Week 2 Developments

I am the creator and currently the only member of M.A.D. Designs. The name stands for Musician Artist Designer. During this class, I plan to combine my freelance operation into this class in anticipation of increasing my notoriety on campus as a premiere designer by introducing more media as advertising strategies.

I have already begun the amplification of M.A.D. Design musically. Over the Winter break I organized on iTunes playlists of music to air on the radio, centered around a theme. I decided on creating a radio show primarily to advertise M.A.D. Design, but also to perform. The art of D.J.ing includes a technique called sampling, where sounds are reused, usually in repetition, as a part of recording. I insert audio samples found on the internet, and also personally captured on a recording devise to transition one song into another for as seamless a stream of music that may be achieved. As another component to my performance, I create dialogue myself as two different voices. The program is called Musicanator, with the hosts as my Austrian alter-ego, Arnold Schwarzenneger and I. By speaking as Arnold I am able to improvise and, with practice, learn how to exaggerate ideas and emotion in acting. As is crucial to reaching my goal of increasing awareness of M.A.D. Design in advertising, accentuating the main-point is essential. Outside of the studio, weekly updated posters will advertise my radio show. This will create a circle of self-promotion and connect the media of music and art together.

I am a studio art major, in addition to an instrumental performance major. My primary reason for founding M.A.D. Design at the beginning of last term was as a substitute for our school’s art classes not offering any design-based instruction. Over the summer I began utilizing my Adobe Creative Suite program Illustrator on a daily basis, making finished digital drawings. I focused on typography, organized structure of images, and thoughtful use of color for persuasion. My method of creation was to first hand-draw a sketch, scan the drawing into my laptop, and trace the design as a Illustrator file. The final products have hand-drawn quality, even though they are digitally created. Many of my designs derive from art works by Parra. He has a loose, provocative, and direct approach that is suitable and appealing to me.

I am interested in design as a professional line of work. This class will be a constructive use of my time to write out and decide the possibilities for M.A.D. Design. As a continuation of last term, where I posted a new set of posters each week to promote M.A.D. Design, I will continue to do the same this term along with the radio show, posters for the radio show, commissioned posters, and other new developments. Last term I was commissioned for five poster designs. Of which you may have seen the posters for bringing Talco to Appleton, “Feel Free at Harmony” when I collaborated with a marketing class group, and Pomegranates with Lookbook concert. Over the course of my commissions, I have learned how to better communicate to clients, management time and payoff, and make more effective designs.

Currently, I am planning of setting up a temporary table outside of the cafeteria selling professionally printed post cards around Valentine’s Day. Types of plans to be made are how to attract attention to the table and to the merchandise made available. At the end of the term I will design a book of prints and posters made for presentation to the class and for final review along with play lists of radio shows, annotated scripts of the advertisements on air, and future plans and frequent updates on progress on the blog.

IHRTLUHC

Ian Wallace