Riggatti's Pizza Box

For my artifact in the Riggatti's design campaign, I designed the pizza box.

Our communicative objectives all dealt with attracting a younger audience through color, excitement, and creativity so I tried to capture those feelings in the box.  I also tried to stay consistent with the rest of our campaign by using the same colors and fonts but also by focusing on the brick oven.  The Gestalt Law of Similarity ties my pizza box to the logo which is found throughout the whole rest of the campaign.  Also, the Law of Closure is found in the box design.  By placing a pizza inside the box, it would appear as if the pizza is still in the oven being cooked by the flames spreading out from underneath it. This, combined with the view out from the oven in the lid, gives the feeling that the customer is in the oven with the pizza.  The outside of the box is basically a rendering of the Riggatti's logo with the oven and flame which, again, ties the box in with the rest of the campaign.

Jurassic Park: Set designer

The set designer on a film is responsible for taking the production designer's vision and creating it in real life as a set.  The set designer works under the art director to accomplish this.  The set is extremely important in film-making because it shows the environment where the scene takes place.  The majority of movie scenes are shot somewhere other than where the audience is told the scene is taking place.  This makes the set designer's job both very difficult and very important.

John Berger, Masako Masuda, and Lauren Polizzi are the three set designers credited for 'Jurassic Park.'  Berger is also known for his work on 'The Hunger Games' and 'Transformers.'  Masako has worked as a set designer on such films as 'X-Men: First Class,' 'Eagle Eye,' and 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.'  Polizzi was a set designer on blockbusters 'Independence Day' and 'Forrest Gump' along with many other films.  All three of these set designers brought experience to 'Jurassic Park' in creating sets of places that don't actually exist; they were not recreating a physical location.  This would prove useful for designing sets for 'Jurassic Park.'

Our chosen scene from 'Jurassic Park' is made to look like it takes place outdoors, however, everything is shot inside a studio on a set.  The film is set on a far-off, made-up island, Isla Nublar, and much of the film was shot using Hawaii as a stand-in for the island.  This scene on the T-Rex paddock, however, isn't shot anywhere Hawaii, it is shot at the Warner Brother's Studio in California on a huge sound-stage.  This was necessary in order to control the elements (in this case, rain) and protect the very expensive equipment being used in the shot such as the animatronic T-Rex.

This scene was probably intended to be the feature scene for the movie.  It is remembered as one of the more memorable scenes of 'Jurassic Park' so it needed to be well executed.  Fear and suspense were the primary communicative objectives that the film-makers were looking to create in this scene and the set designers were among those tasked with creating those emotions in the audience.  The darkness and the rain contribute to the feelings of fear or uneasiness as well as the snapped electric fence lines that are hanging in a jumbled mess and the squelching mud.  The audience's lack of ability to see very far into the distance keeps their attention on the events of the scene and adds to the suffocating sensation and the feeling of being trapped with the T-Rex.

Set designers play a crucial role in film work and their work often goes unnoticed and that is really the way it should be.  A film with a good set designer should appear like a film that had no set designer at all.  If the audience can tell that a set designer has been working on the scene they're watching, that set designer has failed.

To see entire analysis and presentation, go to http://jurassicparkmis-en-scene.blogspot.com

Compose Frame

This is a photo that I took this morning up behind Dixie Rock.  It follows the rule of thirds because the main subjects in the photo are located in the bottom right cross-hairs of the grid.  Diagonal lines are found all throughout the photograph.  The most prominent diagonals are the top part of the door-frame, the mortar lines between the bricks and the strong diagonal line where the dwelling meets the rock.  All of these diagonal lines also serve as graphic vectors guiding the eye directly to the subjects.  The mortar lines at the bottom of the frame point diagonally upwards and then as you go up the wall, they change angle so as to point right at the figures so that when you get to the top of the wall the diagonal lines are pointing downwards.

This picture was taken in 2010 on the Teton River in Idaho.  Again, the subject is located on the bottom right cross-hairs of the grid.  The horizon line also follows the rule of thirds because it is located along the top-third line with the main subject matter appearing in the bottom two-thirds of the photo.  There are diagonal lines represented by the edges of the canoe as well as the banks of the river.  These lines also can be considered motion vectors conveying the sense of moving down the river, into the photograph.  Above all, it is a photo I love because of the location, the time of year, and the people I was with.

Design Evaluation

For some strange reason I decided to evaluate tea packaging.  I don't drink tea and I don't like tea but as I was walking down the tea aisle at Walmart the other day I found myself mesmerized by different tea packages and almost bought some just so I could feel as relaxed as the packaging made me feel.  Then I remembered the last time I drank tea and how much I hated it so I put the box back.

Below is an example of poor packaging design for tea:

Unless this is being marketed as military M.R.E. tea, this company missed their mark.  Not only do I find their colors and design just plain ugly, it also violates the Gestalt Law of Similarity because this packaging looks more like it belongs with the coffee than the tea.  It certainly is simple but not in a let's-forget-our-troubles-with-a-calming-cup-of-tea simple.  It's more of a we-couldn't-think-of-a-design-and-were-too-cheap-to-hire-someone simple.  The bag is very asymmetrical and unbalanced, the colors are all dull and boring, and there is just too much wasted space.  The use of plastic takes away from the natural feeling of tea and makes it feel more manufactured.

Now, for a good design:

This design works because the company has identified their target audience (people who savor the easy-going, old-school way of life).  By putting their tea in the burlap sacks, it gives the feeling that the tea has been hand-picked, dried, and packaged by the farmer himself rather than as the product of a factory.  The boxes us the Law of Similarity by all having the same design and using only different colors to convey the different flavors.  The images of bamboo and the paper of the boxes retain the feeling of a natural product which is something tea drinkers want.  This packaging is similar enough to other tea products so that it can easily be identified as tea but different enough from the others to set it apart as its own product.  The text is all left-aligned giving a sense of harmony throughout the product.  The bamboo also shows the use of the Law of Closure because we don't see where they are planted or how high they have grown but using closure, we feel like they are growing wild in the forests of China.  This Asian feel is also consistent with many teas because it makes Westerners feel like they are partaking in an "ancient Chinese secret" by drinking the tea.

Contrast, Harmony, and Balance

I took this photo near the top of Boulder Mountain in central Utah a few years ago.  It illustrates the principles of size contrast between the tree in the near ground against the tress in the background giving the perception of being in a clearing in the middle of a forest (which we were).  It also shows position contrast by showing the side of the one tree and only the tops of the others.  We can also see the contrast between the blackness of the trees against the relatively bright night sky.  At first glance, the photo may seem asymmetrical in balance because of the close-up tree on the left.  However, I feel the tree is somewhat balanced by the Milky Way's appearance on the right side of the photo mirroring the orientation of the tree.  For me, the photo is harmonious in that it feels entirely consistent with its setting.  Boulder Mountain is a world-famous location for stargazing because it is so isolated from bright city lights and this photo shows that.  The photo's consonance gives the feeling of tranquility and seclusion; who knows how far away the nearest human was at the time.

Visceral Response

'Impression, Sunrise'

Claude Monet

When I was in high school, I took an art class and as part of that class, we talked a little about art history.  I'm normally not a very artistic person, I certainly don't understand what a lot of art is all about but for some reason, when we got to the impressionist period, I was riveted.  Claude Monet is widely revered as a pioneer of the impressionist movement and so his works are among some of my favorites. This painting, 'Impression, Sunrise,' was one of his first paintings and paved the way for the entire movement.

What I love about impressionist paintings in general, and this one specifically, is the lack of busyness.  I'm a pretty simple person who enjoys the simple things in life even though I'm largely surrounded by life's complexities.  Impressionist paintings are all about simplicity; they cut out the fine details and just show the basic components of whatever scene they are depicting.  Additionally, most impressionist paintings are of landscapes or seascapes or other natural things and this is another big draw for me because I love being outdoors and getting out away from it all.

As far as the design goes, this painting doesn't have a lot of lines which means it doesn't portray the energy of some other paintings.  Even the horizon line is quite blurred and difficult to pinpoint.  This lack of lines, I believe, is what gives this painting the relaxed feeling it has.  Perhaps being a seascape makes the mind automatically think of horizontal lines that bring comfort and security because that is what we are accustomed to seeing at sea: the sun peeking over the broad horizon, the line of the surf coming into shore, and the line of the sand disappearing into the waves.  While this painting doesn't convey these lines clearly, it transports our minds to a place where these horizontal lines are so common.

I like the colors Monet uses in this painting, for the most part they are drab and dark with a lot of blues and grays but then, near the center, is the orange/red sun and its reflection off the water.  Try as you might, you can't take your eye off that beautifully colored sun.  It is the perfect hue for a sunrise sun.  An interesting side note: upon doing some research on this painting, I discovered that people have used a photometer to measure the brightness of the sun in this painting and what they found was that the sun was actually no brighter than the surrounding sky and water.  The sun all but disappears in black and white copies of the painting.  This means that it is not the bright intensity of the sun that we are seeing but only its differing color that causes it to stick out to us.

Because the painting lacks the finer details of this scene, we are unable to see what exactly is going on as the scene disappears into the distance.  This ambiguity of space allows the viewer to input his/her own interpretation of what the area looks like according to their own experiences.  All Monet gives us is the fact that it is some sort of waterway with small boats in the foreground and larger structures in the background.  The rest is up to us.  The infinite depth of this painting allows us to put in any details that we want to which makes this painting appealing to a wide variety of people.  For me, it is a painting from a dock in a harbor where fishermen from a small seaside village are out early in the morning trying to haul in their daily catch while navigating around the much larger ships anchored there.  However, there is no sign anywhere in this painting of fishing activity or even a dock, a harbor, a village, or even that the structures in the background are other ships.  For all the painting gives us, it could be a view from the shores of a busy river, or a view looking downriver at two small boats with factories lining the banks of the river.  The details of the painting are put in by the viewer and not the painter.

It is the ambiguity of this painting and its beautiful coloration that make me love it.  The simplicity and calming nature help me relax and enjoy what this painting has to offer me and what I have to offer it.