OUGD406: Design Practice 1 - Speaking From Experience

Design Context Post

This is another live brief, and the final product of this brief will be given to the new first years in their first week, you can see a copy of the brief which we were given below. 

For friday, the 22nd of March, 3 boards, one with a concept, one with a method of delivery and one of with production. Boards are to be no smaller than A3 size, printed off. 

Audience: New 1st Years, 18-25. Typically, confused and overwhelmed with power point presentations.

Concept: For the content, I'm interesting in providing the recipient with useful information to optimise their productivity and methods so they can create a high quality standard of work slightly quicker than the conventional methods, with more efficiency. For example, I would recommend apps for their macs which would act as a note book, for examples Evernote, which is a notebook app, it stores and categorises your documents in a clean and easy to navigate format, which separates your notes into 'notebooks', which you can tag for ease of search. They also work well in sync with other Evernote apps on other user interfaces, such as iPads and iPhones, incase you're caught short without your Mac. The advantage to working with this app above direct blogging would be that this app works well offline, so you can pull up notes in wi-fi dead zones and has a nicer interface. You can copy your notes over to blogger simply using the copy and paste tools. You can also share your notes to Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and you can e-mail them. I could essentially review them and says specifically how they can be applied to optimise efficiency, and show the audience, the new first years, briefly how to use them.

This part of the module will have an massive effect on the module grade, this needs to be good, and it needs to look like Graphic Design and you need to think about production. 

Method of Delivery: Following my research on my design context blog, I've decided to create sleeve which will hold all the information in, which consists of a small dictionary in book format and 3 flyers. One, which congratulates and welcomes the new student onto the course, one which provides the new students with the app guide and the final one, which is the tips guide. You can see a concept sketch of the sleeve below.

For the first crit, on friday the 22nd of March, before we break up for easter, we were asked to produce these research boards. One which defines the concept, what we want to communicate and why, the second, states our method of delivery, how we plan on delivering our message, for me, that is a sleeve with the flyers, leaflets and book inside it, as you can see in the design sheet above. The third sheet is Production, how we plan on creating our method of delivery. For me, I plan on binding the book using strings of fiber, and thread to hold it together, and cardboard with cloth over the top for the front and back cover. 

Following the feedback from the crit,  I've decided to narrow down my concept, into just creating a Graphic Design Terminology Dictionary. Which will contain the words which are used in the studio and within the industry. To help the first years progress and learn and be able to reference the terms easily, when needed.

Above, you can see the concept design for the book. It will either be bound using a sewing method which I've mocked up, you can see below, or a perfect bind method. 

I began by creating three sets of four sheet of paper, folder and stacked like this. Piled the sets and compressed them under books for 24 hours. To decrease their size as much as I can, and almost solidify the folds.

I then begans to sew the paper sets together using this method, which would create this bind below, on the inside of the book. 

I then compressed the binded book for another 24 hours, as you can see below. This would seal the bind, and allow it to set within the books. 

It then produced this, as the final product, after adding some black card around the edge to cover the binds of the book, and make it look alot nicer.

I think this is a nice alternative to using a staple bind, and i'm glad with how my first attempt came out. However, to achieve a more professional look I'd have to go with a prefect bind, with a hard cover on the edge. 

Since i've got the method of production sorted, I've begun to focus on layout and colour/type selection. I quickly mocked up some thumbnail sketched of how I want the spreads in the book to look.

I wanted to have a large feature type in a heavy block colour to draw the attention of the reader. Then using body copy to allow the reader to learn the definitions. 

Above are some larger layouts which communicate exactly how I'd like them to look, as they're in 1:1 scale. 

OUGD406: Design Practice 1 - Communication is a Virus

Attached is the brief, the subject of which is to create a form of viral communication.

We were given the topic of 5 A Day

We must consider the following within our work:

• What do we want to say?
• How do we want to put it across?
• What language and tone of voice would be considered appropriate?

• Will this brief's response be composed entirely with type?
• Will it be with image?
• Or will it be a combination of the two, working in unison?

• What is our goal? 
• To inform?
• To Educate?
• To divert?
• To Persuade?
• To Challenge?
• To Offend?
• Who is the audience?
• Will it be interactive, or encouraging someone to change their lifestyle?

We also must remember what we are working to a limited colour set, which means two colours, with the addition of stock.

Following initial brainstorming, as you can see in the image below, we originally decided to orientate our work around social networks, by listing a huge amount of them, to determine which ones we use the most, which ones we use the least, which ones are the most popular, or addictive. We've been able to establish that people spend far too much time on social networks, and the majority of the content submitted to these sites are usually mindless dribble, which bares no use for anyone.

Wallpaper Designs.

For part of this project, I've undertaken the role of designing the wallpapers for mobiles, tablets and monitors. Which, will be e-mailed to Tom, the course admin and he will distribute them across the courses in the college. I will also upload them to the web and send people links to download the wallpapers. In an attempt to promote the Twitter Account. The wallpapers must feature the logo, which is the recognisable character, the face of Tweet5 and the Twitter name, which is @Tweet5_ 

Study into Resolution and Screen Size. 

First, I want to learn the resolutions which I will need to work at. Retina displays, which is a very high quality display, are coming into effect in most of the new products which are being released. That is the minimum standard I wish to work to. The DPI of retina displays is 264, as opposed to the preset screen resolution which is 72 DPI, which is an extremely high quality standard of image, almost as much as the standard print resolution, which is 300 DPI. I imagine, I will work at 300 DPI and export the image in the appropriate resolution, 264 DPI, this way I'll be able to print the images in I need to for crits and the final module submission. 

Second, I will need to learn the sizes of screens, which greatly variate. At a glance, 90% of the people who work in the same studio as me, a combination of 1st and 2nd Years on BAGD, all use MacBooks or iMacs. The sizes of the MacBooks range from the 13 to the 17 inch models, however the majority are the 13 and 15 inch models, with only one or two 17 inch MacBooks. The iMacs in the room are all the 21.5 Inch models, without a retina display, so based on my study research, their DPI would be half the retina display resolution, which is 132 DPI. However, I will still create the Retina Display Resolution versions for those who have their own newer iMacs out of College. They other size which Apple offer is the 27 inch iMac - I will cater to both. The 21.5 inch iMac has a 1920x1080 resolution and the 27 inch has a 2560x1440 resolution. The 13 inch MacBook Pro has a resolution of 2560x1600 and the 15inch MacBook Pro has a resolution of 2880x1800. I have decided not to create a background for the 17 inch MacBook Pro, as they're no longer in production, and hardly anyone has one anymore. The Retina Display iPad by Apple is has a Resolution of 2048x1536 

OUGD406: Design Practice 1 - Design Presentation

Peter Seville 

• Album cover design
• Infographics

Paul Arden

• It's not how good you are, it's how good you want to be
• Whatever you Think, Think the Opposite

Look out the window and whatever catches your eye, a bird, television ariel, an old man on crutch or whatever, make that the solution to your problem.

• Take a break, and look on something with a fresh perspective.

Do not seek praise, seek criticism 

• Rather than asking if something is good, ask what isn't good.
• Things you can resolve and build upon.

Ask questions like "Can you find fault with this?"

Don't give a speech, put on a show.

• When you're presenting work; rather than talking, put on a show. Think about how you're presenting 

With your work, Astonish people. That's what is going to make you achieve what you want to achieve. 

"If you can't solve a problem, it's because you're playing by the rules".

• 99% of the time, you should follow the rules
• but sometimes you need to think outside the box. 

When presenting work, put the idea in a situation where i could be used, and how it would look if produced.

Mock things up, practice your craft skills, clients prefer to have something physical.

Make links with other people with specific skill sets, and utilise them, when creating your work. 

Show the colour codes (Hex, CMYK, RGB) and the fonts which would be used in the work.

Scan things in, put them together on design boards, put things together. And submit them. 

OUGD406: Design Practice 1 - Design is About Doing

Secret 7 Website | Design Context Post

This study task is in response to a live brief, hosted by Tallent House, the contest specifics are below.

INSERT PROJECT BRIEF SLIDESHOW HERE, BECAUSE IPHOTO IS A TWAT

Contest: Secret 7''Work: Submit artwork inspired by Public Enemy's track, Harder Than You Think.Prizes:Host Choice and Additional Winners:Between 30-50 designs will be selected and printed on a Secret 7’’ vinyl sleeve which will be exhibited and sold at the gallery. In addition, each winner will also receive:

• An A3 print on which will be their design and a certificate of their involvement in the project

• Exposure for their artwork both online and in the exhibition space at the UK’s largest independent creative agency, Mother

• One design will be picked by Clash magazine and featured in their June edition

Highest Voted Winner:

• One highest voted artist will receive the incentive as offered to the 30-50 winners selected by Secret 7’’.

Entry Period: January 7 2013 to February 18 2013Voting Period: February 19 2013 to February 26 2013Winner contaced by: March 12 2013

All seven of the songs featured are embedded in my Design Context Post.

Listening to the songs, I think would like use Harder Than You Think - Public Enemy.

From my research, as you can also see on my design context post, I quickly mocked up some thumbnail sketches for possible designs for the vinyl covers.

INSERT DESIGN SHEETS

INSERT DEVELOPMENT OF 5 CHOSEN DESIGNS

To create the first of my designs I begun by grabbing an image of a vinyl record from Google Image search, which I would use to get the basic dimensions of the shapes, when I would trace the image. You can find a copy of this image here.

I then added a background, which covered the bleed, I used a colour similar to that of one of the background slides on the Secret 7 website. By taking the screen shot from the website, importing it into Illustrator, and the using the colour sampler tool, and taking the green colour, which I think pops nicely in contrast to what will be the foreground. The lack of hue in the foreground, which will be created, being mainly greyscale-monochromatic, with the introduction of a new colour, works well, I think. 

Below are the five designs.