Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Uwkm-APEtU&feature=sub

Starring: PJ
Co-starring: MD, YY
Director: PJ
Producer: PJ
Camera People: YY, MD

As most of you probably know, Pompei was buried by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in around 79 CE. The city has now been excavated, with amazingly well-preserved mosaics and artwork. Walking through Pompei was haunting, and especially chilling was seeing the preserved bodies. Bodies are positioned lying down, clutching to one another, and twisted and writhing in pain. These people never stood a chance.

But! On the flip side, Pompeians must have enjoyed life! They loved sex, and anything of the fallic nature. Instead of your standard deer’s head mounted above your mantle, you have you standard set of oversized testicles. Same difference, right? The above photo is only one small example among thousands of relics.

Needless to say, I got used to seeing racks full of dick postcards really quick.

Basically, Iowa State University “sponsors” a South Field Trip and a North Field Trip through Italy/Europe. This past weekend, all graphic and interior design students took a trip to Naples, Sorrento, and Pompei as part of our South Field Trip. A couple things to note:

1. Naples: not only nasty, but dangerous. Two groups of students witnessed muggings or attempted muggings. Another female student, while sitting down, was interrupted by a young boy who performed aggressive pelvic thrusts into her head. Luckily, I was not around for any of this — having limited my Naples explorations to the train station, one museum, and the pizzeria across the street.

2. The Lemon Tree Restaurant: OOOOMMMMMYYYGAWWWWD SOOOO DELICIOUS. Iowa State design students take over this little jem every year during the Sorrento visit. All of us sit down together and enjoy a full course meal, with lemon featured in every dish. The food is divine, the waiters are hilarious, the chefs in the kitchen are cute…eighteen euros well spent. I can’t even put into words…just thinking about it is making my drool. I wish I took pictures of my food!

3. Claustrophobia: nice to meet you! PJ, MD and I spent our Sorrento days in a hostel called Village Camping Campogaio. In other words, we stayed in a matchbox standing on brick supports. The shower was too small for any of us to want to deal with. Fortunately, we all sweat roses…right?

4. Cliff diving: FAIL. A group of us took a day trip to the island of Capri, where there were rumors of beautiful landscapes and “safe” cliff diving. We found the beautiful landscapes without much difficulty, but the area with we wanted to visit happened to be closed off to all boats due to inconvenient water levels. So…no cliff diving. Instead, we took a chair lift to look around the island. Also fun, but not the same.

One big, semi-blurry family:

We head up north in a few weeks…

I realize that while I’ve talked a whole lot about horribly long hours spent in studio, I haven’t actually shown what our studio looks like. Therefore, I’ve provided some photos for your fulfillment:

hallway right as you enter the studio

1 of 2 graphic design studios

this is where i sweat, bleed, and cry

Pretty? Yes. But don’t let it fool you.

This past weekend, basically all of ISU in Rome took a 3-hour bus ride to Assisi: a small town in Italy situated in the mountains. In order to get to it, we actually got off the bus and onto escalators, which simple-machined us to our destination. Assisi is where we took the above photo. After a half hour attempt, PJ, MD and I had managed to attract several small crowds of about 5 or 6 people. Assisi is cute, quaint, quiet, beautiful, we had a great time there, blah blah blah. The best part of my day was actually in the morning before we even got on the bus.

Note that the night before leaving for Assisi at 7 in the morning, a group of us thought it would be a great idea to go out. Throughout the night, TP managed to get hit by the tram, almost publicly pissed in a restaurant’s flower pot, set off a scooter alarm, offended a street vendor, and ran around with his shirt unbuttoned begging for euros. It took the boys 30 minutes to figure out how to order one piece of pizza, while the rest of us watched a 4-person fight in a car escalate into a 20-person mess on the street. Our attempt to get home in the morning consisted of half the group making it onto the tram, with the other half chasing after the moving vehicle. They never caught up.

The mess doubled in the morning — try to imagine a herd of still drunk, sleep-deprived rhino’s stampeding onto the tram, side stepping/shuffling up and down the car like it’s their job, and then spraying apple bits everywhere, with one rhino banging his head against the tram window whining, “I hate us, I hate us sooo much right now.”

If I weren’t us, I think I would’ve hated us too.

But yea, Assisi was fun too, I guess.

Let me tell you about Tram Man.

After another exhausting day at studio, Ferrari, EL, and I finally make it wearily onto the number 8 tram for the thirty minute journey home. The cars are crowded, and I resort to hanging onto EL for support with one hand, with my freshly bought box of soy milk tucked under my arm. To my right, a man wearing a gray, pinstriped suit gestures at me and says something. Amidst his jumble of Italian words, I manage to pick out the phrase “soia.”

“Si, soia…” I say, thinking he’s asking about my soy milk.

Much to my surprise and strong displeasure, “man in a suit” rapidly transforms into “crazy in a suit.” Crazy starts shooting off excitedly in Italian, complete with hand gestures and sound effects. “PSEW PSEW PSEW!!” He says, looking at me knowingly and motioning downwards at his butt. I narrow my eyes — is he talking to me about poop? I look around desperately for help, only to find Ferrari’s wide eyes and giggling face, along with other tram passengers glancing cautiously my way.

“Do you understand?” Crazy is asking.

“No! No parlo italiano!” Maybe he’ll get the point and shut up.

“Ah! Inglese! Bridge! Canoe!” Crazy makes furious rowing movements. “Money! Do you have money? Everyone needs money!”

“No I don’t have money!” I clutch my purse a little closer to my body. At this point, I am staring determinedly in a different direction, thinking that if he came any closer to me, my fist was going to make something ugly happen all over his face.

To my intense relief, Crazy picks up his suitcase and exits the tram at the next stop, all the while jabbering away. So there I am, still holding my innocent box of soy milk, and an entire tram full of Italians peering curiously at me over the tops of newspapers. What just happened?

Lesson learned: soy milk attracts lunatics???

This week, I learned an important lesson:
“Never design things for your friends. I did that once: they tell you you’re fantastic, and it will drag on for two years. I mean, I did do other things in between…like buy a gun. And if I shot em, no one would know! Because I was his friend! These are the things I think about at night…”

Words straight from the mouth of Primo Angeli, leading packaging/branding designer from San Francisco. He was kidding, of course. (Or was he?) This week, Primo flew to Rome from California in order to work with us Iowa State students on a packaging design workshop. This 3-day, nonstop-design workshop consisted of small-group collaborations to redesign a package/look of an Italian product, and ran in place of all our regular studios. Products included wine, spices, fruit juice, etc. My group redesigned a cookie package. I won’t bore you with the details, but the here’s the jist of what went down (initials are used to protect the identity of participants, and these people may or may not have actually said these things):

DAY ONE:
enter group of 4 into a grocery store: JJ, AO, JQ, YY
AO (scrutinizing shelf contents): This cookie package is uber UGLIES…
YY: Great! That’ll make us look super fly when we redesign it.
JQ: Agreed!
JJ: …

enter group with Primo, for initial presentation of redesign ideas
PRIMO: Great presentation! Redesign a cookie tin!
YY: Cool, that was easier than I thought.
AO: I was nervous, I said “umm” a lot!
JQ: Nah, no one noticed.
JJ: …
group stares at computers for several hours doing “work”

enter group with Primo take two
PRIMO: I forget completely what I told you earlier! Cookie tin is a shitty idea! Start over.
AO: !!!
YY: Fuck.
JQ: It’s ok! We can do this. Nevermind that class ends in an hour and everyone else is way farther ahead than us.
JJ: …

DAY TWO
enter group the next morning. a little scrappy, but still holding it together. more “work” gets done.

enter group with Primo take three
PRIMO (squinting at pacakge redesigns): Ehh, I don’t see cookies. It looks like a pasta package. You guys would be fired if this were real.
AO: O_o
YY: Shit.
JQ: What do we do?
PRIMO: You missed the mark, try again. You there, you haven’t said anything — what do you think?
JJ: …I agree with you?
exit now semi-distraught group to kitchen. everyone scarfs down a box of cookies to take the edge off.

several hours later…group has now been in school from 9 am to 11:30 pm, having eaten nothing but pretzels and cookies all day. every graphic design student is still at studio.
AO: Let’s go home.
YY: I’m soo over this project.
JQ: I’m feeling good about this! Plus we finished before everyone else.
JJ: I made a barcode.

DAY THREE
enter all (graphic design students, Primo, professors, and department chair Roger Baer) to formally present final designs.
YY: I’m so nervous.
AO: Oh crap, we need to fix our presentation…and it’s our turn now…
JQ: I’ll hand out cookies to distract everyone!
JJ: Um…
AO stands in front of the projector, blocking everyone’s view, while YY makes over the slide show within 30 seconds.

standing on quaking knees, the group manages to pull off a solid presentation
PRIMO: It’s striking. You guys did a masterful redesign.
ROGER: Yes yes, I agree on everything Primo.
group collapses in relief.

fade to black.

Upon ompleting these not-so-important-yet-at-the-same-time-super-nervewracking presentations, everyone (all 26 of us) lined up to take a group photos with Primo and his wife…after which, Primo kissed us all.

In all honesty, working with Primo has been quite the learning experience. Exhausting and frustrating, yes, but I think we all walked away better designers. And Primo Angeli is not as mean as the above portrays — he is actually a very chill guy with a great sense of humor, with his wife keeping him in check. Was this a rewarding workshop? Yes. Finishing was a great reward. Would I do it again? Ehh…it’s debatable. Let’s just say, that after this week, TGIF has a whole new meaning.

Name: Octavius IV
DOB: September 19, 2009. 4 o’clock am.
Hours in labor: 25+
Comments: he started as an octopus, and he was one of those “quick turnaround” projects. Melissa and Paula are fellow new parents, saying hello for the first time to Fitting In and Didi, respectively.

Every parent believes their baby is beautiful. On Tuesday, someone is probably going to tell me otherwise. I hope he makes it through.

6-hour studios are no joke. Now try a couple of those, a couple of 3-hours studios, and 4-hour art history walks around Rome, plus putting in extra hours after class to continue working. Usually, this means being in school from 9 am to midnight, while running low on food. This happened on Wednesday and Thursday of last week, and also going in on Saturday and Sunday. You say nerdy? I say badass. We are just that hardcore.

And now, just because I can, I’m going to make you look at Octavius IV.

It’s the little things that count.