Journal 1

"In sum, building confidence in writing is an ongoing process. It takes dedication,

practice, and patience, and the more you write, the more confident you will become

at expressing yourself in words."

For me, this quote from the Visual Writing reading summed up what I mostly took from the text. It went into great detail about each of the steps that a writer should take to make their work more successful. Most of the topics covered in the first half we have practiced in class. Like we talked about, it is good to know that our process is used elsewhere and not "just in Kansas."

After this reading, I was reminded that I need to start sketching more. I think I have the mindset that I am not a great drawer so it wouldn't be that beneficial to me, but now after reviewing chapter 2 in this reading I know it would be beneficial for me in the long run.

"One of the ways to grow and evolve as an artist and designer is by being aware of

how you learn, think, communicate, and work."

I think this quote is going to be important to keep in mind not only for this project, but for each challenge we come across. Even though the process may seem long without a clear end in sight, its important to know that it will all come together if you use the right steps to get there.

"Keep your process organized—there will most likely

be many pieces to the grant application including the

proposal narrative, work samples, budget, résumé,

and letters of reference. Proofread carefully. The review committee could

interpret one or two misspelled words as lack of

attention to detail. "

The information of writing artist statements and resumes will be a good resource to look back to once we start putting these things together for portfolios and interviews.

"But writing is more than a burden—it is a critical component of your work. Embrace it."

Word List:

hurt fear pride loath angst nightmare trepidation bravery courage disgust
despise revolt defy ridicule resist withstand survive endure exist persevere
persist suffer sustain revive remain prevail torture affliction agony excruciation persecution torment oppress genocide massacre devastation annihilation extinction concentration camp hell incarcerated antisemitism
catastrophe extermination murder emotion discrimination racism extermination dignity honor self respect modest sad uncertainty

Courage: the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery

Persecution: a program or campaign to exterminate, drive away, or subjugate a people because of their religion, race, or beliefs:

Torment: a state of great bodily or mental suffering; agony; misery

Catastrophe: a sudden and widespread disaster, a final event or conclusion, usually an unfortunate one; a disastrous end

Defy: to challenge the power of; resist boldly or openly, to challenge (a person) to do something deemed impossible

Dignity: bearing, conduct, or speech indicative of self-respect or appreciation of the formality or gravity of an occasion or situation

Bravery: a quality of spirit that enables you to face danger or pain without showing fear

Revolt: to break away from or rise against constituted authority, as by open rebellion; cast off allegiance or subjection to those in authority

Suffer: to undergo or feel pain or distress, to sustain injury, disadvantage, or loss

Resist: to make a stand or make efforts in opposition; act in opposition; offer resistance

Revised Concept

Concept Statement:

"I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. And anyone who does not remember betrays them again."

Tone:

Reflective, remembering, enduring, writing

I do not want the tone to be overwhelmingly sad or depressing, but instead optimistic for the future and overcoming obstacles

Audience Persona:

Brett is a 26 year old male who just recently moved to Los Angeles California. He grew up in Madison, Wisconsin and from a young age has had a passion for studying history. He is a sponge and remembers any historical fact thrown his way. The history channel has always been a favorite for him and he would chose a documentary about Vietnam over a football game any day. In particular he was always had a strong passion for studying World War II. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in Psychology and History. Brett chose to move to LA to earn a masters degree in History and he hopes to someday become a History Professor. Recently, he was a rekindled desire to learn more about the Holocaust. He knows everything about Hitler's plots and strategic War plans but wants to gain more knowledge from a more personal source. He wants to learn more about concentration camps and what they were like to be a part of. Brett thinks that getting a first hand account of a survivors story would help him fill this void in his otherwise extensive knowledge of World History.

To Suggest...

to never forget

to overcoming obstacles

to respect what others have endured

what hate can spark

reflection

passing notes

writing

remembering

Type Studies

Concept Statements and Audience Personas

Concept Statement: "I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death." Even though the Holocaust was a horrific event, its refreshing to know that some people still have this type of belief, and it is what got them through the concentration camps alive.

Concept Statement: Never forget. This is one of the sole reasons that survivors chose to write their stories to tell the world what they endured. It is not to get pity or remorse, but to remind people what a feeling of hate can start and how quickly it can escalate.

Concept Statement: Stories of survival. Death and suffering is associated with the Holocaust, and rightfully so. But this story is about survival and how one person had the determination to survive to ensure that their story was told and that an event like this would never happen again.

Audience Persona 1: Brett is a 26 year old male who just recently moved to Los Angeles California. He grew up in Madison, Wisconsin and from a young age has had a passion for studying history. He is a sponge and remembers any historical fact thrown his way. The history channel has always been a favorite for him and he would chose a documentary about Vietnam over a football game any day. In particular he was always had a strong passion for studying World War II. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in Psychology and History. Brett chose to move to LA to earn a masters degree in History and he hopes to someday become a History Professor. Recently, he was a rekindled desire to learn more about the Holocaust. He knows everything about Hitler's plots and strategic War plans but wants to gain more knowledge from a more personal source. He wants to learn more about concentration camps and what they were like to be a part of. Brett thinks that getting a first hand account of a survivors story would help him fill this void in his otherwise extensive knowledge of World History.

Audience Persona 2: Kate is a 35 year old college graduate who is about to start her first teaching job. She grew up in a large family in a suburb of Kansas City. She had the cookie cutter childhood and was always at the top of her class. One thing that she would have changed about her education is she would have liked to go beyond the facts and try to gain a more personal understanding of events. Kate knows that the facts are important and a good way to learn, but she knows that she would have appreciated learning through other peoples experiences. Now that Kate is going to be a teacher herself, she is going to consider this when she is writing her her curriculum. She is going to have the goal of her students to learn all of the necessary things about the subjects they study, but in addition help them relate on a more personal level of what it would have been like to go through something from the past and know what was going on in the world during that time. Kate wants her students to gain an appreciation for what they have and in addition know what past generations have gone through in order for the world to be how it is today.

Audience Persona 3: Kyle is a junior in high school in Lawrence Kansas. He has a lot of friends, plays 3 sports and makes decent grades. On the weekends he likes to hangout with his friends and play video games. Kyle's favorite subject in school is Math. He is above average in any math class, but as for other classes he is more average. In his history class he was been assigned a new project to research something that has shaped his cultural past. Kyle is Jewish; his family is not very strict in the religion but they still do recognize themselves as part of the Church. Kyle knows about the Holocaust but lacks a lot of knowledge about what his ancestors went through specifically. In order to address this, Kyle has chose to read a Holocaust survivor's memoir for his project and to learn about the history of his ancestors.

series: a set of successive volumes or issues of a periodical published in like form with similarity of subject or purpose

sequence: the following of one thing after another; succession. order or succession

sign: very diverse, can include speech, gestural expressions, marketing, clothes, body language, etc. can mean something other then themselves, located everywhere
"two-sided psychological entity"

body language sign:


index- non-arbitrary relationship between signifier and signified. relationship can be physical or casual. example: a photographer would be the signifier and the signified would be what the picture was meant to represent.

Defined by some sensory feature, A, (directly visible, audible, smellable, etc) that correlates with and thus implies or `points to' B, something of interest to an animal.

This picture alludes to the fact that it had been raining due to the puddles:



symbol: any sign where there is an arbitrary relationship between the signifier and the signified. examples of symbols: dove symbolizes peace, school symbolizes learning, etc.

• easily removable from their context, and
• are closely associated with large sets of other words

This symbol signifies recycling:

What Makes a Good Book Jacket?

-avoid being too literal
"Where a book cover, if it's done right, is going to just suggest a sensibility, it's going to be a lot more coy and a lot more discrete"
-Chip Kidd

Successful book covers should hint at the overall feel or essence about the book without giving too much away but still attracting the readers attention and create a desire for them to want to know what the book is about.









-I think these covers are successful because they seem to say a lot by still leaving a lot up to the imagination about what the books are about. They all use negative space in a way that allows the designs to stick out.


3 Books: Holocaust Memoirs

All But My Life-Gerda Weissman Klein

All But My Life is Gerda Weissmann Klein’s memoir of her experiences during World War II. Klein was born on May 8, 1924, in Bielitz (now Bielsko), Poland. She remembers her childhood as being happy, even idyllic. The Weissmanns were a Jewish family, and their town had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before 1919. Like most of the residents in the area, the Weissmann family was bilingual, speaking both Polish and German, and Klein’s older brother, Arthur, studied English as well. Klein’s father, Julius, was a business executive who had lived in Bielitz for more than twenty years, and Helene, her mother, was born there, as were both Klein and Arthur. The family was horrified when German Nazi forces invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Despite the fact that Britain and the United States declared war on Germany two days later, it took the Nazis only eighteen days to conquer Poland.

Five Chimneys 'A Woman Survivor's True Story of Auschwitz'-Olga Lengyel

Having lost her husband, her parents, and her two young sons to the Nazi exterminators, Olga Lengyel had little to live for during her seven-month internment in Auschwitz. Only Lengyel's work in the prisoners' underground resistance and the need to tell this story kept her fighting for survival. She survived by her wit and incredible strength. Despite her horrifying closeness to the subject, Five Chimneys does not retreat into self-pity or sensationalism. When first published (two years after World War 2 ended), Albert Einstein was so moved by her story that he wrote a personal letter to Lengyel, thanking her for her "very frank, very well written book". Today, with 'ethnic cleansing' in Bosnia, and neo-Nazism on the rise in western Europe, we cannot afford to forget the grisly lessons of the Holocaust. Five Chimneys is a stark reminder that the unspeakable can happen wherever and whenever ethnic hatreds, religious bigotries, and racial discriminations are permitted to exist.

Eyewitness Auschwitz 'Three Years in the Gas Chambers'-Filip Muller

Filip Müller's testimony Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers (1979; in some editions Auschwitz Inferno: The Testimony of a Sonderkommando ) is one of the bleakest and sparest of all Holocaust memoirs. Müller worked in the Sonderkommando, the special units that were most closely involved with the extermination of the victims of the Holocaust. He was one of the few survivors of these units, as they were systematically murdered by the Nazis in an attempt to avoid the secret of the camps getting out.

Unlike many testimonies, this text begins in the camps and ends, literally, at the moment of liberation. On being told that he is free, he struggled from his hiding place, "stretched out on a woodland ground and fell asleep." This concentration on the "three years in the Gas chamber"—we find out little of Müller before or after this period—makes the book all the bleaker and focuses the reader's attention less on Müller and his story and more on the horrors of the camp.

Word List:

hurt fear pride loath angst nightmare trepidation bravery courage disgust
despise revolt defy ridicule resist withstand survive endure exist persevere
persist suffer sustain revive remain prevail torture affliction agony excruciation persecution torment oppress genocide massacre devastation annihilation extinction concentration camp hell incarcerated antisemitism
catastrophe extermination murder emotion discrimination racism extermination dignity honor self respect modest sad uncertainty

Courage: the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery

Persecution: a program or campaign to exterminate, drive away, or subjugate a people because of their religion, race, or beliefs:

Torment: a state of great bodily or mental suffering; agony; misery

Catastrophe: a sudden and widespread disaster, a final event or conclusion, usually an unfortunate one; a disastrous end

Defy: to challenge the power of; resist boldly or openly, to challenge (a person) to do something deemed impossible

Dignity: bearing, conduct, or speech indicative of self-respect or appreciation of the formality or gravity of an occasion or situation

Bravery: a quality of spirit that enables you to face danger or pain without showing fear

Revolt: to break away from or rise against constituted authority, as by open rebellion; cast off allegiance or subjection to those in authority

Suffer: to undergo or feel pain or distress, to sustain injury, disadvantage, or loss

Resist: to make a stand or make efforts in opposition; act in opposition; offer resistance

Tone:
-memoir, fiction, personal, informative, heart wrenching


To suggest...

a sense of pride
a sense telling a story
a feeling of suffering
a sense of fear
a sense of risk
a sense of going against the odds
a sense of bravery

"As freedom-loving people across the globe hope for an end to tyranny, we will never forget the enormous suffering of the Holocaust."

Some one mentioned the 'Holocaust' the old Jewish man said 'no'
Such word i do not wish to hear that happened years ago
Then he slowly folded up his sleeve and numbers etched in blue
Told of the sufferings he'd known and all he had been through.

We played, we laughed
we were loved.
We were ripped from the arms of our
parents and thrown into the fire.
We were nothing more than children.

Welcome nights of broken sleep,
And days of carnage cold,
Could I deem that thou wouldst weep
To hear my perils told.


In curtained shadows
whispered words
over sirens and train whistles
linger near yesterday's horror.
Lives torn, ripped apart in hate,
Waiting
Wondering
Will the tears ever dry?

"We are all different; because of that, each of us has something different and special to offer and each and every one of us can make a difference by not being indifferent."

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances - to choose one's own way.

There is a watch lying on the green carpet of the living room of my childhood. The hands seem to stand motionless at 9:10, freezing time when it happened.

“Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams.”


"... in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquillity will return again."