Lecture Exercise C- From the lens of different angles

top slanted: following the rule of third:

Bottom-up/ rule of third:

Front:

Centre, Bottom up:

-Personally I like the 2nd picture best: It seems to have a life on its own; how it is a character playing in a scene in a lecture threatre. =)

Assignment 2- Less is More

Design Rationale:
- Wanted to remind commuters to be considerate and not put their belongings beside them and occupying an empty seat unneccessarily.

Abstraction:
Final Prototype:
I was thinking between a probibition sign (Left) and a take note sign (Right)So I did both and showed it to the class.


Placement of the signs:

Design Critique from the class:

1) Lines are too thin. Abstractions, Pictogram are mainly composed of thick simple lines that can convey message as directly and simply as possible.

2) The jump from 1 ladies bag to 2 plastic bags is abit too wide.

3) The message may be misinterpreted into : do not leave any belongings behind; OR beware of any suspicious article behind.

- This stumped me. It turns out my reasoning of taking the person out during abstraction is flawed. My reasoning was that the main character is the bag since we're advising people not to be inconsiderate and put the BAG beside the person. But after the misinterpretation, having the person, even if just one part of the person appearing in the pictogram, the message would be more effective.

Lesson learnt: Always think of how different people will interpret the design and make sure not only you are able to convey the message effectively, but the recepients have to recieve it correctly.

Lecture Exercise: Iconic & Indexical

Exercise: Draw something that's iconic (actual representation of something) and indexical version of it.

Iconic representation should be fairly easy enough. My peer Timothy drew a watch and drew the indexical version of it.
Then we realise that indexical version would refer more of a relation, eg. cause and effect. like how smoke means fire etc. If we were to use watch as an iconic representation, we think time will be the indexical version of it. (actually we thought vice versa would be more appropriate) Whichever is prefered, there is no way to draw the abstract idea of time, as in, there is no one object that can be used to represent time.



So we drew a new one:

This, we think, will be a better representation of iconic and indexical representations. Iconic: the actual car. Indexical: the steering wheel/ exhaust pipe.

We thought this would be very straighforward already. Until one of the TA came along and asked, "the exhaust pipe meant carbon monoxide? greenhouse gases? global warming?"

We went o.O.

Design is an abstract thing afterall. Multi-faceted indeed.

Assignment 1: Me & Myself

When it comes to designing your name, I think people will start brainstorming thousand and one ideas on how to make your name look good and accurately represent yourself.

The first thing that comes to my mind are things that I like: chocolates, dancing, bookscraping, singing, mixing, taking pictures etc. At this point of time, suddenly I dont like my name- it's either too long (Josephine) or too short (Jo) and i refuse to accept others (Jose ?! no~) Left with no choice, i ended up choosing my surname- Siow.

Hence the skeches:

Based on my friends who took the same module last sem, they talked about integration of design. That spurs me to think and choose the designs that best reflects the natural integration of the letters into the object chosen. So I chose the camera and DJ mixer instead.

Upon completion of the roughs, I thought i liked the mixer idea, but the readability of the letters presented by the knobs appears to be quite low. I could only make out the "W" from the microphone wires. As for the camera, the idea seemed cliche- a lot of people could have thought of the same thing too, it's quite normal, common and not very innovative. But it's a decent piece to work on nonetheless, though personally I thought the film was placed abit too awkwardly. (It's an attempt to make things more natural rather than making the "S" a sticker design placed there on purpose)

During the critique session, as what I expected, most prefered the camera idea as compared to the mixer due to its low readability.

For the mixer, Jing pointed out something useful I thought is worth considering.

As I was complaining on how difficult to draw the mixer as accurately as possible, she said I could simplify the picture and reduced it to a pictogram-like diagram and the effect will still be the same.

I guess I could be called a realist- trying to make every object I drew as normal and real as possible. That explains the black colour of the camera and the grey colour of the mixer.

However, while others talked about the readability of my word, Jing said something which I've never exactly thought about. And of course it's a fruitful one- I knew I've learned something.

1) What does the camera mean to me? That i like taking photos? or do i like cameras? That's a good question. The activity or the equipments. Jing said that the whole canvas is yours, and you use the whole canvas to portray your idea instead of the object itself. It's the meaning behind the whole canvas that I need to think about when depicting my idea.


2) The colour scheme and the type of camera I choose. The DSLR that I chose, does it mean that I'm a serious photographer? (No, I chose it because it best represents a camera and I like to take pictures to keep all my memories with my loved ones and favourite things)
Instead of an SLR, I could choose lomograph instead as that is more casual and relfect my character more accurately.


3) The placement of the object: Right at the centre- Differenct orientation, placement and sizes tells something different about the you. Whether I'm bold, shy etc.
I wouldnt mind being in the centre sometimes, maybe that explains my position of camera.

After all the insights I've gained, I went back and did my final prototype with AI:





I've added bright colours to the SLR to signify that I'm a serious worker but I know how to have fun too. I've added a background, a collage of photos which portray what I like- capturing memories with my loved ones and favourite things. I increased the transparency of the background so that there would be a visual fight between the camera and the photographs.

I thought that my colour shades are problematic, the shadows especially. I wanted to have the effect of the camera lie on top of the photographs, but I can't seem to have an embedded kind of a feeling. =(

During the second round of critique session, the comments I've recieved are pretty much the ones that I've thought about. Especially the readability of my "S", it made me quite sad, because as much as I wanted to make it natural, the film has to be 1 strip at least to make the film natural. I think I have to overlay some photographs over the film to make the "S" more obvious.

To help with the embedded feeling of the camera, Jing and her assistant suggested distorting the background with photoshop to create the effect. I shall try. =)

Generally the things I've learned are figure and ground, colour scheme, placement etc. Good exercise to lay down the foundation.

Some of the class designs by my peers that I liked includes the circuit board- how Lionel can hide his name under organised systems of wires and circuits.

It's amazing what you can with the simpliest things- lines.

Class Excercise- Constructive Criticism

Only when I search the picture shown in the lecture that i realised that the picture was taken from Macdonald's PR stint of promoting Avatar movie, this app online calld "Avatarise yourself", where you can create your own avatar.

No wonder I feel there's something wierd about the picture when I first saw it during lecture.

Here's another picture that's similar to the one in lecture:














Constructive Criticism

Description:

Composite picture combining avatar and another real person's face. It is reflected against the background of the avatar's homeland- Pandora.

Analysis:

It combines the user's face and avatar in the movie to create another personalised avatar uniquely for the user himself. Colours are blended to create the blue distinctive in Avatar. The Macdonalds Logo uses this application as a sponsor of this movie uses it as a PR tool, not only to advertise Avatar, but also to reinforce its brand value in consumers' mind.

Interpretation:

It makes user to feel as if he has created his own avatar that is capable of living and interacting with the other species in the world of the indigenious people, the Na'vi.

Judgement:

It is a clever idea to engage people in an interactive way, to enhance the interaction and attachment of people towards the movie.

However, based on the picture shown during the lecture, the resulting picture is pixellated, due to its low-resolution nature. Also, the blends between the user's face and the avatar's blue skin are not done very well. The user's face ended up looking paler than the avatar's blue skin, making the whole end product looking very artificial.

There is no blending between the foreground (the avatar itself) and the background. There seemed to be no connection between the avatar and the background, but more of a statue taking a photo in front of a painted wall. Shadows and lighting could be applied to make the avatar more blended to the background.

It's interesting that it's a programme you can avatarise youself, too bad by the time i realised, it's no longer available. Oh well.

"If you were design a machine that'd enhance your imagination 1ooX, what would you draw?"

I wouldnt dare to show my piece after i'm done with my piece at first. I drew the first thing that comes to my mind.
I looked around, and there, all pieces of headlike gears, helmets and goggles.

"Why restrict everything? Does it mean that anything that's related to head/brain means you've gotta create something that can be worn etc?" I thought.

The rebel took over, and I refused to draw any helmet or goggles.
Maybe that's why I ended up drawing something that's totally out of the blue- an egg beater.
I have no idea how did I thought of that; it just, well, popped up in my mind.

Let me elaborate on my "creation":



THE ULTIMATE IMAGINATION BEATER- it beats the hell outta you (what a cliche product name) [UIB]

Objective: Makes the stale thinking locked in your mind be "beaten" into something more fluid, and let your resulting creative juices flow.

How it work: When the UIB is switched on, there will be an ionic beam produced that is able to penetrate through the skull and brain and free up all the unwanted stale thinking without harming the user physically.

Additional: LCD screen with a library of resources exists to allow more info to be stored in the brain, a starting ingredient for imagination/creativity to be produced.

Caution: Using on high-powered mode too many times might lead to possible headache. Try to use it sparingly. =)

Reflection:
The final piece might looked stupid, funny, even unrealistic. Then again, once upon a time, people called Galileo a mad man, Einstein a freak, but only future generations know how to appreciate their works and theories.

Well, I just thought that whatever our design is, it need not necessarily be based on the subject we'e doing. Let's just be crazy about it, and let our imagination run wild. That's what brainstorming is about.