Designer: Chris Milk

Before I say anything about the genius of Chris Milk, go to this website, type in your address and watch this music video. 

http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

I hope you liked it, and if you aren't a fan of Arcade Fire, then hopefully you could at least appreciate the style in which Chris Milk designed their experimental video.  I think that this innovation in designers is the sort of thing that creates a name for yourself.  He has made videos before, and is obviously not a no body, but Chris stuck his head out on this idea and went for it.  He used a completely foreign HTML5 to design his interactive short, where it pulls up a Google Chrome image of your house and incorporates the viewer to engage them in the video.  

Sure, many people could think of ideas like this, but to actually attempt and succeed in creating this video is amazing to me.  The coding is far past my understanding and I think this is what is often scary for people with big ideas.  It is easy to give up on a big idea when you don't have a clue how to start or even how to build a framework to support your ideas.  This may be what separates the great designers from designers.

Chris Milk has also done many other short films, like this one titled "Last Day Dream"

Another of my favorites from his works is "Who's Gonna Save My Soul" where he did a music video for Gnarls Barkley.

Compare and Contrast

Above is the short directed by Chris Milk entitled 'Who's Gonna Save My Soul.'

I newly discovered Chris Milk and his body of works as I will go into further detail later. I realized after watching this short film that his style is somewhat similar to the more widely known Spike Jonze. Spike has a similarly themed video in which he worked with Kanye West as his primary actor. Here is Jonze's video titled "We Were Once a Fairy Tale"
Part 1:

Part 2:


Both styles are a bit dark, but cut right to the heart (sorry for the bad pun). I think this was also shown very well in Jonze's recent remake of Where the Wild Things Are.  They have very similar styles especially in the first two videos I posted as they both involve cutting into their chests to pull out fictitious living creatures, one being his broken heart and the other being Jonze's interpretation of a man's soul.  I can really appreciate both of their bodies of work because they are very abstract and also notion at critical emotions that we don't even like talking about often.  Instead we are able to view their short films and have a conversation with the director in relating to the portrayed situations.  As I have stated in previous posts, I believe that it is in the best art that the artist can get straight to your physical emotions and play with your thoughts.

Design as Conversation

As Housefield stated in class last session, design is a conversation.  Whether design is a conversation between a designer and his or her client, or whether it is a conversation between a design you just published and your audience viewing it on a local billboard, or whether design is a conversation between Lady Gaga and Yoko Ono talking about how the sun is down on stage.

Design is often thought of as the communication of ideas towards your audience and one of the best visual artists and maybe the least known is Yoko Ono.  She often did exhibits about allowing viewers to interact with her art work.  The greatest part about this to me was that it got the viewer to be visually and mentally simulated and thinking about ideas involving her art and even politics as she and John Lennon were very politically forward and driven in their actions.

Communication is not always through the sound waves stimulating your ear drums, but can also happen through your retinas via visual elements and designs which are pleasing to the eye.  This the study of design as a communicative process, since to be a successful designer you must be able to communicate to your audience verbally and visually in a quick and concise manner.

Flowers Are So Pretty

As an amateur photographer, flowers have to be one of the more cliche things to shoot. But I must add, Blossfeldt sure makes me look stupid for even thinking that. One of my newest man crushes in the photography world is Karl Blossfeldt. He is known for his famous images on flowering plants such as his work titled "Pumpkin Tendrils, 4x Magnified," shown below.


He certainly is a very similar photographer to me in style, and in no way am I trying to compare my photos to his since they are no where near his level. His shots became most popular in the late 19th and early 20th century. Mainly, these photos consist of natural forms he has found, usually at a macro level, which he magnifies to create huge prints of anthropomorphizing forms. The way he designs his shots also add to this specifically because they are shot in studio lighting with a blank backdrop, further bridging human and nature. For some it reads as if he is making a comment on the natural forms of humankind, and for some it reads as a showing of the similarities between humans and their close relatives of the plant kind. I personally feel as if Blossfeldt was a revolutionary of the early 20th century. Not only did he say what he wanted to say his photographs, but he did it in a completely different way than anyone had done before. This was the time of painting and photography was still looked at as a sort of documenting, not the designing of thoughts. He got his message across not by telling people what he thought, but by showing them, with real photographic evidence. Although he may have never called himself a designer, he was a designer of modern photography. I still find myself shooting in his styles far after he has lived.

Creativity from Without

Tim Brown is a designer that inspires me to do what I love and that is designing.  Brown has given a few talks at the TED conferences in Monterey, CA.  One of these is his talk on thinking big.  One of Tim's main ideals as a designer and as an artist is to 'Think Big'.  To him, this means not only going to work at your design firm and reskinning simple designs and looks for other things.  Brown talks about how many designers today are underused in his speech on 'Creativity and Play'.  One of these points is exactly what he was talking about here in that he doesn't want designers to just go to work to get paid to do mundane things that any graphic artist could do.  He points out that you should design the frameworks for objects as well as design the skins for them.



I think that he is completely correct about this since you can be a decent designer and get away with just reskinning for big firms and making your money to pay the bills, but the truly great designer would put that on the line to go big for a greater cause.  This may be hard to justify, but I would like to think that I have this quality in that I also try to go big whenever I can.  A lot of times you can come out and just look dumb, but that one time when you succeed and come out on top makes all those previous attempts worth it.

Stone Soup

Last class we had a great activity planned called Stone Soup.  The basis for this was directed towards the lessons shown in the book, Stone Soup, by Maria Brown.  Everyone brought a few items, whatever they wanted, and we all threw our stuff together to make an object.  Everyone brought quite a few things such as duct tape, string, paint, paper, and even more odd objects like tubes and CDs.  As we thought about what to make with all our items laid out on the table, we thought, maybe it would be interesting to try to make something natural out of man made objects instead of usually making all these things out of what were once natural materials at some point.  We didn't even talk about what we were going to make.  We just made it.  

That is what was so great about the Stone Soup project.  Everyone brought a few little pieces of themselves to the activity and our group turned it into an object inspired by their own individual lives.  This is just the same as design and how designers work.   Each designer brings their own experiences as objects and cooks their own stone soup to better the world and feed it to their peers.  I feel that often times designers attempt to redesign other works they have seen and these can be good works, but truly great design comes from originality, inspiration, and motivation within.  Sometimes the best work of designers doesn't only redesign something, but creates some unique way to prevent the problem other designs are merely fixing.

My Attic: Fuzzy Like a Childhood Memory

One of the first positive memories I have which impacted my life is my attic in my house back at home. I wish now that I could stay there forever. There being that time of innocence in my life and there being in that attic where no one could hurt me. My attic made such a strong impression on me because it was no ordinary attic. My family converted it into a sort of playroom. It was filled with pillows, blankets, and giant bean bags. These were no ordinary pillows either, but a mix and match of all sorts of crazy shapes and textures. Just to give you an example, I specifically remember one that we had which was a corduroy covered square pillow which had two big arm pieces attached to either side. Even though as a young child you really aren't faced with many responsibilities, it still felt like I could get away from the chaos and hard work of dealing with my two brothers and family. I could go up there any time and cover myself in blankets and pillows and feel at rest. The room had a very soft quality to it between the literal softness in the blankets and pillows covering the floor to the visual softness of the single yellow light that dimly lit the space in which I spent so much time. The space could also be so easily recognized because of its musty attic smell. Not a bad thing by any means, but just very unique. This smell is now something that when I smell, I instantly recognize and identify it with my attic and my childhood. I think the way we designed the room completely changed my outlook on attics and similar spaces. I think most people would see a basement, attic, cellar or the likes to be seen as eerie, unsanitary, rat infested, and dust covered. Places that people do not want to spend time. When I think of an attic I think of just about the opposite of this since my attic was such a secure place in my younger years and I often find myself still wanting to spend time in these areas simply because of this transition in design my parents offered me.

Pop Art in Sportswear

What are our motives in buying clothing and more specifically in sportswear?  We are influenced by fashion trends around us and right now that is Pop Art.  Not only is it popular in our everyday culture as Americans, but it could be growing into sports swag near you.  Now, I am a HUGE San Francisco Giants fan, so naturally when my Dad texts me, 'Want to go to the game Friday?' I freaked out. I was walking to the ballgame the next night in hopes of an NL West division clinching win when I noticed a person walking by with an interesting t-shirt which had an unfamiliar silhouetted face. This got me thinking. I have been wanting to design some Giants t-shirts simply because I feel there is a lack of creative design in sportswear. Pop art is in right now, and incorporating this into sportswear could very well bring a lot demand.

In a fashion context of design I think you can either follow trends or create new trends. If you are an established design group and you have a big enough name, you most likely have the freedom to pretty much do whatever you want. This would give you the option of creating trends. Otherwise, if you are trying to make it in todays market, you would probably have to design something that would be following a current fashion trend. Do what is in and it will be easier to catch the eye of people around you. Often, if you try to create a new trend it will be seen first as weird or unusual. But don't get me wrong, because you definitely don't have to just copy everyone else and not be even innovative and good designers will do just the opposite of this. They will take current trends whether it is in fashion or any other field of design and take it to the next level. Design to me is just this. Sometimes people fall into the mindset of copying everyone else out there when you should just be yourself and let everything around you in your unique lives inspire your creation!