The Fourth Lecture: Cultures and Combinations

On Friday Professor Babcock toured around the room and examined our multitude of drawn symbols for the various aspects of everyday counterpart of our lives. The student that sits next to me is from England in a small town called South Port. As the teacher passed by his series of drawings the professor noticed a pound currency sign on his paper and a dollar bill sign on my own. The student commented on how he was still adjusting to America but it also made me think or other cultural differences. Later, after the teacher had inspected my own paper, I compared my tiny drawing of the world to the other person's own rendition. Once again, the cultural difference was apparent; my drawing was centered on displayng America, while his displayed more of England/Eiurope area on his global drawing.

Later in class, Babcock discussed how much research can go into the design of a simple logo. In the case of the Olympics, a council decides the theme for that year, and then selects a series of words and images that would best represent those themes. Themes that usually show up involve tradition and comradery, but the location of the Olympic event has a major impact on the visual imagery too. My thoughts turned to when I had to research Barcelona, Spain for a design project and found the overall design for the event centered around the look of Pablo Picasso designs; the image of a brush painted running man as the logo and the mascot dog was based of Picasso's designs.

Babcock explained that now we had created all our everyday images, it was now our turn to combine these objects into forms that could prove visually interesting but still appealing, and to have them done over the weekend. My excitement for the weekend as well as the challenge of the project are evenly tied.