Of course I'm doing my homework!

No I'm not. No excuses, it's entirely my fault. I get wrapped up in making images that have to mean something to everyone, I miss out on learning how to make them think. On that note, I'd like to apply some of Burnett's theories to my own work, since that is all I did this week.

As is my custom around this time of year, I am doing the marketing material for this year's Confutati conference. For those not in the know, and how could you not be, Confutati is the graduate conference in Languages and Literature at the U. It's pretty esoteric, but some of the stuff that comes out of it is very interesting. Happily enough, the theme this year lends itself to a hightened sense of the abstract, my specialty. What you see at the left is a rough of the poster I'm working up for them (clickie for a larger view). The them vox populi/vox politica translates to voice of the people, voice of the poet. As it was described to me by the current student director of the conference, it's a melding of the written word and the spoken word. He wanted that represented as a kind of waveform-meets-letterform imagery. Fascinating, I think doing my best Spock impression, where the verbal meets the visual. It is in essence what designers strive to do. Meld the nebulous concept with the austere use of an object. It's great because now my poster moves beyond relaying information of the "what" and "when" to portraying the concept of the conference in action. Man, I love it. Not only do I get to push myself creatively and conceptually (always a pleasure), I get to create something that people can see and really have a moment with, something Burnett talks about frequently.

Among the other not-so-cognitive projects I participated in this week were the Lyceum II lecture web material. This was very taxing because I had to make something completely new from something old and outdated. Since UCOMM (campus marketing) is producing the material, I'm essentially at their mercy for content. They miss me very occasionally (no malice on thier part, I'm sure, they are busy people) and I'm left to make gold from lead as it were.

This image that is currently on the homepage has actually been photoshopped five times already to accommodate the changing needs of the marketing materials. It leaves me with a sort of feeling of sadness for the image, because even though those looking at it would never be able to tell, it feels to me like I've taken the soul out of it to make it more functional. The image in and of itself is just so wonderful, it seems a damn shame to put words over it. Then to alter it further almost feels like a crime. Why? I can't really say. It just feels like a lie to me.

So there are two polar examples of what was consuming my time and concentration this week, if anything I was productive on that front, even if my studying suffered for it. I'll make an attempt to post again over the weekend, and expect a lengthy post on the media-savvy-but-saturated girl's take on this year's superbowl commercials. It promises to be a good year, I'm especially excited about the Eels' commerical. Novocaine for the soul indeed.