obama <3s graphic design and vice versa

Obama's team unvieled two new logos this week:

I read about them in a post by Steven Heller, a well known graphic designer (and professor at SVA) here at the New York Times Moment Blog, which has different writers each week- a few weeks ago the same blog featured Sagmeister, a real great designer as well. Nothing much to say about this, but I wanted to post them up. Hopefully I'll type up a few recent design-related writings that I did for class, they are handwritten right now (I know, how 90s of me).

papermaking project ideas

I need to work out some ideas for a papermaking project, involving watermarking and silkscreening. The image needs to be multilayered- with each layer interacting in an appropriate or ironic way. I.e. a picture of george bush making a speach- when held to the light, reveals a speach bubble with the word 'LIES' in it. This is a little more direct and in-your-face then I want to be but illustrates the possibilities. Another layer may be something which I have not tried yet- but there is an ink which mixes with other colors to make them glossy and Kevin, my instructor, says that you can silkscreen straight gloss and put an image that is only visible in a certain light- just like the watermark. This glossy image can be the same as the watermark, which would emphasize the image, or it can be yet another layer in the project.
Content ideas:
-the silkscreen image is a body or a face, with a watermarked image of a skeleton or skull. I would have the become much better at making watermarks and play around with the pulp to make a perfect porportion for watermarked paper. A skeleton may be too detailed, but a skull or a part of a skeleton may be doable.

-an image of self-immolation, a monk setting himself on fire, and a watermark image of his soul rising or some other way to emphasize what it means to give your life.
-this much black might make the watermark hard to see, which can corrected in a few ways: use a semi-transparent black or another color completely. or 'back up' the watermarked image with a glossy image on top



>another problem: how to cut down the watermarked paper so it is perfectly aligned, which will matter when I try to silkscreen on top of it.
-idea: make a key with the monk image and the outer lines of the page marked off. On a lightboard, place this image on top of a sheet- lining up where the watermark should be seen. Trace the watermark onto the page in pencil, then put the page underneath the handmade paper and align- then trace the paper edges onto the handmade paper and cut it down. Continue by placing each handmade sheet on top of the monk image, align, trace paper edges, and cut down. Is there an easier way?

more on this later