Christine's Design Blog

Kittisak Chontong
Untitled
Acrylic on canvas
0.70 x 1.20 m
2010

Saw these paintings at the Thai Artists Alliance‘s Siamese Connection show, which happened at the Dumbo Arts Center back in May. Here’s the description that accompanied the piece:

This work was inspired by Chris Gall’s artwork in the MRT subway trains that depict the different types of people within New York. At the time, I had just arrived in New York and had been here for just one week. I knew very little about what I saw and experienced here. This piece depicts a visual account of my very first experiences as an overwhelmed foreigner in a foreign land.

I love how whimsical the figures are, even as they experience the chaos of the city for the first time. The color palette makes me think that it’s a reflection on past events, with a sepia tone. What strikes me most, though, is how much stark negative space there is in paintings showing one of the most overcrowded and overloaded cities in the world. It makes me kind of nervous, like that part of memory was just wiped out, due to the sensory overload.

The show was pretty amazing, even as I think back on it a month later. I shall return with some more photos I took, but meanwhile enjoy Kittisak’s wonderful work.

Making something everyday, I am aware, is far from a groundbreaking concept. From Obsessive Consumption to Daily Drop Cap, creative minds are obviously in need of constant stimulation for a plethora of reasons.

Mine? Being fresh out of school and needing to, as James Victore would say, ‘stay hard,’ as I try to find work. And making something, after all, is why I chose this business.

So commences Project Make Something, with my first sad little drawing done on the wrong kind of paper with the wrong kind of ink, but I said I’d make something, not a Renaissance masterpiece. This little scratchy drawing has a story behind it. Remember Phileas Fogg? Well, I felt it was time I really got to know the character by reading the actual book, and where I left off, Phileas Fogg was traveling via elephant with his faithful servant Passepartout, from Kholby to Allahabad in India. Apparently the railway was not yet completed at that time between the two locations, so Mr. Fogg had to improvise. Cheers!

P.S. I get nice sunlight in my room between 10 a.m. and noon, as shown in the photo. Exact hours vary between seasons. I wish it would stay sunny all day!

I’ve just popped over to check out this website I worked on last summer while interning at the Longitude, under the expertise of design partner Greg Wong. This project lasted pretty much all summer, as I worked on the logo, Powerpoint slides and the website. I don’t know if they went with the Powerpoint slides that I created, but they did not take the website suggestions (for which I don’t blame them — I had a very hard time with this project, since biomedical things I have a hard time wrapping my head around).

But I’m very excited to see my logo on their site! It’s always nice to see something real that you’ve created, doing its thing in the real world. I think Greg put it best when he said that it wasn’t the ‘sexiest’ project, but it’s still something in actual existence for my book.

Here are some early explorations:

The lab, run by Elliot Hui at UC Irvine (yay Anteaters), studies things that I clearly do not understand, but they look like this:

Anyhoo, that’s the final design. This was actually one of my first uses of Gotham, and I haven’t been able to stop since. Trying to stop now.

How lovely are these? Sighted in the Upper East Side on my way to the Whitney Biennial exactly a month ago, the day before the exhibition closed.

I CANNOT stop reading this, but it’s 563 pages long and I’m a slow reader (if I accidentally skip a word, I have to go back and read the sentence again properly). Plus, there are so many characters and details to keep track of (some that you have to remember from the previous book), so I keep finding myself getting hung up on certain paragraphs. I usually don’t mind that I’m a slow reader, but staying up all night reading is apparently not conducive to job hunting.

But I’ve waited since last summer for the American edition of this book to come out. I was tempted to get the UK import from Amazon, but I could not, on good conscience, order a book with such a horrendous cover design. It’s definitely been worth the wait. Okay, back to reading…