1. State of the art, project management and documentation¶
Research & Ideation¶
This week, my research has focused on exploring systems for documenting the ideas and processes that influence my work. I reflected on this topic, I found images from an exhibition I saw two weeks ago of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s preparatory work for Wrapped Walk Ways in Kansas City on display the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art. The artists used charcoal, gouache, and wax crayon on top of collaged images and architectural plans to map out the yellow pathways designed for Loose Park in 1978. They scale and analog processes used out of necessity gave them a presence something that you rarely see anymore now that digital collaging platforms are so prevalent. This made me want to find ways of incorporating mixed media as I move forward with exploring the digital processes for research and ideation.
References & Inspiration¶
Sustainable Fashion¶
Below are some of my favorite recent reads for folks interested in Sustainable Fasion - enjoy!
I am also a big fan of Slow Factory's Open Edu series. This is a link to Aja Barber's discussion of the fast fashion industry, but all of their content in the Climate Justice section is worth checking out.
In approaching the assignment I was inspired by an example shown above from the Fabricademy slideshow attributed to Ailin from Fabricademy 2024. I was not able to find this example on the website, but I would liked the way a single image was distributed between the frames.
I found following sites by several Fabricademy alumni sites to be a great resource:
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Barbara Rakovská I appreciated the organization of the home page and icons created for each of the assignment pages.
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Isobel Jo Leonard I was drawn to the illustrated icons for the assignment pages. I’m looking forward to having more time to explore digital drawing in the coming weeks.
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Maricruz Chavéz This site was helpful for both layout and navigating how to code changes to the site templates in GitLab.
Tools¶
I always love learning about new tools, but I don’t try to limit the amount of platforms and accounts I have to manage. Here are the tools I use frequently for documentation in my practice:
- Notion I think in grids and use Google Sheets to plan almost everything. Recently I have been exploring (and loving) Notion as a way of tagging the work and ideas I am referencing. Tags allow me to create a personal vocabulary
- Google Slides I use this platform for brainstorming because it allows me to easily creatively combine images and texts for free. It also allows me to quickly refine and present ideas as presentations or printed pdf publications.
- Canva I use this as an alternative to Photoshop because it is easier to collaborate. I was excited to learn about the collage maker feature. If I have time, I might also try out the mindmapping and infographic tools.
Documentation Workflow¶
Step 1: Theme¶
I started by changing aspects of the theme. I opted for white as the primary palette choice because I wanted to highlight the images and content that I am uploading to the site, and I found the header bar at the top distracting. I selected my font by typing my name into the preview feature of Google Fonts. I liked was drawn to the Monospaced options and selected Source Code Pro.
Step 2: Assignment & Home Page Content¶
I developed the assignment content using Google Slides with a Grammarly plugin to assist with proofreading. I love using this platform for brainstorming and process publications because it allows me to easily creatively combine images and texts for free.
I used Preview on my Macbook to resize all of the images. I landed on 600 pixels at 72 dpi as my sweet spot and I'm hoping I did not eat up too much storage. I found sizing it lower than that made any text included in the image difficult to read. Lots of trial and error to get the formatting right. Below is the documentation of my many Commits:
Below are some things that I am continuing to struggle with:
- Image size recommendations when text is invovled to ensure it is legible.
- Centering images and captions.
- Spacing between images - both horizontally and vertically
During Week 2, I changed my workflow for images and it went much quicker. Rather than coding the spacing in GitLab, I edited and captioned the images in Google Slides. I took screenshots and resized them to a width of 800 pixles. They now look much cleaner when they uploat to the site. Below is documentation of this workflow:
During Week 2 I also struggled with my text wrapping around to the left side of my images. Nuria recommended I add this editing and captioning images in Google Slides and the extra bit of code pictured below in between images and text and it seems to be working.
Below are the commands I am using regularly in Markdown:
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Adding web linK: Parenthesis around the text
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Adding "p style="clear:both;"><" after each image to ensure that text does not wrap around.
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Using "* " for indenting text
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Using "(.../)to insert images from the image folder
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Embedding video from Google Drive using the how-to suggestion here
Conclusions¶
The learning curve for me this week was pretty steep! Before Fabricademy, I had only used website builders offered through Squarespace, Wix, and Google Sites to create my websites. While I appreciate knowing some of the mechanics of coding, I need to find ways of working more quickly if I am ever going to get any work done.
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