I got a kick out of this image. Thought it described my life perfectly with this past week!!!

class last week...

I have been so overwhelmed with work this semester in all my classes and felt a week for the portfolio and reflection of self was WAY to short. A week to complete a resume, cover letter, portfolio, business card and whatever else we wanted to include was crazy! However, I do feel it gave me a taste of real world deadlines, situations and expectations from our future "clientele" or bosses. I felt happy with the work I produced, but wish I had more time to complete it. I felt rushed and didn't have time to do everything I really wanted to do. I spent most of my time researching cover letters, resumes and portfolios. In doing that, I got side tracked with all the information from the Internet and fell behind. It was frustrating to not get feedback and guidelines before we left class. If we would have, I wouldn't have spent so much time researching in preparation for putting it all together.

It was a good experience and exercise to do our own research about how we want to present ourselves professionally, but not on such strict time schedule. I also really appreciated Eric being open to criticism on the project and getting feedback from us. I think we all felt a little relieved, after he agreed with most of the problems we said we were having. Plus, it gave us a chance to speak up and say what was on our minds about anything in the class. (250)

Stressed out!

Some inspiration for my research...

So, I am feeling a little inspired at the moment with this project. I was browsing and came across Paul Rand (who I really respect as a professional graphic artist). :)

“Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.”
Paul Rand

Paul Rand was truly the genius of logo design – his logos are so simple but so timeless. I get inspiration from the littlest things and enjoy looking at Paul Rand's work as he was an artist and a professional.

an idea for logo and business card

So I have a business card, resume, cover letter and now working hard on my portfolio. My head has been spinning with what approach to take on the portfolio. But I think I have an idea. I am going to get back to work now. :)

Professional Presentation of Self

This professional presentation of self assignment has really engaged me in preparation for real world situations. I am looking forward to the feedback and I am really working hard on it. I actually learned a lot about myself and my art through this assignment. I wanted to post my "Professional Presentation of Self " to give you more of who I am and what my interests are.

(WK8)

My interest in art and design began in my early childhood. As a daughter of a musician and an artist, I have been brought up in an environment where imagination, as a quality of mind and way of being, is highly valued. One of my early mentors once said: “Art is a form of problem solving, but there is never a single solution.” For me, design is a rich and deeply nuanced language. Design is the planning and organizing of elements in art that is accomplished with purpose by following certain principles. Design is a means of visually portraying a particular message, and the message is a composition – a unified and thoughtful piece of work that will capture the interest of the viewer.

As a maturing artist, I focused intensely on painting and drawing while in at the Visual Arts Center at Albert Einstein High School, a magnet program in Montgomery County, Maryland. I am now developing my expertise and appreciation for graphic design at Ringling College of art and design. I am intrigued with all phases and aspects of art, and how everyone can share and interpret it differently. I enjoy texture and working with my hands and as a graphic design major it challenges me to be more simplistic and clean in my approach in problem solving and layouts. My interests include branding and identity, as well as advertising through graphic design and other art-related mediums. I enjoy how typography can make a piece more effective with a simple image to portray a message. Creating compelling visual communication is what I enjoy most and do well.

I’m looking for an opportunity to collaborate with a team of other talented designers. I work well alone, but also work well with others and have grown to value the collaborative environment since my internship at USA Today. There I thrived on the fast-paced dynamic environment and found myself challenged by multiple cascading deadlines. The internship gave me the opportunity to author and contribute to many interesting projects. I’m constantly looking for opportunities to combine my interests and love for textures and apply it to graphic design elements and compositions in a way that helps get the message across.

Graphic Design is a lifelong passion of mine and I would love to turn my passion into a successful career. My favorite aspects of design are typography, photography, image manipulation and advertising. I take pride in my work and enjoy the developmental process from initial idea to finished piece. I am a very creative and visually-oriented person. Graphic design allows me to use my imagination to create stimulating pieces of work which are visually pleasing and communicate a message in a thought-provoking way. I seek to produce well-executed conceptual design with a focus on detail. I am inspired everywhere I look and I try to reflect this in the work I produce. I always look forward to new challenges and am eager to tackle a new and diverse range of projects.(504)

"If you have ideas and imagery, technique will follow."

Unknown

"We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak." Epicetetus quote

BOOO BOOOOOOOO!!! HALLOWEEN PRESENTATION

(WK7)

Here is a link to our introduction video about the origins of Halloween by Timothy Dickinson.

http://www.history.com/video.do?name=timothydickinson&bcpid=2524527001&bclid=1873841322&bctid=1842866701

I found last class to be fun. I actually had fun for once with a presentation. YES! Of course I was nervous but I began to relax after our presentation started. My group and I did something very daring and different from the regular weekly power points. Our topic was on informative speech with Halloween as an example of the technique. My teammates were so calm and there I was slowly freaking out as people started to walk in for class. We were there at 1:20 pm preparing and doing any last minute changes we had to make for the presentation. We wanted everyone to have fun (knowing that we were not getting graded) we decided to include activities and other things we probably wouldn’t do on a graded assignment. Our ideas and speeches should have been pushed further with more information and content to support our individual topics. As everyone knows, our presentation was WAY TOO SHORT. It was about 32 minutes long when it was supposed to be 75 at most. THIS WAS A BIG PROBLEM. Eric made a good point about how bad we would look to a company if we ended earlier then we said and so on.

Our speeches should have been more elaborate but at least I had fun presenting for the first time ever. Our Halloween concept was solid but as everyone said, our games and facts needed more explanation. And even though we had everyone read off the vocabulary list for the jeopardy game, it could have been connected more. Our intention for the games was to get peoples attention and engage them through activities and participation-which we did but we lacked connecting the entire thing to the presentation and ideas. We thought the activities would take longer then they did, so the presentation went even faster then originally planned. It was difficult to find a balance between the facts and Halloween because all of our examples were so focused on Halloween concepts.

The simple fact that we were not graded on this, led us to making such a drastic change in this assignment. If we were graded, I don’t know if we would have taken the same approach. However, with al the preparation and ideas behind the presentation It’s weird to actually not receive a grade even though it was a nice break and helped me relax a little. Overall, I had a great time with our presentation and got really good feedback that I will carry on with me when presenting again. (426)

I tried to post a video and I can't :( I will try again.

The good old days...With MR. LEE

(WK6)

After reading “Understanding Human Communication" I couldn’t help but pay attention to the section of "Gender and Language.” After last class when we discussed teachers and how they acted on the first day, I couldn’t help but write something about it. Back in High School, I had a teacher my freshman year that was very intimidating. Being a freshman in HS alone was scary enough. Specially, coming from a private school almost all my life to a public HS.

People hated when Mr. LEE, my English teacher, would walk in a room. Normally dressed in a suit and tie everyday he had a vicious and intimidating look on his face all the time. MR.LEE would walk the halls yelling at the “skippers” to go to class. He really wanted to see who could handle him and his attitude. Those who could would make it to college and have successful careers. And that was what he wanted for all of us, even though we didn’t care at the time. For the first three weeks of school he failed us in every assignment we did. I WAS FREAKED OUT. It was all about directions and process for him and every teacher was different. He was one of few in our school that scared students. He rarely opened up to people even until my senior year when I asked him to write a recommendation for me. Though a great man, the way he acted in class was normally how he acted in general and it gave me a reason to believe that he was like everyone else. Trying to give us a taste of reality in the real world and how people acted, rather then immature “hard ass’s” that people thought they were in HS and disrespecting teachers and starting fights and so on.

I personally really respected him as a teacher and knew how dedicated he was. He was actually my favorite teacher and I don’t know why. He didn’t care how many people hated him; it never changed his ways of teaching and his habits in classrooms. He was very strict, but I saw right through it simply because English was his passion and if I showed interest and dedication he would respect me equally as I did him. Because of him, I had more of an appreciation for literature and group activities through his assignments. I learned from my mistakes through failing and succeeding in his classes. I liked that he was hard on us because it pushed me. I took him every year after that. As all people say it either works or doesn’t work. In this case, I enjoyed his classes and intimidations because it helped me get over my fears on opening up and asking questions as well as general conversations with adults and teachers. (470)

I love this image and it relates to the previous entry about silence. This is where I think in peace and quiet with the sounds of the birds and ocean breeze.

unplug iPod
music stops abruptly
cricket song instead
~Dr SunWolf

"Orbiting the Giant Hairball" A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace by Gordon MacKenzie

(WK5)

Orbiting the Giant Hairball is a great read so far. It is easy to read, fun and refreshing. It is written in a spontaneous, stream of consciousness style with child-like drawings and pictures throughout the book, even hand­ written in places. It really engages the readers by having visuals to look at. Gordon defines “hairball” as the companies that are created through endless rules, policies, procedures, management layers and practices. Each “rule” is like a little hair that gets connected or knotted to the other hairs, and the result is a giant hairball. I can definitely relate to this simply because we all get wrapped up in following the rules and therefore it limits out creativity and little freedoms. But I want to talk about the book itself and all the process behind it. It is not your typical traditional style of business books or material in it.

I love books like this simply because Gordon went back in with his hands to edit his material. It’s collaged with different fonts (large and small) that are handwritten, stamped and typed out. As a Graphic Design major I see both good and bad layouts with this book. Knowing my major is geared toward simplicity and clean layouts, I love texture and patterns. Which a lot of my fellow peers do not relate to. I am intrigued that Gordon was able to pull it off and still have it be an overall interesting read in both visuals and content. At first glance the pages seem cluttered and overwhelming but Gordon’s experience and ideas are definitely obvious with his placement of everything and how it flows. All of his lines, marks, designs, type etc is intentional and he thought about all before hand. For example on page 75, the WHUP! WHUP! Etc is so simple but so effective by the type sizes and type face as well as the simple gestured qualities and movements he added behind it. What I like most is that whether a child, teen or adult the visual elements can relate to everyone and make it fun. This book is so inspiring and has actually helped me with outside ideas to do for fun. It comes from the position of a true artist, Gordon himself, who was very creative and also inspired by everything he saw. Almost all his work in this book I can see in posters, magazines, and other art related assignments. It is directed for people like us “artists” and is very lose and inspiring. (374)

Silence

(WK4)

The last class was interesting. I liked how we discussed the power of silence and how people react to different situations. Most people like having a friend to talk to rather than being alone. Some people are afraid of being alone and cannot tolerate silence so they need someone to comfort them. I find that people say they are "bored" and they constantly run around doing things in a frenzy to keep the silence away. I believe if you love and understand yourself it is okay to be alone and allow silence and space in your life. As weird as it sounds, people don't appreciate being bored. We get all wrapped up in always having to be with someone or always running around from place to place when we can be by ourselves and appreciate it. We all deserve a break from our hectic lives sometimes. I choose to be alone at times and have gone to the movies or the beach by myself. I come back happy. People don’t understand how I can be alone and be happy.

My zodiac sign tells me I love people. Yes I am a people person; always wanting to make sure everyone is happy and comfortable. Yet I enjoy my space and alone time too. I have also wanted to try what Eric did with his friends -- sitting back with friends in silence for an hour and then talking about it. A lot of people just react to the awkward silence and almost immediately start talking or acknowledge the awkwardness of the situation. I have yet to accomplish this goal simply because every time I try and be quiet, everyone thinks I am mad and they worry. This also applies to me when it comes to homework. I have my days where I like to get out of my room and do work and with a small crowd of people and other days where I do work alone. I get my work done so much faster with less distractions and conversations with friends. Of course everyone cares about pleasing people and being able to be around when everyone else is but I prefer working alone. Silence is a very powerful thing, sometimes stronger than words. I have very few friends that can understand that talking is not always necessary to make a point or conversation. I can sit with my best friend for hours and not feel pressured to talk none stop because we are so comfortable with each other. On the other hand, if people are shy and do not know each other very well it can make things awkward and then people don’t know how to handle the awkward situation. (450)

“Silence is a source of great strength.” Lao Tzu quote

is face to face communication the same...

(WK3)

I couldn't think of something to write about for today relating to class. So I decided to browse for a blog on Google and try and relate it to class.

Here is the blog:

Communicating with People You Haven’t Met

By Pearl • August 12, 2007

I found Pearl's response to communication very interesting. Though there was one point in the blog I didn't really agree with. She says, "I believe its all about communication. Communication is at the heart of building relationships and I believe blogging, as a means electronic communication, should be no different than face-to-face conversations. With every sentence we write, we are building a quiet relationship with our readers. So it is of utmost importance that each and every post is written with the purpose of engaging our readers."

It is easier to talk to someone face to face, with co-workers, friends, family, and even the person you meet at the library. However I do not agree with her comment, “blogging is no different than face to face interactions".

It is so much easier to have a conversation online or on Facebook without knowing who the people are verse face-to-face conversations. I say this because I experience this on an almost daily basis with people. It is so easy to pretend you are someone you aren’t because people do not know the difference if they have never met you. Of course everyone wants to be friendly and polite when on Facebook but in person it can sometimes be different. I love to meet new people and get to know them.

It is easy to write down your thoughts in a blog or online, but would people be that interested and do the same in person to someone they just met? I think not. I think these are both very different concepts and most people don't feel the same in those situations. I have heard from friends that every time they talk to someone online it's not the same vibe or energy they get in person. I think most people prefer face-to-face communication. I know I do. (349)

"Good communication does not mean that you have to speak in perfectly formed sentences and paragraphs. It isn't about slickness. Simple and clear go a long way." John Kotter Quotes

Is it really sincere and honest?

(WK2)

In communications class we talked about communicating and asking someone how they are doing. I am normally a very open person with people and love to talk and really get to know them. Especially when those people are friends with the same people I am friendly with. It is a normal thing to ask someone “how are you today” or “what’s up”? Saying this normally gives the person the opportunity to say, “I am fine” or the complete opposite and then they usually explain why they are feeling a certain way.

We expect people to say something even if they are not interested in what we have to say. It is like an unwritten rule. Most people just give a short answer and not really seem to care or engage in the conversation about what the person really wants to know and hear. Yesterday I experienced something similar. I was in line at Michaels Art Store listening to this wonderful conversation the cashier was having with a customer about the store and upcoming events.

I thought, “wow, what a happy and nice person the cashier is.” When it was my turn I put a big smile on my face and said “Hi, how are you today?” It was a long pause and no answer. I spoke up and said it again and she gave me a dirty look. So many things went through my head about the situation. Was it something I was wearing, how I said it, maybe I was closer in age to her then the older women and that caused an issue, or maybe that whole conversation with the women was all fake. Her whole attitude changed and it instantly became very negative. I understand that everyone is different and maybe it wasn’t anything personal by her not saying anything, but she did hear me. Nevertheless, I still kept a smile on my face and walked out wondering. It is so funny how people react differently to each other and their environment. I probably didn’t care too much about how she really was when I asked the question, but seeing how she was the cashier and helping me check out, it was the polite thing to do. It all goes back to the standard of what people expect about a person. Just like Eric said, no one really cares what people say when you ask them how they are. But overall it is just assumed that we follow the same routine as everyone else and ask those “normal” questions to possibly feel better about ourselves. (427)

Style and Attitude

(WK1)

After being in this class for a couple weeks, I have began to look at everything around me differently. After class last week, I realized how people are so quick to judge others based on their looks and how they present themselves. Eric, our teacher, was describing how he changes his looks and appearance based on who he is interviewing with. Why, we ask? Because that is what we know to do and what is expected of us. It’s considered normal. The instant someone does something differently from what society says is normal, they are judged on any number of levels.

Growing up in Maryland I experienced so much pressure to dress correctly and go along with the crowd. It was very competitive and there were lots of expectations. I found it interesting that most people refused to be different because they just wanted to fit in. I love art, therefore I am weird to some people. I accepted that a long time ago.

My individuality comes through my art and it allows me to be who I want to be. That doesn't make me any less of a person because I enjoy something different. Eric was telling us that the only way we know who we are is by communicating! This is true. We have more of an understanding of a person when we talk to them rather than judge them on how they look. I have met some of the nicest people who originally I thought were stuck up until I communicated with them and got to know them.

There is so much ambiguity among people. It makes a huge difference when we make that little effort to talk to each other face to face.

I enjoy the face to face exercises in class and walking around the room looking at our surroundings. Why? Because it let us become comfortable with each other and our surroundings. At first, we were out of our comfort zones because we had to talk to complete strangers but the end result is that we are all much more open and comfortable now.(351)

ME

Hi everyone,

My name is Jenna Fanning and I am a GIC aka graphic and interactive communications major here at Ringling College of Art and Design. I love it here! I am actually really intrigued with this class, because Eric, our teacher, is allowing us to be creative and think about communication differently than what we have always known to do and what we are so accustomed to doing. I also took this class because I HATE presenting (ha ha). I love to socialize in big groups of people but when it comes to standing in front of people and making a presentation, I become anxious. So, I am taking this class in hopes of improving in all aspects of communication and presentation.