Poster 3 January 2011
Poster 1 January 2011
Poster 30 December 2010
Poster 25 December 2010
It seems like scrapbooking trends are just like fashion. Everything will come back in style eventually, so hang on to everything you own. Take pens, for instance. Five years ago, I did not scrapbook a single page without pulling out my box of pens to accent my titles, punchart and paper piecings. While paper piecing may not yet be back in style, my pens are getting used more than ever before.
Everywhere I look, penwork is being used to accent layouts. Whether it is a whole page of doodles and accents, or just using a pen to journal, everyone is doing it. Penwork is an easy way to add an inexpensive handmade touch to your work of art. Even if you are like me and do not consider yourself a freestyle artist, you can find ways to work this hot trend into your layouts.
So, pull out your own box of pens or go buy a new favorite. It is time to doodle and draw!
Practice makes perfect. The first step to feeling confident with your pen is to start with some basic lines and loops. Take out a scratch piece of paper and draw a box. In that box, draw some straight lines over and over again. Pay attention to how you hold the pen and the angle of your hand. A hand held to closely to the paper may tend to smudge your pen lines. Don't labor over each line; instead draw aimlessly and quickly. Once you feel confident with those lines, change direction and add some waves to the lines. Move to a new box and draw lines that swirl, curve, zig zag and loop in random patterns.
Learn to accept "mistakes" and imperfections, as those are a trademark part of doodling.
Now it is time to go beyond basic lines. You are now ready to combine your lines with some basic shapes like stars, hearts, diamonds, flowers and circles. Start with the simple shape and then add outlines, dots or swirly lines. If you are not confident in your ability to draw the basic shapes, look for dingbat fonts or clip art that you can trace with a lightbox. Instead of drawing a shape, you could use doodles to accent a die cut, sticker or punched shape. Still not confident enough to draw directly on your page? Doodle onto a piece of cardstock and then add that to your layout.
Incorporating doodles into your layouts can be as easy as doodling something at the edges of the photos, to something as complex as an entire doodled background. Here are a few ideas for simple ways to add doodles to your layouts:
- Handwrite your journaling on to doodle lines, adding some extra flourishes to a large drop cap letter at the beginning.
- Draw doodle lines around your page, adding a few basic shapes in the corners.
- Doodle onto a transparency and overlay that on your page.
- Use a template to draw an outline letter and then fill in that letter with doodles.
- Add doodles to a title or subtitle word.
- Doodle on to a pre-made embellishment to make it your own.
- Mix pen doodles with other random marks from paint, brads, rhinestones or thread.
- Doodle random words around a photo mat or other shape.
By playing a little with your pens, you can find many ways to fit doodling into your personal scrapbook style. Keep it structured or make it totally random - you can do it!
Poster 20 December 2010
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--They've celebrated Pac-Man's anniversary, Einstein's birthday, the World Cup, the Fourth of July, Persian New Year, the Olympics, U.S. elections, and just about everything in between. Who are they? Google's Doodlers, of course.
A band of artists whose job it is to translate special events into those colorful, whimsical versions of Google's corporate logo, the Doodlers almost certainly have one of the best jobs in the world.
This team's members mix artistic skills with an ability to fit into Google's culture--meaning they can speak engineering and hold their own among the uber-geeks--in order to do the one thing atGoogle designed specifically to put a smile on people's faces the world over.
After working on a story about Google's creation of a special playable Pac-Man doodle back in May, I arranged for a visit with the Doodlers to witness their process and the creation of an actual doodle. So it was on a sunny Tuesday morning last month, I found myself among the Doodlers in a small conference room at the search giant's headquarters here.
A brief history:
A little context first. In 1998, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided to spoof the whole "out of office" idea by putting up a Burning Man logo behind the Google site's corporate logo while the two were at the annual arts festival in the Nevada desert. "While the first doodle was relatively simple", a corporate history of the Doodle recalls, "the idea of decorating the company logo to celebrate notable events was well received by our users."
A little context first. In 1998, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided to spoof the whole "out of office" idea by putting up a Burning Man logo behind the Google site's corporate logo while the two were at the annual arts festival in the Nevada desert. "While the first doodle was relatively simple", a corporate history of the Doodle recalls, "the idea of decorating the company logo to celebrate notable events was well received by our users."
In 2000, "Larry and Sergey asked current [Google] Webmaster Dennis Hwang, an intern at the time, to produce a doodle for Bastille Day," the history continues. "Pleased with the result, Dennis was then appointed Google's chief doodler and doodles became a regular occurrence on the Google home page."
Today, the team is made up of five people--chief doodler Micheal Lopez and doodlers Susie Sahim, Jennifer Hom, Ryan Germick, and Mike Dutton.
And as part of my visit, they agreed to let me listen to their discussions about--and see their concepts for--future creations, so long as I didn't publish anything before Sept. 4, when one of the new doodles celebrating the discovery of the Buckyball, would run worldwide.
It's notable that the doodle was running globally because just a fraction of the total creations are meant for a world audience. Most of their work is aimed at specific countries and celebrates local events, such as the birthdays of those countries' famed composers, scientists, and artists or national days of independence.
Regardless of whether a doodle is meant for the eyes of billions or just a fraction of that, Lopez said, the creative process is basically the same: the team tries to find a way to conceptualize the event and then tries to find the most fun representation of that idea.
Each year, the team creates about 200 doodles, and with each, it tries to instill Google'stechnology and its culture.
"The company feels pretty good about it. With all our products, we think of the user first, and this is another example where we really enjoy sharing....We get to have a human hand in our company as part of our interaction with users," said Germick, who led the Pac-Man effort.
Checking the facts
With huge audiences viewing the doodles, those on the team know that it's important their work accurately represents the subject matter. Because if they get it wrong, the public will let them know.
With huge audiences viewing the doodles, those on the team know that it's important their work accurately represents the subject matter. Because if they get it wrong, the public will let them know.
For example, said Lopez, when the team put out a doodle commemorating the discovery of DNA, "we actually had drawn the double helix the wrong way...Scientists started writing us...[and] we revised it on the fly".
That's why, Germick said, when working on a doodle celebrating Pi Day--March 14, or 3/14--"I made sure to get a Princeton Ph.D.'s check on my representation of different geometric equations before I pushed [the doodle] out to hundreds of millions of users."
While team members will often have days, or even weeks, to finish their creations, that's not always the case. Hom recalled the day when water vapor was discovered on the moon, and it was decided that the team should get a doodle up that same day. "It looked like we had inside information," Hom said,"but really, we were reading the news".
When the so-called "missing link" fossil, was found in 2009, paleontologists felt it might fill in holes in their understanding of primate evolution, and the news created a splash worldwide. At the time, several of the Doodlers were at an awards ceremony in New York. But this piece of news was considered such geek manna that it was decided on the spot that Google needed to put up a doodle celebrating it. There was no time to lose, Germick said. Within hours, the resulting Doodle was bringing word about the fossil's discovery to untold millions.
Concepts
While the Pac-Man doodle would have made the news any time, it was particularly notable because it was the first example of a special logo that was fully playable and interactive. But over the years, the team has experimented with a number of dynamic doodles. Among them are the celebration of Isaac Newton's birthday in which an apple falls from a tree, a UFO's creation of a series of crop circles, and one that people could click to collect candy wrappers. That one, of course, ran on Halloween.
While the Pac-Man doodle would have made the news any time, it was particularly notable because it was the first example of a special logo that was fully playable and interactive. But over the years, the team has experimented with a number of dynamic doodles. Among them are the celebration of Isaac Newton's birthday in which an apple falls from a tree, a UFO's creation of a series of crop circles, and one that people could click to collect candy wrappers. That one, of course, ran on Halloween.
After about half an hour of sharing the history of Doodles, it was time for the team to get down to business: discussing current projects and giving one other feedback on their progress.
Generally, one person is assigned a specific doodle, and each usually works on two or three at a time. This means that as a team, they can make progress on a lot of doodles at once.
The first concept doodle they discussed while I was in the room was one that was scheduled to--and did--run in Russia on Aug. 19 celebrating the 50th anniversary of the space flight of Belka and Stelka, the two Russian dogs who became the first animals to go into space--and return alive.
Sahim was creating it. Her design, I was told, was inspired by the famed Nintendo franchise, The Legend of Zelda.
At this point, just two days prior to the doodle's publication, Sahim had already gotten the sign-off from a Google marketing manager in Russia, who had reviewed and approved it.
Next up was a doodle celebrating the 205th birthday of Danish ballet dancer and choreographer August Bournoville, which was scheduled to--and did--run on Aug. 21.
Dutton explained that he had wanted to give the doodle a "dreamy feel", a "lost-edge quality," and a sense that the "body mass is fading". In the concept sketch, one could see a chair fading a bit into the background.
Next up was a doodle commemorating Ukraninan Independence Day on Aug. 24, and then one for the 213th birthday of "Frankenstein" creator Mary Shelley on Aug. 30. The Shelley doodle ran in the U.K. that day. In Lopez's conception, the doodle depicted a hallway in Dr. Frankenstein's home to pay homage to Shelley.
I asked why it was important to commemorate Shelley's 213th birthday, rather than one with a rounder number. Lopez said that Google simply likes to celebrate anniversaries and birthdays. "We're not going to wait for a big, round number," Lopez said. "We want to do it now".
Of course, as Germick put it, by celebrating birthdays like Shelley's 213th, it maintains the "element of surprise...We want to be somewhat serendipitous".
Buckyball
After discussing a couple of more potential doodles, it was time to see some early concepts for a doodle celebrating the 25th anniversary of the discovery of buckminsterfullerene, a molecule that, Wikipedia says, is "composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, or tube". Spherical fullerenes are known as "Buckyballs" because these compositions have some of the same elements as geodesic domes, which were invented by Buckminster Fuller.
These molecules are commonly used in science, particularly in materials science, nanotechnology, and electronics, according to Wikipedia, yet they are also seen in the design of many different kinds of soccer balls.
That's why, when Hom began drawing her concept for a Buckyball doodle on the whiteboard, she incorporated what looked to everyone like a soccer ball. "Let's just re-use the World Cup doodle," someone joked.
Hom explained that she was thinking of two different ideas for the final design. One was slightly interactive, she said, and would feature a tiny particle rotating in circular motion around the fullerene. "Hopefully, this would spark user interest," she said, "and they'd mouse over it. And when they do, it would zoom in to a gigantic Buckyball. The user's mouse would cause it to rotate and spin."
She said that if that approach wasn't appealing to the team, she had also been conceiving of a static doodle.
I asked about the animation in her interactive idea. Germick said if they went in that direction, they'd "probably try to con an engineer into working with us in their 20 percent time." He was referring to the Google tradition of giving employees 20 percent of their work time to address personal projects.
"Some of the people I'm talking to about animating this are Buckminster Fuller fanatics," Hom said.
Indeed, she said that working on the project had felt like being in school because she felt a lot of pressure to get it right. "If I get it wrong," she said, "then everyone's going to be upset".
This article was first published as a blog post on CNET News.
Poster 17 December 2010
A lot of people hate doodlers, those who idly scribble during meetings (or classes or trials or whatever). Most people also hate that other closely related species: the fidgeter, who spins pens or reorders papers or plays with his phone during meetings. (I stand guilty as charged. On occasion, I have also been known to whisper.) We doodlers, fidgeters and whisperers always get the same jokey, passive-aggressive line from the authority figure at the front of the room: "I'm sorry, are we bothering you?" How droll. But the underlying message is clear: Pay attention.
But I've never stopped fidgeting, and I've always thought I walked out of meetings remembering all the relevant parts. Now I have proof. In a delightful new study, which will be published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, psychologist Jackie Andrade of the University of Plymouth in southern England showed that doodlers actually remember more than nondoodlers when asked to retain tediously delivered information, like, say, during a boring meeting or a lecture. (See the cartoons of the week.)
In her small but rigorous study, Andrade separated 40 participants into two groups of 20. All 40 had just finished an unrelated psychological experiment, and many were thinking of going home (or to the pub). They were asked, instead, whether they wouldn't mind spending an additional five minutes helping with research. The participants were led into a quiet room and asked to listen to a 2½-min. tape that they were told would be "rather dull."
That's a shocking bit of understatement. The tape — which Guantánamo officials should consider as a method of nonlethal torture — was a rambling (and fake) voice-mail message that purported to invite the listener to a 21st-birthday party. In it, the party's host talks about someone's sick cat; she mentions her redecorated kitchen, the weather, someone's new house in Colchester and a vacation in Edinburgh that involved museums and rain. In all, she mentions eight place names and eight people who are definitely coming to the party. (See pictures of office cubicles around the world.)
Before the tape began, half the study participants were asked to shade in some little squares and circles on a piece of paper while they listened. They were told not to worry about being neat or quick about it. (Andrade did not instruct people explicitly to "doodle," which might have prompted self-consciousness about what constituted an official doodle.) The other 20 didn't doodle. All the participants were asked to write the names of those coming to the party while the tape played, which meant the doodlers switched between their doodles and their lists.
Afterward, the papers were removed and the 40 volunteers were asked to recall, orally, the place names and the names of the people coming to the party. The doodlers creamed the nondoodlers: those who doodled during the tape recalled 7.5 pieces of information (out of 16 total) on average, 29% more than the average of 5.8 recalled by the control group. (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.)
Why does doodling aid memory? Andrade offers several theories, but the most persuasive is that when you doodle, you don't daydream. Daydreaming may seem absentminded and pointless, but it actually demands a lot of the brain's processing power. You start daydreaming about a vacation, which leads you to think about potential destinations, how you would pay for the trip, whether you could get the flight upgraded, how you might score a bigger hotel room. These cognitions require what psychologists call "executive functioning" — for example, planning for the future and comparing costs and benefits.
Doodling, in contrast, requires very few executive resources but just enough cognitive effort to keep you from daydreaming, which — if unchecked — will jump-start activity in cortical networks that will keep you from remembering what's going on. Doodling forces your brain to expend just enough energy to stop it from daydreaming but not so much that you don't pay attention.
So the next time you're doodling during a meeting — or twirling a pencil or checking the underside of the table for gum — and you hear that familiar admonition ("Are we bothering you?"), you can tell the boss with confidence that you've been paying attention to every word.
Doodling may look messy, but it could in fact be a sign of an alert mind, a study suggests.
Plymouth University researchers carried out memory tests on 40 volunteers, asking them to listen to a phone call and recall names and places.
Doodlers performed 29% better than non-doodlers, the team found.Experts said doodling stopped people from daydreaming, which was a more taxing diversion, and so was good at helping people focus on mundane tasks.
During the study, half of the volunteers were asked to colour in shapes on a piece of paper while they listened to a 2.5 minute telephone message.
The other half were left to their own devices while they listened. Both groups were told the message would be dull, the Applied Cognitive Psychology journal reported.
Afterwards, both groups were asked to write down eight specific names and eight places mentioned.
The doodlers on average recalled 7.5, while the non-doodlers only managed 5.8.
Lead researcher Jackie Andrade said: "If someone is doing a boring task, like listening to a dull telephone conversation, they may start to daydream.
"Daydreaming distracts them from the task, resulting in poor performance.
"A simple task, like doodling, may be sufficient to stop daydreaming without affecting performance on the main task."
Professor Alan Badeley, from the British Psychological Society, said: "Doodling is a relatively undemanding task so this makes sense.
"The temptation during meetings or telephone conversations that you are not particularly engaged with is to start thinking about things. You visualise things such as holidays.
"That then takes you away from the task at hand. Or you may even end up nodding off.
"However, by comparison, doodling is not that taxing and keeps you more alert so you are more likely to absorb what is being said."
Have you ever been in a boring meeting and start drawing on the margins of your notepad? What about in a class or while talking on the phone? We all do it, but do we know why? Do they mean something?
Doodling is an absent minded scribble or marks without aim, purpose or thought. Some definitions describe it as a foolish or wasteful act. In some circles of psychology that is not the case. While a definite reason for the act is not that clear, there are some commonalities and hypotheses about the act of doodling.
Doodling usually happens when people are stuck in a place where we do not want to be. If you are in a boring meeting and you have other priorities or prefer to be someplace else, doodling is likely to occur. Like daydreaming, doodling helps us displace our thoughts to something more pleasurable.
Another characteristic is that it usually happens where open expression is disallowed. If you are on a conference call or in a class lecture and you cannot expresses yourself freely, doodling is a way to compensate for that restriction. The drawings can potentially have a meaning to the person creating the doodle.
Some theories, including Freud and Jung, think that doodling is an act where the individual is conscious, but the meaning of the drawings is unconscious. Alfred Adler suggested that we tend to seek symmetry and doodles meet that need. Other psychologists suggest that doodles are a manifestation of an unconscious or emotional state.
What is interesting about doodles is that we all have a pattern. Some draw circles, while others draw shapes or jagged lines. Sometimes the doodle is based on an internal or external stimulus. If you look at your previous doodles, you may find patterns.
