It’s only been what, 12 weeks? I cannot deny that through the process of forcing every creative bone in my body to design something for this module, I have learned plenty and more. Not only did I learn more about design elements and the design process, I also saw a side of myself that was creative, determined and motivated. Only by pushing your limits will you realize your potential.

Well, I shall not bother you any further with my mushy rants. My NM2208 journey is finally coming to a close. It’s feeling of ambivalence; of relief and dread, achievement and disappointment. There were ups and downs. But I know I have grown through this process and now see myself more capable of communicating my ideas visually. And I will carry the lessons learnt, both design-wise and on a personal level, with me through this humble journal, a remnant of my experience.

I gathered some inspiration from the previous cohorts’ works and began coming up with an organized layout and underlying theme for the portfolio. I decided to go with a white-grey-black color scheme as I preferred a minimalistic look to a colorful and vibrant but potential design massacre if not done right. These colors also attributed to a slightly corporate yet non-conventional and contemporary look which I felt was apt given the formal context of most of our assignments.

Each assignment was to occupy (at least) 2 facing pages with the left page showing the development process and the right page showing the final prototype. This was achieved for all the assignments except assignment 3 where I extended my development process to 3 pages to elaborate on the 9 frames I had for my photo-story. The final project was also included, dispersed across the last 4 pages.

GiraffeElephant

Monkey
Panda

Each animal represents the culture of the country they come from. We included cultural elements/accessories to reflect their cultural background. For example, the monkey from Japan had a Sakura flower (coincidentally, her name is Sakura) while the China panda wore a Chinese hat. Hence, the final animals looked like this:

Front and back covers

Taking inspiration from other children’s storybooks, we also decided to put in a border around the illustrations in the book as we liked the clean, organized look of the pages. Having a uniformed layout may be conventional but we felt that it suit our edutainment theme. The font used also contributed to this overall feel we wanted to achieve. We chose Myriad Pro, a simple, non-fanciful font that was contemporary enough to appeal to children while still maintaining the formal tone.

Page layout

Finally, to complete the book, we included a glossary page and an edutainment page. The glossary page included words that might be too complex for our target audience while the edutainment page provided some interesting facts about the food cultures mentioned in the book.

Overall, our group felt the book achieved our aim of an organized edutainment storybook that integrated the theme of culture.

I felt that although my first draft managed to spread the points out in a neat and organized manner, it didn’t suit the feel of a journey towards a more pleasant environment which was what I wanted to achieve. I decided that the footprints should be placed along each step that will lead to an “end point” in the form of the happy, healthy earth. To accentuate the contrast between the “start” and “end” of the journey, I desaturated the sick earth as well. After moving things around, I settled on placing my points in a “C” shape to emphasize my point on Carbon. The “C” shape is made more striking with the footprints that also, symbolic of reducing Carbon footprints, are getting smaller along each step of the way.

Right now the infographic looks more complete and each element has more purpose. I believe the overall design now promotes the simplicity and fun for the average person to reduce their carbon footprint.

We wanted to explore international food cultures as we felt that living in a globalized world today, children are exposed to all kinds of food and this would be something they will be able to identify with.

Using animals from different cultural backgrounds gathered in a zoo, our story begins when the animals decide to hold a party for their trainer. However, in preparing for the party, our animals cannot agree on the food for the party as each animal sees food from its country as better and each advocates their preferred cuisine. Inevitably, a fight ensues. Eventually, the animals learn to cooperate and have a bit of each cuisine for the party and everyone enjoys themselves at the end.

Besides merely showcasing various food cultures, the story is also reflective of the cultural theory of ethnocentrism by using food as a representation of culture.

I faced this challenge by first reading on climate change and ways to prevent it. After browsing several articles, I decided to go with a “how-to” type of infographic. Basing my information on this and this, I came up with the 5 most visually expressible and accessible things individuals can do to reduce their carbon footprint.

1. Opt for public transport
Showing how a bus can take more people than a private car

2. Save electricity
A power switch being turned off

3. Be an activist
Icons of people holding green pro-environment signages

4. Plant a tree
A spade with a plant growing out from some soil on the spade

5. Eat more greens and less meat
Vegetables “standing” and stepping on a piece of meat

Once I had my 5 points, I needed to link it back to climate change and came up with the most obvious way by putting a “sick earth” and a “healthy earth” to illustrate the results of the actions I want to promote. Here’s what my initial draft looked like:

My classmates suggested that I put a background to it as it looks quite plain right now, and also try exploring other arrangements for the illustrations. I personally also would like to change the title font. The footprints that represent “carbon footprints” could also be rearranged in a more organized path around the canvas and not just the top alone.

Then I proceeded with photoshopping the colors of the clothes and experimenting with different color schemes for the backgrounds. I used Kuler to find color combinations that I felt suited the vibrant, edgy look I wanted to go for. Initially, I wanted to divide my postcard into 2 parts right split in the middle. The split allowed me to include more colors, hence making the postcard more eye-catching and loud. However, when I tried to remove the split on the clothes, I felt it looked more aesthetically pleasing as the outfit didn’t look so disconnected and not so clashing.

Color scheme

When I presented my color scheme during tutorial, it appeared that most of my classmates were supportive of the split for the whole postcard as it looked different and would be more appealing to the target audience.

Another issue I had was with font. I hated the font after I printed it out. I will be changing the font for the front of the postcard to something more contemporary.

I liked the back of the postcard as I felt that it managed to gel the whole concept together and provide sufficient information to induce a call to action (to get people to check out the website). The objective of the campaign is very clearly reflected at the back of the postcard with the tagline, “Iron Out Your English!” in prominence.

Back

I will be further experimenting with the colors for the front for the final portfolio.

The Big Idea:
The whole point of ironing your clothes is to create a good impression. So wearing the perfect outfit but presenting it with creases will fail to make a good impression. I thought of parallels I could draw with forming good impressions and clothes. I thought it was a stroke of genius (which happens quite rarely for me) to use the outfit to represent how you carry yourself and the creases on it as a person’s inadequacies in English. Hence the pun of “ironing” of English would work to draw people to improve their command of the language. The Speak Good English movement is an ongoing campaign that targets Singaporeans (youths primarily) to use grammatically correct English.

Target Audience:
The colors are meant to be, (in Ris Low’s words) “loud” and I’m not sure if “red” would cut it, but definitely something that “boomz!”. Targeted at all the Ris Lows out there, this postcard is set to drive people to start ironing out the creases on their English!

Status:
WIP, TBA

There are a lot of theories about aesthetics and some were mentioned in the lecture. It never really occurred to me before why these elements of art is important. But I believe it forms the very basis for design. Without these elements, there will be no art. And more importantly, it allows an expression of the artist’s emotions and ideas. As a novice, there is still much for me to learn but I dare say I have a better idea of the theories I’ve shunned all these years.

Our class exercise was to design something that would describe any of the given adjectives. My partner and I did the following.

This is an image representing power. The tower of grey blocks is meant to create a “peaking” point that will intimidate and at the same time give a majestic and supreme impression.  The sharp edges reinforce this notion.

This is the symbol for ‘change’. Green was used as it represented momentum and movement. The crisp lines and curves are meant to create a spinning illusion to represent continuity and change. The edges of the symbol are pointy at the corners as sharp lines give an energetic feel as mentioned in lecture.

One of the key challenges I faced was in framing my shots the way I planned. As a stickler for details, I often felt that the surroundings and minor elements affected the framing such that it looked awkward or irritable. Things like my cast’s outfit, the placement of details and other objects within the frame were the key problems in my framing. I had to improvise on my shots on the spot and explore different angle to avoid such shots. This “forced” experimentation of shots actually showed some great results that I may not have otherwise achieved.

An integral part of my plot required some photo manipulation to enhance the story. I had to tamper with some physical traits of my lead to bring out the elements in the story that indicated a change. This became another potentially lethal part of my project because for one, I didn’t visualize how I wanted to edit the features and ending up having to work with several constraints and another problem in the technical aspect was that my macbook was lagging like crazy and couldn’t work the photoshop filters properly. It was time consuming working within the constraints but I managed to achieve something close to my vision. I believe this illustrates how more often than not, planning is never enough. I eventually worked on a friend’s computer and that helped speed up things a lot.

The different shots will be included in my final submission. And now, presenting my photo story… If you can figure out the plot, I can safely say I have succeeded in this assignment.