Franc's Chocolates - Day 5

11/23/2011 Wed.

Seattle is a city full of art and design, there's no question about it. It has more furniture store and restaurants that aim for life-enhancing experience more than what I would see in LA. Most of them are very low-profile, not as noticeable to find if you don't pay attention to their small signage. Chocolate store, Fran's Chocolates, is one of them. I almost passed by it if it wasn't for my family members who had been there before to point it out for me.

Fran's Chocolate sells hand-made chocolates and chocolate-related sweet beverages in the store. I'm more into their package designs and logo more than anything else in the store. The logo is simple with the word "Fran's" being stretched out in a san serif font. The word "chocolates" is very small and compressed, sitting next to "Fran's" quietly. I personally prefer looking at the package design at the entrance, and then move on to the chocolates sitting quietly behind the counter glass.

The interior was decorated with tall ceiling, massive white marble floor, and brown in-set display cases that are full of Fran's Chocolate's chocolate boxes. The display cases and counter glass are the only two spots where chocolates can be seen, which makes it easier for the customers to find the items. Which reminds me of how Godiva does it differently in LA....The whole entire store has chocolates everywhere in a Godiva store. It makes me having a headache just to find what I need.

Design is very important. It allows your audience (clients) to know what you got to show, and what you want them to know without being lost. When you lost your audience, your design has pretty much failed.

Museum of Flight - Day 4

11/22/2011 Tues.

Although I've been to Sea-Toc (Seattle Airport) and Downtown Seattle several times, I never really step foot into the Museum of Flight once. I remember a few years ago I came here with family to Seattle, and we were talking about that we want to check the Museum of Flight out, but we never did. Now this year, thanks to my family members who are courageous enough to give it a shot, here I am in Museum of Flight while it was raining in Seattle.

Museum of Flight is located between Sea-Toc and Downtown Seattle, so it was a good 30 minutes of driving from where my friend's apartment is at. I found that the museum is pretty generous on moving all the old airplanes into the huge window building, took out all the engines, repainted the airplanes, and arranged them in different show rooms. Somehow, to me, it feels more like walking around and looking around. There was not a lot of activities going on though. The photography is allowed in most of the exhibition areas except two rooms in a red barn place. Those rooms are the ones with the diaries, publications, and newspaper records of the important people in the history of making planes. Too bad I can't remember all their names, but it was kind of funny that I got stopped by a security while I tried to take a photo of the model airplane invented by Wright Brothers in a dim room.

Velocity - Day 3

11/21/2011 Mon.

Talking about design in daily life, home deco or furniture is the most easily accessed to. So I went to Velocity store to find out what it is all about that some people are very dedicated in this form of art.

http://www.velocityartanddesign.com/

Velocity is a furniture business that aims for organic modernism style to incorporate art and design in daily life. They value creativity and quality. It is a store that cares about simplicity that lasts for decades. I was introduced to it by a family friend who is in Seattle for 10 years, and I'm glad that I went to Velocity in Downtown Seattle!

Fremont Vintage Market - Day 2

11/20/2011 Sun.

Fremont Vintage Market is not too far from where I stayed at, Mill Creek, and it is considered the residential area with collectors of vintage items and artists.

I found out that it sits between residential area and business offices, and Google office is among them. How interesting! There were a lot of people at the Fremont Vintage Market, most of them are Caucasians, rarely I saw a few Asian faces. But that's expected since Seattle doesn't have that many Asians or Hispanic populations like we have in California.

Going through booths by booths, I realized that some of them sell very very old items from their grandparent's time, or promoting their hand-made crafts. Some booth owner even sells cookies, hot meals, and coffee. It seems that the vintage market is more of a fun gathering place than a serious display of collection of objects. People are more relaxed than California's swap meet that I've been to in Pomona and City of Industry.

The items that are common to see in this market are fur coats, Asian-inspired robes, big piece jewelries, recreated pieces from old items, paper-made accessories, and furniture.

SAM- Seattle Art Museum - Day 1

11/19/2011 Sat.

Ok, so I guess it's not exactly that fun when I have a cold and I still don't want to waste my educational trip up to Seattle....Battling with headache and a running nose while trying not to disturb other visitors in Seattle Art Museum surely wasn't easy! But I had to do it anyway.

So the 1st day in Seattle is to go visit Seattle Art Museum.
http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/

I came here for the Luminous exhibition on Asian art at the 3rd floor, where they are a lot of Buddha carvings and torsos of Buddha. There are some other Japanese screens painted with gold or made by fabrics, some displays were old Japanese daily clothing from poets back in that time era. It is interesting to see how the museum arranges different exhibitions at the same floor, how they changed the color of the paint on the wall to differentiate each exhibition, and how they occasionally don't have the light hit on the displayed item directly.

The 2nd floor has more European paintings, the 1st floor is mostly modern installation art.

Web Design Workshop in Santa Monica - Day 2

11/13/2011 Sunday

So I got up a bit late this morning, around 6:15am instead of 6am like yesterday. What happened was since Jose (the workshop host) said we'll all be meeting at 9am, I figured I can just show up at 9AM sharp instead of 8:30am. I do need extra time on catching up with some sleep, so I chose to leave the house around 8:15am.

When I got there at Blanc Space, everyone already seated and I thought "Oh crap, I'm late". Later on I found out that I wasn't the only one that thought we're suppose to show up at 9AM sharp, haha. Oh well. It is ok, at least the workshop didn't get in there when the workshop is half way done.

It was very easy this time driving on the freeway. Much less cars and the weather was very nice. It was a sunny day and the temperature was much higher compare to yesterday. It was so cold, windy, and cloudy yesterday that I thought it might just start to rain at any second.

So I went to the group and joined the workshop......Now we're working on the web design part! Yes! After learning how to prioritize, assign workload to all members, and design sprint time, now we're totally on the web design part, where we'll learn about the process, what are the most important components of that process, actually doing the exercise to get it, etc.

Web Design Workshop in Santa Monica - Day 1

11/12/2011 Saturday

I signed up for this workshop pretty last minute....I didn't know about this workshop until Thursday of November 10th in CSULA at the end of an AIGA guest speaker's speech. I was pretty enthusiastic about it that night, but then somehow when I got back home from CSULA, I honestly had to think it over. Really think it over, a lot.

It's not about the money (yes, this workshop requires whoever signs up paying for the event). It's about the timing. I have graphic design lesson plan to do (since the previous art teacher left nothing for me to use), graduate coursework (totally behind on that, and I'm not the only one suffering), and illustration project to do over this 3-day weekend (thanks to the Veteran's Day).

I was debating on whether or not I should go and get myself more educated the whole day yesterday. I told myself I really need this break because teaching high school has been really really tiring and I need to get my work done (whatever they are). But then, just last night, an hour before the midnight, I saw the host's response email, and I thought, "Damn, this guy cares about what he does!" And that really struck a cord in me, so I signed up right away and emailed him back on what I was debating for a long long time....


So now I'm sitting in Blanc Space in Santa Monica, extremely close to Sana Monica Mall (more like 20 steps away from it, not kidding!), at the 2nd street.


I can't list out exactly what I do in this workshop, because it's only for the people that paid for the training to know, but I can tell you it's all about increasing work flow ,progress, effective management, and know a new system of designing with a team so that everybody works happy and satisfied with what they do in the team.

This workshop is hosted by Groop Skool in Santa Monica. This is their 3rd workshop so far in this year.