Designing Dislikes

This week has really provided me a valuable insight into the design industry. Having to listen to the music that Steve provided us with over and over again certainly wasn’t my cup of tea. If I’m honest, the music was that peaceful and quiet that it almost made me fall asleep the first time I listened to it. But by doing this exercise, I have learnt that you don’t always design for something that you like or have interests in. Therefore, I have learnt to switch off my personal tastes and design regardless of my opinions.

One of my reading week tasks has been to create some ‘mood boards’ relating to the music I have been listening to. At first I found the idea of these a bit silly, but as I’ve been putting them together throughout the course of the day, I’ve come to like them and discovered how much of a great visual aid they will be to me. I decided to do three story boards relating to my tracks; each one shows the three main themes I feel are present at some point throughout the four tracks.

The first theme was a calm, almost dreamy track which helped me to picture clouds and water in my mind. Colours schemes appropriate for this would be shades of blue accompanied with white to create a tranquil theme. For this, I think that some form of ‘flowing’ font would be suitable, therefore a script font like Mistral or Staccato would be perfect. Forte would also be suitable.

After track one, the piece progressed into what reminded me of the jungle. A percussion instrument is present and sounds almost like bamboo sticks being struck together. Obviously this kind of theme would go perfect with different shades of green. Typefaces that have a jungle like appearance would be best, so for this I stuck Papyrus onto my board, I also think Eccentric would also be a suitable font although it lacks that jungle appearance.

For the final theme, I couldn’t help but think of Arabia, sand and snake charming. An instrument that is present during the final 15 minutes or so sounds exactly like a shake charmer’s flute and this brought me to thinking about sand and pyramids, camels and sunny climates. An appropriate colour scheme would be oranges and yellows, warm colours to depict the sunny climes the final part reminds me of.

Throughout the past two days, I’ve been collecting logos in preparation for the final assignment of year one. From what I know so far, this is going to be a big assignment and I’m really looking forward to it. It will be nice to include all the aspects of design that we’ve learnt so far into one assignment and really show the amount of knowledge I have gained since starting the course back in September.

I have really enjoyed this reading week, it has provided me with a challenge and some music which I didn’t really like, but has shown me that I can put my mind to something, even if I don’t like the object I’m designing for. A valuable experience.

Thanks for reading,
Sue

Nyala by Carl Stone

Carl Stone – a name that doesn’t give any clues as to the genre of music he may fall into. Therefore, upon listening to his music for the first time, mystery is brought upon the listener creating a sense of curiosity and intrigue. For the more daring listener adventuring into the unknown, Nyala is a set of 4 tracks that continue on from one another, creating a piece that gradually brings an atmospheric but demure conclusion.

Nyala begins with a steady introduction, an almost silent piece that steadily builds into a crescendo of stringed instrumentals, which provides a calming ambiance throughout. A tranquil piece that could relax even the most stressed out listener. With the addition of a percussion section on the second track, a variety of musical compositions and soundscapes are explored. Repetition plays a big factor in the dynamics of the tracks and helps to make them blend into background music.

As the song continues, we are taken to more eastern climes. With a melody reminiscent of a snake charmers flute, accompanied by the inaudible drone of a male singer. With the relaxing atmosphere throughout the piece, the listener can easily drift away and take their mind off things. Em:t 1196 is a calming album that provides easy listening during stressful times, perfect for anyone wishing to wind down after a hard days work.

A6 - Revert to Type Evaluation

Another assignment completed and handed in, an assignment that I thoroughly enjoyed as it wasn’t like any I’ve done before. The topic of typography mixed with the ‘as and when’ issue of timed tasks certainly kept me on my toes. Preparing myself for the timed tasks really paid off, having a few hours messing about with Adobe InDesign really familiarised me with the menus and therefore saved me time when building my designs.

When I received this assignment, I must admit I was slightly daunted by the fact that one of the main tasks was a presentation on a chosen typographer. My chosen typographer was Stanley Morison, a 20th century typography consultant who designed Times New Roman. Researching into Stanley and his work was really interesting, the amount of information that I found regarding his work was unbelievable. It made the task of putting information onto presentation slides less painful.

Presentations aren’t something that I like doing – at all – and this really shows when I present, I get all breathless or I ramble so fast through my presentation that I end up finishing before the time limit. To try and overcome this, I constantly practised and practised my presentation to myself and then to family members. Some of the hard work paid off as I wasn’t as breathless as I usually get, but more work could have be done to stop myself from speeding through the presentation.

The rest of the assignment consisted of a handout to accompany the presentation and a series of timed tasks. The timed tasks were really scary to begin with, the thought of working under such strict conditions made me anxious. Getting the first one out of the way helped to ease some of that anxiety and after a couple, I fell into a comfort zone with them.

Hokai (Paint Tube)
The first of the timed tasks and also the one I dropped from my submission. Of all the timed tasks, this one provided me with the biggest challenge. The amount of content you had to fit into such a little space meant that there were only so many ways I could lay the content out. This task was dropped due to a small mistake I had made on the design.

‘Vodafone’ (Newspaper Advertisement)
Vodafone provided me with a challenge from the start, deciding what column structure to go for proved difficult. In the end, I decided to go for a long but thin advertisement and I was really pleased when the design I wanted to achieve fit in the dimensions of the column structure.

‘Jonathan Gee’ (Newspaper Article)
This was by far the one I enjoyed the most, even though I spent most of my time trying to get my columns to align at the bottom, it gave me a great sense of achievement when I finally succeeded. I produced a design that I was really pleased with as it didn’t stray away from my original design.

‘Grid’ (All that Jazz)
Grid was harder that it initially sounded. Designing a newspaper layout when I didn’t have any idea how long the content was going to be made me wary and forced me into playing a safe bet. Due to the previous newspaper task, I felt really comfortable having to do another newspaper layout. Everything was still fresh in my head from the week before and therefore made things a lot easier.

Story (Snake Davies)
The final task of the lot and the one I completed in the quickest time. As already mentioned, I was comfortable with newspaper layouts and due to my mind-numbing experience of aligning columns the previous week; I was in the knowledge of ways to solve the problem.

The ‘design studio’ experience has been a major learning curve, adhering to strict deadlines in a studio atmosphere has given me a feel of what things could be like in the employment world and it provided me with a sense of reality. The fact that I have managed to hand all my timed tasks in at least 25 minutes before the deadline has made me aware of how efficient I can be with my time planning. In future, I could use the spare time I have left to check over my design more and ensure everything is how it should be.

If I was to do this assignment, I think the only major thing I would change is how I presented my presentation. Although it went better than last time, I can still vastly improve the way I present. Of the silly things noted in my blue presentation, I think I managed to cut a good portion of them out. To stop myself from fiddling with my pockets I wore trousers that didn’t have pockets and my handout was left on the table so I wasn’t playing with that all the time.

Goals
From now on, whenever I do a piece of print work, I should take full advantage of being able to use a more diverse font – rather than the box standard web safe ones, e.g. Verdana and Arial. This seemed to be a habit of mine and something I want to break out of. When I search for inspirational pieces of typography, I can now use the definitions I have learnt to annotate my work. Doing this and practising the terms will keep them fresh in my mind and therefore will embed them in my head.

Continue to use the method of time planning that was produced during the timed tasks, due to the short space of time I had to do tasks, I felt that my time planning had to be spot on. Making the duration of tasks as strict as possible will keep me in the pressured design studio experience and will therefore get me used to the environment.

So for next time:

• Use typography definitions more so they stick in my head. Keep revising them.
• Keep the time planning as strict as possible. Plan a day at a time rather than a full week as this seemed to be more effective.
• Use my time to its full potential. Check everything over multiple times before handing something in. It’s too late to change mistakes when the work is submitted!

[Word Count: 1043]

Thanks for reading,
Sue

Late feedback on A5 Website

After undergoing many different layout designs, here is my final design.
Please feel free to leave any comments or feedback!

Thanks,
Sue