February 2012
12 posts
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Viral...ish?
One of my friends just showed me that her friend from home reset her Blackberry picture as my art-science-wonder Venn diagram! And I’ve seen it on a few blogs now, too, not just tumblr. And it shows up in Google image searches.
WHY DIDN’T I WATERMARK IT
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Vector Drawing
[shift+c], convert points from curve to straight
[A], go to white point selection arrow
[cmd+J], join two endpoints
[C], cut a line segment
[+], add a point
[-], subtract a point
[P], go to pen tool
and countless other keyboard shortcuts that I don’t know.
Conclusion: Illustrator should just be able to read my mind.
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This is a Disease
Just spent the better part of an hour voluntarily replacing hideous lavender comic-sans drop-shadowed letters spelling out “*STUDENT*LIFE!*” with 630-point Gotham book, NYUAD-purple ones spelling “STUDENT♦LIFE”. Purely because I would have died a little inside every time I saw our brand so badly misrepresented.
Now the bulletin board is on-brand, and I have officially...
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“Printed materials bring information transfer rates in presentations up to that of everyday material in newspaper sports and financial pages, books, and internet news sites. An excellent paper size for presentation handouts is A3 [or A4]…that one piece of paper shows the content-equivalent of 50 to 240 typical powerpoint slides. Thoughtful handouts demonstrate to the audience that...
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Adolphe Mouron Cassandre
Cassandre is my new hero. He created the most iconic graphics and typefaces of the Art Deco period and, in many ways, defined the values of contemporary graphic design. Simplicity, strong shapes, powerful and previously unseen relationships between image and text—even using text as image—and the very idea of condensing an image to its purest elements and most recognizable form.
...
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Today I learned about the system (chemoreceptors, glomeruli, and neurons) that allows us to process smell.
Also saw this picture of the Carina Nebula.
There’s too much wonder in the universe for me to handle.
(Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology and European Southern Observatory)
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Online Portfolio! →
Starting to look for summer jobs (a little late, I know) at design firms…and now I have an online portfolio! So fancy! Not much there yet, but I’m hoping to at least double the amount by the end of this semester. It’s a little clunky because it’s a desperate attempt to make a blogging platform work like a website for me. Yay free URLs!
Now to update my CV. So...
January 2012
13 posts
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Learning Photoshop: Clone Tool
In a reprint of my collage (see Expectation & Aspiration below) on high quality photo paper, I reevaluated my design and realized some mistakes:
A horrible water line
Some floating bikini women who were messing up the perceived scale of the photo
A floating palm tree head.
Luckily, I have people around who are more expert at Photoshop than me, and they told me that all these problems...
Wish List
Amazing, ambitious project by company Brusselssprout.
Birthday present, please?
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Productivity
This past single day I think I’ve blogged more than I have in the past four months combined—and that’s even counting double posts as one! I should take January Term classes more often.
Desert Stars: Designing Abu Dhabi Edition: Font... →
desertstarsdesign:
Today I learned what an “ink trap” is: a feature in some typefaces where the corners are excessively notched, to compensate for ink spreading when the type is printed. It has more importance than you might think.
In the mid-1970’s, AT&T had just switched from printing their…
(self-reblog)
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Desert Stars: Designing Abu Dhabi Edition →
Link to my Designing Abu Dhabi class blog, which will be a more focused and professional version of this one.
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Designing Abu Dhabi
In January, we students at NYUAD have a really interesting learning opportunity: the chance to take an intensive, single-discipline class by itself for three weeks. Some people use this to travel, others use it to get distasteful requirements out of the way, and others use it as a chance to learn something they normally wouldn’t.
This month, I get to take my first class in something that’s...
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The Interrobang
Conceived in 1962 as a way to efficiently express a surprised question. Why have I never heard of this before‽ Why is it not standard on every keyboard‽
… I guess it doesn’t have quite the same visual weight as ‘?!’. But still!
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December 2011
3 posts
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NYC Study Abroad Application
I never wanted to go to New York. It seemed crowded, feverish, overdone and underlaid with the unfulfilled dreams of thousands of people. I figured it was overrated, so I avoided it and moved to a young and spacious city in the middle of the Middle East instead. I fell in love with everything about it—the diversity, the contrasts, the lights, the sunsets, the way anything is possible.
But while...
November 2011
17 posts
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Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card: absolutely one of my favorite books. Just finished reading it as it floats around my pool of equally obsessed friends.
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MSL/Curiosity Launch →
Just watched NASA launch its most complex and largest Mars rover yet. We’re getting closer and closer to human exploration!
On a side note, I love my school: twenty people, including my physics professor, came to watch with fifteen minutes notice. We also spend the next half-hour debating the pros and cons and possibilities of various propulsion strategies. And making bad science puns.
...
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Spirit of the Union
This country manages to be so young and old at the same time. This logo is everywhere from baseball caps to the sides of buildings, and it captures that duality so perfectly that always catches my breath.
8 days to National Day!
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The Life of a Science Major
Roomie: What's that you're drawing?
Me: A timeline of EVERYTHING.
Roomie: Oh, is it your plan for the next four years?
Me: Nope, of the last five billion.
Roomie: -awkward silence-
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The Hunger Games
Saw the new trailer on a random jaunt through Youtube yesterday, got intrigued, read the first book in pieces between classes, and am left absolutely breathless. One of the most spellbinding dystopian novels I’ve ever read.
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Peirce quincuncial projection
A 2D representation of our 3D world based on complex number theory, yielding much less distortion than the Mercator projections we’re used to. It’s amazing how perspective changes everything.
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October 2011
5 posts
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Festival of Lights
A satellite image of India taken on Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights, which celebrates the triumph of good over evil as the year ends and a new one begins. Happy Diwali!
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Restart
50% through a new semester
25% through my second year here
it’s time to restart.
The old desertstars blog didn’t have much of a focus. Sometimes I used it to share cool links, sometimes I used it as a way to update people who want to know what I’m up to, sometimes I used it as an extension of Facebook, sometimes I used it to process things happening in my world. I think...
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Prolouge
“Humans have always seen the stars. We have looked to the sky to learn that we are part of a greater pattern. We have used stars to begin and end stories, to light the dark nights, to guide us homeward, to order our days and months and years. Our oldest ancestors slept under them. Others navigated by them. Always, they’ve inspired wonder and the excuse to explore.
Stars provide us...