Final Research Poster

This is my final research poster which I have submitted for my assessment. I think that this poster looks much better than my previous poster that I submitted for my formative assessment. The layout flow is much better and it allows there to be order within the poster. I decided to stick to a basic colour palette to resemble the Bauhaus’s clean minimalistic modern style. I think this approach has worked well as it’s not too bold but not too boring either, I have used the lines to break up and add a bit of structure to the poster. Overall, I am happy with how my poster has come out and I think my simple minimalist approach has worked well. 

Research Poster | Theory

Before creating my final research poster I created several different ones with different layouts. However I wasn’t happy with how it looked. As I wanted to not include that much text as I thought my first attempted had way too much text I opted for selecting one section from my essay to reflect my poster. 

Although I think that all these different layouts flow I just didn’t like how they looked as they didn’t really look that appealing and I wasn’t 100% happy with how any of them were going thats why they were all unfinished. 

Second Year Reflection

Coming into second year at uni I was very positive about the year, don’t get me wrong I still am positive about how they year has gone. I think that I have developed not only my technical skills but I have developed my own way in which I absorb information. Although I may not have gotten to grips with every single lecture I found that reading back at the lecture notes and doing further research made me understand things a lot more clearer. Also I think from now on when I do essays I should definitely pick a topic that I actually want to know about, as I know it makes me much more motivated to find out the information and it also allows me to see things differently.

EG: from doing my essay on how the Bauhaus influences modern design has allowed me to see buildings: furniture differently. While I was in Dublin I saw a very modern clean McDonalds building as it resembled the Bauhuas.

McDonald’s at Dublin Airport.

This year has also taught me that change is good, within in my work and within life. I’ve had to change a couple of things in regards to my work and I think that the change in direction paid off and helped me to see that change is not always that bad. Even though I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do changing my ideas allowed me to explore and develop my ideas even further. Overall I am really happy with how second year has gone and think that I’ve worked to the best of my ability.

Theory Reflection

I have actually enjoyed this years lecture series which is actually surprising since I don’t really like the theory side. However I’ve found the lecture series enjoyable as each lecturer has covered different topics and they all have different approaches to teaching which I like. I have found the seminars with Rob very reassuring as he always sees the positive in everything, even when the majority of us hadn’t started our essay Rob reassured us that even if we don’t submit the full essay it was better to submit something rather than nothing as we’d be able to get feedback so we could improve. With Pete’s lectures that gave us a massive insight to the business world and things which we need to consider in the future. Half of the things Pete covered I never really thought about until now so his lecture series was very eye opening. Alison’s lectures were very interesting as we looked at various practitioners instead of just focusing on animation and graphic design she allowed us to expand our knowledge. I found Alison’s teaching style very relaxed and informative. She accompanied her lecture with a lot of visual references this helped me to understand the topics even more. Overall I have enjoyed this years lecture series and hope I will enjoy the lectures in my final year.

Studio Brief Reflection

All four of our studio briefs that we were given this year I have actually enjoyed doing them all. They all had very different outcomes and allowed me to push my creativity and thinking. The brief that I enjoyed the most was the rebranding brief, this is because I’ve always wanted to do rebranding. Also because it allowed me to see another side to rebranding when it came to the brand guidelines as it allowed me to see how a printer, other designers etc know how everything is supposed to look so there are no mistakes. Overall I think that all the briefs which were given allowed us all to be extremely creative and I felt that they were more industry focused compared to our first year briefs.

Evaluation | Conversation

For my conversation brief as I didn’t manage to finish it before I had to come back and revisit it. I am happy that I didn’t finish it before as the idea I would have gone with would have been done already. However I am happy that I changed my final outcome as sometimes change is good. The fact that I changed my final piece idea allowed me to experiment with signs and social media / technology signs. It allowed me to capture a different side to a conversation. This conversation would be the visual representation of the signs which we see everyday mixed in with the social media / technology signs. I have done this as if though the traditional signs have been replaced with the new signs to represent the impact that social media and technology will have on the world in the near future.

Some of the ideas which I came up with such as the *break glass in case of emergency* would be seen as a first world problem in joke way, however it’s not a joke as some people actually think that their phone dying is a major problem because they have become disconnected from the world for a matter of minutes or hours. When in actual fact there are much bigger problems going on in the world. Doing this conversation brief has allowed me to reflect on the influence social media and technology has on our lives, I don’t think that this will change if anything I believe that it will become an increasingly bigger part of our lives. Overall, I am happy with the final outcome for my brief and if I had more time I would have liked to produce physical versions of my illustrations to see the impact they would have being used in the public domain.

Final Pieces | Conversation

Concept Behind Signs | Conversation

Caution No Wifi / Instead of saying ‘ caution wet floor ’ I’d warn people there isn’t any wifi as people only go into certain places to use wifi. EG: Mc Donalds: Costa Coffee: Starbucks etc.
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If certain shops had this sign we wouldn’t even go in. People are too quick to connect to any free wifi available, myself included.

In Case Of Emergency Break Glass / Inside there will be the new EE Power Bank charger. The emergency will be that your phone needs charging.

I can guarantee if this was a real thing someone would break the glass when there phone died. We are all always carrying our charger leads or charger just incase our phones die. People even go into the Apple shop just to use their chargers. 

Instagram Cleansing / I got this idea because of the bus lane operation hours. Instead of a bus lane I will replace the sign with the Instagram logo. To show your not permitted to use Instagram between the hours shown.

Imagine if this was actually the case, some people would go crazy. But it’d never really but that deep, it’s only Instagram. 

Snapchat In Operation / Snapchat is becoming the new CCTV camera, everyone uploads literally everything they see / do. Therefore I will replace the CCTV camera with the snapchat logo.

Although CCTV cameras are always watching us the footage which they record does’t get put out into the public domain, unlike snapchat footage that is uploaded to various social media platforms for the world too see.

Don’t Tweet And Drive / Instead of the message don’t drink and drive.

As everyone is obsessed with tweeting everything that they do, while driving they might see something which has just happened and feel the urge to tweet about it. 

Change Of Plan | Conversation

After finding what I wanted to do had already been done, I still wanted to use the theme of social media. As I was looking back at my blog and thinking about what I could do I found the lecture we had with Anna about semiotics. I then came up with the idea of using signs which we already know and using them with signs / icons that relate to social media or relate to technology. 

I am going to illustrate my outcomes as though this is what we have yet to come in life if we carry on making our lives revolve around social media / technology. The traditional signs which we have will be replaced with signs that are linked with social media and technology. 

Even though I was a bit disappointed that the idea which I previously wanted to do had already been done, I am now happy that this happened as this has allowed me to change my idea. I think that this idea is much stronger because, it allows me to combine semiotics but yet it allows me to bring in the social media and technology side. This would allow my pieces to be simple but portray the correct message. 

Eazyy Oke Art | Conversation

While on Instagram I came across Eazyy Oke’s pieces, he is a graphic illustrator from St Lous. The pieces that stood out for me were his pieces titled ‘ Addiction ’, he has combined the addiction to drugs and alcohol with the addiction of social media. This was the type of thing which I had in mind for my final piece, but as it’s already been done I can’t do it. However, I’m happy to have found his work otherwise it would have looked as though I copied him even though I didn’t. Overall his work is strong and sends the clear message that when it comes to addiction it doesn’t always have to be associated with drugs or alcohol because we can be addicted to anything. Oke’s work is very graphical and strong allowing the message to be delivered in a clear simple form. 

Workshop Reflection

In Jay’s workshops we’ve been developing our 3D skills using Cinema 4D, although we’ve previously used Cinema 4D I feel much more confident in using it without guidance. I think that being able to use this software will prove very useful towards my practise. We’ve also been looking at product design by designing our own cereal box. I enjoyed doing this workshop as we designed everything ourselves from creating our own characters to coming up with the cereal name. This workshop allowed us to explore using all of our different creative abilities.

With our general workshops with Darren: Tracy and Zoe I found them very informative and that they were more workshops to help us towards our personal  development and getting us ready for looking for a placement. I think these workshops were beneficial to myself as I am wanting to do the placement year and some of the things which were covered came in use such as, were to look for a placement and knowing that we have to be the ones to actually make contacts with people instead of expecting a placement to fall into our laps. The most useful thing I think to know about placement year is that we have up until September 2015 to find a placement and I like the fact the we aren’t limited to finding one placement that lasts a year, we can final multiple placements to undertake throughout the year.

While in Sara’s workshops we were more working on getting our animation skills up using After Effects. I think that Sara’s workshops have been the most beneficial for me as I’ve done a little bit of animation work while at Sixth Form using Photoshop and 3DS Max. But I’ve nearly really used After Effects, although we did workshops using the software in the first year. I feel much more confident in using the software at home by myself. I think my confidence within this programme can be seen when I missed the 3D Animation / Workshop Three, as I missed the workshop and used Zara’s notes as guidance as to help me do the workshop myself at home, but I wasn’t happy with my first attempt so I did it again and I was happy with the outcome as it looked more like the task which was set out for us to achieve. 

Finally I found Nick’s typography workshops very fun and relaxing, I found this because one of his relaxed teaching methods also because nothing was deemed as being ‘ wrong ’ or too farfetched. The typography workshop was an exercise that allowed us to be extremely playful and helped to push our creativity even more and didn’t just limit us to using a computer or just pen and paper. 

01.05.15 | Spencer’s Lecture | Theory

Today in Spencer’s lecture we were looking at Scott Bukatman - Superheroes and City Scapes.

Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century
As advanced technologies have proliferated, popular culture has turned the fear of instability into the thrill of topsy-turvydom, often by presenting images and experiences of wheightless escape from controlled space.

Superheroes and the city in films and comics superheroes tend to live in the city instead of in the quiet countrysides. The mainly tend to live in NYC, if they were real there would be an awful lot of superheroes in NYC.

Core Proposition
American superheroes encapsulated and embodied the same utopian aspirations of modernity as the cities themselves.   

Themes Of Analysis / Comic superheros psychological / sociological:  
Superheroes as male power fatasies
Displacement of sexual energy into aggression
Negotiators of complex multiple roles Secret identities, outsider status etc.

In comics, order exists only at the level of narrative, Candy coloured costumes … dynamic, irregular layouts, movement between frame boundaries, fragmented time, sound effects.

Although I was unable to attend this lecture I was able to use the Spencer’s powerpoint to get a sense of what was covered. As I was reading the lecture notes it reminded me of The Big Bang Theory, I think it might have been because it was talking about comic books and TBBT is heavily focused about the groups love for comic books. It also made me realise that most superheroes are always deemed to be average males who magically either discover they are superheroes or they drink / eat something that give them superpowers. The fact that the superheroes are always deemed to be ‘heroes’ and use their powers for good is something that we’ve always been brought up to think that superheroes are good and that the superheroes who are villains that use their powers in a negative way are the bad ones. However shouldn’t they both be deemed as bad? As the ‘superhero’ is always fighting the bad one and we’ve always been told not to fight. Although comics and superheroes are fictional characters they have been around for years and no matter what type of person you are you would have been engaged with a superhero wither it’s through a comic: film or game they play an important part of allowing our imagination grow and will always make people wonder what powers they’d wish to have if they could have a super power. 

01.05.15 | Seminar

Today in Rob’s seminar we were looking at everything we needed for our summative assessment. 

Task One: Visualising & Writing Design Theory
Essay Abstract / 500 words
Essay Poster  / 2000 words
Essay / 2500 words

Essay Poster / Due In Friday 15th May

Task Two: Contextual Record 
Marketing report / 1000 words
Contextual Record Blog / 4000 words

For our contextual record summative assessment we need to ensure that our blog is publicly viewable and that we show 5 posts that illustrate a good range of theory related content and writing approaches.

We need to have a digital copy of all of our files on a memory stick. 

27.04.15 | Alison’s Lecture | Theory

Today in Alison’s lecture we were reflecting upon our lecture series. 

Willie Doherty:
Photojournalism & Documentary Photography
Political History Of Belfast
Bloody Sunday In Derr
Challenges The Views Of photographing The Evolving City

Martha Rosler:
Documentary Photographer
Viewer Exercise
Meaning Behind The Larger Picture

Richard Billingham:
Social Documentary
Social & Political Issues Influence His Work
His Work Is Modern Day Programmes

William Kentridge:
Basic Animations
Not Really An Animator
South African Culture Influences His Work
Deeper Meaning Behind His Work

Louise Bourgeois:
Artist & Sculpture
Insomnia Drawing / Surrealism
 
Donald Judd:
Three Dimensional Artists                                                                                        
Specific Objects

Sarah Lucas:
Sculpture Artists
Give Materials Life

Ryan Gander:
Bridges Illustration: Graphic Design: Sculpture & Fine Art
Concept Behind Work
Outsources The Making Of The Work

Ellen Gallagher:
Artist
Much More Than Modernism
Black History & Culture Influences

Rosemarie Trockel:
Artist
Crimean War

I have found Alison’s lecture series very interesting as it’s not only just foucsed on Graphic Designers or Animators it has allowed us to explore the work of artists: sculptures and painters. It has allowed us to see how you can seek inspiration from everything around you to get a deeper meaning behind your work. I like Alison’s teaching style as she has had a lot of images visuals accompanied by a lot text so that it balances it and also makes it easier for use to engage.