Well, several different ideas came into the final design of this fabric. Data on Santa Clara youth from KidsData.org made its way into the design in the form of pie charts and a graph, the former representing teen's feelings of involvement in school communities and the latter in the form of a line graph showing the decline of student self inflicted injuries over the period of time from 1993 to 2006. The Indian textile motifs were inspired by textiles brought to me by Anu Guda. This particular one below I was very drawn to by the large dramatic motifs and by the bitmap-like look of the weaving design.
Anu educated me quite a lot in the diversity of Indian textiles and even showed me how quickly a woman can put on a sari. She included written descriptions with each textile (see below).
Anu educated me quite a lot in the diversity of Indian textiles and even showed me how quickly a woman can put on a sari. She included written descriptions with each textile (see below).
Below: I recreated the design by drawing it in Illustrator and then added some video game computer graphic elements. I use to do a lot of cursor design and icon design so this was fun to bring in element of my past career into this design.
The mental health of the youth is one important thread in weaving an understanding of a community. The reason I wanted to allude to video games and youth mental health is that here in Silicon Valley there is a wide range of computer literacy in children from region to region and I wonder if there is a negative impact in feelings of connectedness to school community and peers in the youths who spend a ton of time playing video games. Does video game involvement fall along ethnic lines? Do feelings of school connectedness very from one ethnic group to another? From my experience teaching in some Hispanic communities I see there is little involvement in video games and even sometimes a lack of familiarity with computer interface navigation. The Indian, Chinese and other Asian students I see in Cupertino and Sunnyvale are very comfortable with digital media and it is common to see children with their heads buried into their game devices.
There have been quite a few article in local and national media about mental health issues of youth here in Silicon Valley this past year. The up and down arrows allude to emotional feelings of being up or down.
There have been quite a few article in local and national media about mental health issues of youth here in Silicon Valley this past year. The up and down arrows allude to emotional feelings of being up or down.
