OUGD405: Design Process - Photoshop - Postcard Task

Research Post | Design Context

Based on my research post, I've been experimenting into apature shapes, to manipulate lights which are out of focus, creating my chosen shape, the triangle. You can see below that I've created a lens cap, with a triangle cut out in it, much like the one which you can see on my design context blog. 

Above you can see the lens a cap and a text image, which I created by turning the back light up on my keyboard, on my MacBook Pro, and turning out all the other lights in the room to make them more prominent. I hope to apply this in some images which I will take around LCA before the semester is over, on the 14th.

Above is an example of one of the few photos I've taken today, prior to my camera dying on me, as you can see i've applied the bokeh technique, and created some wonderful images with the light manipulation. However, without anything in focus, in the foreground, the images look rather unprofessional  in my opinion - like I'm unable to focus a camera properly. So, I intend to find something which I can put in the foreground of my images, to give a subject, which would be the main focus of the postcard. However, these would be in the background, or foreground, of the image to keep the theme of 'the triangle'.

Prior to this, I also had taken some photographs around college, which will also be used in this task, you can see them below in the contact sheet provided.

Using this, and my research on some very simplistic, minimalistic postcard designs, I began to make the postcards, for print. I used the method seen in the bottom of another Photoshop Workshop post.

This is the back side of all my postcards, I found this works better, and keeps the postcards as a set, rather than random images collected together. I also think that the bokeh works very well in a low opacity, and adds a nice warming touch to the back of the postcard. To the left of the image, there is a black grey space for the person whom would be sending the postcard to write, or draw, whatever pleases them. Overlaying the bokeh image are 5 lines for the address and a 20x25mm box, for a stamp.

Above, in contact-sheet form, you can see the five images I've selected for the front of the postcard. I used the same grey for the back of the card as a boarder for the front of the card, which i created using a  grey overlay, and then vector masking the part of the image which I wished to be transparent, allowing the photograph to show through. 

OUGD404: Design Principles - Creating Accents With Type

For this part of the module, we were asked to modify the question, "Who Are You?" by manipulating letter forms to convey the feeling of an accent, this could be done by changing the weight, point size and fonts within the typeface. This would exaggerate the prominence of the pronunciation of the letters, which would convey the feeling of an accent. We were asked to create the following accents.

• Geordie 

•  Welsh 

•  Yorkshire  

•  Irish  

•  Pirate 

•  Essex 

•  Scouse 

• Jamaican 

•  Russian 

•  French 

•  Australian 

You can see the results of my work in this issuu publication:

In Session:

In the session, we were placed into groups of 3 or 4. We were then asked to switch tables, giving us the "Who are you?"'s of another group. These were not labeled, so we could not tell which sentence belonged to which accent. We were then asked to categorise the sentences into their appropriate accent piles. This was rather difficult at times, sometimes we had issues differentiating Welsh and Irish typefaces, as they both follow a traditional celtic-style. Other fonts which we struggled to differentiate were English dialects, such as Scouse (The Liverpool accent), Geordie (The Newcastle-area accent) and the Yorkshire accent. All three of these accents are from the north of England. Some sounds are the same, and there aren't many distinguishable fonts which personify the accents correctly. 

We then selected the 4 accent groups which we believed to be the most accurate, and we then switched back to our original tables. As you can see above we were greeted with the following groups, Irish, Pirate, French and Russian. We then sorted through the piles, to find which of the fonts they sorted correctly. There were a few which were in the incorrect piles, however, the ones which were in the correct piles were fonts which personified the Pirate accent, and the Russian accent. The Pirate accent fonts usually looked distressed and had very worn, sharp characteristics, and the Russian accent was very bold, strong blocky, sometimes containing backwards letters, and new characters from the Russian language, these made the fonts very easy to distinguish. However, these stereotypes are rather outdated, the Russian fonts are based upon themes from the cold war, Russia being a powerful race with a feared arms-race, however Russia isn't like that in the present, 2012. The same applies to Pirates, we see them on ships, like something from the Disney film, Pirates of Caribbean, however, they're no longer like that, they use speed-boats, and can be quite modern, rather than scrawling quill onto paper. 

Photoshop Workshop

Today, we had another photoshop workshop, we are learning new techniques, and how to get Photoshop to do work for use, in an automated fashion.

Notice that the layer created, is a smart object, which means it can be edited in the different window, and the changes will, in real time, be transfered to the smart object in this document window.

OUGD405: Design Process - Study Task 2

How to get more people to donate to charities.

Following the crit, we quickly mapped out a spider diagram, devising ways which we can get more people to donate to charities, this would then form a basis for us to create an idea to get people to donate more, we will present our work on 07/12/12 in the form of a presentation.

We established that the best way to demonstrate how we could become more effective was to advertise the following aspects. So we organised a free-hugs event which would promote and advertise the charity, almost like giving something back to those who would donate, something simple as a hug. 

We then decided to use the Honey Monster as our mascot, who is a recognisable figure. We decided to incorporate him into our design work, so we could associate him with our work, we sampled the yellow in the honey monster's fur and used this as one of our limited colours. We then went with purple, as it's the colour for the charity, Scope. With a few alterations to the colour, we were able to make them work together, and they had a nice contrast too them, not too extreme. 

However, we will unable to accept any donations, as you need to attend an interview with the charity, so they can trust you. So we decided to use our Graphic Design skills to raise awareness for Scope, so people would donate directly. 

Unfortunately, because I was working of film-prep for the majority of the week, I didn't have time for much design work, however, I did mock up and sketch design sheets for flyers, which were used. 

The bottom left thumbnail sketch was used, I didn't make the flyers themselves, but I designed them, and below you can see the finished product, which was distributed when we did our free hugs event. 

When it came to the actual event, I documented all the hugs, our promotional tactic. Which demonstrates the effectiveness of our campaign, with the hug, we distributed our flyers and asked if the hug-recipient would donate, the majority said they would. 

I shot and edited the video above, which was shown during the presentation. 

OUGD404: Design Principles