Narrative Design.
When we think about narrative we think about animation, film, however it could be related to any type of design from advertisement, book design, web design and more. We firstly talked about what was meant by Narrative design, we found that Narrative design was the Utilisation of narrative design is of key concern when developing visual communication. I found that this subject was very engaging and I found that this was very interesting to look into because it was something new that I hadn’t look at before.
Quote- "A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle and an end." – Aristotle, Poetics.
Freytags Pyramid 1863
We looked at the series of conflict, which were written and designed by an author called Arthur Quiller Couch. These were:
“Man Against Man”
“Man Against Fate”
“Man Against Society”
“Man Against the Supernatural”
“Man Against Machine”
“Man Against God”
“Man Against Self”
After this we looked an exposition.
What is meant by the word Exposition?
Exposition is meant by an Explanation, which means something is explained in detail.
What do we mean by Narrative?
A spoken or written account of connected events; a story.
A representation of a process or a situation in particular in such a way as reflect or conform to an overarching set of aims or values.
If we consider this shared language: From the point of view of a designer, your job is to illustrate or demonstrate the solution to a problem. To visually narrate a sequence of events that explain the solution.
We then watched a clip called Feed Music, I found that this clip and business allowed me to understand how the business works together and how the music flows through there work. The clip that we watched was very informative, as it provides me with lots of information about the company Feed. They said that there was something coming that was going to be special and I think that this is a very good point, as we should always look forward to the future. The video is made up of lots of exposition, the climax of the video is how it performs across the channels, it could be broken down into three sections when looking at the film very closely.
We then looked at the company called Basili.co, who is a narrative that specialise
Basili.co was the creators of the feed website, I found that the layout of the design was very professional and they have taken the philosophy and portrayed it in a interesting way through the feed website, by creating something new. We should always think about how we feed into the eco system, using our stories that we create through our design work.
Reference- http://www.basili.co/
Story Based Messaging.
You have to get the target audience to understand your product in order for them to by the product.
“The audience does not need to tune themselves to you- you need to tune your message them- Nancy Duarte. I think that this is a very important point because you need always make sure that your message is related to your product and the target audience that you are aiming your product towards.
We then looked at the company called Toms, which is shoe company that are mainly pumps, we firstly watched a clip about the shoes how the company grew year after year. The video that we were shown was created by a company called Giant Ant in the year of 2013. The video had lots of facts about how the shoes were created and who was involved with the company, I found that this clip was very inspirational because I like the style of the clip that had been created for the Toms shoes. The style that had been used was Illustration, I thought that the animation was very pretty and very well put together.
Imagery
Tone Of Voice
Symbols, Icons and colour
Hierarchy of Information
Navigation
Imagery
We firstly looked at Imagery, the first example that we looked at was clip that was about about five Australian guys that went on a road trip in Australia, that turned into disaster because the boat capsized and they were left stranded on island trying to find their way back to land. The felt that the situation was very dangerous because the animals around them were very dangerous. However, I found that the Graphic Illustration of the design was very well put together and if the sound and dialogue was muted, I found that you would still be able to know what the story was about.
Tone of Voice
We then looked at Massimo Vignelli, in his time he has only used 4 different typographic styles. We then watched a short clip that was created around Massimo Vignelli’s work. I found that he used lots of grids when creating his work even for the artwork that he had drawn because the gird system was very helpful to work with as it was easier to look to understand what was being displayed in the artwork. He finally said “I am Massimo Vignelli and I write books. I found that this video was very inspirational, as I have looked at Massimo Vignelli whilst looking at my secondary research for my project. We were told that we should always take inspiration from his work and how he designs his artwork because it is very professional and impressive.
Hierarchy of Information
We then looked at Hierarchy of information
“For Sale, bay shoes, never worn”- Ernest Hemmingway.
We looked at the I have dream speech (Transcript) Duarte. N. 2010.
We looked at how the pace of the structure of the speech. Once we had looked at the Dream speech we focused are attention to the 22 rules of Pixar’s storytelling, which I found were very fascinating and quite inspiring.
We were then shown of the different Images and we were task of guessing what the pictures represented the first one was The Lord of the Rings. After this it was the extinction of Dinosaurs. The next one was Leonardo DiVinci and the last one was Steve Jobs. I found that the fourth and third pictures were hard to figure out because they were a lot more detail. Overall I really enjoyed this task because I found that it was very interesting.
We then watched a clip called Tiny Story, we had to focus are attention to the navigation of the Beginning, Middle and the End.
Navigation.
Linear Beginning Middle and End
Non Linear- Is used to engage the viewer to solve the mystery or problem within the storyline of the film. We started to look at Graphics that were related with the linear and non linear.
Colour.
Once we had watched this clip, we then looked at Plutchik colour wheel of emotion, which I found was very interesting because I could take inspiration from this wheel when I am going to design my own work for my projects.
After this we then looked at a Colour Script that had been created by Pixar called the Art of Pixar that was based around the film known as The Incredibles. It is Quick colour, mood capture.
"Working small and short allows you to see the broad strokes of the film." - Ralph Eggleston
We finally watched a short clip from the Walt Disney Studios, which included a man throwing airplanes after the women kissed his paper, trying to get the attention of this woman, that he has madly fell in love with. I found the film was very well put together and very creative and funny. I also found that the storyline of the film was very sweet. Break down the three stages of the film.
The final conclusion of this lecture was for someone that is developing a visual story, the most important thing to ask is ‘what is the story you really want to tell?’
Answering that can mean working through these questions:
What is the Issue?
What will be the Events/Moments?
If Needed, who are the Characters?
What is the Context?
I really enjoyed this lecture because it had lots of animations that I was interested in from the Walt Disney Studios short film called Paper man to the visual storyboard of the incredibles.
