Bridgette Goes to College

            I tend to not think things through before doing them. Which, if you’ve met me, sounds like an untrue statement, because I also think about things way too much, and I like planning. I don’t like planning so much as I like doing, apparently. Planning takes too long, and by the time I’m done planning I’ve changed my mind half a dozen times. Sometimes this is good. With writing and designing, the first ideas aren’t always the best, and you have to go through 8 or 10 drafts before you get to something that’s really solid. I clearly don’t have a problem planning out a story and editing it, and editing it, and editing it, and editing it, until it’s virtually unrecognizable from its original inception. At the same time, I tend to latch on to an idea too quickly and get myself in trouble (hence why I keep referencing the Great Crisis of Last Month when I couldn’t execute all the brilliant ideas I was having). This is the same me that went “It’s time ...

I’m not quite sure what to blog about this week, so I think I’ll just ramble a bit about the current class I’m taking and see where it leads.               This class is Web Programming, and while it might not be “programming” or “coding” as one might think of it, we are working with HTML and CSS and building multi-page websites in text editors and Dreamweaver.               I think I’m neutral about it. I don’t have any strong feelings one way or another. I don’t have a whole lot of passion or excitement for the projects, but I’m not dreading them, or filled with anxiety, or going into a crisis every 5 minutes because I don’t have the skillset for my ambition. It also seems like a weird class to end on, as far as my Graphic Design degree goes, but I think I’ll get into that next week.            ...

             I came across an article the other day, that was discussing a book written by type designer Marie Boulanger, called XX, XY: Sex, Letters and Stereotypes . It gives a brief overview of what’s in the book and some of Boulanger’s thought processes behind writing it. Here is a link so you can check it out for yourself: Marie Boulanger explores how typography perpetuates gender stereotypes.               I was absolutely going to get this book, but it’s apparently only in French at the moment. I can’t read French. Despite this, I wanted to talk about the book, and some of the ideas that are in it.               Essentially, it comes down to this: typefaces have been gendered (whether intentionally or unintentionally) and over time we’ve come to associate strong, bold typefaces with masculinity, and decorative, sc...

  It’s time for another book cover analysis! I’ve already done two, but I like talking about book covers, ok? If I keep up with this blog this may be the only thing I blog about in the future. I may even transfer my blogs over to a different site and only keep these ones and leave the rest behind. Today’s choice is The Left Hand of Darkness, which I read last year at the start of the pandemic. It was a birthday gift from my friend. They had to read it in their gender studies class, and she was like “Oh, you know who would enjoy hot takes on gender with an extra helping of sci-fi worldbuilding? Bridgette!” And she was right. Can I tell you anything about the plot? No, but I came for the worldbuilding and I stayed for the worldbuilding. Doesn’t mean the plot wasn’t interesting! Let’s get on with it, shall we? This is the first cover we’re going to look at.                 I’ve seen a couple variations of this where the text is pi...

                 You know how I said the last project almost kicked my butt?               Consider it kicked.               I have been defeated by a foe greater than any the world has ever seen.               Who or what is that foe?               It’s me.               My own ambition and ideas are stronger than my fragile human body and the short time I have to spend on this Earth. I have seen the dark end that lies in wait for all of us and felt the crushing burden of a great potential that will never be fulfilled. I have been slain by a despair so great humanity will sing of it for an age.  ...

              Animating kinetic typography is a beast.               I say this to be punny, and also because it almost kicked my butt.               I was having fun, and I got over ambitious as I tend to do, and I ran out of time and had shorten the project I was working on. It still works. I still met the requirements, but I ended up with 42 seconds instead of the near minute and a half I had anticipated. I could have gone a bit longer, but I think I’d be working on the next 40 seconds for another week and that is Against The Rules. The question that might be asked is why specifically 42 seconds, and why was the only other alternative to go overboard and have double the required time?               The answer is I chose a very specific song with very s...

               This month I’m learning about post production with the use of After Effects! I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy it, but I have so far, and I wanted to share a couple of projects I’ve worked on this week. One of them is purely for amusement, and the other I think I might actually be a little proud of. This is the first project, which I’ve simply been calling Sad Window Rain. One of the options for a beginner project was to add rain to a video, and my genius decided that meant filming the dolls that live in my dollhouse looking sadly out the window. It’s Poetic And Sad because the dolls living in the dollhouse represent me and my best friend, who moved across the country this summer. It’s Also A Joke because the music I chose to put in the video is from that iconic Australian mermaid show H2O: Just Add Water, that plays whenever any of the characters has a break up and they look sadly out the window while it rains for a full th...

  Stormchaser is the second book in a series called The Edge Chronicles. I may or may not have been obsessed with this series as a kid. Ok, I absolutely was obsessed. It was weird, imaginative, fun, and no one else I knew was reading them so my Inner Hipster Demon felt really Cool and Special. I did a book cover analysis of The Two Towers a while back and I wanted to try another one. I only have a copy of the first cover I’m going to show you (It’s a first American edition, printed in 2004, so it’s not the first cover ever), but I remembered having Thoughts about this second cover when it was released. I’m going to take another look and give a Designer’s Opinion on it and on another, newer version of the cover. Here is the first cover of Stormchaser: Iconic. Maybe that’s the nostalgia talking, but I really do love this cover. The fake distressing on the edges, the swirly cloud background that looks like old, stained paper, the fluttery scroll of the title. The hard cover is tex...

I’m doing something different this week. This isn’t your regular “what I’ve learned this week about Graphic Design” post. It’s more like… “ what I’ve been learning about myself over the last two years.” I’ve been meaning to talk about Imposter Syndrome.  It was brought up in our very first week of class this month and I’ve been sitting on this blog post ever since. Hoo, boy. I’m familiar with it, but probably not in the way that you think. Imposter Syndrome, to put it simply is when you feel you aren’t as good at something as people say or seem to think you are and one day they’re going to find out you’re a big liar who’s been tricking them all this time and you’re actually a bog mummy in disguise. Lots of people feel this way. I feel this way. But not about my design skills, or my intelligence, or my ability to perform a task. I keep proving to myself that I’m capable enough. I’ve had straight A’s the entire time I’ve been in college. I got an A in algebra for math’s sake, and I...

              I’m supposed to write a cover letter for a job listing of my choice as a homework exercise. I haven’t quite worked up to it yet, because first I have to pick the job I’m fake applying to, and then I have to…you know…write it. It shouldn’t be an impossible task because I believe I have a certain amount of skill when it comes to writing, but it will take twice as much energy and brain power as this blog post here because it’s supposed to be purposeful and good and professional , or whatever.               Not that this blog isn’t supposed to be those things, but this is supposed to be “heyo here’s my personality. Let me tell you a fun thing” and not “Hello, yes, I am uniquely qualified for this position because of xyz reasons – but interesting.”               I can make excuses left and right about how I i...

One of the things that is so interesting about Graphic Design is that it is everywhere, and it is so everywhere that most people don’t even think about how everywhere it is. Not only that, but there are so many different specific kinds of Graphic Designers that most people who are hiring Graphic Designers (which is more people than you think) don’t even call them Graphic Designers. A designer who is animating graphics for a video game does not do the same kind of work as a designer who formats books for print. So, that makes sense. Why call both jobs Graphic Design jobs when the work is completely different? They might be called a Graphic Blandisher and a Layout Artist. Ok, Graphic Blandisher is a joke from Peanuts cartoons, because apparently Charles M. Schulz hated animation or something and all the animation on stuff like A Charlie Brown Christmas is called Graphic Blandishment in the credits.  Photo credit https://peanuts.fandom.com/wiki/Peanuts_Wiki  So, the j...

              Ah, the elegant form of a…form.               Ok, there really is nothing elegant or “high art” about paperwork, but efficient and concise forms are necessary. How many times have you had to fill out a form and you take one look and are completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff on it? To be fair there are a lot of things that are unavoidable, and I don’t know if it’s more intimidating to be confronted with one over-crowded piece of paper or a stack of less-crowded papers.               I deal with a lot of paperwork at my job. I work at a theatre and we have forms for all kinds of things. Season ticket orders, auditions, class registration, waivers upon waivers…all to keep track of contact info for our patrons and volunteers and to make sure our volunteers won’t bully other cast members or sue us...

“Make me wonder, make me understand. Spark the light of doubt and a newborn mind. Bring the vast unthinkable down to earth,”               These are lyrics from a song by my favorite band, Nightwish. It’s called Sagan, after the famous astronomer Carl Sagan. I was going to make that blog post about designing forms today, but seeing as it’s Carl Sagan Day apparently, I thought it would be more fitting to talk about last week’s project. The project was to turn a song into a poster based on feelings. Not the title, not the lyrics, but the feeling of the song and how it makes me feel. I regularly belt this song in the car and prance around the house while it plays, either in my head or on my phone. I regularly do this with a number of Nightwish songs.               I was, at first, overwhelmed by the possibilities. There are so many songs that would have bee...

The tale continues! See part one if you’ve missed it: Bortbyting Part 1 I had a lot of fun writing and illustrating this story, and then piecing all of it together in InDesign. When I think about all the different kinds of careers and jobs I could have pertaining to Graphic Design, working with page layout and books still holds my interest more than anything else. Not even necessarily illustrating or designing covers, just putting the pieces together and arranging it so that it makes sense. At least it’s vaguely more interesting than designing forms, which I will get into at a later date. I feel like that seems too mundane for the vibes I give off (ah, yes, the person with the bright red and orange hair, who listens to metal, and has an ever-growing doll collection likes designing forms of all things), but maybe I’m just too interesting to be doing interesting things all of the time. “It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.” J. R. R. Tolkien

“Bortbyting is the Swedish word for Changeling. This new tale takes the old stories of faeries, trolls and changeling babies and turns them on their head. Taking elements from Scandinavian folk tales and Bridge Rhodes’ own mythological inventions, Bortbyting is a quirky little story of the love between parents and children, and embracing the strangeness of your own identity.” This is the blurb from the back cover of a short book I wrote, and illustrated, way back in March, in the early days of The Pandemic, when lock down and social distancing was fun. I thought I would share it here. Many of the names and creatures are things that are featured in other writing I've been working on. The other writing has a working title of The Eleventh for now (I posted a cover design I did a while back), and I was able to finalize (ha!) a draft over the summer and begin work on its sequel, which I am now in the process of editing and cleaning up. I have some background characters that share name...

      I disappeared again.      I do that sometimes.      I hate feeling obligated to keep up with a platform that I a) don't know how to use anymore, and b) no one even follows me on. Even if they did I would still hate feeling obligated to bring them content at regular intervals when it would only be an obligation I made myself and there is no grade or money involved and I don't feel an overwhelming joy for the thing.      I hate feeling like I owe the internet something.      I love writing.      I should love blogging.      This is supposed to be my "Here is a cute and clever look at my personality for future employers" blog.      There is nothing fun about that. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I have to put a filter on it, and it feels inauthentic. I mean, it's not inauthentic. Everything I write here is written in the most Bridgette way possible. Except that...