Inelectricdreams’s NM2208 Weblog

Alfie movie poster, starring Jude Law.

This week’s task was relatively simple. (Yay! finally a respite from the many weekends of rushing visual comms assignments… haha) We were supposed to critique a good/bad design from a poster/ advertisement; anything. My partner for this task was Jaime, and she was in charge of the “bad” design while I was in charge of the good.

GOOD DESIGN
The poster in general was organised and simplified, and easily understood the by reader.

Proximity

Words “Alfie”, “what’s it all about”, “Jude Law” and “October” are positioned close and near to each other, therefore creating visual unity.

Sameness

Similar fonts used for entire poster. Black colour used in the words “Alfie” as well as Jude Law’s shirt.

Continuity

Elongated letter “L” guides the reader’s eyes vertically downwards.

Closure
Able to see complete picture of Jude Law even if part of the information is missing.

Visual Economy
Using only minimal elements and what is absolutely necessary to get intended results. The design is simple, clear-cut, and non-frivolous.

 

From the previous 2 designs we made, we were supposed to choose 1 design and further fine-tune and develop it. Well, despite having slightly more of the class liking the “pink” card better, I chose to stick to my blue design cuz I find the colours more visually balanced and united.

• The cupid logo and text “Cupid Greetings” could be shrunk more so that it does not become the centre of attraction.
• Bcos there was some problems with my printing.. my text “Glimpse of Heaven..” got slightly cut off at the side. I was told to go check and modify it.
• Lastly, the barcode should also be shrunk.

 

 This week, we were supposed to design 2 greeting cards bearing in mind the principles of colours. With that in mind, I produced 2 greeting card samples:

Some comments from the class:

 Since the class’ opinion was rather balanced among both designs(only slightly more than half chose the pink design), Miss Siti told me it’s up to me to decide which design I preferred to work on.. hmm… I will reveal it in the next post then! (:

PS: I dun know what’s wrong with WordPress, but the colour (blue) u see here of the first design is slightly darker than the original.

Some constructive advice given by the class:

For this week’s assignment we were supposed to tell a story with a TWIST ENDING… in no more than 10 pictures. Haha… being the uncreative person I was … I had to go through a long process of searching for wackyyy sources and inspiration for my project from Youtube! Haha! So in the end… I got inspired by this THAI TOM YUM noodles commercial… which was extremely funnyyyy! DO take a look! I really give it up to the Thai ad producers! SO creative….

 SO with that.. I came up with a do-able story line since it was impossible for me to completely copy the ad given the time and budget constraints. (Plus… ethical issues!) Instead of having a “cat” in the ad I did away with it… and just made the story as simple as possible. Here goes:

 Does it make the plot clearer now? Tell me what you think! (:

For this week’s assignment, we were required to distill a chosen object through 5 stages of Abstraction. Well, if you ask me, it ain’t hard for me to decide what object to distill since I’m an avid CAR lover…..

Ta-dah! The MINI COOPER!

Can you understand the different degrees of abstraction I was trying to show above? Apparently I wasn’t too clear in conveying some of my ideas here… From a photographic representation it slowly evolves into an icon, i.e. the ”cartoon” sketch of a cooper, then to the Tachnometer, and lastly a parking sign. (a symbolic sign)

I received alot of constructive feedback on my abstraction, and the most common one was that my Abstraction was abit too abrupt, esp. the part where the “Cartoon car (no.3) ” is succeeded by a “Tachometer”. Many recommended that I add something in between so that this “transition would not be too abrupt.

 Secondly, many couldn’t understand the meaning of a “Parking Sign” and how it could be related to the mini cooper. I  must admit this association was abit far-fetched but initially I intended to use it as a “symbolic sign” i.e.  a symbol we understand by convention.  To me such road signs like this would be second nature  to any driver, but yes, on hindsight, it would be more appropriate only if I were doing on a generic theme like “Cars”, not a Mini Cooper.. which would be too specific.

Other comments:

-end abstraction at the 4th pic, which is the coloured tachometer, cuz the 5th pic actualli could be mistaken for a common clock/stopwatch

-remove the last “Parking sign”.. cuz others may not understand its significance if not for the previous 4 pics.

-be more consistent in the abstraction, don’t jump from one stage to another.

Okayys! With the above comments in mind, I made my final changes to Assignment 2. No more Parking sign, no more “clock-like” Tachometers! Instead, I added a Dashboard in between the “cartoon” icon of the MINI and the tachometer to make the transition more obvious! I’ve chosen no. 4 as the symbol Im gonna develop:

TELL ME WHAT you think!

The pics you see below were the final products I presented to the class:

I LOVE the 80s!

As you can see I sort of integrated all my previous design concepts e.g. Michael Jackson, the mix tape, etc. into my final design.The three huge circles at the background were supposed to represent DISCO lights representing the 1980s era. However, one of my classmates pointed out that it was taking away too much attention from my name, and suggested I decreased the opacity.  Miss Siti also commented that my name seemed rather small and I was not fully utilising the A5 space. With these comments in mind, I made changes and created another version:

if you ask, I’d definitely prefer my 2nd version now. Thanks to my classmate who pointed out the part about the opacity. By decreasing the opacity (and also rearranging the circles), I think the DISCO lights now have a “softer” feel( instead of the harsh lines in the previous ones It now looks more realistic, sort of merging and “blending” into one another. It also ensured that it did not steal too much attention away from my name, which was very important. The process of finding the right opacity was not easy; I had to play around with different values. Yellow had to be reduced the most (to about 50%) cuz it was so bright at first, overshadowing the other colours. 

Lastly, the invidivual letters were resized and enlarged so that they better utilize the full space on the A5 paper.

I LOVE MAKEUP

my final product for “I LOVE MAKEUP”. No one gave any criticisms on this one, so Im sticking to this original version. (which took me so long to do using Illustrator). ENJOY!

After coming out with the rough sketches, we were required to develop 2 into full-scale roughs EACH. Unfortunately, I misunderstood the instructions and only came up with 1 each. Nevertheless, here are my full-scale roughs:

1) I LOVE THE 80S!

Yayy.. I really loved this design. To me, Michael Jackson really personified the 80s and I thought (haha wishful thinking on my part) that by using his portrait on my name it would be sufficient to represent the 80s. By the way, that pose you see is Michael Jackson’s starting pose for the 1982 hit “Billie Jean”. It took me soo long to get it right; trust me, pausing and looking at various Youtube videos to search for the correct angle is not easy. If you look closely, the letters “F”, “N” and “G” are shone on by disco lights (I havent filled in the colours) to represent the disco music and culture of the 80s.

While the class was pretty impressed by my sketch, many commented that the “Michael Jackson” figure was too distracting and it would make it seem like “I love Michael Jackson” (which is true, by the way.. haha). Suggestions included shrinking his picture so that it would not take the focus away. Also, some classmates recommended merging the “Mix Tape” design (refer to post below) with this and the disco balls. Okay, point taken.

 2) I HATE CORIANDER

Well, this was a disaster. The result of clinging on to a particular concept and not wanting to search for an alternative. I ended up with a very kiddish-looking sketch. Miss Siti suggested that since I was good at drawing, why not draw something that I like (since I ran out of ideas for coriander). I think the rest of the class kinda agreed too that the concept was too ambiguous (the bugs destroying the coriander represent my hate for the vegetable… not very obvious isn’t it?) and perhaps simple. Okay, I will work on that..look out for my next post!