Love and Hate

Below are two examples of designs that I hate

In my opinion, this design is taking 'less is more' a bit far. The lack of detail is not inspiring and i was under the impression that their brief was to excite, encourage and inspire.

I got a bit more hopeful in the idea of an alternative animated design, but to me this is just quite creepy.

Below are two examples od design that I love:

I can pretty much see no wrong in anything Carson does, ironically since he seems to stumble over some of his ideas by accident. Ordinarily, if it were anyone else, I have little interest in designs like his, but his style can be applied to a huge range of products.

These Michael Kosmicki designs epitomise the style I am interested in, styles that portray simplicity but aren't actually that simple. Both in monochrome, colours wouldn't lend themselves to these images, I don't feel like they need colours to be vibrant.

Is the quantity sufficient enough to be followable?

Is the written work understandable and of a high quality?

Is the contextual work of a good, high quality?

Is my blog easy to follow and understandable?

Is the quality of work at a high enough standard?

Alphabet Soup Part 2 Evaluation

Overall, I am pleased with the final outcome of my typeface, I think that keeping it in black and white contributed more to it. I tried to ensure it captured some elements of Suzie's personality, without having a lot going on at once.

I briefly explored looking at architectural structures, stacked letters and letters designed on squared paper, like a grid, but found that these designs look much like some of the work I had seen of Suzie's. After unsuccessfully trying to adapt them to look less like her own work, I looked into some of the work of Suzie's favourite designer, Peter Saville. Much of his work included very sharp elements, all intersecting, which I felt similarly reflected Suzie's architectural style I lightly based the letterforms on Tahoma in order to keep it simple, as my design was becoming quite complicated. Someone mentioned to me after I had finished drawing up the typeface that I should try connecting them all, which I did with Suzie's name badge.

I missed the final crit, so have quite limited opinions from others. Although i was pleased with the final outcome, I would hope that another time I would be able to convey more of Suzie's personality other than the styles she works in and enjoys. Similarly I would have liked to explore joining the letters together further.

Alphabet Soup Part 2 PowerCrit

In this weeks crit we presented our work to Amber, Simon and the 5 other group members. I was pretty much set on my idea before the crit, having researched a lot of initial ideas and landed on something that resembled the work of Peter Saville, my partner Suzie's favourite designer.

Points I will work on after the crit feedback:

• Explore the use of other typefaces as a base
• Experiment with adapting designs to lowercase letterforms
• Try to include more than one element of Suzie's personality in the designs
• Explore some of the other designs before I completely settle on this one - more design sheets to experiment

What is Graphic Design? Part 2

In our blog groups we chose 5 posts from Part 1 and individually analysed their function, design context, tone of voice, message/idea/concept and intended scale. After this we shared all we answered and explored other options, making lists for each one.
The 5 i chose:

Function we found:

• Publishing
• Typography
• Campaigning
• Audience interaction
• Branding
• Advertising
• Aesthetic quality
• Education
• Comedy

Design context:

• Film posters
• Events advertising posters
• Magazines
• Logos
• Media
• Collage
• Packaging
• Newspapers
• Books
• Galleries
• Billboards
• Web design
• Mapping

Tone of Voice:

• Humorous
• Playful
• Minimalist
• Informative
• Self-help
• Witty
• Ironic
• Cynical

Message/Idea/Concept:

• To persuade
• To advise
• To worry
• To promote
• To inform
• To help
• To look good

Intended Scale:

• Packaging
• Books
• Magazines
• Newspapers
• Webpage
• Billboards
• Album covers
• Varied poster sizes

After this session I starting looking for more examples that fit into the points within these categories.

 

Alphabet Soup - Part 1

We were each given a word that we had to illustrate through a typeface, my word was 'shatter'. I chose to adapt Helvetica Bold, keeping it simple as I planned on making some exaggerated designs.

I explored two different routes with it, one being the more expected, shattered or cracked shards of glass. The other I looked at was shattered in terms of exhausted, tired, weakened. For this I made one N to appear as though it was deteriorating, and an H to appear tired. However neither of these seemed to illustrate the word effectively enough so I made more shattered glass designs.

Crit

In a group of 11, we each briefly explained our ideas behind the work and present it to the others. From this the others chose the top 5 that fitted the brief the best, which from my selection ended up being the F, E, E, A and M. I agreed with their decision that these were the most fitting.

Once each member of the group stuck their top 5 on the wall, we rotated to another table to narrow the their 55 down to the 5 most fitting and best executed. Bearing in mind that we all had quite varied ideas of what was the best, it was fairly easy to narrow them down, choosing only one in the end that was the best of the group.

I liked the idea of an elimination process in this crit as it forced everyone in the group to be involved in the decision making and the varied opinions allowed me to see things from another persons point of view.