Second Week

*This was supposed to be published last Friday, but my internet crashed while writing it. Sorry it's late!*

Hey guys! Week 2, week 2. It was pretty good. Let's see. I had inductions for most of the week. Monday was printmaking - we were given a glimpse at how to screen print both for textiles and print media, as well as lithography, where it's basically just imprinting onto paper from an inked object. Tuesday we had our IT and library inductions - really just a tour around the library and computer labs. Wednesday we had our 3D centre (yep, it's spelled that way here) inductions. The 3d centre is made up of metalworking and woodworking - so blacksmiths, fine jewelers, and carpenters go there for things. But they also had this really cool laser cutter, which can rastorize, cut, burn, imprint, etc to pretty much anything - and all you need is a design from illustrator! How cool! Later in the afternoon we had a lecture from one of the design tutors at Central St. Martins College, another part of the University of the Arts system. He talked about manifestos and their place in design. It was pretty interesting. Patrick, our tutor, said it was a hint to future projects. Might be cool?

Anyway, Thursday was our day back to class. In the morning we talked about our book project, and I found out that we can only use type. So scratch my previous idea. Only type? I'm having a little bit of trouble with this one. Hopefully I'll figure something out. In the afternoon we watched an episode of the BBC series "Century of the Self," which talked about the influence of Freudian concepts of the psyche from advertising. It focused a lot on America before the depression and how advertising basically caused the depression by exploiting Americans' material desires.

It was really interesting because it gave the European prospective on everything that happened before and during WW2. Hitler kind of use the fall of American economy to promote anti-democratic views, while his propaganda person used the same techniques to promote Hitler as American advertisers used, just for beliefs rather than objects.

Pretty interesting stuff. Anyway, next post more on the weekend!