Visit to Penzeys for Branding Assignment!

I went to Penzeys to look at their branding and took some photos of their different spices sections! 

It was interesting to see how the labels don't have much design to it unless it is a specialty. Most of the jars were glass with black plastic tops that you twist open and a few had silver tops. 

Their labels are not very appealing or catching to the eye. There are different typefaces and differing design elements depending on what the spice is. 

Here's some of the photos I took! 

Spring Break Museum

For my Spring Break I went to New Jersey on a Habitat for Humanity trip. On our last night there we went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It was my first art museum outside of the Milwaukee Art Museum so it was an interesting experience. Im so use to the white walls at the art museum here in Milwaukee that I was not expecting what I saw. The museum had a Greek architectural look and I can just feel its vastness when I first walked in. I was told that it was one of the largest art museums in America and with only 45 minutes to spare to look around I practically ran through as much as I could. The big exhibit that was on at the time was the Treasures from Korea: Arts and Culture of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392-1910.

Here are some pictures that I took of the overall museum. We werent suppose to be taking pictures and I was so engrossed in what I was seeing that I kinda kept forgetting that I was suppose to be taking pictures.

Entry room

They had a Japanese exhibit too that was just amazing! They built an actual tea house inside the museum which was really pretty neat! The plants were alive and you could see just how much time and energy was put in to making it. 

This is what the label read on the wall just outside the door

Label:

This ceremonial teahouse was built in about 1917 by the Japanese architect Ögi Rodö. Designed in the rustic tradition or "artless style" of the fifteenth-century artist Oguri Sotan, it also incorporates eighteenth-century elements. The Sunkaraku teahouse originally stood on the grounds of Rodö's private residence in Tokyo. He sold it to the Museum in 1928, and in 1957 it was installed at the Museum, making it the only work by Rodö outside Japan. The garden setting you see now was planned by one of Japan's foremost contemporary garden designers, Matsunosuke Tatsui.

The apparent artlessness of the teahouse in fact conceals acute attention to detail and to aesthetic pleasure. The architecture of both the waiting room and the tearoom reveals a special delight in natural materials such as cypress shingles (for the roof) and bamboo. Proximity to nature is also emphasized by the garden, visible from both buildings. Everything inside the tearoom has been planned to stimulate the mind and to delight the eye. Rough, unfinished vertical posts remind guests of their imperfections and their oneness with nature, and the tea utensils enhance their sensitivity to natural textures and artistic creativity.

Label:

The tea ceremony offers a temporary respite from the complexities of daily life. This mood perhaps inspired a famous devotee of the tea cult, Lord Fumai Matsudaira (1750-1818), when he autographed the tablet over the teahouse with the inscription "Sun Ka Raku," or Evanescent Joys.

I also loved the granite pillars in the South Asian Section! Being inside this amazing building complex was surreal and it made me feel so small on this planet. 

Label:

The granite pillars, brackets, and slabs that form this temple hall (mandapa) come from the Madanagopalaswamy Temple, a sixteenth-century building complex in the south Indian city of Madurai. (The complex is dedicated to Krishna, an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu, and is still used for worship today.) The architectural elements installed here were purchased in 1912 by Adeline Pepper Gibson of Philadelphia while on a visit to Madurai. They are believed to have come primarily from a freestanding hall that once stood in front of the main shrine and was probably dismantled in the mid-nineteenth century.

The eight stone slabs between the pillars' lion brackets depict scenes from the Ramayana, the epic tale of the hero Rama, another avatar of Vishnu. The slabs were originally part of a larger relief series that ran around the inside of the hall and narrated the entire Ramayana. The life-sized figures projecting from the central-aisle pillars are deities and characters from both the Ramayana and another major Hindu text, the Mahabharata. These include Garuda (the bird-man vehicle of Vishnu) and Hanuman (the monkey-general of the Ramayana). A variety of small relief images of divine and human figures also ornament the pillars, including Krishna as a baby, a couple making love, royal donors, and even the temple architect with his measuring stick

I wish I could have taken more pictures but there you have it! I loved everything I saw there and the amount of history it held was just incredible. I hope to visit it next year if I can!

Workshop After School

On Tuesday 2/25, I went to a workshop called: "How to Develop Your Personal Brand: Professional Networking for the 21st Century". It was mainly about how to use social media to market or promote yourself or business to employer or potential clients. I learned a lot from attending it. There were some things I already knew, but I did discover new ways to use the social media sites. I can really get better at networking and showing my skills off more in my career field. I can build more connections and have those I communicate with become those who will recommend me for jobs. The speaker gave us websites to check out and see how we can use to brand ourselves. She showed videos about people who've use social media in creative ways to promote their skills. We were encourage to use Linkedin and also keep a blog. Many points I found very useful and plan on implementing so I can be successful in the future.

Invite Update

So for my invite cards I am going to go with this color scheme. I'm still figuring out what techniques all of the student artist are going to be. I want them to be graphic designers so that it'll be easier to stick with sold colors. I think I'm going with a thick white paper but it'll be pretty smooth so that the designs dont look like the texture of the paper will be the texture in their designs. I want the designs to be noticed but not screaming out to be noticed. 

The Arts and Technology: Responding to the 21st Century video

http://www.rubinmuseum.org/pages/load/312

            After viewing this video, I found it very interesting how technology or digital media has affected museums. In some ways the positive impact is obvious, although the negative aspect of the growth of technology has caused museums to change in many ways. It’s not longer a “locative”, but now an all over the world experience. Where there was once a more physical experience, now there is an assertive push for people to see the real thing after seeing it online or in digital form. A lot of cost goes into maintaining museums which try to preserve art pieces and better the way there are showcased. In today’s digital world museum comes to us through videos online, social media, etc. I think it is the way most of us are used to seeing art works and learning about different artists.

 I thought it was a great concept brought about there tracking pieces and other things using WIFI and taking advantage of users groups, applications in order to create a better design experience. Everyone is on the internet and use to things being more interactive now. One of the speakers talked about now instead of trying to find out more about artists from all over, it is all online which makes information more accessible to everyone around world. Then just saying again how hopefully what people see digitally would encourage them to want to see in physical form.
            I never thought in depth before about the differences between technology and art. One point discussed was technology being a set of tools or an enabler of making some form of art. Art is communicating between people through various form of it. It deals with us as human beings affecting our emotions and causes us relate to one another. Digital tech is a means to an ends, the end that is human experience. Technology makes an idea fabricated or untouchable, but doesn’t mean it can’t help artistic or creative ideas into reality. Art is a handmade, authentic object. I would have to agree with what they’ve all said in the video. It caused me to think about the growth of this digital world affects me. Am I taking advantage of it or is it causing me to miss out on experiences I can only get by physically going to a museum or using the original ways of making art? There was a lot to take away from it, but I think in the end it is about finding that balance between art and tech that can benefit in many different ways for the artist, the viewer/audience, and where art can be found.

Invitation Update

Had a critique the other day and decided to go with what people are saying and decided to fix things up a little bit. I made the plate an invitation instead of having it be just a decoration. I also fixed up the map, having it be a real orange inside of just cutting the map out like a circle and coloring it orange :) hehe. Right now, this has more texture to it, which I like. However, I think it sorta sticks out a bit while everything is cartoony and fun, this seems a little bit too "real" for me. I will probably play with some effects with the orange before I call it quits. Any suggestions would be awesome.

Center Stage Talent Show Event

I went to show support to some friends at this event, where I also saw talented I didn't know we had in this city. There was a Capoeria groups that did a mix of Afro-Brazillan martial arts and music and another group of Packour (like doing acrobatics) performers. They were amazing! Then there were a few singers, a poet, rapper, and a lovely group of dancers ages 65-81. I was so impressed by at the talented people. This event was to support St. Ann Center's Adopt-A Life Program which helps people of all ages in many different ways. I thought it was a great idea to put on this show that brought people from different walks of life. Every age group was present and the audience was very diverse. I had a great time.

For video of the performer's auditions go to https://www.stanncenter.org/centerstage