My 5 artifacts

I'm pretty excited about having chosen my 5 artifacts and I don't think I'll have to change them to cater to my inexperience with design. I think re-creating them to be better and more effective is a great exercise because it's fun and re-design/design of products is definitely a skill that is needed by every major company. Also, these artifacts were an excuse to buy Adobe In-Design, a program that many work ads have encouraged fluency in. Not to mention, my portfolio will probably look much better after this course.

1) Pinnacle Protection business card

The other day a stranger knocked on my door offering a subscription with Pinnacle Protection——some sort of home security package. He didn't look like any reputable salesman, in fact, he dressed almost like a homeless guy and the eerie coincidence of his mentioning of recent break-ins in my neighborhood was not missed by me, as my car was broken into just a few months ago. It was probably pretty paranoid of me to start thinking that maybe he bashed the window of my car and jacked my CDs so that he could come back and sell me some security. But nonetheless, setting my paranoia aside, he gave me his card and upon my review of it I found its blandness perfect for redesign as an artifact.

2) DVD Cover: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I love this movie. I love the interplay of reality, relationships, and memories being re-lived as they're actually being destroyed through minor brain damage. The movie offers everything you need and feels more like an indie film than one of the oscar winning kind. Even the DVD cover is nice and probably needs no re-design whatsoever. But my plan for redesign is to make a cover equally, if not more, artful and telling of the story but also creating an even more spectacular cover for a "special edition" version. The fun with the special edition idea is because most special edition DVDs are always flashier, shinier, and they are more attention grabbing and aimed at the true movie collector/fan than usual. My love of this movie is motivation enough to try and do a great job.

3) Book cover: The Nasty Bits by Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain is one of my favorite personalties in all of pop culture. Ironically, it's because, in my world, I consider him so normal, or at least, what normal should be. He is verbose, descript, witte in the dirtiest sense, and the dude has a standard for everything and is intolerant of bullshit——the way everyone should be but somehow most aren't.  His book The Nasty Bits, despite its fantastic writing, in my opinion, has a very bland and unmemorable cover. It's much less symbolic than his most recent writing, Medium Raw. Upon looking at this cover you would imagine this guy is some self-absorbed motivational speaker in a leather jacket rather than suit, trying to look modest and not the brash, unapologetic, very natural and good guy he really is. It'll be fun trying to turn this into something that I believe fits with his true personality.

4) Message board interface

I love Texas Tech sports in an obsessive manner and I often try to acquire any football related news in any way one could concieve——meaning I enjoy sports message boards every now and then. This particular website I almost don't visit at all, really. I just remember it because of it's extremely boring, sleepishly gray look. Its appearance makes it look as if it belongs at some internet message board garage sale. Other than the dvd cover, this particular artifact might be the most difficult. I am hoping my Adobe In-design will prove useful with this one.

5)Texas Tech Safe Ride Brochure

I want to laugh at this brochure because it's bad in a lot of different ways. Or maybe I should say it's plain and underwhelming in a lot of different ways despite containing a subject with a very serious message. What this brochure lacks is almost disrespectful to its message, but oh well, I guess.  Safe Ride is obviously a service for people that get too wasted and need a safe driver to take them home so that they don't kill themselves or someone else but when I look at this I can't help but think it looks like it directed at the attention of 5th graders; i don't know many them that get drunk, either. Its most obvious that clip art was probably the main tool used to design this brochure and whatever department at Texas Tech that developed this should be embarrassed. Surely the staff that created this has better design skills and computer resources than to use clip art and could make this a little more serious looking, considering its message. The copyright says its from 2005 and I hope that is true and that the current one is 10x better but if not, then I think I could make a much more adequate one.