Who are you? - DP

Visual Literacy - The Language of Graphic Design

Semiotics - sign, symbol, signifier

Visual Metaphor - When an object or image is representing something else. It transfers the meaning from one thing to another it can be made familiar with.

Visual Synecdoche - When one part of an object or image are used to represent the whole thing (or vice versa).

Visual Metonym - An image that is used as a symbol to reference something that could be entirely different, for example a cross representing a church.


Readability and Legibility

Content given on, for example a tabloid or newspaper, is hierarchal. The name of the newspaper is the biggest, boldest type, the headline of the story is the second most noticeable, with the subheadings coming third and content last.


In todays session, we had prepared cut outs of the words 'who', 'are', 'you' and '?' at varied weights and sizes. We arranged our words into several variations of 'who are you?' with different weights and sizes to each other, putting the emphasis on different parts of the phrase. Saying our sentences out loud in our groups allowed us to see how much of a difference it makes.

Varied fonts, weights and sizes rearrange the hierarchy of type and controls the order in which something is read, and the where the emphasis is.

We tried to create sentences with varied emphasis and said them out loud to the rest of the group. They then had to decide how they thought the weights and sizes were distributed to each word. Reading it out loud allowed us to try and mimic the emphasis as we read it.

Examples:

Research, Collect, Communicate, - J. R. R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (3rd Jan 1892- 2nd Sept 1973) was a British writer, poet and University of Oxford professor. To avoid my research turning into a biography, I have chosen an initial focal point in his infamous trilogy 'The Lord of the Rings' and it's prequel 'The Hobbit'.

The Lord of the Rings fantasy series was adapted into three films, co-written and directed by Peter Jackson who in 1995 wondered "why nobody else seemed to be doing anything about it". His filmography includes King Kong, The Lovely Bones, and the recently released adaptation of The Hobbit and the future sequels. By subtitle the films are broken into 'The Fellowship of the Ring', 'The Two Towers' and "The Return of the King". For those who have been living under a rock for the past decade, here is a brief plot summary - http://www.sparknotes.com/film/lordoftherings/summary.html

I have little interest in the film posters, the colour scheme and layout is just another stereotypical depiction of fantasy films. However, upon learning my topic of research I looked at some minimalist versions of film posters and loved most of them. I thought it created a balance between the poster and the complexity of the plot, giving it some sort of compromise. In some cases the designers managed to take only one element of fairly complex films and indulge in it.

Design Principles - Speech Made Visible

In the session we made up a list of 10/11 accents that we were then to try embodying in a typeface, putting emphasis of certain words that are emphasised in the accent.

Geordie

I kept Geordie a simple Gothic type, softened by the curved ends which contributes to the friendly nature of the accent. I put emphasis on the 'Who' and the 'you' and made it quite large as a Geordie accent is so different from others around the world that it demands attention.

Welsh

I incorporated a traditional celtic style for the Welsh accent as I find the Welsh are usually very proud of their heritage, but the phrase is modernised after the first letter.

Yorkshire

I kept the Yorkshire type simple and bold as there are more accents within Yorkshire, and it is a very broad accent, so this way I could make this type applicable to a few variations of accents within Yorkshire.

Irish

For irish I used quite a celtic style, putting emphasis on the 'you', although it could also be put on the 'are' depending on the tone in which it is being said. I made the whole thing quite a large point size for such a recognisable and noticeable accent.

Pirate

For the Pirate accent I chose a typeface similar to the script nature of a treasure map, with emphasis on the 'are' to exaggerate the 'arrr' noise.

French

For French, I chose to look at animated representations of the French and this decorative, OTT type came up a lot. I made he 'Who' slightly larger to put the correct emphasis on the throaty noise made by a french accent on some words.

Essex

An Essex accent is another hugely recognisable accent so it was important to make it appear different to the others. I chose a quite playful and disjointed typeface to represent the individuality of the accent, and emphasised the 'you' in a larger font.

Scouse

For the Scouse accent I wanted to put some emphasis on the throaty noise that it made for some words and this scratchy scribbled type I think could be compared to that.

Jamaica

For Jamaica I used Bob Marley as a reference and tried to replicate a carefree and relaxed attitude to the type and decided on using a simple and childlike script type. I emphasised the 'are you?' part to represent the really strong jamaican accents that are sometimes difficult to decipher.

Russia

I chose bold lettering for the Russian accent as a lot of people will put it in conjunction with Russia, and it demands attention from the reader.

Australian

I chose a simple hand rendered type for the Australian accent, it appears relaxed and calm like the nature of the accent. I put emphasis on the 'are' as a lot of emphasis is put on 'a's in the accent.

Typogateaux Research

All of these Nissan advert cake designs are extremely detailed but since this was advertising Nissan, it doesn't look like these cakes were actually made and were just designed digitally for the campaign.

This Auto Load ad is much more simple than the other designs and still quite clever. It works very well with the slogan used by the company.

These designs venture away from the others I had looked at in that these were just designed as cakes as oppose to being used for something else. The designs are very detailed and in some cases very familiar for the target audience.

A much more basic cake design, it's made all about the cake instead of having it masquerading as something else with a complicated design. This one is simple and elegant and could easily be manipulated to fit the criteria for Typogateaux.

The design of the icing on this 'steak and chips' cake is simple in idea but perfecting it must have taken a long time. The food doesn't even look real and looks like a painting instead of a 3D cake.

While there may not have been as much detail put into the cake itself in this example, the kind of spiky upper part of the cake appears as though it must have taken a long time given that it looks as though could probably all collapse quite easily.

In a lot of my research, a lot designers were referencing Anna Garforth's Edible Poster. The varied fonts and fine detail in the header and footer of the poster is very effective and the wording works well with the poster.

I could see the influence of the poster most in this design. It's kept very simple allowing the letters to flow off of each other well. This design was half baked before cutting into the right shape and then finished allowing all of the letters to join together properly.

While I like the simple layout of this with the two cakes missing, I have a lot more interest in the slightly more complicated designs.

Despite this poster being digitally designed, I like the font used for it and I think it lends itself to the cake-like outcome a lot.

I started looking at typefaces for the modern cake and the traditional cake, wanting to exaggerate each to fit the idea we had for the cake designs.

Modern

Traditional

Photoshop Induction 2

 Automate options let Photoshop do a lot of the work, you just provide the images. It allows you to straighten images and build panoramas.

By loading files into stack you can combine images to find a medium of several images, so if you have a series of images taken of the same place with people interfering in each image you can blank them out and create one image of the background with nothing in the way.

By creating a 'Smart Object' the images can be edited further.

Collectively these images can be edited together under one 'stack'.

This option allows the image to take away the inconsistencies so you will be left with a desolate image of, for example a landscape.

This image shows how that the series has been transformed into a much more scenic image, making it appear desolate.

If there is a part of the image you want to keep the same then you can use the quick selection tool to choose one image that you want to keep a certain way. I selected an image with a more vivid sky as the medium of the images make the sky quite bland.

I used the Quick Selection tool to highlight the image in which the sky is most vivid. By going to Select - Inverse and deleting, it puts the sky into the medium image.