NicoleCommDes

ASSESSMENT 1 - ‘HELLO MY QUESTION IS…’                                    PROGRESS, FEEDBACK (WORKSHOP 5) AND REFLECTION.

Get ready for a long ass post (sorry in advance to anyone who reads this lol) but here’s my final outcome for Comm. Design’s first assignment with my question…

WHY DO WE LET DESIGN INFLUENCE US?

Just like my previous post for Week 3 - March 21st, I wanted to ask why humans allow ourselves to have different perceptions about something, due to the way its presented aka designed. This concept that design and designers are ’manipulative’ stemmed from my first lecture of Comm. Design (if my memory serves me right). One of the lecturers presenting (I think it was Andy ??) told everyone in the room that “designers are manipulators”; which to me, was a take on design that I hadn’t heard before. But it made sense because now thinking about it… good designers know how to create an effective and visual experience, to change the target audience’s behavior towards a narrative.

Therefore, my final materials included every-day items throughout my life where I know their design has influenced me to use or buy them. Hence why I chose packaged drink and snacks, my skincare and beauty products, childhood books and DVD’s as well as magazines and catalogs.

I arranged and photographed my letters one by one and took them on four A3 paper sheets that I tape together because I did not have any large white fabric to use as a background. After that phase, I would Photoshop my letters together, colour corrected the grey-ness of my paper and abused all the healing tools and stamp tool to get any lines and creases out of the way.

WORKSHOP 5 FEEDBACK:

By the time it was the day of my week 5 workshop (same day as due date!), our class shared each other’s WIP or final outcomes and gave feedback. I presented my WIP with the screenshot below, where I was in the middle of just slapping all my letters down and beginning to play with spacing between letters and words. Within my smaller group that we were randomised in, my classmates said that they liked what I had so far but agreed with me that I should further work on my spacing as words/letters, specifically how ‘WE LET’ looked like one word at that moment.

Bailey also commented on my work, where she said that my ‘W’s in my ‘WHY’ and ‘WE’ were a bit repetitive in terms of positioning which I actually didn’t notice-ish. I knew something looked strange whenever I looked at the entire composition but couldn’t figure out why, so that criticism was really helpful! She also suggested for me think about the structure of my words and liked how the white background gives the composition a ‘punchy’ feeling.

REFLECTION:

Overall, I think I did a decent effort for this assessment and liked how the end product looked; the simplicity of it and especially really drastic contract between the colours of my materials and the white background.

However, there are some things that I wished I changed or tried. 

I fixed the ‘W’ repetition problem, but I only realised I had accidentally made repetition again with the ‘N’s in ‘DESIGN’ and ‘NCE’ from ‘INFLUENCE’ after I had submitted my assignment so that annoyed me :/  Especially since I had this other layout with all the words aligned to the left, where there isn’t ‘noticeable’ repetition as shown below. The only reason I didn’t choose this layout instead was because I felt that the alignment in the center had more of an impact (?).

Kinda wished I experimented with background colours (I chose white because I wanted a strong focus on the colours and packaging of my items). Although I like the contrast the white background gives off, I feel as if it’s too strong on the eyes maybe?? I also wished I had used stronger lightning to create more cast shadows on my objects which some of them had and gave off more depth to the composition.

I also think it would of been more playful if I had more decorative elements to this poster or took advantage of my materials more. Like maybe letting the liquid from the bottles leaking out onto the page as well or even similarly with smearing the food or skincare stuff to emphasise the product.

(COMMUNICATION DESIGN STUDIES RELATED):

Work in Progress (WIP) - Antoni Gaudi Zine

One of my questions relate to how Gaudi’s work is unique and different and for that, I wanted to visually answer that through his ‘Park Guell’ design. This park includes a multi coloured lizard mosaic which can be found at the main entrance. I found the vibrant colours and intricate tile work very eye catching and one of a kind - thinking what other park do you know that has mosaics? let alone a giant 3D mosaic of a lizard. 

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Therefore, I knew I wanted to incorporate something similar in honor of him. I initially thought having it sprawled across the page would be very eye catching and interesting, similarly to how it looks in real life. So here are my first few designs:

In terms of the colours for the lizard, I didn’t want to completely replicate the lizard from Gaudi’s one for different reasons. Bailey mentioned to not completely mimic the aesthetic or style and to put your own twist on it so I changed it up however it still shares the similar eye catching quality and feel. Another point is, that colour is a very important aspect to Antoni and can be seen across all his works. Although it was the Casa Batllo that also inspired my colour choice. The Casa Batllo I’d have to say is one of my personal favourites as the variety of colours makes me feel this certain way. As corny as it may sound, I find this design so magical and dreamlike, when I look at it I feel as if I’m in some sort of fairytale. Therefore I have aimed to combine his other unique works such as the Casa Batllo within his Park Guell design through the lizard as a visual way of answering the question.

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The background is a photo of one of the walkways within the Park Guell - I did this in hope to give all the information and lizard more context. However in doing this, the text got lost among the background so I then played around with white and black tints and making the text colour contrast. Overall I was happy with the layout until I did some more reflecting as I felt something was off about it. Thinking from a general perspective, I realized that if I was to read all the information, that I’d like to see more images of Gaudi’s work or some sort of other visual aid to support and complement what is written. So I looked into further refinement ideas to address this, here is what I came up with:

After this, I still wasn’t completely satisfied, I felt the pictures were a good addition however in another way it also looked as if it was almost just squashed in at the last second and that it didn’t really flow or connect in with the rest of the design layout.

I went away for a bit, days later I decided to take another approach towards this idea and design, as what I had currently just wasn’t working for me, something was missing. I knew I wanted to keep the lizard design in terms of the visuals and I knew I wanted to find a way of using the lizard among pictures of some of Gaudi’s other work. 

New idea/concept: I thought to place the lizard on a log outline and to then have his tail wrap around as a way to divide all the pictures within the log.

Here is how I went about creating this idea:

As you can see I went through a lot of random steps and techniques to try and make it all work😅. But here is the final outcome for this question:

Finished Zine!!

I can’t believe I actually managed to finish! This zine, though fun, literally has consumed my life for the past few weeks, always at the back of my head. This has definitely been the most time I’ve spent on an assignment and it was the best feeling finally getting to vacuum all the tiny bits of paper on my floor and clear away my magazines haha.

There’s quite a bit I’ve changed since last time I uploaded. After receiving feedback from Bailey that my text was quite un-Dada, looking more like a magazine, I spiced it up by using random (and some ugly) alternating typefaces for each paragraph, to make them look as if they were different bits of text cut from a newspaper, a method used by many Dadaists. I also highlighted/underlined/circled important words with my primary colour scheme, giving the words more personality.

I decided to stick to a red, cursive type for my interview questions to give it more contrast from the rest of the pages with its elegant appearance, and enlarged my question numbers to give them more hierarchy.

Making the rest of my zine pages was challenging. Having to adhere to the nonsensical/humorous/weird/chaotic aesthetic of Dada, as well as relating my collages to my questions, as well as creating layouts that still had some structure and thoughtful design choices, was a lot to juggle. I had to think about each element of my designs extremely carefully. After a while, I started to stray from Dada and forgot to fully emulate its style, instead kind of just making collages with no style. I also started to lose creativity and found it hard to come up with ideas from my magazines. There were times where I spent hours doing things that would usually take 15 minutes. With all these slumps, I found that detaching myself from the zine and looking at other existing designs, whether that be Dada art, general designs, or zine designs, proved to be really beneficial in re-inspiring me with new ideas and a fresh perspective. Taking a break away from the zine and coming back to it another a day was also useful.

After learning all about the importance of colour in my colour & info class, I decided to stick to primary colours. Limiting my colour palette was a really good choice, where my pages altogether have a sense of harmony. As my pages have quite a lot going on, limiting my colours helped make them more digestible to view. It was however quite hard having to find specific things to collage with the added limitation of colour. Most of the time I overcame this by looking deep into my magazines, but other times I physically coloured in objects, like the red shoe on question two, or added in coloured paper, like the windows on the second last page.

Once I had all my draft pages ready, I spent yesterday sticking everything permanently down and fixing things I was wanting to change to the pages, such as rearranging layouts, adding more hand drawn aspects, changing my interviewer typeface, using the same yellow coloured paper etc. It was much easier to refine and improve my pages when I already had their general appearances figured out, where I found it a lot harder to start my pages from nothing, as more ideation was required.

FINISHED ZINE (Ask Me Anything!)

I was going to wait to upload these until I got all my posts up in chronological order, but I figure I may as well get this up and start fresh afterwards. I know, what a mess. Can you feel my struggle through the screen? Thank you next Miss ‘Rona, I will not miss you next semester. 

Now to discuss the actual Zine… 

In choosing a significant and influential figure in design, I chose none other than THE David Hockney. His contributions to art and design have always been a huge source of inspiration from me, especially his never ending curiosity into the next best thing (eg. the obsession with digital art and the use of technology in advancing art). However, I didn’t want to just interview Hockney as himself because he is still a living artist, and he can therefore speak for himself. I chose to look through some of his older work, as I was also interested in art pop. I remembered his “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” from 1972 and looked into the ideas behind the portrait. Turns out, the painting is packed full with insight to a time nearing the end of Pop Art, and a commentary on the difference between his upbringing in England and the decadence of California’s lifestyle. I thought this was really poignant, and despite its fun and playful personality, left a lot unsaid within the painting itself. 

I then decided I would interview the figure from the painting to add another layer to the understanding of the piece. I wanted to give the figure some of their humanity back, and explore the way Pop Art was experienced for a young person at the time. I aimed to centre the figure on a life that honours Hockney’s (such as his sexuality, his affinity for America and the mediums he used to express these things), and discuss the attraction of the figure to Pop Art through their experiences in California. The metaphor of the swimming pool being a world of luxury and experience that the figure had yet to ever ‘dive’ into was the idea behind the whole project, which I think is communicated in the interview.