Holy De La Hoya!

I have my final programming presentation this Friday on "The Science of Cute." I'm already kind of nervous. But I've resolved myself to finishing the book first and creating the presentation from the book, so everything else is on hold.

Here are a few choice pages from the book. It's currently only in Illustrator format. After I finish that, it's dividing each spread into two individual pages via Photoshop, then turning them into jpg files and uploading them to Blurb's Booksmart software. Get excited!







(P.S. Captions are just place markers, and page numbers are all kinds of not right.) The layout is super simple–hopefully people focus more on the photos than the layout. Not all spreads will have text. A few pages will simply be photos with captions. But the page count is getting up there.

More when I can. Maybe I can figure out my MobileMe account and get a pdf of the book up here when I'm done.

Logo Time!

I did lots of things while I was home this Halloween weekend, most all of them not involving school work (big surprise). I did, however, name the book on "the science of cute" that I'm making and design the logo for the cover.



I'm unsure whether I want anything else on the cover. I think the simplicity would be nice. No name, no subtitle, just OMG, Cute! The official title, however, would be:

OMG, Cute! The Science Behind a Cultural Phenomenon

And it would be the first of two books, the first one being my "design brief" with all my research and the second documenting the design phase, from initial sketches to built project. The first one's cover would probably be pink with a white logo and the second white with a pink logo. Thoughts? Critiques? I'm not too keen on the "G" in the logo. It seems off, but I need to play with it a bit.

The Mystery Box

I forgot my Mac power cord this morning and am forced to use my PC in studio. I got on and opened Firefox to my homepage, this little blog. My good lord, it's ugly on a PC. I don't know what happens in translation, but it's one hideous looking web page. So I apologize to all you PC users. There's not much I can do, however, so you're going to have to live with it.

As I mentioned in previous posts, I've been reading up for my various classes, so I thought I would share a few of my sources with you all, you know, just in case. Most of them, I will pass on, however, because they will be sources for theming, such as my "How Does Earth Work? Physical Geology and the Process of Science" book, which is helping me get around the educational aspects of the ride.

I'm afraid I can't divulge the idea for the project because I am most likely going to enter it into the competition. I'll try and post my most vague renderings and other little tidbits along the way, though. Like this book that is an awesome source of work done by actual imagineers:



"Designing Disney's Theme Parks: The Architecture of Reassurance"

There's an amazing photo of the model for Sleeping Beauty's castle in Paris. It must have taken ages to build. This isn't the photo but it's the closest I could find out on the world wide web:



The book also has some interesting sketches and renderings that give me a good idea of the caliber of work that is put out at Disney.

Also as part of my research, I have been listening to short talks given by some very inspiring people at TED. So far, I've been listening to talks that focus on children, learning, creativity, story-telling, and technology. In particular, I'm loving this one given by J.J. Abrams entitled "The Mystery Box." Good stuff.

Final Day in Copenhagen

Today could not have been a more beautiful day. I'm happy to say that my final full day in Copenhagen was well spent.

I woke up outrageously early. Like 6AM early. And not on purpose or to an alarm clock. I think my body just new it was my last day in Copenhagen and wanted me up and out of bed for it. So I spent my first hour awake writing a bunch of post cards. Then I leisurely got ready and headed to the S-Train.



I got to Kobenhavn station about 15 minutes before the Post Office opened at 10, so I strolled around a bit. I went into one of the Kwik-E-Mart type places and saw, to my surprise, a Mountain Dew!



I snatched one up, along with a scrumptious looking Danish, and went to eat my breakfast while waiting for the P.O. to open. The Mountain Dew, oddly enough, was probably the worst part of my day. It tasted horrible! Either 4 weeks without one has built up some sort of Mountain Dew aversion (god forbid!), or it's made differently over here. I could tell it wasn't the American packaged kind like my Stockholm beverage of goodness was. It tasted like Sprite mixed with 409. Or what I imagine Sprite and 409 to taste like. Either way, gross.

Then I headed to the Town Hall, to buy my last family souvenir, a "I (bike) CPH" shirt for my dad. Apparently, they are only sold in this one location. That's it. Nowhere else, not even online, can you find this shirt. And, to make it even more peculiar, they keep them in a locked cabinet, guarded by security! I almost felt like getting myself one just because of the rarity.

After that, I thought I would take a stroll along Stroget, the shopping district that runs through the center of Copenhagen.





About midway through, I popped into a bookstore and found the English section, all three shelves of it, and found an interesting book:



A Short History of Everything by Bill Bryson. Here's the summary from the back of the book:

"Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveler, but even when he stays safely at home he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History of Nearly Everything is his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization––how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. The ultimate eye-opening journey through time and space, revealing the world in a way most of us have never seen it before."

The voice Bryson uses is very humorous, and you sort of absorb his intense interest in not just the facts, but how scientists made their discoveries. It's going to make for a very educational flight home. I made it a good 30 pages in during lunch at "Sunset Boulevard":



Also, during lunch, I accidentally set my camera to the Movie option and took a short movie. After figuring this out and then watching my inadvertent movie, I found the quality to be actually quite amazing. That paired with a 4-gig memory card, allowed me to take the following movie, as I walked from where I had lunch to the nearby Norreport station. The movie is 4 minutes long, so it may get kind of boring, but there's a good part in there where I pass by a street musician and his music provides a nice soundtrack. And I apologize for my apparent "big foot" walking. It's hard to keep the camera steady as I'm holding it at my waist. Anyway, enjoy!



After the train ride home, I headed out again to the Rodovre shopping center, the closest thing to a mall that I've seen here, and did some shopping for myself, as I realized today that I hadn't gotten myself anything to remember Copenhagen by. Other than hundreds of pictures and a chair, of course.