The other day I saw a shirt that said “what type are you” and had a picture of a blood droplet. Being the type geek that I am, the first thing I thought of was typeface, not blood type. I decided to make a series of t-shirts or posters for the type obsessed. It would simply read, “what type are you?” set in ~60pt type contrasted with the first letter in ~950pt and the name of the typeface to go along with it. I started off with my favorites, “futura” and then “helvetica.” Soon I had about 5 or 6 letters from the alphabet, so I figured I’d do the whole alphabet. They’re more poster-like than t-shirt-like. Only finished a dozen so far but here’s a teaser.

I’m going through this really good drawing book right now, Keys to Drawing by Bert Dodson. So far focuses a lot on the technical aspect and technique of drawing. For example, you should be looking at whatever you’re drawing more than the drawing itself. I bought it a year ago because it was a recommended classic. I’m only about half way through it, but with the portfolio review coming up, I hope to finish it well before then. Here’s one for the chapter on lighting. (the white lines under the chin and hair is actually the ripples on the paper reflecting light from the scanner)

ben harper portrait

4H-8B graphite on paper

Don’t you hate it when you start doubting? I sometimes doubt if design is something I can do. It’s not that I doubt whether or not I really love design or not, but if I can survive? Will I be good enough? Can I handle the responsibility that comes along with the title? I remember reading in a book about some famous designer who was asked what he feared. To my surprise he answered he was insecure all the time; that he wasn’t going to be relevant anymore or jokingly that the world will discover that he’s really just a hoax. That was encouraging in an odd way.

So I set some goals for this winter break. It’s a little over the halfway point and I’ve checked off zero of my goals listed. The first couple weeks were really busy as I was working full time and spending time with family. But now the holidays are over; my out of town family have gone back home and there’s much less hours for me at work. I’m back at it working on my final book from GPHD 25 which is one of the pieces required for the portfolio submission. This class never ends! I had some edits to do on Series 5 (point line plane) and had to redo part of Series 3.3 (stacked interval). I just finished the vellum overlays for Series 3 and 5, which take forever by the way. I’ll post a picture to show you what I mean. Other things I’ve been working on: finally created a cool little email signature when I start emailing studios for potential internship, doing some drawing, and some reading.

On a side note, the day I hoped would never come happened one night when I was cutting out 4×4 squares out of bristol. In one quick motion, the x-acto blade went up and over my t-square, across both my index and thumb. It was so fast I didn’t realize I had cut myself until I saw blood, which luckily did not get on the bristol. The cut looked pretty deep to me, but found out later it wasn’t deep enough to get stitches. It’s been really frustrating because of the time and money I had to waste. Not having a fully functional thumb also makes simple things so much harder to do. I’ll spare you the macro picture. A good thing that came out of this humbling experience was that it pushed me over the edge to invest in a quality rotary trimmer. I was always too cheap to get one, but the experience is way too much of a hassle.

Currently Listening to…
Artist: rogue wave
Song: postage stamp world
Album: out of the shadow

It’s been a long semester. I worked harder in this one semester than any other quarter or year at UCLA. There’s many things I can go into detail about as far as assignments and other design related topics, but I’ll save that for a later entry. I’m unofficially on my winter break right now because I have one exam + 1 paper left. It’s GPHD 05 which is basically my easiest class this semester. As a pre-graphic design student, the work never really stops. Actually, designers in general never really have time to stop learning and moving forward. It’s a constant fight with competition; with staying relevant.

So this winter break, I’m setting some goals for myself to hopefully keep me ahead of the competition. Whenever I set goals though, I’m always overly ambitious, and as a result fail to reach my goals. Well, this time around, nothing’s really changed, but I’m still optimistic about meeting my goals! Here they are in no order of importance:

• maintain a habit my art 20a teacher tried to instill in our class: 1 drawing a day, either from imagination and/or reality
• complete my huge drawing of a Japanese factory (potential portfolio piece)
• complete my GPHD 25 book, spiral bounded and all
• finish my personal promo pieces to send out to potential employers (ex. business card, portfolio take away material, cd)
• contact all the design studios about possible summer/fall internship
• finish one of those books that have been accumulating faster than I can read them

That’s quite a list on top of work work and play as well. I’ll let you know in a month how I do.