Christmas Card Launch Workshop

We firstly looked at the first christmas card that was ever sent, which was in 1843 by Sir Henry Cole, which was designed and sold for a shilling. The service of delivery expanded so more and more christmas card were able to be sent, which made the christmas card more popular than it was than ever before. We then looked at an infographic that was created my the moon pig card service, which displays facts and figures about the history and the anatomy of the christmas card. Our generation would rather send a message through social media rather than a physical christmas card, however people that are more elderly like Grandparents would more likely send a physical card to say with the tradition of the Christmas Cards that people send to each other. We then looked at different designs that companies send, they said that they didn't want digital to be in one place but more across the whole social media platform to get the christmas card design and message across.

Another example that we looked at was the Christmas Card that was created by a company called the Nice Agency for critical mass, I found that this example was very different as it was a digital message. I thought that this was very interesting, as I could look into this design even further when it comes to design my own christmas card. This christmas card digital message was used to advertise the Critical Mass to new Clients. This advertisement was originally a still, however were it tells you to place your phone, the animation that they created would then appear on your mobile screen, which you will then be able to watch.

Our Christmas card has got to advertise to several different target audiences, which will be a very important factor to consider when designing our Christmas Cards. We were told that we needed to show our personality through the designs that we were going to be creating. We then looked at other christmas cards that were created by Graphic Illustrators, I found that some of these pieces were very creative, bright, bold and stood out to me well.

The Brief that we were given was: 

"The brief is about great but simple ideas. The festive season is saturated with traditional and contemporary imagery and sentiment. Your challenge is to develop an innovative approach to Christmas 2016 - communicate a compelling christmas vision to surprise, inspire and delight. Anticipate how audiences will view The School of Art & Design, be imaginative in generating a festive feel for the University of Huddersfield to unleash your collective creativity and make it memorable." 

What do we need to consider:

• Collaborate - Graphics Illustration, Photography, Animation and Art.
• Look from a personal point of view, what was your best christmas that you had or what do you think of when it comes to christmas time. 
• Brainstorm some of your ideas.
• Who's your audience? - What's the message?
• Develop some new ideas.
• Pitch it to others - what's the response?
• Evaluate and refine those ideas
• Revisit the brief and refine 
• Pitch to the Panel at 3pm (Tracy)

After this we looked at Mixed Media design, which I thought were very different to designs that we had seen before in this workshop. Would produce a gif for our christmas, don't be original be experimental and take your ideas further. The design that you create can either be still or it could be move me 3D be Illustrative, but we need to make sure that it stands out to people.

My Ideas

I had to consider what I associate with Christmas:

• Gingerbread
• Reindeers
• Snow/Snowflakes
• Travel
• Trees
• Food and Drink
• Baubles
• Tinsel
• Holly
• Family
• Pinecones
• Candycanes

The first idea I had was that you like to travel the world at Christmas time, to see all the different countries and cultures at Christmas and New Year. For this I was going to create an animation using the sleigh to go around the world that then leaves the words behind which appear and say "Travel the world this Christmas" once this has happened snowflakes will fall and cover the screen completely white and words would then appear and then say Happy Holidays. However feel that this wouldn't work. My next idea was to create a typography Christmas Card using a symbol and the words that you associate with Christmas. Below are my final designs that I created for this Christmas Card workshop.

Process and Production Aidan - Lesson 2

Within this process and production lesson we were given the task of creating four different design briefs, which were various posters. Out of the four we were told that we should design three, using the techniques that we had learnt in the previous lecture. For the third brief were given a list of designer that we could take inspiration from. To start with we looked at some examples of typographic design and communication. We were told that this lesson was important due to it being linked to the next process and production lesson with Aidan. Firstly to start off with I decided to look at the four different briefs and sketch out my ideas of what I wanted to produce for this lesson.

Brief One - A3 Poster for an acoustic night. The rules that we were given were that you could only use typography on the poster design. We weren't allowed to use images or pictures at all, however you may use any numerous typefaces that were found in the document to help you with the design direction. You could also only use THREE type sizes one large, one medium and one small. Don't worry about colour we are trying to work with the type scale and hierarchy. So we were told that we should just use only the colours Red, Black and White, however we could also use tints too. I found that this brief was quite tricky to go and work with. Although I did keep powering through until I had an idea of what I wanted to produce do this brief.

The next brief that I looked at was for the Craft Beer Expo 2017 event, where we were told to create an A3 Poster. Again the rules from the previous brief again applied to this one. I found this brief quite interesting and hard to think about because I wasn't sure what to produce for this poster design. So I felt that this brief was the one brief that I shouldn't consider for this task. This then left me with the final two briefs, from looking at the briefs I found it exciting because these other two briefs that we were given look quite fun. As I had lots of different ideas that I could use to produce a final poster design for the last two briefs.

The first being an A3 sized poster for a brief called Interpret, the  rules that we should consider for this task were that we should quickly research into the designer of our choice that we wanted to talk about and take inspiration from for our own design work. From the research we should find out key information that we need and call out the characteristics that make up the visual language of our chosen designer. Do they use a particular colour palette, so if they do we could use this to match the design style. Does the designer structure there work in a particular way? Is it hand drawn or is it physically made?

The designer that I decided to look into was Paula Scher below are some of the facts that I found and researched about her that I could use within the design that I was going to create.

She is an American Graphic Designer, Painter and Art Educator who attended the Tyler School of Art. Paula was born in 1948 in Washington DC. Where she has worked for companies like CBS Records, Russian Constructivism, Koppel and Scher. She was also the first female principal in Pentagram. Paula is now a Typographer and Print Layout Artist in New York City. I chose to look at Paula Scher, as I found her work very professional and modern. As the layouts, she uses are very
skilled and efficient. I wanted to look at Paula’s work in more depth because of the style and profession of her work. I think it’s Bold and stands out, which makes a Statement throughout her work. I have noticed that her work is very consistent. I thought that my poster design that I am going to create will represent the style of her work.

The final brief was again to create an A3 sized poster Design for a design meeting, which is known as Wilson's Republic 6. The rules for this poster design needs to include the WR logotype and Pipe Marque. You need to use the WR colours, only use the colours Red, White and Black. You could use tints and half tone patterns of those colours. The first part that I had to do for this brief was to research the word "Resilience" which is the ability of a substance or object to spring back into Shape like Elasticity. This got me to think about an Elastic Band, Slinky, Springs and Stretchy Tights, or Pants.

Overall I liked this process and production lesson because it was very different, where I had to think a lot about how I had to create these poster designs without breaking any of the rules that we were given to follow for each brief. 

Claiming Expanded Practice (2): Animation

Following on from the previous lecture of Claiming Expanded Practice in design, Spencer this week covered the animation side which I was really interested to find out about, as I am doing both Graphic Design and Animation I thought that this maybe an interesting topic to look at. We firstly started out by talking and recapping on the previous lecture with the author, writer called Alice Twemlow. Within this session we looked at a handful of different animations that explored the way in which contemporary animation is shown through expanded practice.

We started out by looking at a conference that had been organised by Suzanne Buchan that was themed around the idea of the animated kind implicating everything. Where invited speakers from all around the world, people who landmark thinkers and practitioners within animation expanded territory. We then talked about one of the speeches by Johnny Hardstaff that was about the use of CGI in advertising, who runs a cgi based design company that deal with lucrative design contracts, but he has a double edged take on what he is actually doing which become quite interesting. Looking into his speech even further will looked at several different types of campaigns that he is involved with that are:

• Sony Orange 
• 'In the mouth of advertising' - fascinating
• Global carousel of meetings - pattern of meetings

The first video that we were shown in this lecture was called Honda the COG. I found that it looked real, but it was created using CGI, the seams are so close together that you can't see them which makes the film very effective. I think that the advertisement is well put together and was surprising that the company like Honda used CGI, but they used it professionally and perfectly to make sure that the advertisement stood out.

We then moved on to look at Sony Bravia advert which also made using CGI. People once again thought that the releasing of thousands of balls down a street was a real life event, so Sony took advantage of their advertising and said that this was a real life event but in fact it wasn't a it was made using CGI.  

I found that this lecture was very interesting and I feel that I am going to look into this topic even further. 

Seminar #4: Assessment Preparation - Polina Zioga

The first thing that we did was look at the assessment preparation checklist that we need to use to see about our presentation that we have to produce about my chosen subject. We also looked at Design + Content + Delivery, and recapped on the previous lecture that we had done with Polina and talked about we were should be with our presentation. Polina then talked about what we should include in our presentation, which is to have:

• 1 Slide with your Title, URL, Name / Surname and Course
• 2-7 Slides which will depend on your visual communication design, this will include the Background and relevant examples either text or/and images, however you need to avoid videos as these take too long to present. 
• 1 Slide for my main Research Question
• 1 Slide for my References and Bibliography

The most important fact that we need to consider for this presentation is to REHEARSE, because you need to know what you talking about and presenting in your assessment. Something else that is important is make notes about what you would like to say in your presentation, as this may help you throughout the assessment, but an important is to not read from your notes so rehearsing is very important. 

Since the previous lecture I have been working on my presentation by researching into my chosen subject, which is Title Sequence Designs between the 1960's to Now and how they have changed? For the past week I have been looking at Title Designs that have been produced in the 60's by the designer known as Saul Bass and title sequence that have been created in the present day by the company called Elastic. I also had to research into the background behind Title Designs and how they established, I found out that they started off in the early 1900's. 

I found that this seminar helped me because it allowed me to speak to Polina and receive feedback on how I could improve my presentation. To receive my feedback I sat with and talked through my rough draft of the presentation that I had produced. The feed back which I received was very helpful because she told me that I had quite a bit of writing and I need to summarise and be brief on the background of the title design, as I had a lot information on this which she thought was too much. She also said that I should pick example of 1 design from each era, which is 60's and now, because she thought that I wouldn't have a lot of time to present all of the examples that I had picked. The examples that I have chosen to work with is Saul Bass's The fact of Life and the new James Bond film Spectre.

Furthermore into this I have thought about what I am going to research for each of my pages and work with this plan to research into my chosen subject this will be:

• Slide 1 - Title, URL, Name / Surname and Course
• Slide 2 - Brief Summary of the Background and Literature review of Title Design
• Slide 3 - Research into the Saul Bass (Title Designer from the Past)
• Slide 4 - An example of his work (A Fact Of Life)
• Slide 5 - Research into a Title Designer or Company in the Now
• Slide 6 - An example of their work (James Bond Spectre)
• Slide 7 - A Timeline of how technology has changed throughout Film and Title designs
• Slide 8 - My Main Research Question
• Slide 9 - References and the Bibliography

I am also going think about any additional pages that I could add to my presentation. 

Process and Production Sara - Lesson 2

This was my second process and production lesson with Sara, for this process and production lesson we need to bring along with us a piece of footage that we wanted to work with. For this I decided to bring a piece of footage that I had taken whilst I was at Athletics of my friend running, I found that this footage would be very interesting to work with.

The first part that we did in this process and production lesson was to open up the programme called adobe After Effects that we were going to work with throughout this lesson. The next part that we had to do was to open up the system preferences and make sure that the Preserve option was off. I then select the file menu > interpret footage and make sure that the frame rate that we were going to be working at was at 25. I then looked at the option known as separate fields, where I had to select the option upper field first and then select ok. I had to rescale the size of the composition, that I was going to be working at, which was 1240 x 1080. For this lesson we had to select a piece of footage from our chosen video that we wanted to work with because within this lesson we learnt how to loop a video.

The next thing that we worked with was the pen tool, to cut around the Video/Animation that we wanted to use in our first frame at the beginning of the timeline. To skip to the frames that I wanted I used a keyboard short cut, which was to hold down the command button and select either the left or right arrows. This would then move the line on the timeline to next frame along. I then had to open the clip in the bottom menu located at the side of the timeline and select Masks > Masks 1 > then select Mask Path stopwatch, which then create a Key frame on my timeline for the mask.

We then watched a short animation that was the introduction which was created for the British Athletics Grand Prix that was featured on BBC2, this advert used roto scoping. I found that the style that had been used for this advert was very interesting and creative. I like watching athletics, so I found that this animation interested me a lot. The use of colours that were used in this design were very bright, bold and very vibrant so that it would catch the attention and stand out to the target audience well.

                  

In addition to this we then watched another advertisement for Athletics, however this was for the IAAF World Championships in Daegu 2011. I found that this animation was very colourful and used a loop on the long jump to make it look like someone was jumping over and over. I thought that this was a nice piece and I am going to take inspiration from this for my own designs. 

I then selected on the composition, then choose the option layer > time > enable time remapping. This puts the keyframe at the front and the end of the timeline automatically which you don't have to do yourself, however I was told that we needed to a new key frame point just before the end of the timeline which is the frame before. After I had done this I then had to delete the key frame that was at the end of the timeline. 

We then had to create a final composition that was 10 seconds long, this was so my animation on a loop would work. I had to make sure that the shape that I had drawn around was the same shape as the person running in each frame, where I had to add pen point or remove a few and move them around so that they would fit and match the figure in the video. We were then told that we needed to create a simple shapes in Illustrator or find a copyright free texture that we could work with. Once I had chosen a texture I was then able to import my texture into the animation, however I had to add the previous composition that I had created into the main comp and create a solid layer that I could place behind the animation. To add the texture to the animation I had to place the texture layer below the footage layer, I feel like this could be experimented with and looked at further, I have also thought about in the future adding other pieces of footage to use and add to the design.

The next part that I had to do to the animation was to select the property tool and loop out the duration, so that the design would loop, select alt and the stopwatch which drops down the code menu, where we can then add the code to the loop out duration. The final part that we did was render out my animation as an Apple Res 4444, which will render my video out at the best quality.

Here is my final design, I found that this lesson was very different quite fun but stressful because I did have a few problems when creating my design work.

                                               Roto Loop from Rebecca Thorp on Vimeo.

Studio Lecture - Tuesday 18th October 2016

This lecture is about Placement Year and placement are where you can start your career. Linda firstly introduced the team that help us to find and finalise a placement. They would recommend doing a placement year, as it will give you more opportunities. The placement will last up to 48 weeks long, from June 2017 - September 2018, as you need to do a total of 11 months. You will need to complete a 1500 word essay about your placement. It is a pass or fail year, but failing would not effect your overall grade.

http:///www.hud.ac.uk/schools/artdesignandarchitecture/placements 
This shows where people have worked throughout the world.

You need to know where you are going after uni, and target your work to that field of design. You also need to be confident when writing your CV and going to an interview. A placement could possibly allow you to achieve a higher degree award. The placement fee for the year is £500.

What type of Placement Interests you?

This could be a freelance designer, where you could open and set up your own business and company. Who would you like to work for? This is another important factor is it a small company or is it a big company. If you take your travel costs to the office if you are travelling 30 miles or more, they will refund you half of your fare. There is also lots of overseas opportunities, have a look at places or companies that you want to work for. Get your CV, Letter and Applications checked by one of the team members. They told us to have a look at eplacements and unilearn, another tool that they told us to look at was placement preparation tool.

When talked about what we needed to do this week, for our project and where we needed to be. We then watched a film about Print v Digital, which I found was very interesting. This was because it was very factual. After this we then watched a film trailer for a film called Anomalisa, it was animated trailer, however i found that this trailer was very creative and interesting, also very different to some of the film trailers that I have watched. I found this lecture helpful.

Business Lecture Number 4 - Buyer Behaviour and Business Issues

Discovery Website – Starting offer out Internships and Placements for Graphic Designers.
Sports Company in Manchester.  Sports Creative Ltd.
Chocolate Company

The first thing that we did in this lecture was to look at a timeline about the American presidents. A timeline is used to show what has happened as is quite useful to to see what is going off at the time.

Buyer and Behaviour

Within this subject we will be looking at how Buyers need to behave. The Buyer Behaviour Process is that they need Recognition, they then need to search and to do a Pre-Purchase Evaluation. The need to start to evaluate the product. So that this evaluation will determine whether the product is right for you. If it is we will then be able to Purchase the product, then consumption. The last thing you need to do is a post-purchase Evaluation, to evaluate whether it is good, bad or an okay product.

We were then shown a diagram that showed us about the process of the marketing and the process that you need to take as a buyer so that the behaviour needs to be good.
(Draw out the diagram)

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

5. Self-Actualisation – Personal and Values
4. Esteem and Status – Power, Respect and Worth
3. Belongingness – Relationships, Family, Home and Sex
2. Safety – Shelter and Defence
1. Psychological – Food and Water

Which product am I going to buy – Memory is it good/bad/indifferent, is it also long term/short term.
What are its aesthetics? – it reflects who you are.
Emotion – Hedonism – live with guilt? Conscience, Love? Genetics – Man vs Women
Logic – people have different logic
Range of Choice
Attitude to Risk – are you prepared to take a risk, are you willing to buy it.
Nature of Problem – How it works, it goes straight over ours heads. – The routine, simple vs complex, is a low or high involvement.
Religion/Belief Structures. – will it effect how you think.
Legal Issues. – what can you show what can you get away with. This interacts with religious beliefs. Having a look at what is acceptable and what is not.
Other Views – Peers, Family and Friends.
And finally the financial Issues.

We then looked at a Chart of major companies that own several other companies, so you maybe working for more companies than you expect.

Business
- Looking at the behaviour process.
- Design – Targeted Design
- Market Issues – Market Segment Real Market Issues. End user aspects
- Research – Macro Environment. Social/ Ethical Issues. How are you going to go around the ethics? This could cause you a lot of problems.

(Draw out the Diagram)
Sender -  Message – Encode – transmit – Decode – Receive

Transmit – Noise and Interference.
Message -  Is it simple, complex, long or short
Sender – Reason for the message

Claiming Expanded Practice (1): Design

Within this lecture with Spencer we started out with recapping on the previous lecture that we had with him about the Histories of Graphic Design. We were then introduced to the topic that we would be covering in today's lecture which was Claiming Expanded Practice in Design and Animation. The first part that we started to look at firstly in this lecture was an ever-changing interactive music video that can be found on a website called Donottouch.org, whilst on this site we were also shown another design and animation known as the Studio Maker. I found both of these animations and designs interesting because they were very different to other designs and animations that I seen on the internet and been shown before in lectures. Designers embrace the chance within the work. The actual outcome is hard to articulate because were not sure what is the final one and what it actually is?

We then looked at into Default Design which is the style that is found between modernism and postmodernism design. After we had talked about this we then looked at a website called Universal Everything, where we were shown a video that was print based but also part performance, it was known as surface design. It explained what the designers were interested in, new surfaces that can be used and a cooperate version of Monicho. These are interactive pieces of work that are high end pieces of surface production.

We then moved onto look at a website called Conditional Design, which began with a book of how to go about drawing a basic design, I found that this website could be quite useful to me because I am not a strong drawer and it may help to pursue my drawing skills and design in the future and future projects whilst at University and in the industry. This website also talked about the design rules and working with different mediums and media and different rule assets. We were also shown the Conditional Design workbook which is used to coordinate certain people to create this design.

Furthermore in this lecture we were shown an short film that was known as the American Werewolf in London. I wasn't very sure about this because I found it strange and weird, I wasn't sure what to expect from this but I felt that it wasn't for me.

So What is Graphic Design For?
We then looked at a writer known as Alice Twemlow that wrote a book called A type of Language - Communication. That is about selling things/ideas/further political agendas which are also about criticising these things. The language has explanatory/critical and creative functions, it also questions the hierarchy of the designer and the consumer, there is a more realistic quote. Where she starts to think about who is the target audience of graphic design:

• people
• users
• viewers
• consumers
• customers 
• subscribers
• and more.

This could lead to large groups that are connected to Graphic Design and Global Consumers.

Moving on we looked at Paula Scher, were she looked at plays with the grid structure and vibrancy of New York from Shakespeare in the Park. This is because New York is a Grid (Manhattan) designed to make it easy to navigate your way around NYC and find it easy to navigate to a site specifically. 

Local Tendencies in Graphic Design

The designers work feels like it is coming from somewhere rather than nowhere. Globalising makes everything look same. (Unity).

The designer has multiple roles as an author, publisher, inventor and strategist. She is creating an argument and statement to classify everything. You may have different people that work on the project, such as a Project Manager and Sub Project Manager however the roles that people are given sometimes tend to merge together with others. 

Postmodernism + Modern Structures - Transformation of modernism through and encounter with its hippie other.

Modernism

• Universal 
• Timeless
• Rational 
• Not a particular style

The final part that we looked at in this lecture was Andrew Blorbelt and the Walker Art center which I found was very interesting. For the next lecture we will be focusing more on the animation side of the claiming expanded practice, overall I found this lecture was very interesting and I would like to look into this even further. 

Seminar #3: The Research Question - Polina Zioga

Following on from the previous seminar that I had with Polina, I had to research further into my chosen subject that I wanted to look into for my Presentation. the first part in this seminar was that we were told that our blogs are like an electronic and digital notebook or sketchbook that we can use to write notes where we can look back at for future reference.

Within this seminar we looked at the next stage of the presentation, which was the research question. The research question is the question that will develop into questions and answers of how to answer your question and subject that you will be looking into. So what are the important points that the research question is used for?

• It is used to Narrow down your investigation, which is important. 
• It reminds you about the subject that your looking at, which recycle terms and words.
• It also reveals how you will investigate your research subject

We need to summarise our subject to find out the background and the basics of the subject that we looking into. I am interested in.... 

We need to follow a process to find out what our research question will be, to do this you need to look at the Research subject then the Research title, after this the Background and Literature Review of the subject that you have chosen. You should then able to think about a suitable Research question that you will have to consider answering. We are not the same and we need to make more comparisons, this is an important factor. We told that we need to gather relevant images for your chosen subject and compare these to others, so to do this I am going to look into my subject even further to discover facts and the background of what Film Design is. I had to think about what part of Film Design that I want to research into further, as film design is a really board idea. I then thought about Title Sequences and how they have changed from the past to now. I thought about whether there is similarities or if there is differences between the two, also has the technology that has used for this affected the way that the title sequences are produced now compared to the past. I then came up with my research question from these thoughts and ideas, which is: 

"How has technology affected Title Design in Films between the 60's and Now?"  

I thought that this was really good research question, as there is a lot of points that I could look into for this question. For my next seminar I have to make sure that I have a draft of my presentation to look at, so if there isn't anything I need to improve on I can. I found that this seminar was very useful because I was allowed think about the subject and I finally have an idea about what I need to produce and the subject that I need to research. 

Process and Production Lesson - Zine

In this process and production lesson, we were learning about Zines and how to create them. I found that this lesson was really interesting because I found that a Zine could be quite useful to me, as I could consider using this for my own studio project. This is because I have been thinking about what format and publication I want to print my design onto, whether this is a Zine, Posters or Postcard I thought that the Zine was a really nice idea because it is created when using just one piece of paper. It is like a booklet, but it only uses one sheet of paper.

What Is A Zine?

A zine is a magazine and self published piece of work. 

After this we were shown different examples of a Zine. I found that this was very interesting because I noticed that a Zine could be used in several different and creative ways to display your work. We then moved onto creating the Zine itself, that we were going to work with within this process and production lesson. I found that the Zine was quite easy to create, however at one part of the process, I got confused as I wasn't sure how to fold the Zine into a certain point.

We were then given several different words that would could work with for our zine. I decided that to start off with the words that we were given and then think about other words of my own, which I could produce for my Zine. I thought that this would be a great starting point for this process and production lesson, as I wasn't too sure about it at first. Although after a while I kind of got into it and enjoyed the lesson overall. This was because I allowed me to think about and learn new skills that I can develop in the future, the words that we were given were Off, Refresh, Like, Dreams, Emotions, Live, Minimise and Share.

The first word that I decided to look at was Off, I found that this word was quite hard to think about because I didn't want to make my design too original, as I wanted it to be different but still connect to the word well. I thought about this for a long time and came to a decision that a light bulb would work well, as you have to switch off the light when you leave a room or your want to go to sleep. I thought that this was a nice idea. 

The next word that I decided to look at was Refresh, for this design I decided to draw the symbol of that is usually displayed on the screen when you refresh a page until it reloads. I thought that this design was very nice and quite a creative design that I had come up with. I then looked at the word Like, I thought that this word was one of my favourite as I came up with a idea and design for this straight away. I decided to try change the design and make the design very realistic compared the like button that you see on social media, for example Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr. In addition to this I found that the designs that I had created for this was really nice.

The next word that I looked at was Dreams. I decided to look at this word because I wanted to make it a lot different as I noticed that the other people in our class were creating clouds for this design as it you think of clouds when you think about the word Dreams. However the idea that I thought about straight away was a Dream catcher, I thought that this was slightly different but still connected with the word that I wanted to design for. I then looked at Emotion and decided to draw out my favourite emoji that I always use when texting my friends, which is the laughing face emoji. I was quite happy with how these designs turned out in the end. 

I then moved onto the word Live, I thought that this was quite an easy word that I could work with because I had several ideas for this design, where I thought about drawing out a heart. However I decided to go with the House as it is a home that people live in with the loved ones or friends. The next word that I chose to look at was Minimise, I found that this word was quite hard to design about because I couldn't think of any ideas that I could create for this page. After this I had to think about how I could create a design for this word, I decided to write the word on the page and draw out an arrow as you use an arrow to minimise and maximise the screen.  

The final word that I looked at for my Zine was the word Share. For this word I decided to take inspiration from the Facebook symbol that is used for the share button. I thought that this design was simple and related well with the word that I wanted to create a design for. To make my design slightly different, I decided to add the word share and morph it into the shape of the arrow and Facebook Share Symbol. 

This was final design of my Zine that I had created in the process and production lesson, I found that this lesson was quite interesting and fun. As I got to learn about different things in this lesson, to improve this design even further in the future I am going to think about my own words that I want to use a create a Zine for them. 

Business Lecture Number 3 - Market Data and Market Research

Within this weeks Business Lecture, we will be looking at Market Data and Market Research. I thought that this subject was very interesting, when look at Market Research it is usually split into two parts the first is Primary Data, the next is Secondary Data (Desk Research). Primary Data can then be taken even further by looking into the topics of Quantitative and Qualitative.

The next thing that we looked at was the subject known as Quantitative, where is split into 3 types these are:

Geographic – Which is were people live, so this will then tell people a lot about you.
Psychographic – This is how you determine what you buy.
Socio-Economic – This is about your financial state and the class of what you will buy.

When looking at these three subjects there is many pro’s and con’s that come with these subjects.

The pros of this are:

Detail/Clarity
Statistical information
Objective

There are also many cons to this, these are:
It can be very costly
It can very complex and difficult to create
It also needs careful control

After this we then looked at Qualitative which is the interviewer and the focus group, within this you have to discuss with those in the know about the issue and the market that you need to understand.

There is once again many pro’s and con’s for this subject.
The pros are:

Cheap
Easily Done
Offers a holistic View

The cons for this are:

Subjectivity
The success depends on the control of your discussions
It also has no statistical validation

Secondary Data/Desk Research

This covers data that has already been published and there

Market Segmentation

Breaking a market into distinct blocks.
This can be done by:
Age
Sex
Social Class
Geography
Hobby/Interest
Etc.

You always need to focus on the needs of the particular market that you are aiming at.
We then looked at the breakdown method that you need to take for the marketing of Books.

For there to be a successful segmentation, it needs to be Measurable/Identifiable, Accessible, Substantial and Meaningful. A Segmentation ensures you get a successful target.
These for terms are very important to making it very successful. You need to make sure that you define the product offering clearly, don’t try and analyse different objects/products. You need to only compare like with like. However, this a bit more difficult than it might be at first. We were also told that we should not re-invent the wheel.

Turnover - you are not after profit. We then looked at different Data Sources, which were known as Mosaic, Acorn, Mintel, GMDB, Keynote, Fame and Newspaper ProQuest. I think that these sites will become useful and I am going to look into these in my own time.

We looked at were we could find sources and reports or financial reports. Magazines, Newspapers, Company Websites, Retailer Websites and CSO Statistics. We were then shown how log in to ProQuest, where we will be able to find reports on a subject that you are looking at, as it will search and find reports that have been made about your chosen subject, from the guardian to the New York Times and Washington Post.

Part 2

We were told and advised to read how it works the magazine. We then looked at an article about Smartphones and Phablets. This was just to show us how he had downloaded n article from the website where you can find sources. Peter then showed us an article that he had found on the website known as Acorn. Our task is to going and have look at the sites and magazines that we had been shown and go out there and explore. Brad, British Rates and Data, which is a site that you can look at and find people who work in the Editorial Industry. I thought that this site maybe useful when looking for a placement or looking at the business as a whole.

The next thing that we did in this lecture was to always look outside the box and it doesn’t matter about size. We looked at different photographs and talked about the different career paths that we can do, from product to advertising to graphic or even film. If you can get people thinking and interested into your work, you can become quite successful. So you need to always think outside the box and being creative. You can’t use a public building to advertise your graphics. When looking at the designs, I found that some of the designs were very simple, but stood out very well. I think that when creating my own designs it can take in mind that my design can be simple to be effective and stand out to the people and target audience I am aiming at.

Seminar #2: Contextual Portfolio - Polina Zioga

Polina will give us small briefs and we will have to a create a blog post for. Two blog posts per week for the theory as practice session, this could include any of the lectures from the Business Lectures, Polina's Seminars or Spencer's Lectures. For our Presentation we will have to create 5-10 slides that are represent your blog posts. (Theory) and aural description. By the end of this seminar today you will have your title. I need to start to do a plan about what I am going to do for my presentation. We were told that 20 slides are the perfect amount for the presentation because too less and too much won’t be easy to do.

Design + Content = Delivery
When you render your presentation, render the file into different formats. Its good to have a header or a footer throughout your presentation. The url link could be either a link to your Facebook, twitter or Instagram of your account, we were also told that we could use image throughout our presentation, however video is not a good idea because this is very time consuming. We should also remember to use a Citation link at the bottom left hand of the presentation to use as a reference for the design you are displaying.

Define
Reference List
Bibliography

Presentation = Performance.

We were then told about rules about what we should keep in mind when creating the presentation. If someone can’t read something delete and get rid of it. We then watched a video about what we shouldn’t do for our presentation because this video showed a lot of mistakes that we shouldn’t take when creating our presentation.

What I could look at for my presentation.
How selfie filters are used and based off specific style of art, this could be Street Art, Typography, Pop Art or other styles that I am interested in. I found this quite difficult to think about the subject that I wanted to search into, however I found a subject that I was really interested in looking into, which was Film Design. For the next seminar, I am going to expand on how I could look into film design for my presentation and create a research question from my chosen subject.

Histories Of Graphic Design - Spencer's Lecture

Histories Of Graphic Design

In the part of this lecture we focused on was the history of graphic design. We firstly looked at books that we could relate to when talking about the history of the graphic design, these were:

The looking closer series
Megg’s History of Graphic Design
Graphic Design a New History
Graphic Design a concise history
Design and the question of history

But we will be looking more closely at these two books known as:

Art Chantry Speaks – A Heretic’s History of 20th Century Graphic Design and A novel in two semesters by Chip Kidd.

The first one that was produced was Megg’s History of Graphic Design that was written and created in 1985, this book is the first time that the words “Graphic Design” and “History” are used and mentioned together. It was based on an academic subject that was an on going project until she died in 2002. However, the book and history of graphic design will live on, as Steven Helier said that the book had actually made history itself. Megg’s approach to the book was very ambitiously encompassing. We were told not to start our essay with from “since the dawn of time”. We then looked at some painting that were created Before Christ (BC) and After Christ (AC). These were interesting to look at and find out where Megg’s approach was founded, one of the paintings evolved from printing and type (where it was both a technological and Atheists history. The story within the book connects to the different styles and movements of arts and crafts, art nouveau, modernism, the international style and the new typography. These connected with the interior design known as William Morris, also the book that is known as “the studio” that was produced in 1894 by Aubrey Beardsley. Where Aubrey Beardsley talks about the art movement of AVANT-GRADE. The next book we looked at was Peter Behrens who talks about the geometric and sans serif style, we were also shown New Typography by Jan Tschicholdt and the book called Giselle by Armin Hoffman that was published in 1959 that is related to the international style.

However, Megg’s approach is also very limited. We were then shown different and alternative covers for Megg’s History of Graphic Design of how the design era and art movement has developed throughout the years. They have done this so that the cover of the book will fit with how the art and graphic design style has changed.

We then moved onto the book called Graphic Design a New History that was published in 2007, the book was aimed to predicate the idea that graphic design. This book is a similar to the style of Megg’s book, as it is the breakdown of the art styles and movements.

After this we looked into the two newest books, which were Art Chantry Speaks – A Heretic’s History of 20th Century Graphic Design and A novel in two semesters by Chip Kidd.
We firstly looked at Art Chantry Speaks, where he describes himself as a cultural propagandist of the lowest order. Some of the topics that this book focuses on id the History of the Happy Face, Sister Corita Kent, who is an agitprop nun and blind designers. He takes his book in three directions, where the language of design that he uses is like modernism as a Retro. It like a messing model of conversion.

We then watched an animation which was Rooty toot toot, this had a Italian modernist style. A cartoon modern style, I found that this style was nice and very creative. After this we then looked at the NASA logo. And infographics for America, I found that this was very interesting and quite creative. Overall I found that this lecture was interesting because I learn't quite a lot about the History of Graphic Design.

Process and Production, Aidan, Session 1.

The first thing that we did in this lecture was to download the brief and workshop pack from unilearn. We then opened the InDesign document from the workshop pack that we had download. In today’s process and production lesson, we will be looking at different type settings. I am really looking forward to this because it is something different, we will start off with the introduction and look at Typography, Terms and Tips that we will need to use throughout this process and production lesson. To start off with we will be looking at basic typographic tasks to begin with.

What Is Typesetting?

Typeset is the way and form that the type has been arrange for printing.

We were then introduced to the 4 basic groups that typography can be placed in, these are:

San Serif
Serif
Decorative
Script

The first exercise that we looked at was Kerning. I remember kerning from high school, however I only remember the basic knowledge about the design. To start off with I used the kerning tool in InDesign to change the space of the letters, where I changed this from 0 to -100, so that the letters were so close together. For the next the one, I decided to change the spacing (kerning) between the letters from 0 to 150, this made the letters look quite far apart from each other, so I decided to change it from 150 to 100. The next one I decided to again make the spacing between the letters closer together, however not as close so I changed this from 0 to -50. The key is to make sure that the spacing between the letters look very equal throughout the word. So I had to make some adjustments to the first window as the I and D need to be closer together, but the letter S needed to be further apart.

What Is Kerning?

Kerning is the adjusting of the spacing between each letters/characters in a specific piece of text.

The next task was Tracking, I found that this one was a little more difficult than the kerning because I had to somehow move the words apart, however they weren’t moving properly. I then realised that you just need to just click and use the arrow keys or drag them with them with mouse. I found that this then became easier. For this it allowed me to change the spacing between the letters at the same time. I found this part a lot easier to do, so I decided to make on of the words quite far apart and the other really closer together. I then made sure that the tracking was the same so I change this from 0 to 300, however to make them look different I made the words further apart from each other.

What is Tracking?

Tracking is again the letter spacing between characters, however when using the tracking setting it will do this at one time.

We then moved on to leading, which is used to space the sentences or lines equally apart from each other, so to experiment with this I decided to make some of the paragraphs close together. However, I thought that this made the text harder to read and I also changed the spacing so that the lines were further apart. This allowed me to read the text a lot easier.

What Is Leading?

Leading is the distance between each of the sentences or the lines within a piece of text.

After this we move on to Rag, which is making the sentence look like there in a box, I found that this task was a lot harder than the others that I had completed because I could get to grips with what I needed to do. To move words from each sentence I used shift and enter on the Keyboard. However, to make the sentence fit well together with the other we had to use the tracking setting but not too much that the sentence or line looked odd, out of place and look completely different to the other lines and sentences.

What is Rag?

Rag is where the lines or sentences of a piece of text is irregular and it is ragged to make the piece of text look perfect.

We then moved onto cropping, where we used different shapes to crop out area of a letter of our choice to be very creative. The letters that I decided to use for this task was R, D, A and M. I really liked this task because I was able to be creative with the designs and I felt like I enjoyed it more when using several different letters to experiment with. I thought that this was a fun task overall because I was able to use my experimental skills, I am going to defiantly look at expanding on this task in my own time, because I also think that this is a great way to come up with new and creative logo types.

The next task that we were given was to choose between three type faces that would a word the best, I thought that this was also a fun task because it got us to think about which of the typefaces would suit the word the best. Some of the fonts I chose were quite obvious and relevant to the word, however some were different and stood out to me. I had to really think about which of the font style suit them the best because you want the word stand out, but after talking everyone in the group their different answers about which one they had used. It doesn’t really matter about which one you choose; however, you must always have reason for using it. I am going to keep this task in mind when selecting the right typefaces for my own project. I thought that this task was quite fun because you had to think about the task the typefaces a lot to get the design to work.

The Final task that we were given was to put all of our knowledge and skills that we had learnt today and change simple words into something creative. For example, the word slope, I decided make the word slope downwards, however there were 4 rules that we had to keep in consideration when changing the words. These were:

1. You can only use typography to articulate the words.
2. Do not add any illustrative elements to the words.
3. You can only use Helvetica Bold as the typeface, do not change it.
4. You can not use colour. Only the techniques we have covered.

 I found that this task was quite fun, but also quite difficult because there were some words that I found very hard to change and think about. Although I am going to keep thinking about how I can move past my problem and create a creative design for each word.

Overall, I really enjoyed this process and production lesson because I found it very interesting and refreshing to look at the terms that I had learned before, after not looking at them for a few years. I think that this process and production lesson has defiantly expanded my skills and knowledge of typography and I will always consider these techniques for my own design work.

Tuesday 4th October 2016 - Studio Seminar 11:15 - 12:15

The first thing that we did was hand our print outs to the tutor, so that other people would be able to see what we would be doing for our project. Try and remove any blocks, so that you can go past the stumps and work towards our ideas. Don’t worry too much about the purpose at the moment, because it will come to you like that.

Do we need a research and development file?

I think that this important, however we were told to do this at the end because the project and final design is the most important thing to do. The InDesign document is the presentation, there should be a bit of research, evidence, development and final products. We then talked about what would happen if you were in the industry and how quickly you would have to create a final outcome.

I then was told feedback about the mood board that I handed in. Jay told me that it is a very interesting project that I have chose to do and that I should always consider layers for example the layers like my interest or things that make up me as individual. Like the music that I like, my favourite place, my home town that people won’t know about me and that makes me different.

I found that this seminar session was very useful to me because it allowed me to think about what I need and could do to expand this project even further.

Intermediate Studio Practice Lecture - Tuesday 4th October 2016

Brief One – Week Two Cybernetic Self

The first thing that we did in this lecture was to talk about Social Media. So what is social media? Social media is people; you are social media/mediums.

We then looked at video called We are Internet; this video was a documentary of people about what the internet is. Lots of people talked about the internet from around the global, how they use the internet for there company and why it is useful to them or how they started out by using the internet. One of the creative director said that the internet is a mirror, that is good and bad. If the internet didn’t exist, the creative director of another company wouldn’t have anything because they wouldn’t be able to find anything. If your work is strong enough it will take off and people will like it. Creativity is people from different backgrounds taking over and crossing paths, it not about just lifestyle and culture. We were told not to just look at ourselves, but to look at other people as well.

After this we were shown an artist called Mary Ponomareva, I really liked the style that she had used to create her designs. She uses Textiles.

We also looked at an artist called Douglas Coupland. Everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything. I thought that some of his work was very smart, creative and different.

Anti Social Man -  I thought that this Animation was really good, because it was about to stop be anti social able by using your phones or social media and enjoy everything around us. I think that this animation was good to try and get the point across to the target audience that is being aimed at.

Cybernetics – The art of steering. (Greek Term)

We then watched another documentary – need to watch this again and take notes about what is being said. Design Process and which process that you need to go through to get to your final piece.

Cybernetics can be many different things. These are terms that we need to be thinking about throughout our project. We then looked at the selfie, which we had previously looked at and defines us, as an individual compared to others.

For my brief, I am wanting to use a self portrait of myself and create a piece where I can explain my interests that people don’t know about me in a creative way. By using the use of the styles Illustration, Photography and Motion Graphics to do this.

Business Lecture Number 2 - Design Process

Within this business lecture, we firstly started talking about Placements and where is the easiest place to find them. We were told that we should look at a website called Free Index, which will allow you to look into different placements that are being advertised to us. On this site we can search for graphic design and other forms of design that interests me, which could be what ever design you like from being in an agency to being a freelance designer. So are the placements an interest to you, if they are, it is important to make a note about them, so you don't forget. Most importantly you need to make sure that you make a note of the director or the creative director of the company so that you can write to them. Another site that we were told about was the directory of design consultants, which shows you people from many different countries, it was advised to always write them a letter rather than an email because emails are easier to delete than a letter.

We then started the lecture and firstly looked at what we focused on last week in the previous lecture, which was the design process. We then moved onto looking at line which featured a company and what happens outside the company. The black line that we were shown displayed the company itself.

This was a rough guide to what will happen in the industry, it will be like a tornado, so we need to be prepared as designers for a whirlwind of a ride. 

We then moved onto looking into what is Human Error and what is Design Error? An example that we looked at were the Samsung phones, where the new samsung phone which was the Samsung S7 Note as this blew up. In addition to this we talked about whether this was Human Error or was it Design Error. We need to make sure it is never the Design Error, as mistakes occur but they should be solved very quickly and make sure that you make a note about what is said or the requirements. As you don't want to lose your job. it is important to understand what is happening in the world, the firm, the market, the economy and with the client. 

So you need to ASSESS the situation that your in and you need to ask questions before undertaking a design. The client is the boss, or at least you need to let them think that. If you allow them to have an input they will allow to do this because they have already put themselves in. After this we talked about when we get our first brief, we as designers will need to meet the demands of the clients that we are working for. It important that we must understand that they may not be giving you all the information that you need, this is normally unintentional and quite common. As designers we need to ask questions like who is the target audience? Are you thinking of a Style? 

Product Positioning

This graph and diagram shows us how someone wants to precede you because you want to be a part of a particular group. An example for this is the High Price / High Quality and Low Price / Low Quality. We then talked about what it would look like if certain brands were on the diagram, for example a Rolls Royce car would be High Price and High Quality, however compared to a Lada car, which would be Low Quality and Low Price. Some brands would be in the same areas, for example Skoda has moved up on the ladder years after years because they have changed and looked at Vauxhall and Ford, as they are Skoda's competition that were above them on the ladder. Skoda then realised that they needed to look at the presentation of the cars and the advertising that they were creating in order to get people to notice the cars and buy them.

We were told that we should always compare like with like, this is like the contracts you have with your phone, as it is part of the network service that your with. We have to think about the Boston Consulting Group Matrix. (BCG) This is like an Iphone (stars) you need the product to have a relative growth rate with a relative market share, so that people will notice your product. You may have a low relative growth rate but a high relative market share, however you will still need to earn lots of money (cash cows). Where you will be able to change this to get it up to the scale, so that you can complete with the market and change, so you will go up in the market and people will then buy the product.

A low relative growth and low relative market share means that no product will be seen by the target audience because no one will buy the product. We then moved onto the topic of PEST Analysis, which is Political, Economic, Social and Technological. They all need to be acceptable, make sure that they all have a tick, if one of them has a cross next to them the product will not be allowed on the market. you need to make sure that you look at what the product will look like now, in 5 years and in 10 years. Will another product take over your product in 10 years? You should always put a comment about why.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths, Weakness = Internal
Opportunities, Threats = External

9 Times out of 10, no one will be able to do the internal section. We then looked into about what would happen to its product life cycle. It can be extended by looking at things that can be improved, so we need look at who is our target audience and what is the position does the product sit in. After this we then looked at the Adoption Curve. We then looked at PCs vs MACs and what is better, each section will be different each time this is because designs need to be developed and changed.

What is Obsolescence?

Obsolescence is how long will a product last.

We also need to find out and try these techniques on different designs, we need to make sure you understand the brief. The final part that we looked at were the Design Audits, these are hard and more difficult to assess, which often occur after an event....useless then. You need to make sure its right the first time. There is lots of things that you need to think about: for example the materials/equipment and that the design stands out. Another point that we need to make sure is that you start the design and brief on the day that you get it. How will you manage your projects by yourself as you may get five or six projects at once. The most important thing that you need to do a consider when applying for jobs or placements is to clear up my Facebook and look at creating a Linkedin account.