designation: my design destination.

Assignment 6: Design Analysis (Powerpoint Presentation)

2007-03-16T22:56:00.000-07:00

Again, I grouped together with Geri for this Assignment. We each went to find different posters, both good and bad, and then got together to pick out two for our presentation. These were what we came up with:

Hitler Propaganda Poster (Good)

(1) Principles of Interaction
• Contrast – Dark Foreground vs. Light Background
• Visual Balance – Rays and crowd balances the ‘weight’ of the flag
• Flow – keeps the focus on the picture

(2) Gestalt Principles
Figure & Ground
• Size – Hitler and flag VS. everyone else
• Contrast – Hitler and flag VS. blurry washed-out background
• Details – Hitler and flag VS. everyone else
Similarity
• Red Swastika – featured everywhere in the picture
Continuity
• Rays of Light – Implies to be God’s ‘chosen one’, illuminating and emphasising his presence
• Frame – keeps the focus within the picture itself

(3) Symbolism
• Eagle – Symbolising strength and strong leadership qualities

However, the border distracts and fights for attention with what is within the poster.

Casino Royale Movie Poster (Bad)

(1) Principles of Interaction
• Contrast – Light & Dark Foreground vs. Light Background
•Visual Balance – Gun points towards the right hand side; he looks to the right, drawing attention heavily on that side.
•Flow – There is no proper flow formation in the poster. Confusing cues.

(2) Color
• The White-on-Black color scheme brings too much attention to the gun.
• The predominantly dark colors represent darkness and secrets, possibly foretelling the plot of the story.
• However, unity in color choice on the right hand side makes image indistinct.

(3) Gestalt Principles
• Figure and Ground - There is no good contrast btw the background and the figure.
• Proximity - The different images on the right of the poster makes it very messy
• Similarity - There is no similarity in images.
• Continuity - The only sense of direction and continuity is the flow of the 007 logo flowing vertically on the left hand side of the poster.

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Our tutorial mates said that perhaps we were looking to find too many problems with the Bad Poster, that it was bad, but not THAT bad. I don't know - perhaps it is because we're specifically looking for things to say, so we're pinpointing every single thing that we find.

Classroom Exercise: Gestalt Principles

2007-03-10T18:13:00.000-08:00

We learnt about 5 new Gestalt Principles in lecture:

Figure and Ground

Proximity

Similarity

Closure

Continuity

We were asked to pick 3 Gestalt Principles and then use basic shapes and at most 3 colours to show what each means. The 3 I chose were Figure and Ground, Closure and Continuity.

After drawing these I found that each drawing could represent more than one Gestalt Principle. The one I drew for Figure & Ground could very well be meant for Similarity, or even Continuity. I showed these to Reddy - and he said that I have grasped the concepts and understood them well.

Hurray!

Assignment 5: Greeting Card (Love - or the lack there of)

2007-03-08T13:43:00.000-08:00

I picked my favourite phrase about love,

"The love that you can't have,

lasts the longest,

feels the strongest,

and hurts the most."

I thought that the negativity of it would make it different from the rest. So this was the design I came up with first:

I thought that the gradient was nice in that it framed the card well and made sure that the focus was within the card itself - it didn't flow out. That was definitely one component I wanted to keep in the card. Another was the logo that I created an outline of a cupid with a heart for its head. The defining features of cupid are the wings, halo, bow and arrow. That's why I used it - brings to mind the idea of abstraction but yet keeping its generic meaning. Yay I learnt and retained something in my memory for use! Haha.

I added in the three stripes at the back of the heart because I thought that it was very empty on the side. However, after placing it there, I had another idea - since its a love that one can't have, it might be a good idea to make the stripes behind like prison bars.

Instead of 3, I put 4 stripes, and made each stripe thinner - else it wouldn't look like prison bars. However, once it was behind, I didn't feel like it presented the prison cell well? I wanted to place the bars in front, but was afraid that it would look odd and block the broken heart from being seen... So I tried making the bars transcluscent.

However, this ended up looking worse. I then decided to just try it was proper bars in front of the heart, then to attempt placing the heart in a position that would still allow for the broken part to be seen. This was how I arrived at my final product:

My tutorial mates said that it was alright, that it conveyed the message well. I didn't need to change anything about it, which is great. Haha! :)

Btw, a classmate asked me who I would give the card to - whether it actually serves a purpose. I guess he was questioning the intended recipient. But I think this card is still usable - I could give it to a friend who just broke up as an encouragement or something. Just thought I'd explain it here in case there were questions about it. :)

Assignment 4: Poster Design (Save, Prevent, Kill)

2007-02-27T13:19:00.000-08:00

I decided to make this poster a comic one, giving a funny twist in the different diseases that plague us today.

Cow: Mad Cow Disease
Sheep: Mad Cow Disease (in actual fact, the cow contracted the disease from the sheep - they were fed the ground-up innards of the diseased sheep)
Pig: Nipah Virus
Chicken: Avian Flu

Fish: Disease Free! (Not accounting for those chemical toxins/oil spills)

So I came up with this, depicting heaven and earth, showing heaven with the dead animals and their halos. Below, the sky is darkened, and the fish is upside down, as if dying.

Comments from the tutorial class were that the dead animals look too happy in heaven (haha) and that the fish looks dead, that it can't be saved anymore. The idea was there, but the concept wasn't carried out well, they said. They suggested 'flipping' it around, showing the dead animals burning in hell or something along those lines.

I went back to work on it, and this was what I came up with:

It's like a cross-section of a cliffside, where the animals are buried as shown with R.I.P. gravestones. I tried to make use of gradient in colours to give the poster more life.

I hope this depicts it better?

Classroom Exercise: Talking Forms

2007-02-20T13:02:00.000-08:00

The lecture on Visual Principles was very interested - I never really thought about the whole balance thing in posters before. Movie posters do catch my eye though, and I guess that's where the poster designer succeeded.

So the classroom exercise was to pick out two words from the pile that Reddy provided, and then draw it out using simple lines and basic shapes. Our two words were: Rush and Furious. This was our first draft...

The lines we used in rush was supposed to show the 'running trail' of the person, but it just looks like lines. The furious face was just... a furious face haha. Reddy pointed that out to us, said it could definitely be simplified further - so we changed it, to this:

I think this sums it up better. :)

Assignment 3: U C what I C (Visual Story)

2007-02-20T12:20:00.000-08:00

Assignment 3 was very exciting to me, since I enjoy photography and drama. This assignment gave me the opportunity to explore storylines, and this was what I did. I first drew up storyboards for my different ideas, to try and plot out the pictures:

Then I decided to change the storyline a little, since it's V-Day and CNY soon. Also, I was going to bake cookies, so I thought - why not?

Instead of going explaining everything photo by photo, I think its best if its viewed as a whole, so you (or whoever is looking at it) can form your own impressions and try to guess what the story is. The explanations will come later... So here goes my 10 photos:

Story goes like this:

It's 14 Febuary, Valentine's Day. I decided to bake cookies for the person I liked to make him happy. After I baked the cookies, I saw that the guy I liked was with another girl. I then went to a window and acted as if I was going to jump off, but the twist in the end shows that I was actually spring cleaning and wiping the windows - Chinese New Year.

Those in the tutorial commented that the picture of the guy and the girl in the background didn't do justice to the photo - it didn't seem as though they were together, that he should have put his arm around her. I agreed with them and had wanted to 'direct' it such that his arm would be around her, but unfortunately my friends whom I asked to help out weren't a couple in real life (and the guy is happily attached to someone else) so they were reluctant to pose in that manner.

Kids these days. Haha.

Also, in this picture, I was supposed to be crying, but I kept putting eye drops and took the same photo so many times but yet it didn't manage to capture the tear, so in the end that photo was the best I could do. Haha. Squint and look closely, you might catch a gleam. :)

I think I'm quite proud of this assignment - it's probably the best I've got so far. Maybe its because I don't have to use much computer software for this one. Haha.

Classroom Exercise: Representational Techniques 2

2007-02-19T20:32:00.000-08:00

Lecture 5 was a continuation of representational techniques. I had to rush off after lecture ended, so I did the exercise myself after I got back. This was what I came up with:

It's a bit tiny, but its supposed to be a scene in a park, with a mango tree. The tree has borne fruit, and the birds are eating the fruit, leaving the seed. There's a new mango seedling growing, which shows the ongoing 'story', in the required 'freezing time' image.

Of course, it would definitely be better presented if it were in colour, but time constraints prevent it. Heh.

Assignment 2: Making Images Talk (Abstractions)

2007-02-14T21:13:00.000-08:00

Right. After that whole Classroom exercise on Iconic and Indexic representations, we had to start on Assignment 2. According to the calculator example that he gave us in class, we had to 'distill' a chosen image from a realistic to a abstract form. Following the example of the cat that he showed in class, I decided (based on the Classroom Exercise) to make it easy for myself and to pick an animal to draw as well.

I decided to work with rabbits. So I started doodling...

Then my initial sketches became this...

I showed this to the class in tutorial - they said it was alright. The last representation that I drew still maintains its generic meaning, though it still is obvious that its a rabbit. The levels of abstraction are described below, using the final picture. As it was 'approved', I directly transferred it through Freehand, and this is the final product:

First: Realistic drawing of a rabbit.
Second: Cartoon drawing of the full rabbit.
Third: Cartoon depiction of the rabbit's face.
Fourth: I removed the rabbit's whiskers.
Fifth: I removed the rabbit's eyes, leaving just the nose and mouth.
Sixth Level of Abstraction: I removed everything but the outline of the rabbit's face. Seeing as the ears are the defining feature of rabbits, it still conveys the generic meaning of a rabbit.

I guess this means that even though the classroom representation didn't go that smoothly (see previous entry), I managed to get the basic ideas of abstraction and was able to put it down well on paper.

Classroom Exercise: Representational Techniques

2007-02-14T11:47:00.000-08:00

Okay so we learnt about abstraction in Lecture 4, about Iconic, Indexic and Symbolic Representations. To show Reddy that we understood what he was talking about (although I still am a little unsure about it), we had to do a classroom exercise. Forming groups of 2, we had to pick something around us, in the classroom, and sketch a Iconic and an Indexic form.

Reddy said it would be challenging to pick something that is abstract, so to challenge ourselves, Geri and I picked Time. Of all things, we could have chosen clock, chair, butterfly, yada yada, but nope, I had to suggest Time. So we tried it out, and this was what we came up with at first:

Sorry about the lightness of the pencil markings - hope you can still sort of see it. Basically our Iconic representation is a drawing of the typical clock. In the Indexic representation, we removed all the numbers on the clock, as well as the hour and minute hands. To show that its a clock and not just a simple circle, we added the roman numeral for 12.

However, Reddy commented that what we showed him didn't look like it represented Time, but rather, it represented Clock. On hindsight, its true - haha! So we did a little revision, and we were thinking about what really represents time, even in its Iconic form. We were thinking along the lines of sundials and hourglasses. As sundials are already very simply designed, we decided to pick hourglasses to draw instead:

So again, the Iconic representation of it would be a typical hourglass. In the Indexic representation, we drew only the sand within the hourglass. This is because the sand flows through the hourglass as time passes, so the sand itself, to us, would represent Time.

Sadly, according to Reddy, this isn't a good representation, but a good try on our part (haha - consolation prize). Time is a very abstract ideal, so it's tough to place it on paper.

One thing I've learnt - perhaps it would be smarter not to 'challenge' ourselves. That way we could go back home earlier. Haha! ;)

Assignment 1: Your Name in Likes and Dislikes.

2007-02-11T05:36:00.000-08:00

Okay - so this was the first assignment. I'm supposed to pick out something I like and something I don't like. Then I'm supposed to use it to design my name. Before embarking on the first assignement, I tried to list out the things I related with the two things I had picked (Dance & Lizards). These were:

Dance

(1) Ballet Shoes

(2) Footwork and Steps

(3) Body Movement

(4) Bars used for Ballet

Lizards

(1) Body Shape

(2) Tongue used to catch mozzies

(3) Disgusting tail that drops off

(4) How I really hate them and I want to exterminate them

These are the thumbnail sketches I came up with using these ideas:

My name is Charmaine and I Love Dance.

My name is Charmaine and I Hate Lizards.

So from this, I decided to pick these two for my further sketches:

Body Movement in Dance & Body Shapes of Lizards

I presented these two sketches in tutorial, and received feedback that the Dance one ... wasn't very nice. So I showed them the rest of my thumbnails and they commented that the Ballet Shoes was nicer, with the ribbon forming my name.

So in the end, for Tutorial 2, I came up with this, after much scanning, zoomed-in Freehand Tracing and playing around with colours:

My Name Is

And I Love Dance.

My Name is

And I Hate Lizards.

The comments I received were that it was alright on the whole, a good first attempt at freehand, but that the lizards actually looked cute, cos of the black round eyes. They suggested that I make the eyes slits instead, so I did some revisions to it, made the eyes red, and this was what I got:

My Name Is

and I Hate Lizards.

I guess this was a okay first attempt at design, and the comments that I received were very helpful in helping me achieve this. I felt that the lab for freehand was quite useful and aided me greatly - I definitely wouldn't be able to do it without the lab.

Yup, that's all for Assignment 1, I guess.

my virgin post.

2007-02-05T12:42:00.000-08:00

So this is my first post on this blog. First, let's explain the title of this blog: Designation.

Um - it's kind of like a pun, really. It's my way of trying to be clever. Trying being the operative keyword, that is. Haha. It could mean "design destination" - a place my work is put up on. It could be "design imagination". It could also be an act of designating, of marking or pointing out the difference of my work from the rest of the classes. Not that it's better than the rest - because it's not. It's just that it's a distinctive name or title, and as such, points out that this blog and the work involved (unless clearly stated) is distinctively mine.

I do have scanned pictures of the work I did for my first assignment. However, since it's almost 5 in the morning and I have tutorial for this module tomorrow at 12nn, I shall leave the posting of the first assignment details till the next time. Haha.

Also, until I manage to get my hands on a scanner (which is most probably on a weekly basis because I stay in hall on campus and my scanner's at home) this blog will most probably be quite quiet and/or dead. Sorry about that...

Till the next time, ta! :)