All posts by Kristi

Kristi Beisecker is a graphic designer, photographer, printmaker and alternative scientist whose interested in making images through two contrasting elements. She is also a blogger in lifestyle, travel, wellness and health, art and design, beauty and fashion.

I will not be the %99

I have been reading http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com and I do support the movement. I do. I understand where they are coming from and I worry about the future of my country as well as my life, too.

This is why I work hard so I will -not- become the %99.

All my life I have been poked fun of for working hard. In middle school it was always appearing as a know-it-all. My father taught me that there should be no reason to answer with “I don’t know”. I didn’t care, I wanted to make something of myself.

In high school, it was learning about myself and overcoming my language disability, truly finding my passion, etc. Understanding that Graphic Design was what I want and was meant to do and trying to get into college. My grades were low because of my disability so finding a college that would accept me, was incredible.

I have had adobe photoshop open every day since age 11 (or whenever I got it). I consider myself to be better than most of the people in the department. Who -don’t- put their career before anything else. I -don’t- party every weekend. I don’t care about making and keeping friends (I do love meeting new people and love my friends that I have now) but people have created so much heart ache for me, more and more I have stopped caring. When I discovered that my college wasn’t giving me the fullest education possible, I went out and learned more about my field on my own.

In college, I am seen as an overachiever (probably) because all I care about is my career. In Graphic Design you work hard. You need to. You compete with everyone in your field. There are jobs and every job is competitive. You need to have personality, a unique style and willingness to succeed in this field. If it appears that all you do is party and put your career last, you will -not- get hired. I have seen it and continue to see it.

I am sick and tired of people not caring about their future. About their lives. You will look back and realize how much time you wasted at college when you could have spent it putting it into your career.

I have not a had a consistent paying job since summer of 2009, only a couple of freelancing jobs here and there.

The American Dream is dead. You work hard and go big in your field of choice. Small companies can’t afford part time employees, they’re looking for cheap work. It is the larger companies that can, and they’re looking for the best of the best.

Some of the notes on http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com  I don’t see as being part of the %99 but the ones who have medical bills and college bills I see.

Package Design Project

This is my package design project for my portfolio class.
The concept was to develop a package for a product that is a reflection of the company we created this semester. Since my ‘company’ I’m using is my k glyphics graphic design business I went with the whole “speaking to the past” stigma that most of my designs I have created this semester have.

The idea for this herb/spice line is a gift to a client that would have spent a lot of money on our services. Its like a hand out.

The line is a herb/spice/pigment line containing a herb/spice/pigment from an ancient culture that we’re (I’m) inspired from. The reasons behind choosing each of the herb/spice/pigment is symbolic and has connections to mysticism and mythology.

I chose “Lucifer” as the name of the line. The name derives from the Latin term lucem ferre, bringer, or bearer, of light.

In mysticism, Adam from the Biblical “Adam and Eve”, refers to the atom form, and Eve refers to the light emanating from that form. Eve is the dawning of creation, the coming of the light. Eve is likewise, the evening, the end of the light. This symbolizes the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega, of the bringer of light. Adam and Eve together, are symbolic names for the electrically charged atom symbol, which in turn symbolize the light bringer, the bright morning and evening stars. Together they represent the creator of light, the creator god called lucifer, …who is the light bringer.

The herb/spice/pigments are:

Egyptian Blue “irtiu, sbedj” / Saffron of India “Kesar, Zafran” / chocolate of mexico “xocolatl”

Third Eye Opening

At the risk of sounding nuts-o I’ve been meaning to post about this throbbing sensation I have been feeling frequently since the summer of 09′ after my spiritual awakening. Yesterday I decided to do some research, some people believe the throbbing or pulsating sensation is the third eye sending waves of energy out and is beginning to slowly awaken.

I have suspected it has been the third eye. I actually hear this pulsating noise. Its like a heart beat but inside your head, so I’m hoping you can see why I am afraid to speak about this to anyone, cause they would definitely look at me weirdly.

Since then I’ve come completely out of my shell so-to-speak. I’m interested in subjects I never saw myself getting into in high school. My clairvoyance has been spiking. The end products to projects have been coming at me at the speed of light, faster than I can write down the ideas. I design based on an end product that I see in my ‘third-eye area’ and use that as a concept and apply it to my project.

Sleep is difficult. Especially near the full moon as I’ve mentioned before. The moon’s energy seems to affect my hyperactivity/creativity. Philosophical and mystical ideas flow out right before I go to sleep to the point where I’ve started writing a journal to get these ideas down.

I have feel like I’ve been free from a lot of the things in my past and was able to just shed them away. Some ghosts are still there, but most of it I can put behind me.

I’m more aware/careful of what I put into my mouth and hardly overdose on any kind of drug; Tylenol, etc. My time of month has been extremely light to pretty much non-existent.

I’m excited to see where this will take me. I hope it continues to open.

Vintage Writing Poster Design

So I had a poster job to do for Tuesday among all the craziness that happened this weekend. Its for the literary magazine at school called the Manuscript and when I heard Manuscript vintage/romantic writing came to mind and this is my version of it. I tried to have it inspired by a postcard as it is a ‘call’ for submissions kind of poster I thought it was appropriate. Didn’t want it to make it too much like a postcard though, just inspired by it. 
So my college decides to evacuate everyone off the art/music campus because they were worried about cold temperatures and our safety since that building is really dark with the lights off. Was not too pleased. 
I usually went up to the main campus to recharge my comp so I could use it for later when I was back in my room. I was up there today when I realized I had a big conference poster I needed to print out for a client. So I sent my adviser an email asking what I should do, then remembered that she may not have power and decided to call her. Funny that she had just gotten my message when I called her 🙂 but then she tells me, “You have to evacuate from the dorm.” And I’m like what? So I read the campus-wide email and thought, “fuck”. 
I live six hours away from this school so the school gave us some options:
A) Go home
B) Stay with someone on North (main campus)
C) Stay with someone who lives in the area
D) Have office of housing find you a place on north in an unfilled dorm
So since staying with a friend would be more fun, I frantically thought of who lived in the area and then my friend Amy took me in.
So yay, hopefully the power will be back and I will be able to get into my dorm. The whole problem with this though is that they gave us less than 40 minutes to evacuate and that wasn’t fair especially since the bus schedule from the art/music campus to the main campus ran on a half-hour schedule on the weekends. 
They’re intentions were good, but poorly executed. 
Basically we were left to figure it out for ourselves. 

Snow is a life ruiner.

This weekend. OMG
Last night some dumb drunk college students (probably) released the fire extinguishers on three floors and set off the fire alarm. It took about an hour and a half for the situation to resolve. The fire alarm in my dorm is ear piercing loud and I cannot stand loud noises and I usually get into a bad mood whenever there is a fire alarm. I have to muffle my one decent ear as I don’t want to go as deaf in that ear as I am in my left. Not fun at all.
Then I was up until like 4 am because of the fire alarm waking me up and going out in the chilly out side. I slept late today and about 1 pm the power in the dorm went out because it was SNOWING outside. Two days before Halloween it SNOWED. I have never experienced snow this early, in New England the first snow usually happened around Thanksgiving. 
But no power meant no elevator (I live on the fifth floor) and no food service in the hill. So I had to lug my stuff up to the main campus because the student union had food service and power and I need to get work done today. I was definitely not happy waking up today.  BLAH.
Oh and I think my fridge is slowly dying. It froze my water.

Longchamp

Ahh. So this lovely bag arrived at my mail box this week from lovely mother! I have been wanting one of these bags since high school as they appeared to have become a staple for carrying all our textbooks, notebooks, binders and survival kits. Considering I grew up in a wealthy/upper middle class town and the majority of the students could afford to spend around $120 (what it was then) on a bag they’d use every day. Though since my parents didn’t see the purpose of spending money to show that you had it they wouldn’t agree to spend $120 on a bag that appears to be extremely high quality. 
I abuse my bags, as I carry a lot in them. Sometimes even my laptop gets thrown in there when I’m on the run. Otherwise it goes into the computer bag.  
But I found a few chinese sellers on ebay that drew me in because they were selling these at $32! Flat. So I did some research and found out that there was a group of makers in china who made these bags, not Longchamp themselves. They USED to make them, but when they found out that they could make them for cheap in china they did and then jacked the price up to $140. Yeah, not about to spend that much on a bag either. It took a lot of trust because sometimes people sell knock offs… and I didn’t want to get something that looked like the real deal but was actually crap in quality since I was looking for quality and not necessarily aesthestic. 
I also wanted something a bit more sturdy and professional looking for my future job and/or internship. 
So I hope that this bag will not let me down. I’ve gone through so many bags and the one that has lasted the longest for me was a flowery canvas bag from kohls but the handle was so short I’ve resorted to using weekend bag now. 
So a legit Longchamp Les Pliages for $32. Not too shabby. 

The Concept of Images

So I shouldn’t be writing because I have a mild form of tendonitis in my left wrist. The pain isn’t excruciating it is more of a painful throb. It even made me feel a bit nauseous at one point (weird I know). I currently have it wrapped up in ice.

I haven’t even been doing a lot of wrist work… but I use my wrists a lot in my every day and weekly activities… piano, harp, laptop… plus my joints/wrists are weak in general.

Anyway, I was contemplating about Images and their purpose in our society, through the views of a mystic I find them to be extremely fascinating.

The entrapment of the Rubidium 85 atom is the result of a three-year research project funded by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, and has already prompted world-wide interest in the new science which will flow from the breakthrough. The researchers then proved they could reliably and consistently produce individual trapped atoms – a major step towards using the atoms to build next-generation, ultra-fast quantum-logic computers, which harness the potency of atoms to perform complex information-processing tasks. Source: http://www.physorg.com/news205161948.html

In mysticism, the concept of an image is used to described our physical world. The scientists’ 21st model of the Universe is a holographic universe. This just means our physical reality is essentially a grainy picture.  Above this paragraph is a photograph of a rubidium 85 atom trapped. This is the first time anyone has seen any kind of atom. If you look at the picture, it just contains particles of light.  According to scientists we are made up of a bunch of atoms similar to this.

I began thinking about the parallels in science and spirituality, and the concept of images really brings that link closer. ‎I was reading a Practical Kabbalistic guide this weekend and ran across this:

The Analogous Identity of the Divine Plane and the Material Universe, the second being created “in the image” of the first and remaining its reflection, inferior and imperfect; And enduring rapport between the two, a rapport flowing from the analogous identity, being able to be expressed at the same time as it is established, by a secondary science, called Symbolism. – Practical Kabbalah – R. Ambelain (19XX). trans. Piers A. Vaughan.

When I am meditating on the ‘As above and so below’ I am always reminded of this passage in the Book of Genesis from the Bible:

Genesis 126 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,a]”>[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

I am also reminded that many things can be reversed, that’s just how things are in this world. You can neither be on the ‘black’ side of the spectrum or the ‘white’ side of the spectrum.
Putting the “reverse” concept into practice I like taking this passage from the Book of Genesis :

Genesis 13 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

And rewrite it as, “And Light said, “Let there be God,” and there was God.

The above rewritten statement is very kabbalistic and is essentially how this world was formed. The atoms are living entities, who think. According to Byran Kamilla of the It’s All In Our Mind – The LIGHT BRINGERS – Eliminating The Illuminators

The screen in front of you is empty … 

Now imagine the empty screen is the totality of everything that is … even though there’s no shape … no colour … and no sound. 

As you look at the screen in front of you … what do you see? You see nothing. As you look at the screen in front of you … what do you know? 

You know a lot. Even though you don’t see anything on the screen, you still know … and have locked up inside you, a vast storehouse of knowing. 

At this point in time, and in this scenario we’re contemplating, what you know may be correct, or it may be incorrect. It makes no difference. 

You still have an incredible amount of information recorded somewhere within you, even though you can’t see anything. Imagine again, that all that knowing you possess, has within it, the power and strength to exist forever. 

There’s no beginning and no end. You have the power and wisdom to be eternal. Imagine that you’re filled with this knowing and completely possessed with this eternal power and strength. This is about as powerful as anyone could hope to be. 

Let’s imagine that this knowing not only exists in you, but it exists in every person on the planet. It’s not something you have to go out and find, it’s just there, in you and in everyone that ever walked on the face of the earth. 

Now imagine that someone, or a group of individuals, with that same eternal power, also wanted to have your power, and my power. Imagine that this group wanted to take possession of all that is ours. 

However, they can’t take it from us by force, because it’s locked inside us, and it is who we are. Still, they desire to at least control it. 

This group wished for our power to work in unison with their power, and the enormity of that combined strength of power and knowing would make them greater than the greatest … the most massive force in existence… they would appear to be GOD…

Diffraction pattern of an icosahedral quasicrystal

Inspired by the growing numbers and varieties of quasiperiodic crystals, the International Union of Crystallography has redefined the term crystal to mean “any solid having an essentially discrete diffraction diagram”, thereby shifting the essential attribute of crystallinity from position space to Fourier space. Within the family of crystals one distinguishes between periodic crystals, which are periodic on the atomic scale, and aperiodic crystals which are not. This broader definition reflects our current understanding that microscopic periodicity is a sufficient but not a necessary condition for crystallinity. In our research we deal with questions concerning the symmetry of crystals. We classify crystals according to their symmetry using an approach in Fourier space which treats periodic and quasiperiodic crystals on an equal footing. Source: http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/lifshitz/quasicrystals.html

The above photo is a diffraction pattern of a quasicrystal.

When writing this post, I remembered how the first image that was ever created was using the ‘as above and so below’ concept. This discovery was originally made by Aristotle:

Here is the kabbalistic image of the concept of “as above and so below”:

And the battle continues…

This has been a pretty shitty week.
Monday I got slammed twice from the academic committee about getting my grade from my summer french class appealed and seeing if I can get my on campus job (studiosouth) be an internship to get credit. Nothing was accepted. The internship was mostly a GPA problem. But the GPA problem is rooted in my language disability.

No one has told me to go study for a test in the way that is most appropriate for me.
They all tell me to study for a test as if I don’t have a disability and just give me extra time.
But how am I supposed to use this extra time to my advantage with what I have?

Its fucking ridiculous that I have to take language classes when I have a documented language disability. But apparently my high school and college both see it as not serious enough to accept it as a legitimate disability and so I have to take the language classes, which are hell for me.

So now I have to plan my life next semester based on two scenarios.
One, if I get my disney world internship.
And two, if all else fails.

I absolutely freaking hate talking about future plans, or what I’m planning to do. Its my life, I’d like to keep it to my self! Also being a mystic, I’ve had experiences in the past where I talk about something that’s going to happen so much that it ends up not happening even if it had a lot of potential of happening.

I’m just so fed up with trying to make this work its driving me crazy.

So this is the scenario if all else fails and I have to come back next semester:

What I would be taking:
Silkscreen Printing TR 9:00 AM-11:30 AM;
Interactive Design II MW MW 6:30 PM-9:00 PM;
Photography I TR 6:30 PM-9:00 PM
 and my french class online.

If I DO get my internship this is what would happen:

I would take the “Internship class” to get credit for the internship which will fulfill the lame .25 units I’m short.
And I would take the french class online to meet the french requirement (1 units).

Next step would be to meet with the Foreign Language department chair to see if the french class I have found online would be acceptable and as well as meeting with the deans for possible scenarios and get some questions answered.

Facebook Redesign

I haven’t been doing any design to just to do it for fun. So I took a couple of hours off last week one day and did a basic redesign of facebook. Redesigning websites like facebook are great projects because the site focuses on user interfacing more often than not. This was just for fun.

 

 

Alternative Energy Concept Car

So last night when I was supposed to be doing an assignment for my sociology class I got hit with some inspiration and an idea/concept for alternative energy car.

I like to think about things like this, and while I don’t have the engineering background, I definitely have the design background as well as the ideas…

SO like most people this past week, I saw this video

and it got me thinking.

First question that came to my mind… how can we take this idea and use the technique to create a piece of practical technology from it?

Second question that came to my mind… how can we easily obtain liquid nitrogen?

While LN may be cheap, its not that easily obtainable and you have to be certified to handle it.
So I go on google and search for a ‘kitchen’ or ‘hobby’ science substitute. I find this substitute:

Its’ not liquid nitrogen. But you can make a cryo-fluid having -110F temperature. (Liquid nitrogen is more like -320F.) A -110F liquid can perform most of the Liquid Nitrogen demonstrations.

Poor man’s “Liquid Nitrogen” is made out of dry ice and 99% rubbing alchohol.

Do you know what dry ice is made out of? It’s a condensed solid form of CO2. That’s right, the gas that’s in our air and what is said to cause global warming and pollution. And from my research as it melts it turns into gas again, but its not the same kind of CO2 that is from the air, its as delicate as what is used to make carbonated drinks.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

Levitation created by LN which can be substituted with a cryo-fluid having -110F temperature which is said to reproduce the same kind of LN demonstrations. But the question then is, can it reproduce the same kind of superconductor effects?

Since we’re using dry ice, as product of a green-house gas, we’re taking our problem and turning it into a solution.

Completed Wayfinding

 

My wayfinding project is almost done. God, was that a lot of work. I just have to do the outside entrance sign and parking garage signage and I’ll be done.
It’s due tomorrow so I have tonight to work on them. This was definitely a project I struggled with only because it was completely out of my element (print/infographics) but at the same time it was in my element. It also dealt with typography which I’m not necessarily a fan of. I also applied the signs to different views from a 3d model of a building I sketched in Google Sketchup. Which I’ll post later.
I just am really pleased with the overall feeling of this. I took the layout of the information on an element from the periodic table and used the idea of grouping text like that. Taking the element abbreviation as an icon and kind of went from there.