Typographic Poster - Word Emphasis

This session was focused around how type can convey emotion through words based on layout, font and how type can help convey a message.

With this concept in mind, we were given 3 different fonts that we had to utilise to fit a quote. The fonts we had available to us were DIN a Deutsche utilitarian sans serif font, Comic Sans and cooper BLK. Each of these fonts have a very distinct type style that is suited to different scenarios and context. The quote was given to us ahead of time to avoid distraction from the process of thinking of a quote and was apparently our star sign horoscope of the day. Not something i'm personally a big fan of.

When writing out my quote I picked out the more prominent words in the quote to attempt to emphasise them correctly.

I intentionally used the Cooper BLK font on the word 'feelings' as sans serif fonts are often provoke more emotional and 'hand written' aesthetics visually and historically than the more utilitarian and mechanical visuals of DIN.

I took a similar approach to the word 'easy' relating it to childhood posters that schools may have, often using the Comic sans for its known to be easier to read.

The rest of the quote was in Din due to it being more practical and less emotional. Din is a strong font and it has good emphasis to strong words. Because of this I made the word 'deepest' in a bold capital to contrast the rest of the quote.

After creating our personal typographic poster we were put into teams to work on a larger scale version of the task. The quotes available to use were three different sets of song lyrics which we had to divvy out between us to work on. The song we chose had the same number of people in as lines of lyrics, easily giving each person in our group their own lyric line to work on. We encouraged the core font to be DIN once again due to its strong appearance and were encouraged to 'do our own thing' to the type we were given.

Once glued together and constructed we added more personal flair through colours and doodles to represent our personalities and themes of the lyrics.

To further expand on this session I tried to do a more controlled typographic poster. I used the same font that was available to me in the lesson but had more control over the kerning and text layout. The poster was inspired by my current 'student' feelings on feeling poor but not being able to stop myself from buying more art supplies for projects. Something that may seem quite familiar to a lot of creative types who horde art supplies and stationary.

BBC Trip - Insightful Morning

After contacting Christina Connelly from the BBC creative exchange week, me and a small group of other students got permission to go to the BBC for a small meetup and talk with other UX designers. Each speaker discuss how they ended up in their job positions, the kind of work they did/do and advice on what a company looks for. 

The thing that I took away most from this day were:

• My skills may not strictly have to be related to design to get a design orientated job. It is fine to be better at researching or organising as in a corporate setting there is a better position within a group for that role/skill. 

• Don't be intimidated to apply for a job you can't tick all the boxes for ; "fuck it just apply". The likelihood of having every skill before applying for a job is slim and if you don't get the job, you can always learn from the interview what to work on.

• Do your research on the business you are applying for, check their social media, history and get a good feeling for the type of business you are applying to fit in with.

• "Give a shit!" Be interested and enjoy learning new things. People like to see enthusiasm and drive.

It was a very relaxed morning with talks running till lunch time, any time after that being free to explore Manchester at our own leisure.

Creative Exchange Week - BBC UX Design and How to Brainstorm

Today we had a guest visitor who works at the BBC - Christina Connelly. Her job focuses around designing games and apps for kids as a UX designer. UX designers focus their efforts around the user experience. She mentioned she enjoyed working with kids as they are very truthful and will tell you how it is.

"Making small changes in how we think, will make BIG changes to the User Experience"

The main focus of today was to look at alternative ways to brainstorm for a project and pitch a fake scenario. The beginning of the day will focus on coming up with lots of ideas then diverge and close down to get to the final idea.

The first task we had was to build the ultimate flying machine:

rule 1. Use all of the paper

rule 2. No additional materials allowed

rule 3. No test flights.

In my pair these were the first initial ideas we had: 

Frisbee - wouldn't fit specifications. Paper Aeroplane - Pretty. paper ball - Practical.

Our gut instinct is to go to a paper aeroplane cause we know it works and looks good, but any answer is correct.

The second task we were given a phoney brief of creating a shop window display for John Lewis. To help us break down the brief we used the method of drawing a ' Tom and Jerry' diagram. The idea of this diagram is to distinguish the different aspects of a brief. Jerry wants to get cheese (goal) but on his way he gets caught in a mousetrap (issues). even when he is trying to get to his cheese. tom is creeping up on him (blockers).

As designers its our job to work out how we might fix these issues/blockers and so we went through each issue and worked out how to overcome the overcome each of the blockers the brief gave.

The next activity we were set to think of as many things that can be made with a circle in the span of a minute. We often would think of an eight ball but never any of the other numbers. Some people may think of a Sun/Moon but never go on to think of Jupiter,Venus etc. This shows how we may miss ideas if we don't explore all of the potentials to begin with.

Crazy eight was the next task. after going over the brief we had to get some ideas down on paper. We split the paper into eight different sections. Each section he had 40 seconds to write down and build on an idea. As stupid as it may be, its important to jot it down. It can always be removed later.

After writing down my eight ideas I shared and compared them with my partner to come to a conclusion on the overall strongest and interesting four between us both. We then made a X Y diagram depicting levels of impact and effort. From low impact, high impact, low effort and high effort we had to place our idea where we thought it would fit best on the grid. the more centred the idea the more do-able and effective the concept is.

After concluding on the strongest ideas we had one more task to pitch our developed idea into a final outcome of  a faux newspaper that we have to present to our client. After creating the paper we shared our task with the rest of the group for feedback.

This workshop was an incredibly interesting session with lots of very useful techniques to help me generate early on ideas in any project. The speaker Christina was very easy to talk to and Since the workshop we have planned a tour of her department in the BBC with a small group of other willing students to get a better talk to the staff about what they do at the bbc.

Creative Exchange Week - Live Drawing

This workshop was all about practising the core of anatomy and live drawing. The drawings were set into segments of short amounts of time for each poses forcing us to think quickly and sketch fast. This didn't allow us time to get hung up on smaller details and focus on frame, proportions and shape first and foremost. We used our own pencils,charcoal and graphite as a measure to determine the correct lengths and heights.

This was my first time ever doing live drawing and I saw a major benefit in it for my traditional drawing skills. I plan on doing some more group live drawing sessions within my circle of friends to continue to develop my skills.

Creative Exchange Week - Indesign

This workshop was a starting guide on the potential of Adobe Indesign.

We went through the procedure of setting up creating a document showing the potential processes we can go through to make a professional Indesign layout. We also got given a large collection of useful sources to help creative design.


Layout

When creating any project within the Indesign software it is important to create a bespoken modular grid system. To give a sense of unity and control, a grid system is key. Depending on the subject matter, the grid may be different but as a standard you tend to find  a 960 grid for web or alternatively a 24 column layout for print.

Grid should fade into the background. They are a useful guideline that isn't obvious, its main job to makes the work stand out. Though it guides your document layout it is also possible to go against the grid and 'break the rules'.

Text

When creating a publication it tends to have three different consistent fonts : header, subhead and body copy of text. This gives enough difference that it remains visually interesting but keeps it consistent. When looking at what fonts work well together you can look into font pairing to see what/how people have used different fonts together. These were the complimenting fonts I used and an example of them used together:

The standard text size for a body copy for print is 8-12 points title size, The title/header has a lot more freedom and tends to go as whatever looks correct. For web design the fonts tend to average 16 pixels.

Center text is sacrilege for longer pieces of text; Do not center text longer than 3 lines.
Left align and style it best to fit the type. As a designer it is important not to justify the gaps. It makes the overall viewing of the document unappealing and unkempt. Altering kerning and type is key as a designer.

A fun activity we did to practice laying out text correctly was through a simple game where you adjust the kerning of text to the correct positioning try it here.

Extras

Convert images into CMYK colour space before inserting the images into Indesign if possible. Once the images are placed in Indesign you can also create hyperlinks in images if needed.

After creating the document we learnt about the importance and convenience of package a document. Doing this creates a self organised folder of fonts, assets and anything else you or you employer may want from you. It is a powerful tool to ensure your document remains small.

Indesign also has the ability to publish your document online. Similar to a Web Viewer it allows public and private viewing of your PDF Indesign document as long as it isn't being monetised.

This Creative Workshop really helped me understand the potentials of Indesign and is encouraging more experimentation within the software.

my final pdf I created

Creative Exchange Week - Music Video

The focus of todays session was to create a colaborative music video for a client. We all got an allocated time slot for the music video to create a graphic animation. There were no limitations to the style of animation so any type of animation was acceptable. People used a variety of methods such as motion graphics, live footage and rotascoping. The only restrictions people were given was a colour scheme to stick to and stay within their allocated time slot.

The band itself is an indie alternative group called Champion of Youth. Their alternative art really compliments the experimental style of the class/workshop.
https://championofyouth.bandcamp.com/

  

Due to the ammount of space available the piece that I made was a closure to the animation. Something short and simple to finish off the end of the video. The animation had to be no more than 2 seconds so I had to create something with impact.

To give mine a more messy 'indie' feeling I chose to make a hand drawn animation. I drew out the individual frames in a small flipbook and scanned them to create a digital variation. I took the scans into illustrator in order to vectorise and organise them to be taken into After Effects to animate.

 

 This is my end result before being added into the full animation:

end blip - Andy Warhol from Sophie Wales on Vimeo.

This is the results from the entire creative workshop:
Restraint Final Movie from Motion-go on Vimeo.

This was a fun brief to work on, the outcome being for a real client was really fun knowing we had free range on how to tackle the task we got given.