My image of Manhattan was a big busy, crowded city. Many neon signs in Times Square might have brought me that idea of crowdedness. In fact, the street was full of people, and they were shouting and cars were honking all night. On the other hand, very early in the morning there was a short time of silence. I felt kind of awkward going to bed with lots of noise and waking up to almost no sounds. However, there were some people already walking on the street when I looked down from the window; most of them seemed like office people who were heading to work. It is hard to believe there are so many offices in that area from the day and night. This sign of Starbucks that is located where just a block away from Broadway is difficult to find because the typeface isn’t distinct enough. Even more, the reflection decrease legibility as well. That makes it easy to lose the detail and from the front of the sign it is almost impossible to define the letters. However, most of the Starbucks Coffee shops have the recognizable signs with that famous logo, so it is easy to find the place even in busy streets like Broadway. This sign of Starbucks doesn’t have as much impact as the usual one, but it stands there humbly.
The next photo is an advertisement of DKNY, a famous clothing bland in the Soho area. Even, it is a huge image it was hard to recognize that it as typography, but once I noticed it gave me a huge impact and stayed in my mind. The letters are really bold to creates the space of painting in the typeface. The painting is a beautiful monotone site of NYC, which indicates the mood of NY and how the brand strongly relates to the city. These typographies are common in calmness, but both of them gave me strong impressions to me; moreover, they are representative of people who are quiet but who are maintaining the city.
“Parsons The New School for Design” people know the name, but others don’t know it. Before, I was the latter. On the second day of our trip in NY, we visited the school. The people welcomed us warmly, and showed us around the school. Of course, the school buildings were larger than our school, and they were fully equipped, but the contents of study and form of class work was the same as our school, KIDI. Put the final works on the wall, explain about one’s own piece, and then discuss with the teacher and other students. The scene was similar to our school. Also, it was comfortable for me that students hurried up to print out for assignment, making with something to eat, and atmosphere of freedom and messy rooms.
That afternoon we went to communication design department, and we sat in on a class to observe how it was conducted. We could know learning environment at the Persons. Also the teachers were calm and had friendly personalities, so they were glad to meet us. Then suddenly, a big pizza was carried in the middle class, and they treated all students and gave it to us. That floored me, but the taste was good. Later we talked to the students about campus life, after graduation from the school, etc. We made good use of the time there.
Parsons was an international school, and students were together from a lot of countries who have a purpose, so they study harder for the goal. I envied them, because everyday they have a mutual influence on each other, and develop as good designers in a good learning environment. The day was a good day for me, the reason why is that day I receiving the good impetus of by Persons students.
We visited Lucie at MyORB office and looked at her works that she had actually designed for clients. Her office’s atmosphere was so comfortable because of the open space, well-organized ledge and the warm sunlight through a large window. The office had wooden shelves and desks and floor, so the mood was soothing. That helped the designers to communicate easily with each other. On the other hand, they could concentrate on their work because they had their own area. The office had both elements of personal and communal.
Lucie showed us some of her works, website, package design and business card. All of them were so interesting and greatly stimulated to us. For the business card, it had a scratchable layer on the part of a person’s face. Once this layer was scratched off, you could see the injured face of a man. We thought this was a great idea because it entertained people with humor. The website , which was for a jewel company, was so beautiful visually and was thing stimulates people to look at the next page. She told us that her first idea was much different from the final one. We were happy to hear that because we knew that even real designers didn’t always come up with the best idea in the first step. We learned that even a professional designer goes through a process to create a good thing.
New Museum is literally a new museum located in Bowery, which is supposed to be one of the new cool hip neighborhoods in New York city. I imagined New Museum to be sub-cultural, much more modern than the MoMA. I was expecting this trip to New Museum would be something exciting and inspiring. However, it turned out rather gloomy and distant, besides the fact that it was unlike a museum, but a large gallery with a couple of average, minor exhibitions. In other words, the context of the museum gave me the impression much like the exterior of the museum: squared, inflexible, unstable, or unearthly suffocating, with a mocking twist. In Paul Chan’s The 7 Lights, silhouette images of “life” through a windowpane are projected on a wall and floor. The images were not changing fast and it seemed as though time had stopped like in the surrealist paintings of Chirico. The captions read something like. “the 3rd Light” and that’s about it. I couldn’t figure out what the artist’s intention was, in the concrete surrounded closed space with only lights and shadows. I felt uneasy. Perhaps, intellectual patient introverts would have found the exhibition more stimulating. In Double Album by Daniel Guzman and Steven Shearer, there were paintings, installations, and some art pieces. All I remember was a colorful skull sitting on a column with some element tormenting it, and obscene words such as, “molestations” and “necrovomit” as a part of their works. There also were images of exposed genitals, suicide, and a noose…
I thought the whole experience in New Museum was weird and absurd, but perhaps that is just me. I think New Museum offers personal experiences rather than homogenized ideas. In the end, I still hope to visit New Museum again in the near future. Maybe.
