Yusaaa

So I keep exploring the idea of making origami phone stands. After I made my last prototype I found the information I sketched on it goes too much that make it sort of overwhelmed and messy. So I decided to rethink and reorganize the content that goes on the stand.

I feel it’s more related to package design, so I did some researches and found this image:

Above Image: Designed by Yunyeen Yong, Australia (student), for the company brand Jooze, http://www.packagingoftheworld.com/2010/09/jooze-student-work.html

It is rather inspiring to see how the forms are used as advantages to simplify a concept but remain its clear expression, and its visual aesthetic is appealing, its fruit juice topic helped me to immediately build a strong visual language for my own work. After seeing this image I realized that words are quite unnecessary as long as I build a strong visual image which would tell the story of its own. I will still put on some words about GMT as intro but I’ll integrate the instruction to the visual part, in other words, the instruction will be the image itself.

Initially I was attempting to also applies the identity of fruit as the appearance of  the stand, as it directly correspond to the theme of our event. But then it’s hard to integrate the GMT concept so I decided to draw a person who is doing FaceTime with his/her friends instead.

Compare to doing sketches on a piece of paper I found it easier and more distinct to do the draft directly on the prototype as it shows how the final would look like. It works bit of different from flat sketches so mistakes are easier to be detected and adjusted during its processing.

This is how my second prototype look like:

I used markers and color pencils to do the test drawing, they are very handy to me.

I am extremely glad that I chose hand drawing rather than digital means to test with my idea as problems and new inspiration kept happening so whenever I finished part of the drawing on flat version I went back to its three-dimensional version to check that everything goes ok. And I greatly enjoyed the process because hand drawing helps me to relax, and since I hadn’t touched my marker  throughout this semester the feeling of familiar and intimate rushed to me again.

Overall, I’m very satisfied with what I currently have done, and I think it is a successful prototype, I guess my next step is to adjust some details to make it more corresponding to our fruit theme, and perhaps applied with digital drawings. The illustration looks cute but childish so I’m also planing to use a more matured style to do it.

And Stand !!!

Week 11 – 05/10

On our team discussion (Me, Katherine and Nichol. Tristan you really need to show up!!! :P) on last Friday, we sort of moved forward with our idea of printed instruction booklet to somewhat more specific adjustment. We intended to produce limited editions with hand drawn illustrations on the booklet. The reason is because:

1. 100+copies need more paper and this could potentially cause paper waste, reducing the number could reduce the waste too (We don’t know if others would keep their copies or not). 40+ copies should be fine.

2. It saves money from print! (And if we use risograph it’s hard to tell if we have access to print 100+ copies)

3. Limited editions encourage people to share with others! 🙋

Hand drawn is another idea which can integrate our whole team to work collaboratively rather than only one person to do it. Also it gives each copy personality and characteristic – making them more unique. (Undetermined)

We also discussed about using recycle paper or find paper that we don’t use.

However, we’re facing a main problem – What should we do with the content itself? We still have no idea about it. What should we draw? and what should we say about GMT to quickly get others to understand our concept? We are little bit stuck again. (BTW I don’t really fancy the prototype I drew last week, it’s too “instructional” and sort of lose its “poetic nature” (Andy Simionato 2016))

So we talked about this with April in this week’s workshop. She suggested that we can extend our idea of producing planar artifact to make something three-dimensional, a sculpture for example, because it seems there are no decorations on the table but for typical picnic people like to put on something like flowers to embellish the atmosphere, and we can find reusable wastes to make some, with the GMT ideas behind.

April’s words really inspired me to rethink the form of our instruction. Although I like the concept of using found objects to make artifact, I personally feel it’s rather hard to execute. So I thought if there is an easier way which I can put function and instruction together into one form. I suddenly had a spark of making paper stands which as well illustrated introduction about GMT!!!✨

So I immediately start doing some rapid prototypes by following tutorial videos on how to make origami phone stands I found on Youtube, Here are some photos:

I made three as I wanna test the difference with each stand. Thanks to my housemate Cecilia, she borrowed me her three iPhones with different types, which is really important that I didn’t notice because I required them only for taking photos. Then I found one of them (the right one in second photo) doesn’t work for iPhone 5c because of its round corners; the stand can’t hold the phone as they make it slide down. Another reason is that the phone doesn’t has an protect case. 

Then I compared the other two stands and decide to pick the one with a triangle hole. Because it stands more stable than the left one and it supports both horizontal and vertical position for phones, while others can only support horizontal. 

Then I started to sketch on it to see how can I place text and illustrations on it:

I became rather exciting after doing so, as the angular form provides me a very fresh experience on my illustration challenges, and it looks fun! I think it’s good to introduce a little bit about our concept on the side of the stand and encourage them to put their phones on it by friendly tips. And a candy🍬 can be placed in the triangle hole as a friendly invitation. 

What’s more about it is that the stand can be folded to easily take away. So it’s convenient for anyone who wanna keep it for later use, this ingeniously avoid it being a waste after the event. 

This is how it looks in flat version. My next step is to focus on designing its layout, creating illustrations to maximize its beautiful look so people would be more welling to keep it. My plan is to finish them before next Thursday so I can  have them ready-to-print with risograph. 

Reference:

Easy Origami, Origami: Origami Phone Stand/Holder, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohVN2Yd0c-Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F4EN2lFP24

Paper Folds - Origami & Crafts!, Origami Paper Smart/Mobile/Cell Phone stand - Iphone/Samsung/ all brands and devices!!

After a short consultation with Andy on last Friday (unfortunately i was the only one presented so I need to reinform my team about what’s going on), our team sort of alter our aim which we were supposed to introduce uses of technology in organic means – using FaceTime/Skype to share our experience on the actual event with others, so as to expand our community, into some thing more practical. 

What was suggested is to frame our idea into actual actions, and with our core concept of bringing people together by the positive means of phones/pads, what is more important than to simply set up stands is to really communicate with the focus on doing same things altogether in one specific moment. So finally we decided to leave it to our cohort to decide whether they gonna do it or not, our team will just concentrating on the method we convey this concept.

 So what we have now is planning to design a printed piece with some instructions and illustrations on it. Since Andy has seen some of my artworks on Bechance he suggested we can really use our strength to make contributions, as for me, I could use my drawing skills to do the illustration part and my team members could work with the content and structure of the whole printed matter.  We still need to discuss more about the details later in this week.

And we got a sketch prototype of what the final print may look like. We were thinking of doing folded zines with probably a phone appearance? And because there will be a chance of using risograph in week 12 we planed to finish the work before that day.  

Ask Me Anything - Final process and Reflection

I think I’ll just summarize the experience from the very beginning so that look more organized. 

When I first heard of this project I just felt like myself became a big question mark that I totally had no idea what it is about and how I am gonna do it. This really made one feel panic once, especially when you are asked to attempt to contact top designers who you just feel you would never get feedback from. My immediate thought was just to give up and simply interview one of my friend as the alternative of been brave to talk to those famous. Fortunately I just got social contacts with the illustrator, Lisk Feng, who I’ve admired for a long time, and because she newly followed me on (Chinese) twitter just few days before the project start I believed I have a pretty great chance to get her yes for the interview so I just send her a request and soon she indeed replied me with the answer I expected.

However, I was bit of hurry that after I got the confirmation from her in the morning of Monday.  In Tuesday’s workshop Andy and Bronwyn asked us to create a list of five creatives and suggested us to try from the top one, and everyone was preparing for their email draft. I then felt rather ashamed for giving up so early that I even haven’t try to challenge myself to push the boundaries. I decided to redo my list and at least I would like to have a try with my top one creative - Tim Walker - a famous British fashion photographer.

Unfortunately I could’t find any contact details straight to Tim Walker except an email address of his agent, which usually took a long time to get replies. No Facebook, no twitter, no Instagram and no Tumblr shortcuts to approach him. That then made me resolved to focus on researching and preparing questions for lisk only.

Since I know Lisk from many years ago it was easy to do researches about her. I don’t really have common questions on how she processes her work or where she gets her inspiration from because I’ve seen the answers within her books or in her previous interviews. I am more interested in her person, her experiences on the career, how she grow to be stronger and the way she views herself. I want to know more about herself rather than simply asking about her creative process. Based on this curiosity I came out with my final 7 questions. And I already decided to present them in the form of a A5 zine because I have grown a strong interests on it recently. 

After got her answers I started to experimenting with my first attempt in layout designs. Here is some photos of my initial samples of the zine:

Except some common mistakes related to inadequate print setting, such as problems with the upside down double prints, order and size mistakes, there are also some problems with the designs itself that I realized after the consultation with Bronwyn and Andy.

As Bronwyn said the cover is just not of the artist’s style, which feels more like for a fashion designer and it’s hard for audience to link it to Lisk’s illustrations, the back cover is not good either as the font is not suitable. She also pointed out that there may not appears too many frames as Lisk doesn’t use much of that style and suggest me to try with more free styles of framing. The pink squares and fragments should be consider to delete as they are meaningless at all and I should focus on more on the font choices rather than adding unrelated elements to the pages. Andy also suggest me to delete unnecessary decoration and be aware of the space so it won’t appear visually too “crowded”.

To summarize that, the purpose of the design is to clearly establish and promote the artist’s style but avoid adding distractions or meaningless elements, so it should be fully planned and I need to learn to keep a balance between objective description and subjective creativity in manipulating the artist’s work. Everything sound clear now, but how am I going to deal with it?

After a short excitement in this morning for finally getting answers from Lisk I started to plan the layouts of my zine immediately!

As I haven’t done any layout designs for a publication purpose before, although I’ve done some researches and sketched some rough ideas, I decide to put essential elements on the pages as my first step, then to consider where exactly they go. I think that will be easier for me to control. 

There are few things I really need to think about:

1) How should I present her personality through her works, and typography?

2) How can I manipulate her works with greatest flexibility without losing respect? How can I keep the balance in between?

3) How should I deal with the text to emphasize the main ideas of her interview, and set up clear hierarchy so it won’t confuse the audiences? 

Some sketches

I found it rather enjoyable to design an interview presentation for an artist you really admire :)

By the way, I have drafted seven questions for Lisk and told her she have choices between picking up five that she like to answer or just simply answer all of them. She kindly chose the latter and then it was my turn to pick which ones to go into the presentation. I just feel so happy to see her answer them all even though two extras won’t appear in the final but they still very worthy to inspire me. 

My questions are:

1)  Some artists think drawing is supposed to be a happy process, while others think arts is produced from pain, what kind of mindset do you think an artist should keep when they are in the creative process?

2) How do you think of yourself as a creative?

3) You have mentioned in previous interviews that your first year in MICA was particularly difficult, can you describe the experience?

4) What advice can you give to young creatives?

5) What does drawing mean to you?

6) What are the most interesting things you have encountered in your career?

The good side about this assignment was that it provided a platform for our students to share, communicate and reflect our on ideas on the process throughout the course, as well as a great place to gather relative sources and information where really helped me to broaden my horizons. However, it also stressed me. As a non-English speaker for a while I’d been rather nervous and panic from posting and I used to kind of wanna escape from it because I am not really that kind of person who is keen on sharing personal experience and thought on a public place, where everyone can see it. I prefer to have them as a personal journal or something like that (I’m not complaining but simply state what I’ve been experienced). But on the other hand, it forced me to envisage my introversion, learn to communicate with others through blogs. It was also an external force to push and keep me moving forward in regards to researches about the things we learned from both lectures and workshops, and a good channel to improve my English!