Communication Design RMIT

The Studio 1 course was one I initially thought was filled with contrast. One side focused on the business aspect of design, while the other on design ideas, developing them and producing final work. 

Essentials gave us a great grounding for our semester. It filled us with knowledge that we will be using in our everyday lives as working designers. While it wasn’t my favourite class, due to the lack of actual designing, I was really glad to complete this course as I knew it contained essential information (as the name suggests). I found myself ‘working a muscle’ I hadn’t since high school. For the last two years, I haven’t written much. As a designer I most often communicate with colours, shapes, composition, etc and then sell my ideas verbally. So stepping back into written language was a little different at first, but soon it all came flooding back to me. 

On the other hand, Core classes really pushed my creativity. Andy encouraged me to take a one dimensional idea and add layers and meaning to it. I loved working on a single piece throughout the semester, rather than multiple smaller works. Due to this, we were encouraged to interpret our initial idea in a multitude of ways. Each lesson lead our idea in another direction. While not something I’m used to, this is also essential to being a successful designer. 

Today was our food event. It was our chance to share all our work, in order to create one binder for each person. It was amazing receiving everyone elses work and being able to see the final designs of what my peers have been working on all semester. While it was a pain in the ass to print 25 copies of my work, it was undeniably special to have a collaborative book reflecting this semesters work. 

The food event was also a great opportunity to view the other classes diverse range of work. It was a great opportunity to socialise and appreciate other skill.

Here are some photos from the day:

Today was our final class. I worked on refining my work, so I asked my classmates their opinions. I was given the idea of simplifying one of the typefaces on my design. It contains many swashes and has a very decorative aesthetic. It can be a bit of overkill having every letter embellished so I worked on removing some of them. 

Today, I experimented with different designs of my fold out page. My design showcases refined and beautiful food photography, and upon opening up the fold, the authentic and less appealing side of the dish is revealed.

Concept 1 

This reveal involves having a page where both the pretty but contrived image of the dish is, as well as the authentic one. While I like how both are seen together, the design on the bottom half of the page is simply reused from another spread in my mini book. This means the design would lack variety and be unnecessarily repetitive. 

Concept 2

This concept involves having the authentic image of the directly underneath the beautiful but manufactured when when folded. This allows you to flip back and forth to view the differences, which I like. Despite that, the too half of this design looks disconnected to the bottom. It really looks like two pages rather than one. 

Concept 3

Here I sampled the colour of the floorboard to replace the blue in the previous design to achieve more unity. I also chose to include images of me photographing the meal to showcase the deceptive and manipulated nature of food photography. While I believe that this is a step in the right direction, the design could still look more unified. Furthermore, the two images are basically showing the exact same thing, making one of them obsolete. 

Concept 4

Today I played with a prototype containing artwork. I explored the idea of food photography and its over-produced and deceptive nature. My design shows off pretty photos and reveal underneath what the meal would look like without being altered. This gives the user a glimpse in to what their meal would actually look like when they create it.

This week I presented the photographs I had taken for my recipe page/s. Here they are:

Today, each person brought in a prototype for their potential design. As a group we discussed and observed each of them. 

Andy then instructed us to take another’s work and re-create it, in our own way. Andy wanted us to stop being so precious with our work and more open to new ideas. 

My prototype

All our prototypes on display 

Our prototypes in a binder

My recreated prototype of someone else’s work

Today, we discussed how we are going to print our final designs. 

We looked through photocopying, screen-printing, local printing and printing on demand. Most of the options looked highly costly. 

We looked into printing on Blurb as it was cost effective. We (by we I mean Alex) came up with the idea of each person compiling the book in their own way. This would allow each designer to personalise their book and others designs. 

My Idea in...

A SENTENCE:

‘Pretty photos’

AN IMAGE:  

A SONG:

‘I Feel Pretty’ West Side Story

A SMELL:

Today we had to present the idea of our recipe and its design to the class. While people presented we noted down their ideas. Everyones ideas were unique and varied a lot. A few people had some visuals they pinned up on the wall while they presented. This can be seen below. 

Today we had to represent our meal out in four different ways. 

Firstly we were asked to sketch a vignette of our meal. Next we had to make a flow chart of our meal. Then we were to make a cutaway of our actual meal. Lastly, we had to come up with our own visualisation. I chose to make a timeline. 

Andy used this as a demonstration of how one event can be represented in a multitude of ways.

In our first session we were introduced to our topic of ‘food’. We were given the task of creating a recipe for anything that we like. The classes final recipe designs are going to be compiled into one book. I toyed with the idea of a photo-centred design. I want to focus on photography of food and creative images. 

Our homework from Andy was to go and share food with people from our class. Bay, Alex, Betul and I went for brunch at Seven Seeds...

Yulia Brodskaya is a designer best known for her unique and detailed quilling. Originally from Moscow, Russia, Yulia relocated to the United Kingdom in 2004. Two years later she began work as a graphic designer, but found herself bored by modern computer generated design. While attempting to advertise her name in a creative way she remembered the technique, quilling, which she had used a for a school project. After creating her name using quilling, she became hooked on the material paper. Yulia now works with paper and glue only, using a variety of techniques. Yulia’s clients include: Oprah Winfrey, Cadbury, Paramount Pictures and The New York Times.

Why do you believe that design is important?

Design is a vehicle by which brands can express themselves across an increasingly complex environment. It is the means by which companies build emotional connections and stay on the edge of constant change.

How do you continue to be creative while working with the same medium?

Paper as a material is extremely versatile, I keep experimenting and there is still no lack of ideas and new things I'd like to try with it. I believe once you find the medium/style that is truly yours, you will never get bored of it. I continually change the way in which I use the paper. Because of this constant evolution I never get tired of using it.

How do you manage to distinguish yourself from other artists?

I'm different as a person, so the more I express my own inner emotions the more different my work becomes. This is something that will happen naturally for those who have their own distinctive voice - it is just a matter of time and effort to find it.

How do you balance your tastes and opinions, and what a client wants?

The client does have a final say, but I always fight for what I believe is right and always suggest alternative routes if I think something would work better. It is very important to be flexible and listen to what the client has to say because they know their brand values and goals better than you. The most successful collaborations happen with an open-minded and respectful team.

Are there times when you doubt your abilities, and if so how do you overcome them?