THE ASSIGNMENT: Take two cultures and create a banner that represents how their coming together would mix.
THE PROCESS: I found various pictures on the internet of things that are symbolic to both American and Japanese culture. I then decided to make two separate banners for this assignment, one of them would be a collage, and the other would be a design that incorporated both the American and Japanese national flag. My first idea was to make a collage of pictures that represented both cultures, and I did this using the program called Gimp. I saved the photos that I found on the internet to my computers desktop and then transferred them into Gimp in order to begin creating my masterpiece. I never used Gimp before so it took me awhile to understand how this program works. Probably about two hours of my time was spent trying to figure out how to use the program well enough to create my idea for this assignment. Once I had a good understanding of this program, I then used the tools available to enhance/change the pictures in order to create the collage. Once I was satisfied with the outcome, I uploaded the final product onto my WordPress page, and began to work on my flag design. I found a way on Gimp to merge the American flag design with the Japanese design, and then crop certain parts of the flags that weren’t needed. After that was finished, I added some extra color to the flags using the paint tool, and uploaded it to my WordPress page.
THE STORY: When I found this assignment on the DS106 website, I knew that it was going to be a good chance for me to use some of my creativity. Due to the fact that I am an American who is now living in Japan, I felt it only necessary to use these two countries for the culture clash. While creating this assignment I learned how to use Gimp (which could be helpful in the future), and I am very satisfied with the finished product, although it took me way too long to complete.
