Design and Emotion

Guest lecturer, Tracy Lannon, spoke about emotional engagement and meaningful communication in today's lecture, and how engaging in different types of information will help me create meaningful designs that have a purpose to other people. I need to be able to develop deep self awareness to understand how people function, and I will be able to solve real world problems for a better world to live in with design solutions. 

Throughout the presentation we looked into image illusions and how they effect people differently. Illusions are created with certain angles, patterns, colours and presents an image which the eye cannot understand. We as humans have to filter things down to make sense of happenings. Below are a few images that present illusion, our eyes can deceive us. We make things up from seeing objects.

Our expectations dictate our emotional attachment to things. We look for the same kind of things, preparing us for what we will se next time and what we want to take notice of. For example the first image shows either a white vars, or two faces looking directly at each other. It is known that most people look for the faces first because faces are something we see every single day in life and that is what we are more focused on. 

Size constancy is thought to create illusion, for example the arrowed horizontal lines below are the same size, however we see the bottom line as being longer due the to angles the smaller lines point at on the end of each line. The second image shows a hallway with two people, the left image shows the man sitting further away, and the right image shows the man sitting next to the woman, but using the same sized figure. Distance and is become very illusional.

Visual stimulation:

Everywhere we look there is movement, sound, colour form. Our brains flips the information we are seeing through our eyes. The retina in our eye is made up of two cells, cone cells are on the edge that only see black and white, they help us prepare for nature and help us respond to things we see after adjusting. Rod cells see colour. 

We focused on two tests, the first test we drew a cross and a dot on separate sides of a piece of paper, covered one eye and moved the paper in our vision from side to side - when the dot or cross was out of our vision, the cells in our eyes were not able to work.

Test two, we looked at the circles on the left hand side and picked out the numbers in each shape. It proved quite difficult with all the dots and colours involved, and shows that colour blind people will not be able to work out the figures inside. 

This piece of text is created with words that only have the same first and last letters from the original. It is easy for us to fill in the gaps, there is too much information to process so using the same letters but jumbled up inside, is still easy for us to read as we din't look too much into the words themselves. 

We focus on the things that are more meaningful to us, for example hearing our own name in a conversation. We can't take things at face value, we have to look closely.

Brands and Anti-Brands with Jonathan Linley

Guest Lecturer Jonathan Linley was in this morning, I have met Jonathan before in a previous Monday lecture, however today's subject was focusing on brands and anti-brands. A brand is most simply, a type of product manufactured by a particular company under a particular name. It is a way for a producer/provider to tell us where the said product/service/experience originated. It actually tells us a lot about the brand itself, it is very important to have an identity. 

On the other hand, we looked into 'anti' - meaning opposed to (A person opposed to a particular policy, activity and idea). According to Online Optimism, Anti-branding can be described as a multinational company’s effort to disguise the multinational aspect of their company to appeal to a more of a local crowd. (http://www.onlineoptimism.com/blog/what-is-an-anti-branding-strategy/)

Brands use pre-loaded information, information that's already in our mind to help build a recognisable surface to bounce off. 

New = Nostalgic. A sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past. 

Such as PG tips..

People like drinking the tea, they grew up with the tea in their home, they maybe had a nick name for the tea that only friends are family knew about. Brands develop relationship through narrative - growing up with the identity, having own thoughts on the brand, something might remind you of it.

It is very difficult to know what we can trust, we're very loyal to the product we are familiar with but we need to accept that these are fluid. We are surrounded by lots of info moving at speed, sometimes things go under the radar and brand take advantage. 

Anti-brand was a movement, designers worked to undermine big corporate brands, its nots hard  to see why, as many large conglomerate organisations are exploiting our needs in the name of capitalism, hierarchy and economic growth. We still buy into products, we know consumerism is tearing us apart but we don't care enough to fix it, we all want the new pair of trainers etc., because we believe in the branding more than where the product comes from. 

Jonathan's lecture today was useful to me and I understand how branding works and how companies go about saving money, creating shortcuts and create a large popular base. I also understand anti-branding and how the smaller companies work.

An empty exercise (https://motoreraserhead.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/anti-consumerism/)

Morpholo Tiles

Morpholo tiles were designed by Thieri Foulc in 1985, they are a combination of square tiles which can be arranged in different ways, as a game or a piece of art. There are 240 tiles, containing black and white shapes; the rule of the game is to match the black edges with black, and white edges against white, creating many different combinations. In order to create these tiles, a code in generated using a mathematical formula. Below is an example of one of the combinations.

Generation of the material:

Take a square. Each side may be divided if half, and each half side (or half edge) may be designated black or white. For each side, there are four possible structures: white and white, white and black, black and white or black and black. For the square, with its four sides, there are therefore 256 possible structures. The tiles may be numbered according to the order of their generation:

The workshop today focused on visual games within creative practice, helping us explore Adobe Illustrator and editing typography within chosen fonts. Basic pen tool skills in relation to drawing/rendering and the manipulation of typographic letter forms were also a focus. Communication through art and how artists have re-imaginsed objects to communicate something completely different was our aim this afternoon. The independent learning task was to produce a collection of Morpholo tiles, we created a series of thumbnail drawings of potential tile designs using the code generator. The code generator worked when we chose a number from the given spreadsheet, and entered it online, giving us the tile combination we were to produce. These were made up of black rectangles around the edges or the square tiles. Unfortunately I didn't scan this piece of work to display. 

The next step of today's workshop involved bringing type into our work. We looked into different fonts, online and in the computers font book, and picked a few that we found visually interesting. Picking out small aspects from the letters, we were able to place these into our generated Morpholo tiles, lining up the elements from the type, to match the sides touched by the black rectangles. Before beginning the process digitally, I sketched a few designs on paper that I could then bring into illustrator. 'Water Park was my chosen font, it was contemporary, made up of curved edges and white circles inside the letters. I thought it was interesting and quite detailed, so I took some of the letters, and placed them into illustrator on my square tile document, just how I planned to use them in my sketches. These examples below are my final outcomes, I found it hard to line them up exactly, but in the end I managed to correctly adjust them to touch the right edges. I enjoyed this session as I love working with typography, and I have been able to use illustrator for two years, so I had a great understanding of how to use to pen tool to adjust my lines.

Concept development and Studio Module Criteria

The message of today's session with Rob was evolved around concept development. An image was placed on the board, a red syringe. When you first look, it is a red syringe, however there are other meanings behind the image, and this is what we were working with today. We all gave our personal ideas out, relating to the image on the board. Below are a few connotations for the red syringe:

• drugs
• pain
• medicate
• illegal
• addiction
• fear
• illness
• health
• horror
• danger
• infection

We then looked at the same red syringe, but this time 'lifesaver' was printed on the front.

We gave our connotation suggestions again, these were more positive rather than negative like the last few I gathered.

• help
• save
• future
• health
• signifier
• illusion
• giving
• change in perception
• hope 

The idea behind this exercise was to generate a number of ideas that delved deeper into a simple object, we can use this technique in practical work as well as written and theory modules. Thinking outside the box about what something shows helps you to create ideas and leads me to new paths that I can explore and explain. 

The next part of the session including looking into the studio module criteria, below are a few notes I gathered from the slides.

Concept development:

Successful exploration of a problem or theme is demonstrated through the development and documentation of appropriate create concepts and alternatives. 

Looking as multiple concepts - alternatives still need to be appropriate.

Sketchbook - pushing with different themes to look into new places and ideas.

Aesthetics and language:

Creative decisions are made in response to thematic projects and are based on appropriate aesthetic criteria. The ability to discuss these in relation to the work produced and other diverse sources is demonstrated. 

Technical responce:

Appropriate technologies are selected in response to thematic projects. The ability to discuss these in relation to the production of the work is demonstrated. 

Integration and Synthesis:

Awareness of the needs to reconcile conceptual/critical issues with the contexts of genre and audience (graphic design, animation) is demonstrated. 

Semiotic Analysis in Advertising

In the seminar following toady's lecture on semiotics, we looked into a few christmas adverts that had meanings behind just advertising the brand and its increasing trade. We spoke in groups about how each advert shown, had different types of music, emotions, characters, scenes, etc. This relates to semiotics as the signs that are given out whilst watching the adverts are deeper and more interesting than just a supermarkets christmas advert. 

The christmas adverts we were given:

• Goggle box - advertising for goggle box by watching the christmas advert, using format of one to advertise another (Product orientated)
• M&S - Animated man giving out everything he could to please others
• John Lewis - Boxer dog on trampoline enjoying daughters present
• Sainsburys - Preventing war at christmas, opposing sides play football and get along until back to reality
• John Lewis - Man on the moon, giving gifts to people without family 

Semiotics I focused on:
Each advert constructs values
Sentimental
Songs that I listened to - family, sharing, dreaming, flying away. 
Sense of family
Put aside conflicts, come together.     
Sound becomes reference point for reality. (Sainsburys advert)

Meaning and Message - Semiotics

Semiotics are the theories which explore:

- How systems of signs work to make meaning
- How we represent ideas and create meanings using a range of tools such as words and images

Why do we need to know?

It is fundamental to and understanding of:

-How words and images - together with ideas, are used to make sense of the world

-How visual communications work. They can help with my assignments, and also my practical work

'All good designers are semioticians' - Anna

As both creators and consumers of visual art and design - and as participants in a culture which functions on the basis of shared meanings and common understanding - we decode meaning from signs and symbols with ease. Below is the semiotic iceberg that was shown in my lecture, it represents how we see signs, but also shows what is really behind the visual evidence, represented by the waterline covering the rest of the iceberg.

Semiotic IceBerg: http://english1312section078fall2012.pbworks.com/w/page/59782542/Semiotic%20Iceberg%20Exercise

The signs we see and interpret can range, from images and pictures, to objects and sounds, gestures and symbols and also codes. These signs can have different impacts whether it is emotional or anxious etc. They can mean different things to different people depending on individual experiences, cultural differences and context. Semiotics show how we make sense of the world through words, experience and interpretations. Our brains are wired to make sense of an sign in milliseconds. Our actions and thoughts - the things we do automatically - are often governed by a complex set of cultural messages and conventions, and dependant upon our ability to interrupt them instantly. The commercial world takes full advantage of our ability (big brands/super markets). 
Through habit and practice we learn language and different words.

Phonemes, example: Each of which we have learned to connect to a certain sound, which, when placed together, make a word which signifies 'cat', the animal, along with all related ideas of cat-ness. Nothing about the 'c' 'a' or the 't' or about the whole word 'cat' have any inherit 'catness' about them, however. Associating this word with the mental image of a cat is learned behaviour.

Colour semiotics:

The ways in which colours express certain codes, information that make the viewer understand a specific message or feel a certain emotions. This is culturally continued. It becomes habitual.  

Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in Genral Linguistics (1906)

'In itself, thought is like a swirling cloud, where no shape is intrinsically determine. No ideas are established in advance and nothing is distinct, before the introduction of the linguistic structure.'

Key vocab:

Inheret - existing as an innate or essential constituent of characteristic. 

Codes and conventions:

Technological - camera angle, framing

Verbal - spoken or written

Symbolic - decoded on a conotational level

Anthony Burril:

The layout, colour, text (without semiotics)

(with semiotics) screen print, made with oil and water. 

Image found at: http://www.2amfilms.co.uk/creative-review-anthony-burrill-oil-water-do-not-mix/

Visual onamatopeia?

Word signififes its meaning

'Relay: The words and images tell a story equally. They stand in a complementary relationship. The text and image tell the story equally, where text supplies meanings not found in the images alone.'

Creating a Film Trailer using After Effects

During today's Process and Production session, I had Sara, developing my skills in After Effects, a programme I was introduced recently. A recent animation I put together using this software, included changing coloured slides to beats in the audio I downloaded. However this session involved me creating a short, 10 second book trailer of my choice. I already had pre-made slides to take to this session, as I had decided on a book I wanted to use earlier in the week. 

The name of the book I wanted to turn into a short trailer clip was Girl on the Train. I recently saw this at the cinema and knew its tones and emotions well and clear - helping me put the trailer together. To begin with I set up an inDesign document using the correct dimensions, and took a picture that I had recently photographed to use as a background image throughout my animation. I adjusted the image so that it was a dark, gloomy grey scale setting, and also image traced the photograph to a high fidelity setting - this made the photograph more geometric rather than realistic. Once the image was adjusted, I used different sections of it for every slide, and on the 10th slide, it presented the whole image. I have screenshot a few examples of my slide background and placed them on the left. 

I created a slide for each second, with quotes, phrases, authors name etc on each one. I used a light colour for the text to contrast against the darker imagery, and the font was a light weight typeface, used in both lower case and upper case, as seen in my Vimeo link below.

I came across a slight problem after adding all ten slides into my animation to play them back. I noticed that having a slide a second was much too fast for the audience to keep up with - some slides had two lines of text included. It was visibly difficult to read when the slides were changing so quickly, so I adjusted the amount of slides I used. I also deleted text and shortened my phrases for a more sharp, snappier effect. I now have seven slides over a 10 second time period, and I have added one fading motion in to a slide half way through. 

Film Trailer - Gone Girl from Emily-Beth Phillips on Vimeo.

I think my background image works well, and the text is suitable for the imagery - subtle so it does not over power in front of the edited photograph. I think if I had more time to decide and look into, I would change the audio I have picked, there were no beats to the piece, so it was difficult for me to decide when the slides were changing and how long I should give them all. However I am happy with my first proper motion graphics animated video.

Multiple Perspectives - Demonstrations of Differences

This morning's seminar followed on with ways in which to help build the best assingment I can achieve. The topic today was perspectives, and how looking at things from different angles can build a whole new world. The exercises and speeches we were given in this seminar helped me realise that whilst writing my assignment, there will always be more ways to look at different pieces of information I will be jotting down. There is never one straight route that I have to follow, there is always other directions I can lead and new ways of thinking will become apparent.
Nothing is unchanging, internal or timeless. Therefore, there is no absolute 'eternal truth'.

No absolute politics, life, ethics, morality, truth, goodness.

We watched the Shimmer suit video online, it represented new dynamics, and how we are always looking at something different that is constantly changing.

Another video we watched to represent multiple persperctives was the points of view video found on youtube. It shows how we change our understanding depending how which angle we look at something, and we never know the full truth, there is always more to be found. There is no whole picture to get, there is always too much going on. 

To round the seminar up, we took part in two exercise with the rest of the class. One, we watched a video up to around a minute and a half long, then got split into four groups. Each group had 20 seconds of the video to focus on, to share in their own words their understanding of the scene. We all had different views on what happened at different parts of the video. So depending on which part you were focusing on, it had a completely different storyline.

The final exercise included looking at different sides of a box form different angles, my side displayed a piece of paper with a man walking away. Other sides had different objects attached, we looked into angles, reactions, and perspectives from all different people.

Type

Type is the physical embodiment of a collection of letters, numbers, symbols. Anna went through a number of examples today, displaying different types of typography and typefaces, explaining how they range, sometimes due to the date of creation. First of all, we looked into Jan Tschihold, The New Typography, (1928). This was a handbook that started a movement, it was really influential towards modern designers. It rejected the normal way of using columns and other types of layout; before this book, type was not that significant. It was an accessible handbook that was not too academically demonstrated. It influenced other books, magazines, brochures etc.

Personal Research: 
Further research into The New Typography book, helped me find that Jan Tschihold took his lead from currents at the Weimar Bauhaus, he then codified the movement with accessible guidelines is his book. Almost over night, typographers and printers adapted this way of working, from business cards and brochures to magazines and advertisements. 

Image found at (https://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Typography-Weimar-Now-Criticism/dp/0520250125)

This book was organised around the following principles:

• Asymmetric balance of elements
• Utilisation of white space
• Sans serif typography
• Advocated lower case letters
• Supported the typo-photo approach
• Content was designed by hierarchy

After looking into Tschichold's handbook for modernised layouts and typography, Anna went on to talk about 'Fameux sans serif' from the bauhaus: created by Herbert bayer, universal, 1925.

This was a type of font that was simple for a machine layout, cheap to produce, easy to read and legible. It did not use capitals, and it stood alone as a universal typeface.

Image found at: http://www.designhistory.org

/Avant_Garde_pages/BauhausType.html

I have looked at Theo H. Ballmer, 1928 - he was a Swiss graphic designer that produced a clean and clarity typeface just like the example above. Neues Bauen is a hand done typeface that was presenting in an exhibition. It contains only capitalised letters for a bold, legible style, perfect for creating posters with, just like my example below. 

Image found at: http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/swiss-radica

Joseph Muller- Brockman, produced a clear sans serif typeface,  it is blocky, and he utilises lines. It is very apolitical, with no baggage. He uses abstraction in his work. Brockman was also influenced by the Bauhaus movement, and he is one of the most well known Swiss Designers. This poster below for the Zurich town hall is probably his most recognised piece of work.  

MÜLLER-BROCKMANN Found at: http://www.designishistory.com/1940/joseph-mueller-brockmann/

I looked at kinetic type:
Kinetic type is an animation technique, it mixes motion and text together to express ideas through a video. The text presented in the animation video conveys a particular idea or emotion. 

• Words appear in an order
• TV adverst, blogs, landing pages
• From paper to screen

Personal Research:

Saul Bass, worked with hollywood film makers. He made a title sequence for the man with the golden arm. In Bass’ own words: 

“My initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set mood and the prime underlying core of the film’s story, to express the story in some metaphorical way. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it.”

It is a very creative way to present pieces of text, is becomes memorable and the music used ties in with the motions, creating a recognisable piece of music also. 

Seminar and Personal Work:



The seminar following on from the Type lecture, focused on a Stencil typeface, created by Joseph Albers in 1926. Albers wanted a style that was very simplistic and easy to read, a very legible typeface, so he produced a stencil for the alphabet, using only 10 simple shapes. We were given the task of displaying examples of the letters, I have put together my results (shown above). Most letters were easy to produce and put together, however others did not work quite as well, proving difficult to use with the modern day alphabet. Although it was proven difficult in some cases, this stencil design is very stylish and does present a very contemporary typeface. 

Albers taught at the Dessau Bauhaus, there he designed a series of stencil faces. Before his teaching years, he was a student at the Weimar Bauhaus. 

 The typeface I looked into in the seminar is based on a limited palette of geometric forms combined in a size ratio of 1:3. Drawn on a grid, the elements of square, triangle, and circle combine to form letters with an economy of form. His idea was never intended for text, he wanted the face to be used on posters and in large scale signs. I can understand why this text wouldn't work on a smaller scale, used as body text perhaps. The shapes in the typeface and very precise and work better when enlarged.

Introducing Phase Two

Phase one of the Foundation Studio Practice module including creating my sketchbook full of primary and secondary research. It needed drawings, text, images, artist, examples, inspiration. This was formatively assessed on the fourth of October, so we are now moving forward with phase two - Place making. Using my research from my sketchbook I need to begin to think about writing a proposal that includes ideas from my gathered information. This lecture was to give us a guide as to what will be coming next, as we got given a brief hand out to read through and note ideas down. I Started establishing a rationale, describing project ideas and concepts, and the reasons for wanting to do them. I looked into themes, intentions, audiences etc. 

Perspective Drawing - Interior Studies

Today's Process and Production session was with John, focusing on drawing from different angles, perspectives, and areas, similar to the last drawing session. However this week we stayed inside the university and drew different sections throughout the creative arts building. We had a range of material in use, from fine liners, to crayons, to charcoal and water based paints. These materials were there to help us produce an extended amount of different outcomes, and to find other ways of creating a scene rather than using just a pencil to add depth, reflection and character. As you can see below, we displayed a few pieces of work from students including myself; there is vibrant colour, soft shading, thick block lines and a quick light sketches all from using only three drawing sites. We got a feel for scale and size as well as texture and materials throughout the building and its views. A very good exercise to produce thumbnails to larger, detailed images. 

Referencing using APA 6th style

Today Beth visited my morning seminar, introducing the style of referencing I should use throughout my assignments. I had already been told about APA 6th referencing, however I was yet to learn the ways in which to set my references out on paper. Referencing is important to stop plagiarism as well as helping my tutor understand my thinking around the facts I've gathered. There is a software tutors's can use to spot any work that has been copied, called Turnitin. It picks up matches from assignments, and shows whereabouts the work I've wrote is initially from. If I have used the APA 6th referencing system correctly, the quotes, parts of text, images etc. are fine to use. 

There are two ways to reference work: In text citations and the full referencing list. 

Short hand in the main body text of my assignment, is called 'in text citations' e.g. (Kessler, 2003) using brackets and then the surname of the writer, and year of publication. This gives the reader/my tutor a heads up that the information I am using is research that I have found rather than my own description. It is also key to add a page number that the quote is from if I found it from a book, journal etc. It is to be used when explaining someone else's: theory, idea, data, concept, statistics throughout my writing. For larger quotes, I will need to indent the paragraph rather than using quotation marks. 
If I am referencing an image throughout my assignment, I need to remember to write a caption/title then use the surname of the creator and a date, just like I would with a quote. A figure number is also helpful underneath the image, so when it comes to writing the reference list at the end, I can put the figures in order and it will be easy to find the full reference for each image. 

The reference list at the end includes full details of each quote, piece of research and image. This list will need to be in alphabetical order of the authors names. The details will include the authors name or a website name, a date of publication, a title, then finally a URL or book that its from. 

My tutor wants to read my own words to avoid too many quotes, so I need to change the phrases that I want to use so that they fit my own personal writing. However these  own words are still theorys and facts and still need referencing. An example of changing a piece of research would be:

Brown (2001) points out that there is a tendency in modern TV society to oversimplify issues..

Or according to Brown (2001) there is a tendancy...

I went onto the Library services on the University website and there are guides, helpers and all sorts to help keep my referencing together, and also help to put my referencing in the right format.

Reflect on Manifesto's

Anna's seminar this afternoon did not follow the earlier lecture, as this lectures was for Sara to introduce her past work/jobs/life. So this seminar was relating back to manifestos which we focused on in my first ever Monday seminar. We looked at Daniel Eatock and his work to get us started, and were then handed cards with different words on, which would then help to produce a series of positioning statements which reflect my own approach to visual communication. The words are listed below:

process                          open

product                          avoid

believe                           movement

form                              eliminate

stillness                          functions

question                         practice

concepts                         make

reveal                             logic

rules                               disrupt

influence                         material

ideas                              challenge

• Time can't be controlled or avoided
• Don't think logically just make
• Challenge ideas and logic
• Avoid starting too late
• Discard logic
• Makes detailed judgments or your own work
• Rules, limitations, form... can all be unwritten
• Just do it
• Practice through influence
• Question rules, challenge yourself
• Influence takes ideas, practice takes time
• complex is better than simple
• Explore the unexplored
• Avoid comparison
• make influence 
• Allow creativity to embody the mind instead of allowing them
• Stillness isn't always a bad thing
• explore every alternative/variation
• Eliminate any doubt
• Movement is only possible when boundaries and rules are e
• believe in your product/ideas
• Disrupt stillness, influence movement Movement creates form
• question ideas
• Disrupt the everyday rules challenge/break the rules
• Eliminate logic
• challenge concepts