Week Four: Thursday

I found the lecture on maps very useful as it showed a variety of different looking maps, which had been done in different illustration styles. It discussed how the map still has to match the design style of the brochure, and also about how much actually needs to be on the map. For example, the London Underground maps were helpful in showing that sometimes information is much clearer when there is less detail. This makes me think about my own map, and wonder exactly how much I can cut away from it to still keep it clear and obviously Wellington.

This idea was reinforced by the little map activity where we had 5 minutes to draw a map on a post it note showing where we live and the route we take to uni. It was interesting to see that some people's maps were really clear mainly because they used landmarks to orientate us. I drew my first map using a side on view, for the sole reason of emphasising a hill, but later discovered that this view is not as affective as birds eye because it was a lot harder to show all the surrounding roads.

My spreads are nearly done, I have a few details to sort out, as well as writing my body copy, but my main task for the weekend is to create my map as well as get started on the cover page.

Workbook

This was the brochure that I found and brought into class

This is a map example that I like because of the simplicity and ease of following the directions. I would like my map to be clean cut and clear to read like this one.

Week Four: Monday

This class was entirely a studio space. Those of us who had work that we had improved on from the interim presentation pinned it up and received feedback. My feedback thankfully was mainly to do with details and fixing up what I already had. I was struggling a bit with one of my spreads in particular, I just couldn't get the texture right on the Oriental Bay pages. Fay suggested a few things, like making the dogs way bigger, and placing the texture beneath the boathouses instead of above to create a more oceanic scene. I was also a little bit torn because I had a spread for Goldings bar that didn't fit with the others but it was my favourite work so far. Over the weekend I was trying to make it fit with the others, but Fay suggested to make the others fit with it.

I would be interested in receiving feedback from Matt also, as much as Fay's feedback is good, it is nice to have a new pair of eyes looking at your work.

Workbook

Week Three: Thursday

I was surprised at the way the interim presentation was held compared to other presentations I have done. It was useful to see work done by students in the other classes, which was more interesting than the work by students in my class since I have seen it many times before. The downfall of this style of presenting is that I didn't get much feedback at all. And then afterwards we were expected to make changes based on this feedback. Most of the comments I got said that they liked my work, and only one said anything beneficial that I could use to improve it.

As soon as I spread my work on the table, Fay said that my page needed a splash of colour on the black and white side. As I went round looking at other work, I saw what I did a few times and I thought the same things about their work. This was useful in solidifying the change I needed to make.

Before I came to the presentation, I was feeling pretty happy about my work and the direction I was moving in, but now I am feeling quite lost. Compared to so many other brochures, mine does not seem to stack up. I almost want to start all over again, but I know that I don't have time for that. I'm still happy with my dog illustrations, and the photographic element, I guess it's the texture that I'm struggling with. I really liked the idea of the bubbles, but now they seem stagnant, and childish and boring. But as this point I don't have any other ideas of how to show the texture.

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Week Three: Monday

The lecture today discussed grids, an aspect of this brochure design that I had definitely let slip my mind. Thankfully, since I did type last year and am currently taking typographic systems I am quite familiar with grids. I feel pretty confident about using them. The main message I took away from the lecture was "Do everything with intention or don't do it at all."

We had a critique in class, where we pinned up our work so far. I pinned up 6 different collages, which were the 3 different spreads for 2 different design systems. The feedback I received was that the system which I myself thought was working the best, was the best one. This went for the collage that I thought was the strongest too. My next steps are to strengthen my weaker ones, and keep moving forward with the whole system. As well as this, it is also time to start working in indesign on my layout and coming up with titles, and text for the 3 pages. Fay suggested I look up facts and statistics about dogs to include in the body text.

Workbook

These were the textures I used in concept one; they are made from pastel on paper

Week Two: Thursday

In today's lecture we discussed existing design examples and the three layers that made up each one, specifically what the thing/activity is, where it is, and an emotive/intangible quality. It was clarified that colour does not 'count' as a third layer.

In class we had a mini critique of everyone's mood boards, although some people had already made some first collage/designs so the critique was a little all over the place. Secondly, as groups we flipped through design books to find works that we felt portrayed specific emotions, such as natural, sporty, creative and scientific. This was really useful for me as I got to see the works that other people thought portrayed a quality which was generally different to what I thought. This opened my eyes up a bit to remember to see works at more than one angle. The sporty works were particularly interesting for me as my idea falls under the category of 'Sports'. I really liked one of the works in particular which was a capital E that looked energetic because of the repetition of lines around it.

I am feeling a little nervous about having 6 first 'collages' to show on Monday, as at this point I have no clear idea of how I want my brochure to be designed. It's all going to be trial and error to figure this out.

Workbook

Week Two: Monday

In today's lecture we discussed semiotics, in particular Icon, Index and Symbol. I learned the difference between these three aspects. In class, we were given a range of different paper and all sorts of pens/pencils/paint to work with. The whole class was focussed around drawing our object of choice in ways that we never would have thought of before.

For me, the drawing in class has been so useful for my self confidence as I have always thought that I'm not a great drawer. This exercise didn't change my artistic abilities but the way I view my own art. I realised that even without making my drawings super realistic, I can still tell exactly what the object is and it even gives it more life when I didn't think about the details such as shading and highlighting. My most favourite drawing exercise we did was with the craft paper and ink where we were given 10 seconds to quickly draw just the silhouette of our item. I think that my drawings came out the best here. This is a technique that I feel quite drawn to using in my designs as abstraction is more my style than realism.

A scan of the 10 second silhouette drawings I referenced above.

Workbook