Present Joys

I’m doing a really bad job keeping you up-to-date on my thesis project, tumblr. This is especially stupid because I’m being graded on these posts! Let me catch you up with what’s been happening:

Besides my work with the knitting machine, I’ve put a lot of thought into the rest of this project—all the CCAD stuff. A lunch meeting with Marcia Tabler a few months ago, she gave me the really excellent idea of creating a piece of collateral about history of CCAD. I’ve been planning to use all photos as part of an advertising campaign, but I really like the idea of making the photos into something permanent. Leah Fisher, CCAD archivist, has proven an exceptional resource. I went and visited her a couple weeks ago and spent over an hour looking at old yearbooks and course catalogs. Though there are already a bunch of photos scanned and posted on Flickr, there’s even more stuff in the archives that no one else has seen. She’s been very gracious to scan new things for me as part of my ongoing search for cool memorabilia.

I really enjoyed looking at old photos to get a feel for the way to school used to be, if nothing else. Printed materials from the 50s and 60s tend to look antique, but things from the 70s are charming and could still largely working a contemporary setting. The photo at the top of this post is a close-up of typography from the 1974 course catalog. Check out that body face: it’s an amazing, funky grotesk that looks almost-but-not-quite like Extended Helvetica. I’ve been really inspired looking at these old materials.

What’s next?

I have to develop a brand. What’s this thing going to be called? I’ve been tossing around a few ideas in my head. One top contender is “Hutton Club”, named for the old street where all CCAD’s first buildings were built. I also like names like “CCAD is ours” or “we are CCAD” because they sound less fashion-brand-y. So I need to work on that. I also need to make some sweaters! A lot of sweaters!