Jiro Dreams of Sushi

I loved this movie.

I feel so inspired it’s a little bit weird.

Jiro dreams of Sushi is a documentary that follows Jiro and his methods as one of the world’s masters in sushi making. Judy left us with a list of questions to answer while we watched the movie, to help us draw parallels between his work and our work as designers, but I found myself just flipping the page over and writing things down on the back that inspired me. Sometimes I forgot I was watching a movie about sushi and not just an inspirational movie about pushing yourself harder and harder to become a master at your craft.

There were many things that I found particularly inspiring, or that resonated with me personally. It’s encouraging to know as a student just starting out that it takes years and years of hard work and practice to become a master, no matter what your field. In the beginning of the movie they said that some people are born with inherent talent or skill, but these people still need to work really hard for years until they become masters. I also loved Jiro’s attention to detail. There were shots of him fidgeting with the place settings at his restaurant, which I myself was doing the night before as I prepared for friends to come over for dinner. My husband teased me, but I notice these little things! I felt like I related to Jiro. He also talked about the importance of cleanliness and organization (if you glance at my desk at school, it’s always immaculate). Some artists and designers flourish in chaos but I flourish in orderly environments, and I felt that Jiro was the same.

Another thing that struck me was the importance of immersing yourself in and surrounding yourself with excellence in your field in every aspect. For example, Jiro only gets his food from masters in each of their respective fields. He gets his rice from the master, he gets his tuna from the master, etc. He also says that he only eats good food himself, to accustom his palate, because if you yourself aren’t experiencing excellence, how will you produce it for other people?

Something that struck me because I found that I was confused by it was the fact that Jiro hasn’t changed at all, in at least 5o years. How does he get inspired? How does he get ideas to try new things? Perhaps this is where the metaphor between sushi and design falls apart, but I know for me that I need to invest in other areas of my life to get inspired in my designs. The fact that Jiro says he will continue to improve, and there is always room for improvement I also found interesting. I wonder about this in all areas of craft. Is there ever an end? Where is the top, as the movie asked? If you compare it to Olympic running, there is a top. We don’t yet know where it is, because every year people continue to break records, but we can’t go faster than zero seconds. At some point, there will be no way to go any faster. Where is that point? This idea fascinates me. And I feel that it’s the same in any field, though maybe harder to count or quantify in something like sushi making or design.

Where is the top? Will there be a point in areas of design where we say, “Nothing better can be done?”

I have no idea, and I probably won’t find out for myself unless I start working harder. So I better wrap this up and go do some brainstorming.

 

 

Social Cause Poster

For this assignment, we were to choose a social cause that we felt for personally. We were then to find an organization affiliated with the cause, and design a poster for them with a call to action. My first thought was to choose anti-tail docking as my social cause. I immediately doubted myself because it didn’t feel “normal,” or like something other people would resonate with. I do this often with projects. I try to figure out the “right” answer or solution instead of going with my gut or desires. And yet this time, I told myself to go with my instinct. Tail docking is something I am extremely passionate about, and I couldn’t imagine putting my heart sincerely into a different cause, knowing that this was my first passion.

My decision payed off. Researching and thumb-nailing was not only easy, it was fun. I found myself wanting to get back to this project. Every step of the way, from my initial mind map, to my brief, to my research, to my moodboards, I was invested and inspired. When it came time to do thumbnails I found it easy to surpass the minimum requirement for number of sketches (I could have gone on for days but, alas, other classes’ homework beckoned). Here is just a snippet of my preliminary work.

And here are my final 3 ideas. It’s hard to saywhich one I think is strongest. I know for certain that the one in the middle is not the strongest. The first poster (with the dolphin) I think is the strongest conceptually, and it also has the most bold imagery and type. However I find the last poster (with the 500 dogs) to be most interesting visually overall, and most like the kind of poster I would hang on a wall. However, ultimately the first poster is one that would catch my eye if I were walking down the street, which is what you want a poster to do. And for this reason, I think it is the strongest of the three.

Poster Research Field Trip

This morning for the first half of our Applied Design class we were given the task of going on a self directed field trip. The purpose was to analyze posters in their natural setting, and photograph ones that we found to be particularly interesting. It was such a refreshing break to take “class time” walking around downtown. About half our class met up early for breakfast at Save on Meats, which set the tone for the morning (delightful). From there we broke off into smaller groups and sought out subjects to be captured (at this point imagine us all in safari hats).

One of the things that struck me most from this exercise was the vast amount of absolutely terrible posters out there. It was a challenge to find a good poster. Most posters were busy, confusing, uninteresting, and lacked hierarchy. However, I was able to find a few gems amidst the chaos. My favourites include:

 

 

Primarily, I found all of these posters aesthetically pleasing. That was what initially drew me to them. Either through their simplicity, bold use of colour, interesting illustration, or clean organization of typography, I wanted to continue looking at every one of these posters. Which means they’re doing an effective job, does it not?

If you look carefully at the posters surrounding the “nice” posters you might be able to catch a glimpse of what I meant when I said that most of the posters out there are terrible.

Hopefully our class can rectify this epidemic with our next project (designing our own posters).

 

 

The Book of Double Meanings, or D-Zine’s Zine

For the past few weeks, we’ve been working on a zine. It was a group project, and one that seemed really fun when it was assigned.

Our group started out great. Our brainstorming was light and fun, and we were laughing a lot (which is generally a really good sign when you’re brainstorming, unless it’s layout ideas for a funeral program). After we decided on our theme (words with hilarious double meanings), however, our group hit a plateau. Or maybe a valley. Or maybe we fell into a dark, dank cave with no light or way to get out. Hard to tell which.

What I’m saying is, we totally lost our stride. At group meetings discussing potential ideas for pages we all seemed… bummed. For some reason none of us were excited anymore. It actually got so bad that our team leader called a meeting just to discuss group morale (or lack thereof). Should we start again? Pick a new theme? Cry into the collected works of Sylvia Plath? After some deliberation we decided to just keep plugging through with the theme we had, and brainstorm new ideas for page content.

And somehow, after working through that hard place, we found our way out of that dark, dank cave. And I think we’re all really happy with the finished product.

That’s the cover. We were going for a very official, dictionary look, to juxtapose the ridiculous definitions we had inside. Here are the two spreads that I contributed.

The first definitions are how you would expect the word to be described. And then the second definitions, obviously, are where we got creative. My personal favourite is “beat” being defined by “Christ Brown” (what an ass). We thought that extremely clean and simple layouts would be a hilarious contrast to the “intentionally poorly drawn” quality of the illustrations.

Also extremely important to note, though included nowhere in the zine, is that our group name was “D-Zine.”

BAM.