Sunday, December 18, 2011
Monday, December 12, 2011
Navigation Project
Since I'm fairly new to the design world, I wanted to design a piece to show as part of a portfolio. Therefore, my app is a personal collection of the projects and observations I have completed over the semester. The intended audience would be anyone interested in looking at my work (hopefully more than just Mum and Dad). At first my concept was based on the collision of urban and organic design, as I felt that was really the underlying connection between all of my projects/outside studies. Then, as I spent more time with the content I was mainly focusing on how each design concept related to one another. There was a flow throughout the themes, which intrinsically linked or threaded them together. This is how 'Common Thread' was born.
It's easiest for me to just layout what was going on in my mind when developing this navigational structure. So here it goes...
My content starts with the grid project, because with any type of design there is some form of underlying structure.
The grid poster leads into the grid observation to show how a simple grid can be used in the 'real world'.
The grid observation links to The Eames research post. This is because to me the most interesting part of their work was their house, the structure of which was based on a pattern of repeating a cube. However, they amended the original layout of the building so they wouldn't disturb its natural surroundings.This started to combine the harsh, grid structure with a softer, organic feel.
This lead me to my craft project, as although it was designed on a physical cube, the story was about the overwhelming, unpredictable nature of the sea.
Constructing the cube gave me a great appreciation for artists who used paper as their medium, so my observation was on a fabulously intricate paper city.
The city was built using multiple layers of paper, tying in nicely to my layers observation of another 'paper artist'.
The layers observation was great inspiration for our layers project. Where we designed large scale installations using whatever material we desired. My group focused mainly on paper and yarn.
With those materials we created a lot of hand woven messages; exploring the different kinds of type you could make.
Type was an obvious choice for the next observation. From our layers project we learned a lot about texture, and how typography can be used to develop a pattern or texture.
Which we learned A LOT about in our texture project, where type was the only thing that could be used to recreate an image.
Contrasting that highly visual project, I found an article on an architect who tragically lost his sight, forcing him to rely on his other senses, especially touch. He had to develop a new way to print out his blueprints in a way he could still understand them. Braille.
The determination this man had, gave me an overwhelming sense of his 'voice' and love for constructing environmental spaces. This lead me to my voice project, where we had to use a building to display a message to a certain audience. My message was to the students/business professionals in Boston encouraging them to slow down and appreciate life.
An artist who was phenomenally successful at portraying that message was Sister Corita. Her messages impacted so many people, and through their design expressed core emotions such as joy and faith.
J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyers (both authors of incredibly popular books/movies) have affected even more people with their creative imagination. Not with the same type of message as Corita, but one that has spread as far, if not further.
But back to Corita's work, she leverages image, type, and colour in her designs to communicate her message.
Her use of image brings me to one of my favorite photographers who really observes the natural light, reflections, and colours. His photographs are mainly of the ocean, and materials/scenes found around it.
The variation in his photos of the colour blue could have really helped my blue colour study at the beginning of the term.
Sol Lewitt is an artist who really takes colour study to the next level. His large scale installation art was so vibrant and in your face you couldn't help but be awed by it.
Speaking of large scale artists, I found an article on an environmental artist who uses fields to construct his art. I really liked his use of natural materials and the temporary nature of his work.
Similarly, there is another artist who also works with organic materials, but mainly in small scaled items, like terrariums so small they can fit in your hand.
Scale also has a lot to do with the way in which we read things, or the hierarchy in our work. Granted, colour, image, typeface etc, also affect hierarchy, but it is mainly the shift in scale that catches peoples attention. So for the hierarchy project, we had to play with the scale shifts in order direct our audiences attention to different things.
Finally, hierarchy dictates what people see first and how easily they compute the message. This is an essential part of navigation. If there isn't something big to say 'hey, go this way' the signage (or whatever tool is used) is not successful. These bathroom examples were clever, simple, yet effective.
My grid was a 6 column grid with a 1 pica gutter width. This worked well for my project, because it allowed me enough freedom to play with different widths of the text columns and images. This being said, to go along with my concept, there were a number of places where I chose to ignore the grid. Where this happened was often where I used the script typeface (Halohandletter Script), emphasizing the organic. Whereas, the areas with the serif font (Univers Ultra Condensed) I generally stuck pretty close to the grid.
Here's the link to my navigation project-hope you enjoy. Changes to the navigation page and icon come!
It's easiest for me to just layout what was going on in my mind when developing this navigational structure. So here it goes...
My content starts with the grid project, because with any type of design there is some form of underlying structure.
The grid poster leads into the grid observation to show how a simple grid can be used in the 'real world'.
The grid observation links to The Eames research post. This is because to me the most interesting part of their work was their house, the structure of which was based on a pattern of repeating a cube. However, they amended the original layout of the building so they wouldn't disturb its natural surroundings.This started to combine the harsh, grid structure with a softer, organic feel.
This lead me to my craft project, as although it was designed on a physical cube, the story was about the overwhelming, unpredictable nature of the sea.
Constructing the cube gave me a great appreciation for artists who used paper as their medium, so my observation was on a fabulously intricate paper city.
The city was built using multiple layers of paper, tying in nicely to my layers observation of another 'paper artist'.
The layers observation was great inspiration for our layers project. Where we designed large scale installations using whatever material we desired. My group focused mainly on paper and yarn.
With those materials we created a lot of hand woven messages; exploring the different kinds of type you could make.
Type was an obvious choice for the next observation. From our layers project we learned a lot about texture, and how typography can be used to develop a pattern or texture.
Which we learned A LOT about in our texture project, where type was the only thing that could be used to recreate an image.
Contrasting that highly visual project, I found an article on an architect who tragically lost his sight, forcing him to rely on his other senses, especially touch. He had to develop a new way to print out his blueprints in a way he could still understand them. Braille.
The determination this man had, gave me an overwhelming sense of his 'voice' and love for constructing environmental spaces. This lead me to my voice project, where we had to use a building to display a message to a certain audience. My message was to the students/business professionals in Boston encouraging them to slow down and appreciate life.
An artist who was phenomenally successful at portraying that message was Sister Corita. Her messages impacted so many people, and through their design expressed core emotions such as joy and faith.
J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyers (both authors of incredibly popular books/movies) have affected even more people with their creative imagination. Not with the same type of message as Corita, but one that has spread as far, if not further.
But back to Corita's work, she leverages image, type, and colour in her designs to communicate her message.
Her use of image brings me to one of my favorite photographers who really observes the natural light, reflections, and colours. His photographs are mainly of the ocean, and materials/scenes found around it.
The variation in his photos of the colour blue could have really helped my blue colour study at the beginning of the term.
Sol Lewitt is an artist who really takes colour study to the next level. His large scale installation art was so vibrant and in your face you couldn't help but be awed by it.
Speaking of large scale artists, I found an article on an environmental artist who uses fields to construct his art. I really liked his use of natural materials and the temporary nature of his work.
Similarly, there is another artist who also works with organic materials, but mainly in small scaled items, like terrariums so small they can fit in your hand.
Scale also has a lot to do with the way in which we read things, or the hierarchy in our work. Granted, colour, image, typeface etc, also affect hierarchy, but it is mainly the shift in scale that catches peoples attention. So for the hierarchy project, we had to play with the scale shifts in order direct our audiences attention to different things.
Finally, hierarchy dictates what people see first and how easily they compute the message. This is an essential part of navigation. If there isn't something big to say 'hey, go this way' the signage (or whatever tool is used) is not successful. These bathroom examples were clever, simple, yet effective.
My grid was a 6 column grid with a 1 pica gutter width. This worked well for my project, because it allowed me enough freedom to play with different widths of the text columns and images. This being said, to go along with my concept, there were a number of places where I chose to ignore the grid. Where this happened was often where I used the script typeface (Halohandletter Script), emphasizing the organic. Whereas, the areas with the serif font (Univers Ultra Condensed) I generally stuck pretty close to the grid.
Here's the link to my navigation project-hope you enjoy. Changes to the navigation page and icon come!
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Texture Project
My description for this photo was:
Deep purples fade to lavendar and crisp white.
Rugged green leaves and vines contrast the fragility of the petals.
In total I ended up with 27 layers in Illustrator. I sectioned out the different areas of the photo and labeled them appropriately. The typeface I used was ITC Galliard Std, which is a serif font. I mostly used it's ultra black italic weight, so it would hold the most colour, and the ragged edges would mimic those of the natural leaves and flower.
I originally had done my texture piece on a close up shot of a banana, but changed to this photo because it had a lot more texture to play with. I really wanted to see how much I could get the recreation to look like the photo. I feel that I could've made it look more like the original image, however, time was an issue. So some of the details on the flower/leaves are not as exact as they could be.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Grid Project Redo
Monday, December 5, 2011
Hierarchy Project
The message that I wanted to convey across all three parts of this project was that the individual states are not united. I feel that with the number of people Although the amendment says the individual States are allowed to decide matters by themselves, the vast number of people in each state prohibits decisions from being made. In the first composition (major scale shift) I made 'not' be the largest word and broke it into pieces to enhance the feeling of not being united. The rest of the wording in the amendment is small and also broken up into the negative space, almost allowing them to fade away. The second composition (minor scale shift) I took the amendment and repeated it, into the form of the 'x' symbol. The x shape is not connected, framing the message in the middle. The third piece (image) I used the amendment to literally frame the image.
In my opinion the second piece is the most successful. There are a number of levels of hierarchy that work, drawing you farther into the piece. The requirement of small scale shift forced me to think outside the box to get the message across. With the other two compositions I felt like I had so many options, I became overwhelmed and just settled for something.
I chose black, yellow, and white as my colour palette because I felt like this is a serious topic. The black allowed me to play with the varying shades of gray, adjusting the feel of each composition. The yellow provided me with a very high contrast colour that could stand out well on black or gray.
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