Assignment 9.1 - Graphic Design!

I went a little nuts and did almost all the options, except for the self-portrait. I am but human. I'll start with the silliest and work my way down.

I love pins and stickers. I casually collect them. But I love the idea of having a tiny piece of graphic identity on my bag, that immediately establishes my association with something I love, like a band, a radio station, a record store, a cause, or a place. The above is a series of pins or stickers I created for a fake punk band I called "BRAIN." Why? Because I was playing around with the pen tool in illustrator and started making squiggles that looked kind of like brains. And thus, BRAIN was born. I should note that BRAIN is not a misspelling of BRIAN. 

These pins are more closely related to my identity. The font/color choices are inspired by vintage pins. I started with the "I am going to..." pin which was based on a pin from a tourist destination, circa 1970s. By putting "My apartment. To see my dog." in Times New Roman font, I wanted to drive home the lack of pizzaz and practicality of my decision. In fact, it begs for people to not ask me any further questions about the pin, because I really just want to go home and see my dog. 

The other three pins, "I know what I'm doing!/I don't know what I'm doing!" "The world is on fire!/Everything's fine!" and "Oh yeah./Oh no." are meant to be changed based on my reaction to what is happening around me. I thought about my first couple of months of teaching when I was making these, when nothing was going well and I didn't know what I was doing. And yet I felt like I had to say, "I know what I'm doing!" and "Everything's fine!" when it wasn't. It begs the question of what is the genuine reaction to what is happening versus what reaction I want to project. 

I would buy these pins for $1 if I saw them in the wild.

These pins reflect the trajectory of a laugh. Since the days of AOL instant messenger I've marveled over laughter responses in text. When one conveys humor over text, is a typed response enough? Like HAHAHAHA or LOL? Does it mean anything? I can keep a totally straight face and type LOL or hit the HA tapback or whatever while texting, while my brain says, "that's funny." Text-based substitutes for human laughter are ridiculous, though there's nothing like hearing a person laugh in person. These pins are a cheeky way to bring the full trajectory of a laugh into the inter-personal realm. Perhaps if I find something funny I can just, with a completely straight face, point to my button. 

"Chinga la migra" means, Fuck ICE in Spanish. "Que tengas un buen día" means "have a nice day." Given that the majority of food delivery people in NYC are immigrants, I wanted to appropriate the ubiquitous design that's used in takeout bags to convey the message that the wearer both hates ICE and has a sense of humor. Furthering this project would be a clandestine replacement of plastic bags with "chinga la migra" on them, as an anti-ICE campaign. 

I also wanted to figure out how to get a Rizo-printed effect in Illustrator, and experimented with the above. Graphically, I think it reads like a grocery/some kind of big box store name. But it would be fun to screenprint chinga la migra on t-shirts, sell them, and donate the proceeds to an immigrant rights organization.

Anyway, chinga la migra. Que tengas un buen día.