Group Discussion: Most memorable news articles in the past 12 months

As a group we were asked to discuss the most memorable news stories in the past 12months. We also had ti take into consideration the reasons why the chosen articles were so memorable above others. The list we created was:

-Escaped Essex lion - hoax - funny
-Fake kidnapping of girl - shocking
-The olympics - couldn't be avoided
-David Cameron accidentally abandoning his daughter
-Andy Murray
-The Queen's Jubilee
-Sky Diver
-Steve Jobs Died
-Cannibal Man in Zambia - zombie apocalypse
-Anish Kapool Tower

The main three we decided on were
1. The escaped Essex lion
2. The Olympics
3. The Cannibal Man in Zambia
Each of these news articles are memorable for completely different reasons, such as humour, repetition and shock.

Design Principles - Type&Character

Typography Principles
-The art and technique of printing with movable type.
-Composition of printed material form printed type.

Typeface Characteristics
Serif
Sans Serif
Handwritten
Typewriter
Modern
Traditional
Western
Caligraphy
Rounded
Archaic
Cropped
Contemporary
Digital
Script
Bold
Light
Cowboy
Free
Expressive
Retro
Futuristic

Visual Literacy
-The ability to construct meaning from visual images and type.
-Interpreting images of the present, past and a range of cultures.

Rules = what is the required knowledge?
Principles = what is to be explored?

Different materials from which type is generated:
-Stone
-Sabel
-Bone
-Wood
-Lead
-Silicone

Modern digital brush strokes reflect old and traditional methods.

Point size

1point = 1/72 inches = 25.4/72cm = 0.3527mm = 1pica

Task for Fred:
-Download the typeface anatomy.
-Using other people's fonts, guess the specific names of each font using www.identifont.com
-From the 5 fonts choose one and research thoroughly.

Font 1: Arial

Font 2: Verdana

Font 3: Times New Roman

Font 4: Myriad Pro

Alphabet Soup: Weekend exercise

On monday 22 we were asked to present our alphabet designs using an existing brand. A chose to use Addidas as the most recognisable element of their logo is the three lines.

My logo manipulation

Other logo examples from the class

Design Principles Briefing - OUGD404

-Literacy, colour, typography, layout and format.

-Explore principles of communication through type and image in relation to graphic design.

-Individual approaches to exploration and application of fundamental design principles to specified problems.

-Documentation and evaluation.

Recommended reading:

-Graphic Design: A Users Manual

-Fundamentals of Graphic Design - Ambrose

-Fundamentals of Typography - Ambrose

-What is Graphic Design? - Newark

Powerpoint on Visual Literacy:

-Construct meaning from visual images and type.

-Interpreting images of past, present and range of cultures.

-Producing images that effectively communicate a message to an audience.

-Visual Communication is a process of sending and receiving messages through text and image.

-"Effected by audience, context, media and method of distribution."

-A shared understanding of a system of communication.

Semiotics for the Apple logo

1. Sign - Sign for Apple Mac computers

2. Symbol - An Apple

3. signifier - Quality, creativity, lifestyle and independence

Key elements of Visual Language in Graphic Design

-Frame                              

-Format

-Figure/Form

-Ground

-Composition

-Visual Dynamics

-Type

-Image

-Colour

-Layout

-Legibility

Task: Based on the LCA font collection on the University system, identify 5 fonts with very different characteristics.

Bring an A4 sheet of upper and lower case as big as possible.

Final outcome should be 10 sheets of the whole alphabet.

Bring to lecture.

My 5 Chosen Typefaces:

-Baskerville

-Colonna

-Helvetica Neue UltraLight

-Onyx

-Rosewood Std. Regular

A Typeface for Ant Continued..

Following on from my initial research and development on Ant's personality traits, habits and interests I began experimenting with a few of my own ideas. The main key elements I wanted to focus my type design on were Ant's bold personality, his interest in Neville Brody's work and Celtic knots as he is Irish.

I decided to experiment using existing Neville Brody typefaces. I liked quite a lot of the styles although they were quite different to one another. Above is a few sketches where I was thinking of how I wanted to incorporate the Celtic designs. I think the top typeface works best for this as I have more to work with. The bold type not only allows me to experiment with a design within the letterforms but I also feel it is most suitable for Ant's bold personality. The bottom sketches are taken from an existing Celtic knot design which I found. I wanted to see if I could find the whole alphabet within the knot. However this proved to be difficult with letters such as M, W and X. 

When I was getting to know Ant, one of the main elements of graphic design as inspiration or in his own work which he is passionate about is manipulation. For example he really likes photography which has been edited on photoshop to generate something which could not be seen in reality. With this idea in mind I considered manipulation of a typeface. Using one of my favourite Neville Brody typefaces I cut each letter up (as seen above) and places them so they were slightly distorted. I liked this outcome but thought it was a bit too basic.

As i researched further into the style of Neville Brody I began to think about the nearest I could get to resemble this. I decided to look at different stencil typefaces. Above is my final choice. It is simple, yet bold and a great base type to adapt on.

From my initial sketches I chose this as my favourite design. Inspired by the Celtic knot designs I hand-drew my own interpretation. I experimented with a few variations but i think the strongest are the 2nd, 3rd and 4th examples above. 

The A above was additional experimentation because I was curious to see the effect of overlapping all three of my favourite examples using the overlay filter on Photoshop. Although I really like the result, I didn't feel it would look as effective hand-drawn so decided to keep it simple.

The Final Outcome

Here is my final outcome including the whole alphabet and six glyphs. Each letter has its own individual hand-drawn design. Each letterform design uses the same style. This is to keep the overall design consistent. Generally I am pleased with the result however I feel a bit disappointed that the design is not as clear and therefore less visually engaging from a distance.

         

Creating A Name Badge 

As I felt that colour was not necessary in this particular design I wanted to keep the name badge simple yet keep the type large in order to get a clear view of the intricate design. Using tracing paper I copied the original A, N and T. I then scanned the name into Photoshop where I scaled it down to 4cm by 9cm - the required size for our badges. Below is the final outcome.

Alphabet Soup Continued...

 

Above are my 10 final outcomes produced from the Alphabet Soup brief. Using the theme of sound waves I decided to present the waves bouncing off one another in a variety of directions. I used Cooper Std as my base typeface because I like the bold impact it has when using capital letters. I originally considered experimenting with the idea of the letters being part of a strory-board of the sound waves passing through the letters in relation to their order in the alphabet. However that idea wasn't as strong once I put it onto paper. I also thought it would be interesting to experiment using acetate instead of tracing paper but again the actual wasn't as good as I'd predicted. Overall I am pleased with my letterforms but my personal favourites are the T, N and E because I feel they convey the idea of vibration most effectively. If I could re-do this task I would reconsider the styles of the H, G and F as I feel they are the weakest outcomes.

On Monday we presented our letters to a group of roughly 15 people from the class. Individually we each shared our 10 letters, explaining which word we were given and the main ideas and reasons for out final ideas. I enjoyed looking at and comparing each others' work as it was really interesting to see how different they were. 

Once we had the collection of letters on the table in front of us we had to choose the five strongest letterforms for each person. These five favourites were then placed on the wall with the rest of the group. My chosen letters were E, H, M, N and T. I think this was a fair decision because they were the most visually engaging. 

The next task was to switch to another group's table where we were faced with their strongest outcomes. From this we were asked to one by one take down letters until the 5 we thought best conveyed their word were the last ones remaining. This exercise was a good way to learn each others similarities and differences of taste. Generally we agreed on what worked well and wasn't as strong.

Alphabet Soup

"Produce a set, series or sequence of ten letterforms that explore and communicate your interpretation of the word that you have selected from the randomisers.

Using your newfound appreiciation of the anatomy of typographic forms and the wealth of research that you have already gathered, focus on the manipulation of existing letterforms in order to solve this problem"

I was given the word 'Boom'. 

I began by researching the different definitions and synonyms of the word 'boom' in order to gain inspiration for my main idea.

As I wanted to avoid doing the obvious cartoon-style explosion I decided to focus on the effect of 'booming'. I thought it would be interesting to research into soundwaves and generate a range of letterforms which visually represented soundwaves in a slightly unusual way.

Below is an example of a few my initial sketches. The idea was that the sound waves would be coming out of each letter. This idea was then developed further through consideration of the best way to effectively represent vibration and booming.

Module Brief OUGD403

How To... Brief

For our first brief we were asked to develop and produce a information source for new students starting at LCA. Each group was given a different question at random. My group was given the question 'How to survive when your student loan is late'. 

We began by creating a brainstorm on a broad range of ideas surrounding money, students and methods of advertisement.

One of our initial ideas was to focus on labels in supermarkets - essential for monitoring your budget. I was interested to find out if there was a way we were able to re-brand a range of labels in supermarkets to make saving money more simple. For example if there was a traffic light system - red for expensive, yellow for averagely priced and green for a cheaper option. The colours would supposedly be seen instantly and help students who have never budgeted before to get a better idea of how to avoid high costs. As a student moving from London I find it hard to gage what a good deal is in Leeds as everything appears to be a bargain to what I am used to. This idea was inspired by labelling in supermarkets such as Sainsburys Basics, Morrosions Savers and Tesco Value. In theory the colour coding would have the same response as say the London Underground tube map, saving time on smaller details. However we decided this idea was slightly unrealistic due to cost, time and the supermarket policies.

After much discussion of how we wanted to present our final outcome, sticking with the purposes to inform, advise and educate we decided to create a Student Survival Kit.We experimented with ideas of how to design a student survival kit and what we thought would be most suitable. Through discussion within the group and class we thought about presenting it as an advent calendar. Students would receive one new 'survival item' per day. This would be a fun, unusual distraction from the stress of waiting for a maintenance load. As our ideas developed further we decided our theme was going to be humorous and lighthearted. The Student Survival Kit started to take the form of an army camo style. Using camo emphasised the informal approach to 'survival. 

As the brief asked us how we would get the information across to the target audience we agreed it would be most practical in the form of a bag to be handed out at the freshers fair. We began simple illustrations of items to go inside the bag. We each gave ourselves an item to focus on. I was in charge of designing the flyer. 

For the front of the flyer I decided to use the camo design as a background and all of our final, scanned in illustrations. As the flyer was to be A5 I thought it would be best to just have our main logo on the from in the bottom right corner and save the main information for the back. The main colour themes were camo greens, black and white. 

The back of the flyer had the main logo in camo print at the top. Beneath that was a list of 8 top money saving tips which were chosen from our personal opinions with the help of an article on www.moneysavingstudent.com. This flyer would be used as our main source of quick and easy information for students on how and why they should use their Survival Kit. By using all of the illustrations the students are able to instantly see what is in the bag. By keeping the information relatively minimal I wanted to tempt the target audience to want to find out more and speak to other students. 

The 7 final outcomes were a canvas bag which we printed our design onto using iron transfer papaer, a packet of seeds with the slogan 'Grow your own loan', a flyer containing the essential information, a box of vitamins with a humorous set of advice and a packet of Super Noodles.

As a group we worked well together and were very happy with our final result. The only disadvantage of working in a group is that ideas can be ignored, rejected or not understood properly. However by carrying out this task I feel that we have proven if your confident enough about one idea, 5 creative minds together can produce a strong, effective outcome.

Flyer Front

Flyer Back

Final Outcomes