My First WBL Field Trip

     Today I went to my first WBL trip to the Metropolitan Museum. We went to see people's works of art (obviously) and analyzed their techniques such as their usage of color or size of shapes. The first piece of art we saw was called "Between Earth and Heaven". Our group had many interpretations of

the work. But what details were important were how it was made and how it was presented. The thing that may pop out when you see this is the gold. The gold parts of the quilt was made from using foil from thrown out liquor caps. While what the message is about Earth and Heaven may be open to interpretation the other message this work tells us is to recycle. We can make beautiful things out of what seems to be waste. We can give old or thrown out things new life by reusing them, changing them, and making them new. This is important to web designers since web designers always need new ideas and sometimes the best thing to do is to remix what's old so it becomes something new. The quilt is also presented not straight but with waves in it. This gives us the illusion of motion which may be a useful trick for a web designer. Another piece of work we saw is one with 3 rectangles [I don't its name. :( ] Here you might just see 3 rectangles colored differently but there is a bit more to it. The

Man, it sure would be nice if my camera lens didn't have to go
all blurry here.

Oh, don't mind me trying to take a picture of the deer. You can
get into the shot, I'm cool with it.

rectangles are different colors and these colors invoke different emotions since that's what colors do. The color and emotion is balanced by the varying sizes of the rectangle. The red, the brightest color of the work which invoke an emotion like anger, is the smallest rectangle. The larger rectangles are the brown and black rectangles, the darker colors, which keep the red rectangle from getting all the attention. The blue background unifies the whole thing. This is important to a web designer since web designers might want to create a balance in their work and they can use color composition to achieve it. One last piece of artwork we saw was a deer made out of crystal and acrylic spheres [I know, it would've been sooo much better if I was able to say the name].  When we first took a look at this work we thought it was simply glass balls glued to a wooden model of a deer. The reason many of us thought this is that the balls magnified the surface underneath to make it look like wood grain. In reality the balls were attached to a taxidermied deer, it was the fur that looked like wood. This is important for a web designer since a web designer can use the concept of making familiar things look different to enhance their work.
     These works of art are not for everyone. These pieces of art may be more attractive to some than others. Perhaps none of the work I've shown you grabs your attention. That's something a web designer must know creating his/her website. The design of the website needs to be unique to the personality of the designer but also be appealing to the audience the web design wants to target. Not everyone will like the website but the goal is not to get everyone to like the website, it's to get the people who matter to like the website. I would make my work appealing to a particular target audience by paying attention to fine details like lines and shapes. For example, if I'm making a website for senior citizens I might want to use curved lines in the border and shapes with soft edges since many seniors are not too keen on things that are erratic in design. If I were making a site for hyperactive teens that may like rock music I may use zig zags and shapes with jagged edges. These would tie in with the erratic and explosive nature of the audience. I can make a website design unique to me by incorporating my personal preferences into the design. For example, the colors I use can be based on my favorite colors.

I probably should've made a better facial expression taking this
picture. Whatever. The other people to the right of me are fellow
classmates that went with me on the trip.