lockyeardesign.com

... is launched! Right now it's mostly just a placeholder. Next job is to actually build up an online portfolio. But its a start!

- Brian -

Laser Cut Business Cards...

This week was super busy. Got lots of stuff done, ending today with supporting the symposium I've been working on for the prof in Eugene. It went well. No hitches to speak of.

Yesterday, in prep, I went down to the school and laser cut some business cards. I've had this idea for a bit about taking mat board... about 1/8" thick with a colored paper surface, and then burning a business card into it. I'd done some experimenting already and found that you could burn a little bit into the colored paper and produce a nice grey tone, or deeper through the color to get a whitish yellow from the backing material, or all the way through the card to get a punched hole. When I went to get cards printed up for my final project presentation, I'd used a design of squares that I was told was hard to print on cards because they were difficult to line up accurately with the card cutter. They did fine with them, but of course with the laser cutter it wasn't even a problem since i was cutting the card outline at the same time as I was cutting the information into the face of the card.

What I had not realized was something totally serendipitous that happened when I did all this. I cut my designs and was driving home, talking on the cell phone and looking at the card (yes, while driving), when I discovered that I'd scribed some of the lines into the paper just deep enough that light behind the card shown through them, creating a beautiful highlighted pattern. Its really stunning.

So now I've got a new idea, what if I cut into the back of the card almost all the way through and the design shows up when you hold the card up to the light. I could even laminate a thin sheet of covering paper onto the back of the card to cover up the cutting that is there. You could either give out a card that looks completely blank until you hold it up to the light, or with just a single line of text that shows up normally and then a design that appears in front of the light. I think it would be ultra cool.

Anyhow, I gave a few away today. They only ref my website, which I also got started this week. It will take a few days to really come to life and you'll here about it first right here!

- Brian -

I'm baaaaaack....

I decided it would be fun to post some of my activities now that I've gradieated and am attempting to find something to do with it all. It kind of works out to a three pronged approach: Advertizing, Networking, Activating.

Advertizing- This is coming in the form of setting up a website, plus refining my portfolio and resume. You should see an official website in the next week or so. I'm going back to some work I did a year or so ago setting up a website for a prof at the school. He ended up moving on to something a bit more sophisticated but not much different. I rather like where we were and, since I have all the code to make that work, am going to shove my images and structure into the site pages and see how they look. I'm also putting one of my woodblock prints into a book that is coming out on "Artists in Willamette Heights".

Networking- This is probably the meat of finding any job. Its not only meeting people and making connections, its dropping ideas for projects onto them and seeing what they respond to as well. So it is a circular thing, I refine my ideas to show up and talk about, they give me feedback that I take home and use to refine the ideas some more. There is a book I am on hold for at the library, "Find your Lightbulb", on making entrepenureship work. I had it in my hands for a bit but couldn't take time to read it during terminals. But I think that it might give me some good ideas about how to move forward. Here is the quickie on it from Powells-

Case studies (eg Microsoft, Celtel and Innocent) illustrate real life examples of how, through forcing yourself to try new and innovative things, you will find tremendous motivation and the power to attract others who will help (both those who are excited by what you seek to accomplish and those who will proclaim “you must be out of your mind.”)

Activating- This means that I am seeking out projects that I learn from or that help me to network. For example, one architect I know is doing some pro-bono work on a project in Wilsonville and I offered to help with that. A good way to get some drawing experience and some credit hours towards licensing as well. Also I've volunteered to help with the local Architects Without Borders website. A group that I've long been a member of but have never been able to attend their meetings because they are always held on Wednesday evenings. Another Willamette Heights group is assembling a revised history of the neighborhood book and I'm hoping to do some graphic design and layout for them. Meanwhile, I am continuing to build my skill set, now targeted towards my interests rather than just what the next school assignment is. I'm planning to take a summer autocad course at PCC and am self learning about scripting in Sketchup and Rhino to take me beyond the normal skill sets there.

Meanwhile, the Prof I was working for in Eugene this past year continues to need some help over the summer hosting a symposium end of next week and generating teaching materials from the information gathered at that symposium. Need to have my advertizing in line for that meeting... something in the hand to get my name out around town.

I'll post more as some of these tentative activities firm up! Wish me luck!

- Brian -

Frankfurt seems like a nice place...

Lufthansa overbooked their flight out of here so I decided to stay over one night and am rebooked tomorrow. Should pay for a replacement computer screen!

Reviews were interesting. My project turned out really well I thought... but it was a very modern building in a very traditional context and the visiting reviewers didn't like that at all. They did have some useful comments but a good deal of the vibe was `we just don't like that concept'. Where I was feeling like, 'it looks beautiful right there!' So I don't really know if it was a good review or a bad one. But I certainly sparked a lot of discussion and I was certainly the most experimental and unique of the designs. Which I was striving for as well. So I feel like I succeeded in many ways. I'm trying to bring home the model... we'll see if it makes it. It is a very solid little thing so I am hoping it will.

Looking forward to getting home!

- B -

Model finally done...

It took me several days to finish off my museum model instead of the 1 or 2 I'd hoped for. I ended up building a pretty spectacular model though, very nicely crafted and the form looks great when placed in the site model. It seemed like making a good model was a more effective way to explain the building structure rather than trying to do it through drawings and a crumby model.
So now I have a day and a half to generate a whole lot of drawings...

- B -