Zooom-lens ...

I finished my design class color homework by completing the last two boards today: my personal palette and the neutral palette.

I also replaced the center of the warm palette design, and I think it looks better for it. "Background 1" is too intense, but it would take too much effort to change. The boards still need a good cleanup to remove excess rubber cement, glue down wayward corners and take a sharp x-acto knife to the burrs. That's tomorrow morning's task.

The project did give me cause to reflect on a designer's use of a "zoom lens" to be able to move from the big picture to details and back again. I'm just beginning to experience this activity -- which means I need to "see" the completed design as I b

egin, and then focus on the details of creating it. One of the students in the first design class spoke of being able to "see the design in her mind" and then struggling to actually create what she imagined. At the time this was a new concept to me, so I've been conscious of it ever since, and now realize the relation to the "zoom lens concept."

For this color assignment I finally selected a design that I could zoom out to the finished board in the different color schemes, even if at first I did not know the details of the exact selection of colors. I knew the board would look different with different color palettes. Yes, the design could be more interesting, but I needed to concentrate on executing the color piece. When I experimented with the Great Wall design I couldn't "see/imagine/zoom out" to how it would be different under the different palettes.

And I can't think of a parallel way of approaching a problem in organization theory.

So, here's my one woman exhibition, waiting for tomorrow's Crit.

And here a photo of some 2,000 people walking on on the beach this morning (you're looking at 1/16 of the spread of the beach) in a walk to cure juvenile diabetes. It was a nice day for it.