Lilian Lee | Koha

What was your favourite aspect of the project?

My favourite aspect of the project was definitely working with Marie. We flowed and vibed really well and it was always like a good time working with her and am really proud and happy with what we came up with.  

I also really like how we got to create something like a neighbours day. I think it’s really important because personally myself I don’t really know any of my neighbours and if something happened like an emergency I would like to know that someone would be looking out for my family and I. I think this is probably my second favourite project out of the four we have done. Puna was my favourite haha.

Your biggest learning?

Biggest learning would have to be to make more iterations. And not just like little changed but more like different concepts of the same idea. I think that was what we were lacking a bit.

And definitely changing it up. If you’re getting stuck change it up. Change what you’re doing with your partner. When working with a partner, it is important to work together and have a say and to contribute to all of the items that you have to design and create. I think it was super helpful and super important and for Marie and I to have swapped what we were doing with the poster and website. Because that gave up something new to look at with fresh eyes and helped us elevate what we had done.

I think another biggest learning is visual communication. I think we were all caught up with the idea of the actual event, rather than visually communicating what it was going to be like. I think that’s what caught us up. We didn’t really look back at at all the matrix ideas and lists that we had of everything in a neighbourhood I think we were too caught up in the idea of lego and lego being lego. So I think really just trying to visually communicate our idea on the poster and website. Whether, that just be the smallest details of literally everyone coming together, or the logo of the words, visually communicating what it is saying. 

What would you change or do differently?

If I could I would want to work on the layout of the website. I think I could have done a better job. For the first home page I would want the lego minifigures to be clickable and possible have like a blurb about each of the neighbours. Like a little story because I think that would be interesting and A LOT of people were trying to click on the mini figurines on the home page. Maybe like a stories of people’s experience of having a connect the street day, and saying how well it went and how it benefit them and their neighbourhood and community. People like to know how things went, and if it was successful and if they read that they are more likely to make that event happen. 

I would have also wanted to explore more. I think we were playing it safe at the start and didn’t really actually explore much of the poster and of lego until near the end. I think we had a massive improvement and change since our first poster. It looks completely different. 

Rationale

Connect the Street is an event involving the coming together of people in a neighbourhood through the concept of connecting lego mini figure pieces. Our rhetorical approach is the use of Lego and how the purpose of the nostalgic toy is physically connecting pieces together.  To extend our target audience, the recognisable toy is something most people will know, potentially making more people intrigued to attend the event. The Lego pieces, specifically the Lego Mini Figures, represent the literal connections between each piece and figurative connections between people coming together. The purpose within our event is to find the corresponding pieces of your mini figure given to everyone on your street prior to the event. Through creating conversation and an objective to achieve within the event, it creates a purpose as well as being relevant to our rhetorical approach. The growth of our narrative shows the different stages of putting lego pieces together throughout our transmedia project. Overall, we wanted a fun and exciting event which we showed in our colourful vector style and in the layout of our website and poster. Our third item of an app allows for the purpose of being prepared for an emergency to continue through by having the neighbourhood contact details which is obtained in an exciting form.

Poster

Desktop Link

https://xd.adobe.com/view/721d8592-a96b-41f6-6a7d-6ba6b715be55-042c/

Mobile Link

https://xd.adobe.com/view/fd8ca8aa-960c-4d7a-5c73-9526387ae235-8bbd/

Connect the Street Application

Week 12.1

We changed our whole look of the website, in terms of our logo and other things. This is the before....

This is the progression of it, with the new logo, new banner slides, new home page layout and how each page also turned out differently as well. A LOT of progression on the last week. 

Also started and finished the mobile as soon as I finished the web as it made more sense to do so. 

Week 11.1 | Interim Presentation

After the interim presentation, we had positive feedback from the animation for the app video that Marie made which was awesome! However, we were both struggling on the poster and website. At the end of the class we decided to switch mediums. I passed the poster on to Marie, and Marie passed the website to me. Because we were both stuck we needed to just look and work on something else and this way, we both had input on the website and posters which I think was a really good idea from Marie. 

What I learnt from this was that, your partner is there for a reason to help and to do things together and it’s a team effort and its important that we both get to have input and get to work on all the things within the project. Excluding the animation app as that is Marie’s baby ahaha. 

Week 11.2 | Refinement

We got feedback saying that we should try make the poster look like an actual connection. We are saying that its connect the street, but the actual logo itself, is not connected. We also got feedback saying how can we show something, without actually telling. How can we make it simple yet effect. We have the ideas, but are not exploring it to the full extent. 

With that we played on different ideas of connecting blocks and that in turn changed out stylistic approach from the loose drawings to a more calculated stylistic approach as shown below. 

Week 10.1

In the lecture we got introduced to Adobe Xd, the programme in which we are using to prototype our website. For the studio time in class, we created photo prototypes on Xd and started making wireframes as well. I’m quite excited to try it out because its fun looking.

After the three touch-points session last week, our posters changed and we showed what we had come up with since then.

It made sense the idea of wanting it to be like there is a missing lego piece, if you have it come together and we will put the pieces together and make the full mini figure, and it also talks about the idea of like telling them that if there is someone missing in their neighbourhood its like a preparation for that?

But I guess because it was so like pastiche, and kind of in a way too serious? And that it didn’t really fit in with lego. And we want it to be kind of light hearted and fun that it just didn’t work.  It just didn’t fit with what we were going for. So we decided to change them again.  

What I learn was even though it didn’t work, at least we tried it. I think it’s important to try out everything, even if it may not seem right, or even if it doesn’t work out in the end it’s better that you didn’t rather than not and not knowing if it worked or not. It’s good to keeping pushing it no matter what. 

Week 10.2

Week 9.1 | Interim Presentation

In class we had our interim presentation. Marie and I worked on three different concepts; Lego, Guess who? - Doors interpretation and Connect Four

For the actual presentation we showed only the connect four and guess who - door interpretation, however I during and after the presentation I thought that  we should also show the Lego one as that was, I think, stronger than the other two. 

I think what I learnt from the presentation, is to not limit ourselves, even if we were suppose to only show just two concepts. The presentation is to show what you have done so far, and what you are thinking about doing and if you’re unsure on which direction you wanna go, just show everything, because you’re better off having that option and knowing if its good or bad, rather than not knowing at all. 

I think it was a good decision, as LEGO was the one that was chosen out of the three of them, as it was a “game” that everyone of all ages recognised, and it’s also not a game where it limits the amount of people who can play, and at the end everyone is a winner, no one looses, which is what you want a happy and safe environment that people would like to attend. People who helped us critique also gave us some more ideas to push the concept even further.

Week 9.2

In class we did a touchpoint matrix. 

Week 8.1

In class we showed all of our little thumbnails to a group of people. 

We also tried to narrow down our concept of what we are trying to say, and how we were going to say it to actually convince people to come to our neighbours day event. What makes it so unique and so enticing? 

We were a bit stuck on what aspect/how we were going to approach the idea of neighbours day so Marie and I did a lot of brainstorming about games and came up with a couple of different ideas to bring a long next class to show the teachers. 

I think its really helpful working as a team, you have other people to come up with ideas with and two brains are better than one so why not you know. 

Week 8.2

In class we showed up with our four different stylised concepts to show to the lecturers for feedback and too see which ones we should keep pushing to show for interim next week, next lesson. 

Week 7.1 In class we got given our brief under the Pōwhiri framework of Koha where we have to create a three piece transmedia project talking about the topic of fundraising for the Old Wellington Town Hall, or a Neighbours Day to talk about emergency preparedness. 

We were given a Simpsons task where we had to create a poster for a character to persuade them to come. It was really interesting and really made me think about what would cater each character due to their personalities as well as their interests and how difficult it would be to cater everyone to come, in terms of style and the way you aim to go with the project. 

Ned Flanders x Arts Concert 

Homer Simpson x Neighbours Day

Comic Book Guy x Neighbours Day

Week 7.2 We also did random input of words after brainstorming all the words that associated with our topic, that we also did in Ihi Wehi. It was really helpful going through that again and using that tactic to create interesting rhetoric visuals that could work well and grab the target audiences attention.  

What I created below was the combination of two random words that we brainstormed together in class for the Neighbours Day ‘Sausage x Emergency Blanket’.

Aim: To develop an explicit understanding of how a visual rhetorical concept can be implemented across multiple platforms

Overview: Koha This project responds to aspects of koha. It takes ideas of gift, of reciprocity and exchange and examines how design/art can contribute to wider community networks. Koha is a gift freely given. How can you acknowledge your clients or your collaborators or communities you have worked with through your creative work? How can you cement and nurture ongoing relationships through giving something back or giving something away (whether that be a physical object, or your time or expertise)? How might you celebrate the outcomes for all parties involved?

Design is not decoration but strategy.

Project Brief: Working in pairs your task is to develop a trans-media campaign that promotes and facilitates a community event. This will involve designing a website, poster and a 3rd informative Open format item. The event website resource page will include a range of promotional material that can be downloaded by individuals in order to initiate their own community event.

Trans-media > creating content that engages an audience using various techniques across multiple forms of media. Importantly, these pieces of content are not only linked together visually, but are also part of a narrative that conceptually evolves in response to each other.

Specifics:

1. Webhub Platform Format

You will design a website and prototype it. It will utilise the visual rhetorical concept you develop and be an integrated touch-point in your trans-media design strategy. You will need to make two prototypes for a website. One to show the desktop layout and one to show the mobile layout. It should have at least 3 pages. The website will promote THE event. It may also be used, at a later time, by another group for their event, so your project becomes an exemplar of event material. Optional >You may wish to continue and use HTML to code the site.

Content Use existing copy from the main topic websites provided. This can be edited or modified as you see fit.

Home page Image + type solution > may include gif or video Objective > to engage and motivate / call to action / encourages further exploration

Resource page containing:

2. Poster

Some content provided, topped up by you, with the main heading and subheading tailored as part of your strategic response. Scale – A2 ( to be used on the street, in cafes and shop notice boards > you decide how this would be used based on your event). Objective > to engage and motivate, inform

3. Flyer / open format