North by Northwest

Thornhill is an innocent man struggling to prove his innocence due to being mistaken for George Kaplan, who doesn’t actually exist. During his struggle he is put in many situations that ordinarily he wouldn’t be. For example the scenes where he has to dodge a crop duster coming right for him, fight bad guys on the top of Mount Rushmore, and where he is wrongly accused of stabbing Townsend at the United Nations building.

You pretty much get a good idea of Thornhill’s personality right from the opening conversation between him and his assistant. Especially when he shows that he has no problem with telling lies by calling them an “exaggeration”. You also see more of what he’s like by how he gets along with his mother. Money seems more important to both of them than their actual relationship with each other. The shift from his own personality to George Kaplan begins when he starts pretending he is Kaplan. In one scene he is in Kaplan’s hotel room and pretends he is Kaplan to anyone that knocks on the door while he’s there. He even answers the phone as George Kaplan.

As the story progresses Thornhill begins to assume more and more of Kaplan’s identity. He was in a way envisioning what he believed Kaplan was like and then taking on those characteristics. Since Kaplan doesn’t actually exist I think that Thornhill was becoming Kaplan.

The Simpsons

I visited the website for the television show The Simpsons and found it very easy to navigate. There are links to watch episodes, get info of upcoming shows, read character bios, and even sign up for their newsletter. There’s also a message board where you can leave comments about the show.

Now I’ve personally never really liked The Simpsons, but I can understand some of the reasons it has such a large following of viewers. The show has been on for 19 seasons, which is an amazing number for any program but especially for a cartoon. I think one of the main reasons is at the time it was introduced it was very different from anything else on television. Realism was not what the graphic artists were aiming for and that’s evident with the look given to the characters. Take the family for example, all of their skin colors are yellow. All of their hair matches their skin color, except for Marge whose hair is blue and like three feet high. Also they all have an overbite and huge, round bulging eyes. It’s definitely not a normal look for a television family.

The other reason for the show’s popularity is it’s not afraid to tackle any subject. Early television programs were more safe not to offend people with topics they chose. The Simpsons is very well known for including very current and controversial subjects, especially political ones. I do think it’s good to have shows that aren’t afraid to do this because it really makes it so people can’t hide from the real issues going on in everyday life.

Wayfinding Project

Assignment: Project assignment is to design external Wayfinding signage system to greet and navigate new students to the Academic Building.

Mission Statement: To design an outdoor signage system for MVCC that is simple and easy to navigate with, yet also visually appealing. This should be able to help new students find the Academic Building as well as any other building on the MVCC campus.

Strategy: A large four sided map located in the center of the courtyard. Each side would represent the building it’s facing, and each would have it’s own color that coincides with the building. There would also be a small bird’s eye view of the entire campus located in a bottom corner of each side. Also smaller signs located outside each building and by each parking lot to help navigate the campus.

Wayfinding Definition: signs, maps, and other graphic or audible methods used to convey location and directions to travelers; also written way-finding

Etymology: coined in 1960 by architect Kevin Lynch

Wayfinding encompasses all of the ways in which people and animals orient themselves in physical space and navigate from place to place.
Wayfinding is often used to refer to traditional navigation methods used by indigenous peoples. In more modern times, wayfinding is used in the context of architecture to refer to the user experience of orientation and choosing a path within the built environment, and it also refers to the set of architectural and/or design elements that aid orientation.
Historically, wayfinding refers to the techniques used by travelers over land and sea to find relatively unmarked and often mislabeled routes.

Principles for effective wayfinding include:
-Create an identity at each location, different from all others.
-Use landmarks to provide orientation cues and memorable locations.
-Create well-structured paths.
-Create regions of differing visual character.
-Don't give the user too many choices in navigation.
-Use survey views (give navigators a vista or map).
-Provide signs at decision points to help wayfinding decisions.
-Use sight lines to show what's ahead.

Saul Bass was born in the Bronx district of New York City in the year 1920. Bass studied at the New York and Brooklyn College, and later had many apprenticeships with various Manhattan design firms. He did some freelance work mostly in commercial graphic design in New York, before moving to Los Angeles in 1946. He opened his own studio there still doing a majority of his work in the advertising business.

Bass was a very accomplished commercial graphic designer, creating many famous company logos you have probably seen today. One of these such designs is pictured above, the famous AT&T logo. A couple other examples are the corporate identities for United Airlines and the Bell Telephone System.

His commercial work is very well known, but the largest impact on the graphic design industry was probably due to his work in filmmaking. Before him opening credits weren’t even shown in most theaters. He would take a movie and design the title and credits to relate to what the movie was about. One of his most famous was for the movie The Man With the Golden Arm. He designed an arm with heroin track marks to relate to the main characters struggle with drug addiction.

Bass continued with work on other famous motion pictures like Psycho and Vertigo. After having great success in all these endeavors he decided to have a try in directing his own feature film entitled Phase IV. However, this film turned out to be a complete flop and Bass returned to what he did best, commercial graphic design.

Enchanted Beach with Three Fluid Graces

One of my favorite artists is the Surrealist painter, Salvador Dali. His work isn't straight forward, it makes you think about what the message is he is trying to portray. Two different people could look at the same work of art and have completely different views on what it's about. Enchanted Beach with Three Fluid Graces is one such work that makes you wonder what the true meaning is behind the piece.

The color scheme is more natural with a hint of warm shades, like yellows and oranges. These set the tone of a very warm area, like a desert. There are three women standing with sheer, white dresses on. Proceeding from right to left the women begin to blend more with the background, like the head of the far right one seems to be where the large hole in the rock is. The one on the left's midsection has actually completely been unraveled, as if it was a garment in itself.

The message I get from this work is that these women appear to be strong and brave enough to stand up to almost anything. Yet, they do appear to have one weakness, in this case the heat. The strong heat seems to be unraveling them. This could pose the idea that everyone, no matter how strong they initially appear, has a weakness of some sort. We all have something that could "unravel" us in some way.

Memorable Image

Some of the most memorable times of my life are also some of the saddest. It's easier for me to remember images that shocked me. Ones that just seemed unbelievable at the time. One of those such times deals with the death of my younger cousin, Olivia. She was only 6 months old at the time of her death. You just don't think that as quick as someone can come into this world, that's how fast they're already gone. I didn't get a chance to know my cousin, but her memory will always live on inside of me.

The one image that really sticks in my head was when we attended the wake. It was open casket(which always freaks me out anyway), and it was my turn to go up and pay my last respects. I just remember looking down at her and thinking, she looks just like one of those porcelain dolls. They had dressed her in this pink, lace dress with matching hat and shoes. Her fingernails were painted pink to match the dress, and she was wearing way too much makeup for a little girl of her age. That image will never leave me as long as I live. Just the thought that someone so little can be taken away, without even getting their chance to live, is to this day still too difficult for me to accept.