Week 15

Week 15: Apr 22 - 28

• Emailed the printer about prints being wrong, had a phone call to coordinate picking them up on the correct paper

• Went to Kinkos to print a backup and spent $280 on printing 2 copies but one less thing to panic about

• Picked up prints on the correct paper (only have 1 copy on the right paper though)

• Ikea run to get inspired/buy some cute table decor

• Consulted with expert, Cole, on which local plants are used symbolically for grief that I can use to decorate my table and would reflect my research

  • Rosemary and ivy would be best for leaving in a windowless space like the studio my stuff will be in

• Spent most of the week binding my books!

  • Made ~5 books

  • Realized that I can make a hardcover layflat book by not attaching the spine to the binding or cover and basically making the cover fold around the book

  • Final book has a super soft linen bound cover with an acetate dust jacket

  • I listened to 29.5 hours of audiobooks while doing this (not counting podcasts and tv shows I listened to)

• Moved tables on friday to prep for the show

• Business cards came!

• Set up on Sunday and got all of my stuff in!

• This week was nuts but now I’m finished!!

Week 14

Week 14: Apr 15 - 21

• Reviewed edits and read through my draft one last time!

  • Doing pretty good! No major changes, just rewording!

• Got my test prints back from the poster printer! Color matched swatches from the printer to my screen colors to get the best match with the rest of my printed materials

• Hung out with my pal, Munazza and reviewed some parts that I still felt really iffy about

• Sent my final poster to print, wrapped up some changes to my book, and also sent my book to the printer!!!!!!

  • I feel a little anxious about little changes that I know I have, but it’s done and I’m letting go!!

• Went to my original expert in the field, Cole’s, fellowship lecture at the Lloyd Library!

  • I wish I knew about this amazing resource earlier!

  • She presented research on how diverse cultures use plants symbolically and medicinally when dealing with death and grief

• Picked up prints on Friday and realized that they were all printed on the wrong paper, so I guess I get to deal with that on Monday when the printer opens again!

Week 13

Week 13: Apr 8 - 14

• User tested my whole book! Twice! It sucked, but it works!

• Met with Sean, feeling ok!

  • Very overwhelmed, but it’s all gonna be fine!

• Made a big ole checklist of big things to do and little things to do (like illustrations!)

• Picked up all of my test prints

  • Pages printed out of order so worried I accidentally deleted a page that messed it all up

  • Colors look great though! Very excited!

  • Poster colors look off so gotta noodle out how to match them to everything else

• Test bound up my test print of the book!

  • A fun craft! Good time had by all!

  • I think I’m gonna bind my own stuff again to save some money and then I have more control over how that looks

  • Considering getting another test print done so I can try a different binding method though

• Taking some time to revise my draft now that I have the physical copy

  • It feels so dang good to hold the actual thing, it makes me feel so much closer to being done!

• I’ve been sharing stickers with some friends and they’re so excited about them! Maybe make more?

• Seriously considering applying for a grant or trying to get a literary agent for this bad boy? I’m fine with where this is for my capstone, but I really do want to get this out into the world.

• Also took time out this week to let myself not be as overwhelmed by everything and to help crit some juniors and it was really nice to get out of my head for a little bit.

  • I also did some quick freelance work this week for a friend’s grant project that opens on Friday and I’m very excited to see it come together!

• Gotta order business cards this week before I forget!

• Sent in another poster test print of swatches to compare with me book and make sure that they’re somewhat closer to the intended colors

• Did a lot more design work on the layout

• Met up with my friend, Emily, again to edit my copy! She’s marking up my current draft and then I’ll fix it up as soon as she finishes.

Week 12

Week 12: Apr 1 - 7

• Went to Otto Printing in Newport and set up my test print!

  • Getting one test print of a draft of my book done and then three copies of my final book!

  • Decided to print on a warmer off-white paper and cotton cover so that the book has a really nice warm color and texture to it.

• Officially finished writing! I’m gonna go back and do some revisions once I have a hard copy in my hands, but I’m stopping writing now!

• Finished a rough draft of the design and sent to the printer for a test print!

• Sent in a test print section of my poster, so I can double check colors!

• Stickers came! They look so cute!

• Also applied for some jobs I’m really excited about! And documented my capstone on my website so employers can see it!

• So much done this week, I’m feeling so much better about where I am with my project!

• Met up with a friend I met at my cremation class, Emily (different Emily than the one who is editing my copy), and we talked about how design can revolutionize end of life care! It was super interesting to hear a different perspective on what I’m working on and how it and other design interventions can be useful in the funeral industry. She’s also super interested in education and museum design, so it was super fun to talk to her about it!

• Submitted all of my honors projects this week too! Officially finished with a TON of work that ties really closely to my work on my capstone!

• Good ass week!

• Here’s what I sent to the printer!!

Week 11

Week 11: Mar 25 - 31

• Met up with my friend, Emily! She helped me to talk through what my goals for the project were and read over my writing.

  • She’s super detail oriented, so she was able to tell me what did and didn’t make sense based on what I told her my goals were.

  • She really helped me to step back and realize that I’m further along than I thought I was.

  • Emily helped me to better divide and organize my book into sections that are more searchable.

  • She also let me know which parts I should expand on or cut back on. She helped a lot with making the advice more actionable.

• Had our first poster critique! I was super unsure of my initial design, but got a lot of good feedback about the summary of my project and the look of my poster in general.

• Ordered stickers and buttons!

Week 10

Week 10: Mar 18 - 24

• Worked on copy more!

• Visited several local bookstores and did a quick assessment of where my project would fit within the store

  • I think the self-help section is probably the prime spot for it because it’s usually located near the psychology section where books on grief are

  • Could also fit in the psychology or sociology sections because these are where the books about the emotions of grief and cultural understandings about death are located.

  • I think the way that I’m designing the book really speaks to which of the genres I would put it in because the overlap really does encompass all of these areas. Most of the self-help style books are really a mix of genres but the design and language of them are geared to a younger audience and make them more interactive than other books

• This was spring break, so I didn’t do a ton of work tbh

Week 09

Week 09: Mar 11 - 17

• Revising copy more, trying to get all of my copy finished by this Friday

  • It’s extremely helpful to me to color code my copy

  • Light gray is to review and build on my original draft

  • Red is revised but come back to it because I’m not sure

  • Dark gray is I feel good about where I am with that part

  • Doing a lot of moving light gray around within dark gray sections, revising the whole paragraph, and changing the color

• Hopefully I’ll finish my content this week so I can send it to my friends who have agreed to edit it for me.

• Talked to my friend Emily again about editing, we’re gonna get coffee and she’s gonna help me make this all legible next week!

Week 08

Week 08: Mar 4 - 10

• Worked with Katy at Coffee Emporium again bc Monday

  • Reworked 3 pages of copy

  • Using framework of presentation to work on tone and how I’m organizing my copy

• Met with Sean

  • Just start designing and use current copy as placeholder

  • Use copy and structure from presentation to structure book

  • Use icon system and aesthetics of presentation to move forward

  • To talk about outreach, is it a tiny infographic on my poster on how i want my info to spread? Or is it a business card that says that i do class/group presentations and discussions?

• Revised copy more

• Kicked myself for not using PubMed for research until today

  • It’s so helpful? I hate myself for forgetting about actual good academic resources

• Started reading From Here to Eternity about funeral and grief rituals again because I want a greater variety of rituals to make a point that you can do whatever you want to feel better about shit

  • Also it’s a very good book and i read it before i started really researching this and wanted to take some notes

  • Boy howdy didn’t realized how biased it is against typical funerals though, especially after talking to a lot of people that are involved in the traditional funeral industry

  • Like actually putting in misinformation about cremation even though she is an experienced crematory operator like girl i took the same training as you and this is wrong

  • Finished on Sunday, was kind of helpful and good to read when I was taking a little time off from working while on my frat retreat

  • Inspirational in the way that it was fairly approachable and a friendly read and admitted that wasn’t an end all be all guide and there’s plenty more resources out there so it made me feel better about the range of content that I have

  • Got a good 5+ pages of relevant notes/facts that I should make sure I mention as important leading into different sections because it validates them in a way I wasn’t doing before

Week 07

Week 07: Feb 25 - Mar 3

• Worked at Coffee Emporium aka the best work zone again

• Reviewed with Sean

• I went really hard making a presentation for the teens and it really helped me to cut down my kind of intense copy and figure out how to structure each bit

  • Also really helped me to start to flesh out the brand aside from colors and fonts bc i could use icons and imagery

• Taught a Death and Christian Hope class at Ursuline on Wednesday!

  • Made a 51 slide summary of my research presentation

  • Recorded the audio so i could listen back and hear how i explained things

  • Presentation had gifs and i guess i’m old bc none of the teens got my jokes??

  • Answered a bunch of questions about college/life/graphic design

  • The teens are nasty and wanted the deets on how cremation works

  • Also two of my high school teachers told me that i was doing God’s work with my research so like ayyy

  • Brought up questions of what are good examples of media that show good grief support? And do we get good impressions of how to help people when we do watch things where people/pets die? What makes content on grief not so great?

• I already have the majority of my honors project finished!

  • Still need to study for the cremation licensing test and take it

  • Do more outreach

  • Write reflection

• Meeting with Puhalla on what my deliverables should be?

  • The book

  • Poster

  • Should i be showing/creating materials for the outreach that I’ve been doing?

    • A large amount of the time that I’m spending on my honors project is doing outreach and public education on my project and it’s a major element so how should i make it play into it?

    • Does it make it as worksheets, journal prompts, do and don’t zines, presentations, social media posts, sympathy cards??

    • Takeaway cards with nice messages like “I’m thinking of you” and “your emotions are valid” and reminders to spread

  • Just put everything i have into a doc and just start designing

• Midterm review on Friday!

  • Reviewed by Maureen and Heekyoung

  • Feedback:

    • Add in personal stories or testimonies about what helped from people who have experienced loss

    • How is it categorized or structured?

    • Think about how to plan long term and having info on where to find additional support

    • Make sure it’s approachable

    • Doing good!

    • Greek funeral traditions?

Week 06

Week 06: Feb 18 - 24

• Started reading Grief and the Healing Arts because I forgot I had it and need to return it to CCMS this week

• Started a new draft of my content: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tMn4rGbckqDIVJqcc7UXh-X90t7O8xn8jGxOGcW_2p8/edit?usp=sharing

• Help i’m stuck

  • re-listed out feedback from last week and categorized into positives/additional things, negatives/removes, and guiding questions

  • Sticky noted sections of the book so i can rearrange and make a table of contents

• Met with sean

  • Don’t rewrite shit! Just reorganize!

• Went to Ursuline and met with my former Death and Christian Hope teacher, Mrs. Turner!

  • Sitting in on a class next wednesday!

  • Talked about how the class has changed since I took it

• Cremation license class!

  • Met a bunch of cool people!

  • Lots of notes and learning!

  • 8 hours in a lecture, neat.

  • Got in touch with some people i met there to talk to them more about my capstone!

• Started working on a presentation to give to the teens

  • Chatted with my friend Katy on what the Cliffs Notes version of my research is

  • Organized how i should structure all of my copy

• Worked on defining an icons series for my project and how i can use it to illustrate stuff

Week 05

Week 05: Feb 11 - 17

• Met with my amazing honors advisor, Bria, to chat about my capstone and what I can keep researching to make it an honors experience

  • Need to meet a 70 hour working time frame, but engaging with people and telling them about my capstone counts!

• Gotta revise my honors grant application to be more research-focussed and less DAAP-focussed

• Registered to get my cremation certification at Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science (goodbye $400, hello coolest license I will ever hold)

• Emailed my high school teacher who taught “Death and Christian Hope” to see if I could present to her class

• Revised honors experience application

• Did test print of book to see size - probably should be bigger

• Resubmitted honors proposal

• Reprinted test print at a slightly bigger size - feels better!

• Tried sewing binding booklets

  • Works at a small size, might be good if i want to bind my own stuff

• Had a super helpful in-class review

  • Going to need to do a major rewrite

  • Aesthetics look good but need to work more on layouts

• Honors proposal approved!

• Having a follow up call with my high school teacher about teaching a class next week

• Found out my friend Cole is teaching a thanatology certification course this spring online, so thinking about applying

Week 04

Week 04: Feb 4 - 11

• Submitted honors proposal

• Did some more writing

• Tested color palettes

• Researched layouts and font combos

• Chose fonts!

  • Headers: Study Semibold

  • Body copy: Univers 45 Light

• Set up honors meeting to revise proposal on Friday, meeting on Monday

• Messed around with using halftone images and textures in Vectoraster

• Researched getting cremation license (this is adjacent learning, I promise)

• Did some hand lettering exploration

• Messed around with layouts

Unfortunately, I found out on Friday that the proposal I submitted earlier this week requires some edits, so I scheduled a meeting with my honors advisor on Monday morning to review and discuss some options. I might have to add an additional research element to my project, so hopefully that won’t add a ton of extra stress on my process.

I’m hoping to finish my full first draft of copy this week and do some scale test prints once I’m back around a printer. I’m also really considering binding my own final booklet to make it a lot cheaper, but that’s kind of tbd until I decide on final book dimensions.

Week 03

Week 03: Jan 27 - Feb 3

Did some work at Coffee Emporium with my pal, Katy. We talked through our ideas and did some analog work before doing more digital work.

• More writing (the bitch hit 10 pages of ~content~ on Monday!)

• Did some page layout sketches

• Finished Honors proposal

• Received Woolly Press riso quote (over budget)

  • 50 -  3 color, fully assembled books on stock 11x17: $676.00 + shipping

  • 100 -  3 color, fully assembled books on stock 11x17: $762.00 + shipping

  • 50 -  4 color, fully assembled books on stock 11x17: $986.00 + shipping

  • 100 -  4 color, fully assembled books on stock 11x17: $1,077.00 + shipping

• Compiled updated bibliography

• Started reading On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross (sorry Sean I’m doing more research)

• Shared some research about being supportive on Instagram and talked with a bunch of people about it

  • One of the people I talked to is an abortion doula and is going to share some tips with other doulas about how to support women emotionally better

  • Also talked to several people about how their therapists have given them similar advice to help with their anxiety

Week 02

Week 02: Jan 20 - 26

Researched riso printing process

Researched vendors for final booklet

Wrote Honors proposal to make capstone an honors experience

Began editing outline into content

Made this doc

Requested print quote from Woolly Press

• Tentative send to print date: april 14

Week 01

Week 01: Jan 14 - 19

This week I confirmed my tentative schedule that I set for myself last semester. I spent some time revising and finalizing my outline for my content that I started over co-op. Then I reached out to a friend for editing help who because she mainly edits copy for ads for my target age range.

I started researching printing styles for my final design. I looked into riso, silkscreen, and laser printing options and whether or not I wanted to bind my own booklets or have them bound for me.

On Thursday I presented my end of semester summary deck from the summer semester to my studio.