The Slide House

SlideHouseBrownsville
Originally uploaded by jtpuck.

In my previous post about the Top 5 Observations of Brownsville, I mentioned this house. The first house I have ever seen in Brownsville, Texas with a built-in water slide (lower left). This is a huge house with tons of east facing windows along the back. I'm pretty sure it's designed by the owner of this new firm in town. There's a large billboard in the front yard advertising all the features they can provide which also happen to be in this house. Things like a workout room, two-way built-in fish tank, porch water fountain and pond, built-in safe, audio/video system with electric projection screen, 3-dimensional artwork in the children's bedrooms, oh, and the slide. Also note the cubic wonder under construction next door. That may be the first of its kind as well.

Deep Sea Fishing Fun.

BoatTrip
Originally uploaded by jtpuck.

Did I mention that we went Deep Sea Fishing while on vacation over the 4th of July? It was a blast, except that 4 of the 7 of us got sick. I wasn't one of them. This photo is on the trip out to the deep. We were heading 20 miles out, went through some 8 ft swells, and got nailed with water blasts. It was awesome. From left you'l see Lyndsey, my brother Chris, and Danielle's half-brother, Andrew. He puked bigtime.

End of Week One.

School has started back up again this week, now in my 4th Quarter. Here's where things really take a turn for the serious. The lingering thought of graduation, creating my final portfolio, and the lackluster impact my work has had so far (according to me), it's time to delve a little deeper. I've only got 4 classes this time which means one thing: RESEARCH. Arguably the most important aspect to good design is knowing the who, what, where, when, why, and all that stems from research. So even though I have 400 logo sketches to bust out this week and I've only done 30, the important thing to remember is the research. I'm going to take a stab at rebranding Southwest Airlines, which will then include a new look on stationary, ticket sleeves, luggage tags, inflight meals, steward uniforms, and the plane itself. Also have a 4-project class that will include a Pop-Up book (completely by hand), and 7 new logos will be created for my Symbols, Logos and Metaphors class. So enough of this, time to get back to sketching.

Bridge Over Troubled Landings.

Just returned from my 4th of July break in Brownsville and South Padre Island (SPI), TX and heard an interesting story for the very first time. The Queen Isabella Memorial Causeway, a 2.5 mile bridge connecting Port Isabel with SPI, was originally designed to be a long, straight [read boring] structure. When the owner of the land where the bridge was to meet the island discovered this, he was furious. It was going to take up precious commercial space and devalue the property. Somehow he managed to convince the powers that be to move the point of contact further south, off his property, changing the path of the bridge. Now, the causeway is a more sensual, curvilinear road with varying views of the island, adding just the right amount of anticipation to the approach. One of the true design marvels in the Rio Grande Valley.