Typography and Visual Design

In this lecture, I learn the basic of typography. Usually when I type, I never really care much about how my texts looked, as long as they are not "weird", I will think they are fine. It was until this lecture, I learned much about typography. There are more to it than meet the eye.

Firstly, Julian talked about the two basic classes of type, namely Serif and San-Serif. He then went on to talk about type terminology. One of them is font. He said that it is not appropriate to use more than two to three fonts in a design as it will cause readability problem. He also mentioned about the size of the font. It is important to choose to the right size as it is going to promote readability to an article or design. I was also taught to bear in mind, when choosing a point size, the appearing height of the font.

After that, Julian went on to talk about layout and grids. He told us about the proper usage of grids and also a few examples of them to allow us to understand better. He also added in a few examples of bad usage of grids to make us see the difference between them.

Near the end of the lecture, he went into details on our project with the theme---God created fly and forgot why. In this project, a group of 3-4 students are supposed to come out with a children story book. The age range will be 6-9. Basically, this is like the final assignment for this module, and we are supposed to make use of what we have learned so far and combine them to make a master piece. It is not long til I got my project mates and started with the drawings, designs, story board etc. The attached will be one of the frames that my group has sketched out and the other one will be the coloured version. It's how it going to look like after tedious hand traced and solid colouring :)

The full version of the book will only be available near the 22nd-23rd of April due to the printing time needed by the printer.

Gestalt Principle

In this lecture, my lecturer, Julian taught us about getalt principle which is very useful for designs. He began with showing as a few pictures and asked us if we could make any sense out of it. Following that, he then explained to us about the difficulties we faced from those pictures and the reason was actually their organisation. It will only be clear to the viewers if the things in the pictures are correctly organised and this is what getalt principle is known as--laws of organisation.

He then went on to talk more about factors in getalt principle. They are figure and ground, proximity, similarity, continuity and closure. Under figure and ground, it is said that the figure is supposed to be smaller and also to have a good contrast with the background.

Whereas for proximity, it is said that things which are closer together will be visualise as if they are in the same group. As for similarity, it says that things which share similar attributes, eg. shape, texture, size, colour will be seen by viewers as belonging together.

A group of figures which is arranged in a way which have direction and seem to continue from each other shows good continuity. This is what the principle of continuity states.

Last but not least, for principle of closure, it helps viewers/readers to see a figure even though some part of the information are missing.

In conclusion, a good use of getalt principle can make a design more organised, unified and also simplified. This allows the readers to understand better. On the other hand, if one apply getalt principle for a design, he can cause the design to be messy, difficult to understand and viewers will not want to take any longer look at it.

At the end of the lecture, there was a classroom exercise. The objective of the exercise was to make us apply getalt principle to 3 images and this posted picture was what I did at that time.

Assignment 6:Design Analysis

The focus on this week lecture and assignment will be on Getalt principle. This principle is based on a few factors to allow designers to come out with a good designed posters or other pictured items. Some of the factors are Figure and Ground, Proximity, Similarity, Continuity and closure.

As for the assigment, it is to be done in a group of two. The objective of this assignment is to pick one good and one bad poster and give reasons why they are good or bad. The use of Gestalt principle is important here as it allows one to tell pretty easily the quality of the poster by simply applying his principle. The above are the 2 posters taken by my partner, David and me.

Personally, I feel that this assignment is very different fromthe assignments I did earlier because for the usual assignments, I am supposed to do use what is being taught during the lecture and make something out of it. Then in the tutorials, my tutorial mates and tutor will then comment on my work. However for this assigment, instead of making something, I and David chose 2 posters and discussed about them. Then in the tutorial, both of us presented the arguments and points for each of the good and bad posters we chose.

After our presentation, our tutorial mates took turn to comment on out points. There were some who agreed with us, but there were also some who think differently from us. They then told us the reasons for their different opinions. For the whole tutorial, students took turn to comment on others' presentation. Miss Swati has also added in quite a few constructive comments in between.

I cannot deny that this tutorial was definitely a fruitful one as I learned and understood more on the designing areas and techniques.

Assignment 5: Greeting Card

It's a greeting card this time. The theme of the greeting card will be love. During this lecture, the lecturer taught about the colours and their uses. Firstly, he talked about the understanding of the colours present in a white light, after that, he went on to talk about the colour basics, for e.g. what is meant by primary and secondary colours. He also mentioned about the 4 colour components namely hue, value, intensity and temperature. As he talked about colour schemes, he explained about different colours used for different kinds of temperature. For example, warm colours are usually orange and yellow and blue being a cool colour.

He also explained to us the importance of using complementary colours so as to attain a better colour harmony. Near the end of the lecture, he went on to talk about the pschology meaning of the colours before giving us the assignment for the week--design and make a love greeting card. This card is to convey the theme through colours with minimal use of photographs and other visual elements. The size of the card is to be A4 or smaller.

The objective of this assignment is basically to develop necessary skill in using the colour palette, understanding the uses of different colours and most importantly to comunicate message through colours. The following will be two copies of my designed greeting card. However, the latter will be my final design as my tutor feels that the former is not really a good one in terms of the colours used.

Assignment 4: Poster Design

In this assigment, I am told to design a poster with a theme related to saving forest, stop pollution etc. In other words, the poster will be designed for a campaign to educate good values. This assignment will make us focus on understanding the importance of basic visual elements and design principles in communicating a message.

It will also further help us develop necessary techniques to communicate the message through form. The poster will be A3 size and no more than 150 words should be used for it. After designing my poster, I received constructive suggestions from my classmates and my tutor, Miss Swati. During the tutorial, she emphasized on the use of A3 paper because she said it is going to make a great difference if one is to print the poster on a smaller piece of paper, e.g. A4. The reason is that it will not be able to bring out the intended message effectively to the readers due to the difference in size.

The posted image will be the poster i designed at that time and I am still in the process of improving it.

U C what I C(Continued)

Assignment 3: U C what I C

Woo~~~ What a nice e-learning week. This is my first time having e-learning for a module. I have to admit it was really a good experience! No doubt, it makes students fresher and talk alot more compared to usual tutorials ^^ Really hope there will be more e-learning weeks in future!

Anyway, the assignment this time will be making a short visual story with just 10 pictures!! The main idea is to allow the viewer to understand what story I am trying to say with only the use of pictures. Therefore it is emphasized by the lecturer that no words are allowed for this assigment. However, during the next tutorial, some clarfications were made with my tutor and she said that words will be allow only under certain circumstances. For e.g. using of words to describe the sound an action is allowed. Most importantly, the story has to have a twist for it.

So basically, I am supposed to write a storyboard of my idea, then translate them into pictures. I am also told to use camera for pictures. Seems like the lecturer does not really want any drawings this time.

The taking of pictures for this assignment created the hardest problem for me because firstly, I do not really have a good camera. Personally, i feel that it's important to use a good camera in order to get nice pictures. Secondly, the lack of photography skill actually made the pictures look worse. Last but not least, haha, it's not easy to get the other characters in the photo to cooperate for the picture shots.

Nevertheless, I feel coming out the with a story and trying to think of twists for it is really fun. I enjoy this part the most as I feel coming out with a good twist is really not easy. This really posed as a challenge for me. Despite the lack of technical skills, I have try to best to fulfil the objective this assigment. :) The story will be posted as the next post. Hope you will like story ^^

Visual elements and interactions

After one week of "holidays", it's back to school again. Although I feel that it does not really matter for me because even it's supposed to be a resting week, I still have to go school on several days to do projects and stuffs :(

Anyway, this 7th week lecture for nm2208 is about teaching us how make use of visual elements to actually create visual awareness and using them to interact with the viewers. The principle of interaction is broken down into 3 main points in the lecture. Namely, frame and visual interaction, unity & contrast , visual harmony. I will go down to talk abit about each of these points.

For frame and visual interaction, it is telling us about how a frame can affect one's undestanding with the different shapes.

For unity & contrast, it is actually about the how well the different things in the picture work together. It is important to strike a gd contrast in composition, shapes etc.

As for harmony, it's refering to visual balance. How the objects,in the picture, are being placed should beware of the symmetry of the whole picture. E.g by putting too many objects on one side of the picture is a bad example of harmony. It is also important not to overcrowd the picture as it will look kind of messy and make people unwilling to look at them. The colours used in the picture should also strike a balance by not using too much of a particular colour.

In addition to visual harmony, controlling the attention of the viewers is made possible by having correct reading pattern, leaving "breathing space" at the sides of the frame.

Near the end of the lecture, my lecturer then asked us to do a classroom exercise by using basic elements like lines and dots or simple images to convey the meaning of two words. The two words given to me were fierce and wonderful. Under fierce, I drew 2 pictures. The one on the left was my 1st design but after receiving comment from my friend, I agree with him that it did not really look fierce. So I went to draw a second one(the one circled in red) and thought that it looked quite good and fierce :) Whereas for wonderful, I couldn't think of anything better to represent this word. So the best i could think of was this person jumping in the air with a very happy face. Haha, hope it more or less can convey the word-wonderful.

E-Assignment2!

It is really great when I am told that one of the weeks is e-learning week where all students do not have to attend face-to-face lecture and class. We will just have to log in online and do whatever we are told. As for tutorial, I am supposed to upload my assignment 2 which is on levels of abstraction to the forum one hr before the tutorial starts. After that, I will just be giving comments for my classmates' work, reading and replying to the comments by my classmates. What a wonderful thing to do at home :)

As for lecture, we are just to view a video showing us about what we are supposed to do for assignment 3. It's quite a short video and most importantly, I am viewing it at home! So basically for assignment 2, I am supposed to pick one object and then think of an icon for it. Then after that, I simplify it til it can't get simpler! Following that, I will have to pick one of the level which I think will still carry a meaning of the object for the viewer. The attached image was what I did that day.

Iconic & Indexical

Before the start of assignment 2, I was taught in lecture about some different ways of representating an object. The 3 types of representations taught are iconic, indexical and symbolic. Basically, it was about coding and decoding of a message by both the sender and the receiver.

The lecturer emphasized on the importance of coding the message. The reason is to allow the receiver to be able to get the right and intended message. After the introduction of the representations, he went on to talk about the levels of abstraction. On the whole, it was teaching us the steps for simplifying an object and an over-simplified one will evetually carry no meaning.

Soon after that, the students in the lecture were told to think and draw one iconic and indexical sign. The attached image was what I thought of that time. Basically, I was trying to use the iconic sign I drew to signify death. Whereas for my indexical sign, I was actually trying to draw a flask of poison which I used the green colour and the skull to further allow others to understand that it is something deadly and undrinkable. Thus by using this flask of poison, I tried to let it indicate and signify death.

The beginning of Me Myself And I

Although assignment 1(Me Myself And I) has its final design, alot of sketchings and work have been done before finalising the end product. I will put up my sketchings during those time in this post and hope they won't give you nightmares :)

Personally, I feel the idea of having more sketchings is actually trying to give us more choices for our final design. These sketches were brought to class and comments were given by my classmates and tutor. They were really helpful at that time because of these suggestive comments, I am able to decide which of the sketches I want to choose. Maybe if you didn't notice, my final design is not really from one sketch. I took the good ones from the respective sketch and joined them together. ^^

Me Myself And I

Its really a shock for me when I realised I have to do so many drawings ~_~ , I remember my mum brought me to a drawing class when I was young. I never really hate to draw and by following the teacher's instructions, I could more or less draw some decent pictures. But when I decided to stop going for the classes, I also returned what I had learned back to my teacher. Since then, I can't draw for nuts #_#

After the first lecture, I know the days are going to be real hard for me for this module because til now, it's more about drawing, drawing and more drawing. Left with no other choices, I try my best to draw as well as I could. There are alot of times while doing this assignment, there are quite a few ideas running through my mind, the different shapes make by objects, but I will always "cry for help" because so what I have the ideas, but I can't freaking draw!

Then I often will have to search here and there for sample drawings to have some ideas how other people draw. It is really tedious because it is not easy to find the one that matches with what's in my mind. However, by doing this really helps me alot at visualising. At times when I completed some of the letters, I got the sense of satisfaction :) Although it is not easy to think of the shapes to form my name and to draw it out, I feel really glad when I look at my "masterpiece".

Even I know my drawings are definitely not of high quality, it still feel good to look at it. Haha...... It gets more fun when I have to present my drawings in class. Presenting in class allows me to get constructive comments from both my tutor Ms Swati and classmates. Not only that, I still get to see the masterpieces of my classmates! Most of them did really great job. Their ideas and drawings are really fascinating. Furthermore, Ms Swati has also added quite alot of comments for our drawings. I feel that her comments really help me alot to further improve on my work.

My nm2208 tutorial starts at 8am in the morning. I , who live in Tampines, will have to wake up as early as 530am @_@ but at least I don't feel sick of this tutorial because each time I will surely learn new things and there will always be fun and laughter in class. It is really great that Ms Swati not only help us with constructive suggestions but also jokes around.

As for this assignment, I decided to draw one hate and one love. Personally, I feel drawing what I love is not as difficult as drawing what I hate because when thinking about drawing what I hate, I have to think of how I can let the viewer know that I actually hate what I am drawing. For what I hate, I draw snakes. Initially, I only drew snakes forming up the shapes for my name. However I feel that cannot really convey the message to the viewer that I hate snakes. So I thought hard and an idea came to me that maybe I could convey my message by drawing how I hit or kill the snake or even what makes me hate snakes.

Now I have the idea, but there are limitations to my drawing skills :( More searches to help me out with how to draw. After drawing, I have to learn more about photoshop and illustrator to do the final design for my drawings. I feel it is surely not an easy task to do this assignment but I can say that the process involved is really fun and fruitful. I always tell myself that sometimes in life, it's not really about the destination, it's about the journey ^^

I will attach the 2 drawings to this blog and hope my drawings won't scare anyone off :)