Hasta La Ideas

The funniest pumpkin-related thing I read this Halloween was this Conan O’Brien tweet:

As my 5 year-old son and I carved the pumpkin today, I swear I heard him say, “That’s what happens to snitches.”

And the most design-y pumpkin-related thing I saw was the Jack O’Lanterns carved by Ohio State University design majors wielding Dremels and X-Acto knives in their Design 251 class. Just insane.

The students were “working with what would be considered gray scale – black, white and grays – but in this case, they have to ‘think in pumpkin,'” [assistant design professor Tony] Reynaldo said. Therefore, the color palate was vibrant orange, orange, yellow and red.

“They have to really think in reverse because when you light a pumpkin, you’re backlighting it just like a computer monitor,” Reynaldo said. “So you have to think about where those transparent spaces are going to be in terms of a light source.”

To show white, students created a hole in the pumpkin to display pure candlelight. To show black, they left the pumpkin’s skin unscathed. To create grays, students etched into the pumpkin.

(more…)