working on: Similarly Different

In an effort to completely overwhelm myself with work this term, I've been trying to take as many of the opportunities that come my way as possible. Last week one such opportunity showed up in my inbox in the form of a collaborative project between PSU graphic design students and graphic design students from University of the Creative Arts, Farnham in the UK. Headed up in part by PSUGD's own Briar Levit, each of us here in Portland is paired up with a student from UCA and given a fortnightly prompt. We 'research' our prompt (ephemera, sketches, thoughts, visuals) and email it to our partner, who takes the 'research' and creates a visual piece of art based on it. All final art will be posted to the Similarly Different blog, and each school will host a culminating gallery show.

The project is unlike anything I've ever worked on before, and I'm really excited and interested to see what kind of work it produces, particularly because we're working with total strangers! Sometimes I feel like being a designer in Portland is like designing in a vacuum, so I'm curious to see what this geographical collaboration will turn out. Feel free to follow along with the blog, and I'll try to post things here as they are created as well.