Visual Communications Blog

As I look back at my journey through this course, I can’t help but get emotional. I never imagined that there will come a time when I’ll say this is my last week sitting in a masters class as a design student.

This journey has not only tested my resilience  but has also showed me my strength.

It’s safe to say, I can now add visual communication specialist to my growing list of skills as a designer.

With that being said, it is also my first Christmas in Europe. First Christmas without my mum since my dad passed away. She’s fine...she’s in the U.S enjoying the Christmas spirit.

But as the streets start getting brighter and everyone puts their wreath, I’m starting to get a little emotional. The feelings of away from home are starting to wiggle their way in and it’s safe to say, I am home sick.

However, I am grateful for the gift of family though so far away, grateful for the beautiful life I have started to create for myself here and hopeful that christmas will be more jolly in the years to come!

Happy Holidays!

Line is the most basic visual element.

Lines can be used to define shapes and figures, but also to indicate motion, emotion, and other elements.

Lines in visual communication can vary through differences in the width or ‘weight’ of a line. A fine or light can suggest a specific technical detail or, in the context of an illustration, a sense of lightness or minimalism.

Lines can create structure and stability in design.

Here are some works by architects that have changed our perception of line;

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

Wright revolutionized 20th-century architect, and his midwestern upbringing played a crucial role in shaping his sensibility and becoming a staple as one of the Best Architects of modern times. Inspired by the low-lying building that dotted the American plains, Wright created the Prairie House style as a reaction to the prevailing Victorian aesthetic, which emphasized dark decor, and busy embellishments both inside and out. In its stead, Wright employed clean geometries with an emphasis on horizontal planes. Later in his career, Wright would embrace curvilinear elements, a shift that found its most celebrated expression in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

SANTIAGO CALATRAVA

The work of this Spanish architect has been described as Neofuturist, although sci-fi baroque might be closer to describing it. His buildings often resemble the ribcages of extinct robotic dinosaurs, if such things existed. His projects definitely attracted worldwide attention—and garnered a reputation for massive cost overruns. Nonetheless, there’s no denying that Calatrava is one of the Best Architects working today, as his most iconic creation—the Transit Hub for the World Trade Center—attests.

A film poster is usually used to promote and advertise a film primarily to persuade paying customers into a theatre to see it. Studios often print several posters that vary in size and content for various domestic and international markets.

When determining the value of a movie poster, the most important factor to ascertain is the authenticity of the item. However, this does not apply to all posters.

A great example is Marvel Posters

Now, you can expect there to be arguments whenever any major criticism is made of a superhero movie posters. With camps clearly divided between Marvel and DC movies, it’s kind of hard not to want to defend your superheroes tooth and nail when someone insults them. Even if it’s because of a stock photo of a shark like in the Aquaman Poster by Marvel.

Truth be told, It’s not like the real stars of the movie could be submerged in a body of water with live sharks. Aside from stock photography or CGI, which begs the question; what choice did the poster designers really have?

That said, I think what the real issue is, is that this is a huge movie with a huge studio budget, and the inclusion of a stock photo makes you wonder if they cut corners anywhere else in the film.

I took this Picture while drawing inspiration for this assignment at O’conell street.

The name of the statue is The O’conell Monument.The O'Connell monument was erected after a subscription list was opened in 1862. Two years later a competition was announced but none of the entries met with the approval of the committee. The monument is in three parts, surmounted by the figure of O'Connell. The base is heavy limestone with four winged figures representing Patriotism, Fidelity, Courage and Eloquence.

The image you see above is the image of a Church known as the Holy Cross Catholic Church, Dundrum. The Church is located in Dundrum townland, on the main street of the town of Dundrum, County Dublin.

For Catholics the town of Dundrum was originally part of the large county Dublin parish of Booterstown, sometimes referred to as “Booterstown, Blackrock and Dundrum”. The original Catholic Chapel at the town of Dundrum was dedicated in 1837. This small chapel was then demolished and replaced with a larger building in 1879, the architect was G.C. Ashlin. Soon after this Booterstown parish was split, with Dundrum being the new parish church of a separate parish.

When one opens a Coke, one “opens happiness.” At least according to Coca-Cola. For me Joy is every time the sun is out, and I burst open my favourite Italian sparkling drink Sanpellegrino.

Sanpellgrino also known as S.Pellegrino is an Italian natural mineral water brand, owned by the company Sanpellegrino S.p.A, part of Swiss company Nestlé since 1997. The principal production plant is located in San Pellegrino Terme in the Province of Bergamo, Lombardy, Italy, at 358 metres above sea level.

I took this picture on a somewhat sunny day in Howth with my best friend from Uganda Clare. This was her first-time visiting Howth. She had a really bad morning that day and so after class I decided help her escape the sad thoughts by visiting somewhere she had never been and what’s better than fish and chips on a sad day? For me, it’s Sanpellgrino and lots of laughter.

My poster for this assignment was inspired mainly by the art behind hip hop posters.

As you can see most of the posters above show different aspects of the culture or different images that can be linked the hip hop culture.

The street style can be seen as a similar aspect for all the posters shared here...One of the elements that is common in terms of typography through all of the posters above is Caligraphy.

According to Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Opinion, Takashi Murakami(2021) Back in 2018, hip hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs made headlines after spending $21.1 million on Kerry James Marshall’s painting Past Times. The main reason this attracted so much attention? It was the most expensive piece of artwork in history to be sold by a living African-American artist.However, this isn’t the only reason the purchase was such a landmark moment. It also highlighted the strength of the relationship between hip hop and art, with Diddy being the latest rap star to build a bridge between the two mediums. It wasn’t always this way, but after a lengthy and fascinating journey, art has become a central part of hip hop culture as we know it.

In its infancy, hip hop was largely about marginalized groups using music to deliver messages regarding identity and empowerment, breaking the hegemony that corporations and governments had over public narratives. Hip hop has always had plenty in common with street art in this sense. Both were (and still are) mediums allowing individuals to communicate sociopolitical messages in a creative way. It is, therefore, no surprise that these two forms have crossed over a lot through the years.

My design for this project is majorly inspired by Jay Z as an artist and his production company ROC-NATION

In most of his videos Jay Z will be seen lighting up a cigar. He is also always seen in a custom suit which is what inspires the abstract backdrop of my design.

I have used Adobe InDesign to create my poster where I chose red, black and white as the theme colours inspired by the theme colours of the ROC-NATION brand

The fonts chosen for this design include:

Minion Pro, Viner Hand ITC, Matura MT Script Capitals, Adobe Hebrew &

Minion Variable Concept.

 ­­­The design tools used to create this poster include:

Frame tool-To insert the bar code and the backdrop abstract image

Text tool-To add the fonts

This should come as no surprise. The ubiquity of Helvetica in graphic design is well known and understandable; as a clean, simple and enduring typeface, it’s always a safe choice. Helvetica has a straight, even and machined look to it, an aesthetic that makes it neutral and adaptable for many different purposes. This is reflected by the type of influential companies that use it: Toyota, Target, BMW, General Motors and American Apparel.

To start off my creative thinking process-This worksheet serveD two purposes; to get me to attempt using Photoshop for image creation, and to get me thinking creatively about design briefs and using basic elements.

I kept my designs very simple for this assignment as I wanted to challenge myself to create abstract pieces that are inspired by simple geometric shapes to create art.

Wow! so here’s to me finally feeling ready and inspired to take up this assignment. One of the things I’ve enjoyed is the depth approach to different types of visual designs by other artists and designers like me.

For this assignment, I will be critiquing a piece of  3D rendered design which is basically a Photo-Realistic 3D CGI Animations of a space and how it will look once completed.

I am choosing to critique this piece of design firstly, because 3D rendering design is fast becoming the future of designing spaces a lot of architects and interior designers are using this design to make their clients visions of their spaces come to life. They are now creating 3D rendered folios to show their clients the quality of their work. The best thing about this renderings is that they can offer a more realistic presentation of the item being displayed in an artistic way.

WHERE IT BEGAN…

It is important for us to think of postwar America, and what often comes to mind is a white, heterosexual family, pictured in a domestic suburban environment. You can tell this family lives in the suburbs because there’s a lawn in the background, a tree framed in a picture window and a swimming pool glimmering behind a glass wall.

In that era, the indoor-outdoor look didn’t just sell things that suburban houses required It also sold an illusion and as housewares manufacturer Revere Copper and Brass put it in a 1942 said’ “A home was “no mere space bounded by walls and divided into rooms, but a way of life to keep pace with your needs, to change with your tastes, to grow with your means.”

After the end of World War II, real estate developers began planning and promoting open and spacious suburbs on a mass scale as an alternative to the unsanitary and overcrowded industrial city. Soon enough, it became possible for a number of reasons: first, farmland was relatively inexpensive, and often no longer needed for agriculture. Second, the war effort had led to the rise of new construction methods, based on standardization and prefabrication that considerably cut down building costs. Finally, the poor state of the existing housing stock and the growing population led the federal government to invest in new developments, especially by subsidizing mortgages for veterans and young couples, which underwrote “white flight,” as increasing numbers of white families moved from cities to suburbs.

WHERE WE ARE NOW/FUTURE OF DESIGN…

As I look at this piece of design here, I can’t help but think of how far the world of design has come. Case in point; windows. Post-war, they were an essential fixture to protect interiors from weather and unwanted intrusions but in mid-century ads. They became a way to frame the outer world and transport it inside, as seen in this beautiful picture.

If the outdoors was the perfect setting for leisure activity such as; barbecues, picnics, and parties big window frames let these visions penetrate the domestic environment.

The indoor-outdoor relationship has played a critical role in many of the most influential societies throughout human history, in meeting the physical needs of humanity as well as pleasing aesthetic desires.