The brief for the project was to select a text from Project Gutenberg that you think deserves to be republished and design and produce a print-on-demand publication in response.
The text I chose is a short sci-fi story featured in 60s magazine, Galaxy. The story is a about a crew of astronauts on their way to Mars. The main theme of the book is about the social struggles that come with Mars missions, specifically being a chef and having to provide the crew with sufficient nutrients and good food with limited resources but also about the difficult relationship between the Captain and the chef.
Reflection:
text to be in black
Should the main colour of the book be red or green?
GREEN: the majority of the food is made with algae
RED: Mars is red, and a prominent part of the book is when the chief pulls out ketchup: ‘The scarlet burial-shroud for the failures of cooks.’
Or should it be both?
should the book also be placed in an anti-static zip bag – or is this an overused idea – can this be printed on?
Imagery:
Here I was testing out what the foods mentioned in the book would look like if they were made of algae, and although in the book they are described to look true to themselves, I imagined them all an algae coloured green. algae burgerThese are just simple concept sketches of what I was thinking about and not intended for final use. I have decided to scrap this idea as although the food is a big part in the book, I want to portray the things that stem and surround the food: primarily the rocky relationship between the captain and the chef. I think that using the colour red might be a better option. It also identifies that they are on a mission to mars, the red planet.
I begun by using NASA’s images ofMars and changing the colour to red. Looking at the images, you cant really tell what it is, they’re just textural close ups. So I begun taking some of my own – the first ice cream and granola, following a theme in the book of something being moulded into something else – acting as another thing. I think these however look to gory and bloody – they look more like the alien area of science fiction when this story touches more on social issues. Although I did want my photos to be of food, the food photos haven’t worked out as well so I’ve resulted in using the photos of drinks.
I originally planned on having the images printed onto the book but due to cost reasons I am thinking about having them as inserts on photo paper. Having these loose, I have also been thinking about putting the book into some sort of pouch to keep everything together.
Typeface:
My choice of typeface is chosen based on NASA’s guidelines of legibility and readbility created for pilots and young astronauts
Should the title be in the same typeface as the rest of the text?
MAYBE – Maison Medium – very nice for main body, not sure for title
NO – Maison Mono – i dont like the serifs on the ‘r’ or ‘i’ – too thin
MAYBE – Maison Mono Demi – dont mind it in this weight, maybe too heavy for main text
MAYBE – Brezel Grotesk Medium – quite like this as a title – how does it look as the main body of text
MAYBE – Lars Medium – maybe for body, boring for title
MAYBE – Sverre Normal – great for title – personality, unique but what about the body?
I’ve decided with Lars Medium for the main body of text – its a very clear sans serif – very similar to Arial.
Text layout:
I originally wanted to keep my typography clear and legible but I this seems almost too boring for a typography project so I tried placing the text in different places on the page, first I was thinking about gravity so tried to make the text is floating. the thing that annoys me about this is that you have to keep moving the book around to read it which isn’t ideal for a reader and contradicts my original plans.
Crit:
Justification
keep hyphens to a minimum
9-14 words per line
inner margin is too small for a perfect bound book
title page is boring – think about using a different typeface or putting imagery on it
think about whether the images should be loose or stuck down – they an be stuck down very easily with some double sided tape
if photos are stuck down, then bag is not needed
think about the relationship between the text and the images
This project was a part of Channel – the 24 hour TV Channel broadcasted by BA Graphic Design Year 1 and 2.
WEEK 1
During this week, we focussed on gathering initial ideas and research that will form our Weather Shopping programme. We then had 2 days to produce a one minute pilot:
Pilot Crit feedback from Jim:
simple/obvious idea – you want to focus on putting people in the right place at first and then expand the ideas throughout the broadcast – think about this build up of ideas – a narrative/links throughout
Weather effects nearly everything so things that you are selling don’t have to just be objects – it can include non physical things – can you sell ideas?
Don’t go with your first ideas – remember to be flexible throughout this project
Think about what you are individually going to gain from this project + sort out roles
After our tutorial with Jim, we’ve revisited some of our ideas and would like to introduce some more complex concepts into what we already have. We’ve decided to set up our world in 2084, a year we were made aware of by the National Geographic and is supposedly the year that London will be fully submerged in water. We went with this year as we wanted to find a year that was far enough into the future that a dystopia could be imagined and weather could be extreme but not far enough that this futuristic world was too futuristic that it was so unrelatable and weird. We’ve also begun thinking about the things we want to sell that aren’t physical objects and have come up with insurance schemes and holiday packages to safer places. Someone in our group also has the idea to sell the whole programmes and studio at the end of the show when things are really bad but I’m personally not so sure about how well this idea works.
WEEK 2
Tutorial with Rob
dates – you need to make it clear to the audience when this was set – don’t be too weird and futuristic
Does it/will it work over a 12 month period in a 24hour broadcast?
You need to focus on the script – this is the thing that is going to distil all these complex concepts into small phrases that can explain why we’re in 2084 rather than just dropping facts – be clever about your script and word phrasing
After this tutorial, I decided to go away and re-think our storyboard in a shorter time span as I think that it would work better over one day rather than a 12-month period. I also think it would make filming a lot easier for us and would generally just be easier to follow and understand. I then pitched this idea to group – some were disagreed as they thought that it would seem too unrealistic for this weather to change so drastically within a 24 hour period, however, we all agreed that it was even weirder for the audience to be watching a something span over a 12 month period.
Tutorial with Olya
is 11 too many episodes for the audience to follow? Will it be boring and too slow of a development?
think about the objects as sculptures with many uses – the level of absurdity
Explore the language of teleshopping
Visual language is very important – the set needs to be very glossy
Try not to actually explain too much to the viewer, leave them to figure out somethings be on their own
Borrowing footage from films – disaster films – look at this future and think whether it would work with your object
After speaking with Olya, I think the objects are more important than we’ve been treating them. We’ve now put more focus on our objects and what they are. We’re also planning on producing a small catalogue of the objects.
WEEK 3
This week we cam across a couple of issues, on including how do we fake rain. When we had planned for many of our scenes for it to be raining in them, we didn’t think this would be an issue when it came to filming due to London weather, however, when checking the real time forecast it was due to be dry during our planned filming time and we had to think of ways we could fake rain. We thought about it and looked it up online and we found that a sprinkler could have worked, however, with no one having access to one or a water source near where we had planned of filming, we decided that this would be too difficult to do. In the end we decided to use a green screen to do so as it actually didn’t look as bad as we had originally thought. I thought the fake rain by the green screen also added to our satirical programme.
This week the script seems to be coming together very well – we’ve all written parts of it – which I wasn’t sure would really work so well as we all write in different ways and for some people English isn’t their first language so I’m sure it has been quite challenging for them.
WEEK 4
Me and a few others were unhappy with the final colour scheme as we thought it was too tacky, overdone and overall did not really suit a weather and shopping programme. But after discussing with the group we didn’t really come up with a conclusion and seem to have gone with the original – we have, however, agreed to use less of the black and pink which I am happier about.
Due to the snowy weather this week, we’ve had to reorganise some things. This was supposed to be our filming week in which many of the shots were to take place in Burgess Park and some inside the pond so due to the low temperatures we have decided to actually use a green screen for everything. I think this is a good thing as it will allow us to use more extreme weather conditions and more special effects which will overall add to the cheesy-ness and humour.
After starting to film, we’ve also had problems with the actor for Tom, who was supposed to be played by one of our group members, however, after trying to read the script in front of the camera, this person did not feel comfortable nor did we think he was really working in terms of what we had in mind for this Tom character. We did have a back-up actor in mind who stepped into the role of Tom and ended up working very well.
After reading the script out loud we also seemed to have some issue with this itself – we noticed that in some areas the script was too rigid and didn’t flow at all so we allowed our new actor to improvise a bit and put some areas into his words. This also got rid of the issue of him looking like he was just reading of cues, which for the most part he was as he was less familiar with the script, however, he seemed to do a good job at remembering to look up at the camera and talking to the audience like presenters do. In future, we need to bear this in mind when not using trained actors. Before filming, the actors definitely need a good amount of time to look over the script and if working with a short amount of time then cue cards should be held up behind the camera. When we looked back at the footage, it seems a shame to have the actors looking at cards in front of them most of the time instead of looking at the camera. I think this is quite distracting for the viewer.
01/03/18
One of our group members had a tutorial later this week, and I asked her to bring up the logo and colour scheme with her tutor as a few of us were still unhappy with it but the rest of the group felt it was too late to change it now.
His feedback: there is not graphic connection between the weather icons and the logo – the glow is not enough
When you think about weather, you don’t think a typeface, you think of the icons – this should be the focus point of the logo
Logo: weight of type is unbalanced, weather is hard to read, W should be uppercase as it is a noun, same typeface should be used to normalise the marriage of these two, circle of the tag is too close to lines, the tag should be a physical thing (block it out), 80s theme glow is not very attractive/is outdated
Think more about the context of our time – 2084 – what are things going to be like at this time?
I think this week we’ve started to realise that our communication as a group has been lacking – this problem seems to have effected the graphic identity mostly. Many our worried about the lack of time we have left on this project and I feel are rushing things, and not so open to change ideas or what we already have.
We have now changed our logo after this tutorial. I think this new logo is still not correct – we feel its too boring and similar weather logos today – what would it look like in 2084? – we’ve also tried making things less flat and 3D instead, but this makes it look older like Microsoft word art which is not a route any of us are keen to go down.
WEEK 5
The logo has been changed again multiple times over the weekend and I think we have finally all agreed on one.
We’ve begun to think about how we communicate the year through the format of the programme, as it is pretty standard looking at the moment. Motion of iPhone swiping was suggested but perhaps this is too overused – I think this relates to now but not in 50 years when such screens will probably be used less and less.
Our information scrolling bar – technically only the text inside is needed – how can we present this text? Does it have to be in a scrolling bar? This could also include statistics on shopping – how many people have bought our products? How many peoples cats have caught fire? – ‘only 5% of peoples cats have caught fire with the Holiday Hamster?’
QR codes – these are becoming obsolete – never really took off – so I think best to stay away from these and barcodes – will there be barcodes in the future – if so what will they look like? – don’t think they’ll look like
09.03.18
This was our final tutorial with Tracey and Anna – neither of which had seen our project before.
Editorial ads – is this an ad or an article – merging the two
The card reading is too distracting – almost ruins it – we should have used cue posters behind the camera.
Theres a lot of voiceover – a lot of information and accent – to understand
Think about the sound level and where pauses should be – right now these are limited – the overall pace needs to be revised
More found footage could be used to break this up
For future shoots – clear anything in the frame that doesn’t need to be there – everything in the frame should have a reason to be there – especially the room scenes – it makes things look really unprofessional and distracting.
look into the
Stanley Kubrick LCC archive – conversation with braun – hair dressing
Overall
Quite a difficult project to execute. I think a mistake was not appointing roles to people as the weight of the project was definitely not even across the group at some points. To begin with, our group worked very well together – we met most days and communicated to each very well. Towards the last two week, however, many of us were feeling stressed about the lack of time we had to complete everything and I think this shows through in the overall finish of the work. Things such as the filming – we didn’t take many takes of things because we wanted to complete the filming all in one week, when I think with a couple extra days whenthe actors could look at the scripts, we could make the speech more fluid. The shots of the products are also quite disappointing. Saying this, I think we were all very happy with the final graphics, the logo could have been placed on more shots – we had originally agreed on having it in the corner the whole time but I think this must have got lost during editing. I think the green screen definitely worked well but the studioset could have been more polished and a different colour scheme to match the final logo.
The brief for this project was to take a series of photographs that communicate a word (decisive) through objects, props, environments and situations.
I immediately dived into more complex bridges of the word decisive – which looking back, actually diverted me from the meaning of decisive and rather the complexities of what or who makes someone more decisive and so on. But the research I had gathered along with the support from a movie scene I though I had an interesting concept I just struggled to think about ways I could communicate this in my images.
My tutorial with Sandy went well – she was very excited for this idea. She felt that I needed to decide what my ‘focus’ was going to be and that this choice needed meaning. I struggled with this a lot even though I thought I had quite a clear idea in my head of what exactly I wanted the images to look like. So without I focus I decided to go out and just start taking photos based on what I had pictured in my head. Doing this I realised that actually interesting street photography is very difficult and that was trying to do something quite controlled and choreographed in a way that is supposed to be spontaneous – I was trying to create the accidentally on purpose.
After my second tutorial I realised that actually my idea was still undeveloped and what I was trying to do would be very hard to do and to do well. The main thing that came to my attention during this tutorial was that with this concept there is a danger of it looking like a praise to advertisement, which I think would be inappropriate for this project. I think probably also boring in the grand scheme of things as we know that advertisement is persuasive and don’t need to be told again. I concluded that ultimately, this idea is too distracting from the meaning of the word decisive.
I definitely spent too much time on researching, which in hindsight was unnecessary as I had been given very simple instructions to just communicate the word decisive through photography. This project taught me that I need to be careful not to get lost in the research stage and be more selective with what I am looking at. I think in the future I should try to avoid being overly conceptual and remember that I am trying to communicate something effectively.
After struggling endlessly with this project, I decided to strip it back and begin again. I looked back at Sandy Suffields work and thought about what I liked about it: the compositions are simple yet aethstically pleasing and clever. I also looked back at the brief and really thought about the title Still Life and the key: how can objects and environments communicate your word.
After trying to come up with a clever way to respond to the word ‘decisive’, I eventually just decided to completely strip back all my ideas and start shooting something. I looked back at some of my ideas from the ’10 ideas’ exercise and went with one of those. This seems to be a regular occurrence in my work: overthinking and trying to find the clever angle. I need to be weary of this in the future as its more than often unsuccessful and cuts into the time I have for a project, weakening the overall outcome. – in this case I think this is exactly what has happened. Thee images that I present as my final could definitely do with some more developing and annoyingly for this project I was absent for the final crit so have not received any feedback.
For this project we were asked to develop a full set of characters from one typeface or design direction from one of the primer workshops. We were asked to come out with two final outcomes: an A1 printed specimen sheet and a moving image or 3D outcome.
Overall, I found this project pretty frustrating and challenging, this being very much to do with the fact that InDesign is not yet a programme that I am comfortable with. There was also the issue of actually creating the images using the photocopier. After spending many hours beside the photocopier with my crystal and not getting the results I wanted, I did end up cutting a couple of corners on some of the shapes as I really wanted a complete A1 specimen to be able to present – especially evident in the ‘S’.
Looking back at this project, I wish I had focused more on the principles of type. I think that due to it being our first core independent project, I was eager to start and had come across so many interesting typefaces, pushing the boundaries of type which inspired me to create something really unique. I wanted to approach it from an interesting angle but actually ended up overcomplicating things for myself which did not sit hand in hand with the deadline. In hindsight, I wish I had done something a bit more simple so that I could learn about the principles of type properly, I think this also would have helped me focus more on my indesign skills.
I received good feedback during the crit. It certainly grabbed peoples interest and sparked curiosity over the use of medium and process which is something I like to achieve with my work. I suggestion was made to change the type into a block colour so that I could revisit it and focus on the shape.
The brief for this project was to create a 1 minute, 1 take video focussing on design, movement and synchronicity.
I think the main purpose of this project was to teach us how to work efficiently collaboratively – and it definitely did this. Working on this project has made me enjoy group work so much more and has made me excited for group project with the second years in the coming weeks.This project seemed to flow so organically in terms of working in a group, especially a a large as 8. Having specific roles made each of us much more comfortable with sharing ideas and I think somewhat improved the finish of the overall outcome.
I found our project very exciting. it was experimental, challenging and definitely came with some risks that annoyingly I feel did not quite pay off.
In the future, we need to work on our time management as a group, as this is clearly communicated in the refinement of our final outcome. We had a limited amount of time and materials, therefore could only do one take and hope for the best. This take did not hold as much excitement as we had anticipated. We originally thought that we would slow the video down during post-production and thought that our mainchallenge would be to have enough content for that one minute. The video was actually sped up instead and the issue of not having enough content turned into too much content but not being as visually exciting as we had envisioned. Due to thus our editor and sound d man decided to mirror the video. I think that looking back, this wasn’t the best answer to our problem and actually makes the whole outcome look slightly naff and unoriginal. This edit also did not go down in the crib with Alex. His words weren’t negative but he felt that we had cheated the brief by having ‘two screens’ which is somewhat true. He had reminded us on several occasions that this project was not about post-production tricks and that these type of tricks would not be merited. Due to our idea being largely about aesthetics I think we needed more time to challenge ourselves and refine the video during production rather than taking an easy route out.
stellakennedy 