Ear to the ground & head in the clouds


Illustrator Project- The Call for Cellular Civilty
August 6, 2008, 6:54 am
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I had abundance of fun trudging through the various layers of this project. Most of my time was spent mucking about illustrator which is why I have so many different directions as to how I envisioned everything. There are a lot of itterations which I scrapped, but I thought I would post them to show my thought process.

I definitely had the most fun tackling the concept of a logo. It was difficult to find a balance between clarity of text and an overall image. My intention was to capture a mood of urgency while keeping the shapes simple and clean. I really wanted to play with the purpose of each shape; this is why there are a variety of “C”‘s manipulated in various forms.

For the final logo, the “C” appears several times in the text itself, and echoes in the sound waves and even creates the shape for the megaphone. Thanks to some helpful suggestions from a friend of mine, her outside perspective allowed me to simplify the colours and eliminate the unnecessary. Suzi was also clever enough to notice the cellphone shape was very similar to the brown shape; I tweaked this aspect to duplicate the shape.

Despite my contentment with the outcome of my logo, I had a horrendous time trying to integrate the image into the poster without it looking like a last-minute insertion. There was a point where I stopped thinking and just produced.

Here are the few I followed through with and printed for class today. Drawing the maddened cashier was feat in itself. I’m not a bit fan of drawing the computer- it lacks the physicality of a pen in the hand and the grit of the soft lead gracing a paper’s surface. It was fun to be a little more cartoony than I’m used to, and investigate that playfulness (especially with his little paper hat flying off with a wind of anger). At first I planned to replace his face with a giant lion’s mouth to truly capture my frustration!

I feel like him all the time.

Here is where I really tried to involv the presence of the logo, almost using it as a prop:

The crit and feedback from today’s class was extremely helpful. From there I decided to move forward with the poster which struck the dominant chord among the class. At first, I was apprehensive to go through with this poster because I thought the trend of 50’s style advertisements was a little overdone, plus I had difficulty integrating my logo. I’m very much satisfied with the outcome though! Plus, it’s an Asian cashier from the 50’s! I’m going to take some photos of this tomorrow outside my workplace.



Cashiers unite!
July 29, 2008, 9:56 am
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I spend most of my days working and finding human interactions a funny thing. There must be some form of bizarro human patterning when customers decide when to line up; there are moments when the store is pin-needle subdued, but moments later there’s a boisterous thunder of people lining up. I’m sure there’s some sort of study on that.

Cashiers are kind of an oddity in themselves and sometimes it’s hard to remember that, yes they are people too! Some may be more robotic or scarily chipper than others, but like you, they have to trudge along with the rhythm of life. In homage to my fellow cashiers across the nation, I would like to create a poster to raise awareness against one of the most dreaded species of customers: the cellphone talker.

Now, this is just plain rude.
If you’re ready to ring in your items, please do not blah-blah-blah on your cellphone as if I was insuperior to your chatter. I would appreciate acknowledgment of my services and existence, please! I wondering if it’s honestly just THAT difficult to call the person back, or excuse yourself. Sigh. I had two customers in a row on the weekend with phones attach to their ears; no hellos or thank-yous.

Here begins my idea, and the beginning of the Campaign for Cellular Civilty! Cellphones are great, don’t get me wrong. The abuse of them, however, is troubling. I have issues with cellphones as barrier for communicating with the physically present folk. How we treat our fellow man withstands the same importance as using less plastic bags or reducing our carbon emissions. Maintenance of human relationships is vital and essential to function! We need to start treating each other better! More hugs, more communication, more personal fulfillment!

I mean, how the heck are we going to get through this if not together?