Explorations

The exploration project in Design is an exciting and creative assignment where each student was encouraged to delve into a new form of art or craft that they had never tried before. The purpose of this project is to push students out of their comfort zones, allowing them to experiment with different mediums and techniques.

For my exploration project, I decided to venture into jewelry making. This choice was inspired by videos and photos I saw online as well as what I saw a few of my friend’s phone straps. Jewelry making was completely new to me, offering a perfect opportunity to learn a fresh skill and explore a different aspect of design. Throughout this project, I engaged in various stages of jewelry creation, from designing pieces and selecting materials to mastering techniques such as beading, wire wrapping, and using tools like pliers and clasps.

Overall, this process was very therapeutic, as I was doing the same repetitive process to all the beads. My fingers were sore and smelled like metal after, but I am so happy with how this turned out. It was exactly what I was hoping for, and I’m so glad I decided to choose this as my explorations project as I want to continue doing this in the future.

Multi-Layered Wood Art

The multilayer art project focused on transforming a 2D object into something that appears 3D. I collaborated with my friend Ynez—she handled the sketches while I worked on the Illustrator files, as those were our respective strengths. Our artwork was inspired by our Angel Hunting story, featuring a table set with a plate for each of our characters and a pair of chopped-off angel wings at the center, creating a striking and eerie visual.

We connected our wood art to our world-building by depicting the angel hunters gathered at a table, eating angel meat. We designed a bird’s eye view of the table, showcasing five plates, one for each hunter. Transforming our 2D art into 3D was both time consuming and confusing, especially since the layers in Illustrator became complex. We ran into issues with duplicate lines, which I had to manually delete one by one, taking up a good amount of time. Overall, I’m incredibly happy with how this project turned out! My teammate and I worked really well together, and we were able to create something fantastic.

Mandala

In Digital Media we created a mandala in Adobe Illustrator that represented who we were as a person. I advanced my knowledge of Illustrator by learning how to use clipping masks and repeating lines.

My main inspiration for this project was Miffy. Miffy is one of my favorite characters since I remember watching it when I was younger. For this project, our mandala had to reflect who we were and I’ve been told that whenever they see Miffy, they think of me because of my love for the character. Thanks to many comments like that I decided that I wanted to base my mandala around the cute bunny character. I had a great time making this project because I was allowed to make anything I wanted. Using the brush tool for the first time was very exciting as last year in Design we used Illustrator but didn’t touch the brush. This definitely won’t be the last time I use Illustrator, but it will be a while till I do since I am no longer in Design, so I know I will miss it. 

Overall, I enjoyed this project because I was allowed to draw Miffy. If you couldn’t already tell, Miffy is one of my favorite characters so being able to create my own Miffy designs was very exciting. This was very different from our first illustrator project last year, but I enjoyed this one better because the end product is so much more rewarding.

Documentary

For our Junior Documentary Project, our goal was to portray an intriguing person and gather both primary and secondary research sources to develop a distinct perspective on the significance of our subject in the community and world. The research-based paper we created in English serves as a copy of the Imagine article in Design. Overall, this unit focused on narrative-style journalism.

Due to the original Japanese Teacher leaving on maternity leave, I had learned Junko Aoki would act as her replacement at Mountain View High School, and with her vast experience of being a teacher, I thought that she would be an exciting subject. Throughout her life of being a teacher, and mother, as well as moving across the world multiple times, I saw an opportunity to explore new perspectives I would have never thought of before. Despite knowing her since my first day in Japanese School in first grade, I felt like I was able to learn more about her and her background, seeing her not only as an educator but as a role model. Throughout this book, I aspire to capture her vibrant personality and unwavering passion for teaching.

Throughout the creation of this project, I worked through numerous obstacles to reach an outcome I am proud of. Being able to hold this book in my own hands fills me with excitement, knowing the countless hours of hard work that went into its creation. I know that I can look back to this in the future, and not only see how much I’ve improved but to also showcase how special it was to be able to create something like this.  I hope that I can help spread hope and excitement for future students through her story, and to show that even though learning can be a hard challenge, you should never give up, and that there’s always something or someone there for you.