.

Once our time was over, our instructor, Jimmy Moss, questioned us about why we chose that list of criteria and what each factor meant. Some of us answered these questions unsuccessfully. As we analysed what the original assignment was, we learned as a class that it isn't easy to just quickly navigate through thirty or so stories from thirty different perspectives. We needed a hell of a lot more time than twenty minutes to properly analyze each comic strip. Furthermore, we discovered that our list of criteria were not individually strong enough. And last but not least, our biggest challenge was how we handled a group process, a group effort. How we worked as a team to complete the objective. I learned today that sometimes, when working with a team, you have to know when to speak and when to just shut up and listen. I think, overall, this was our biggest challenge.

Visual Literacy

Visual Literacy: to read and understand something visually. Ways of understanding what we see. Visual communication.

Pictures have the capacity to tell us a huge amount of information. It's a "seductive and powerful medium," as said by my Concept Development instructor, Jimmy Moss. Being able to communicate information through a visual experience has manifested and become a major role of cultural communication in my generation. In class today, Jimmy Moss was discussing the difference between visual evidence vs. conclusions us viewers draw from an image. "What you see vs. what you think you see."

Today, Jimmy showed us an older black and white image, The Critic by Weegee, and he asked us to describe what we 'see' not what we presume the picture is about. Never before have I looked at an image and viewed it without some kind of judgement or presumption as to what I think I'm looking at. When I looked at the image he showed us, I saw three women, two walking towards the camera wearing expensive clothing and the other, presumably a woman, with a side view of her face and body, wearing a more modest, shabby outfit. Immediately my response to the image was a judgement call. I analysed what I thought I was seeing, not what was actually there. I 'jumped the gun,' if you will.

With a little more understanding, and breaking down the image to what was actually there, the evidence, I discovered the image was taken to represent two basic facts, not an entire story. The privileged vs. the un-privileged. You see it in their body language, the expressions on the three figures' faces, the direction the figures are facing, and the different values on each figure.

Anyway, as the class went on, we discussed the importance of imagery, and the effect it can have on people. The different ways imagery is used, on buses, on bilboards, on political posters for campaigns. Visual communications is made up of imagery that causes the viewer to have an experience and most likely that experience is influenced by the way the designer has developed the information. Jimmy emphasized how designers have to power to communicate what they want to communicate, if the information is designed correctly. For a quick assignment in class, Jimmy had us create a short graphic novel called How I Made It to College, using four comic cells, in 20 minutes. We were supposed to translate important events that led us to Cal State Los Angeles. To translate a decent amount of information in four cells, and make it understandable while producing as much information as needed was a difficult task. Somehow, it was harder for me to translate an experience through imagery than it was to understand imagery when I was looking at it.

Persuasion and Presentation

In my Concept Development class at California State University of Los Angeles, my professor, Jimmy Moss, developed a "perception" exercise for his new students this Winter Quarter. Our exercise was to go around the room -- as your name was called from a stack of cards-- stand up, present yourself, say three things about yourself; two being true facts and one being a complete lie. The rest of the class meanwhile, will have to try to read the speaker and decide which fact was the lie. This gave the speaker the opportunity to practice persuasion, influencing the audience to believe you through the attitude you present in your presentation. Furthermore, the audience was able to perceive and interpret through sight and sound which fact about the speaker was false.

As a naturally shy person, immediately I felt overwhelmed as I quickly scanned through my current skills and interests. Mind you, this took me a matter or seconds, all in my head, and naturally I had rethink all of my choices every time another fellow classmate was called. "What are my interests again? Oh yeah. What should I pretend is true? Oh yeah." However, watching each of my classmates slowly unwind into a casual banter and excited laughter, the overall experience was indeed relaxing and fun. I found myself commenting and laughing with the rest of the class. Overall, it was a really great experience.