How many designers (students) blog and/or read blogs? How do designers personally benefit from their blogs and how does i benefit the graphic design business (e.g., freelancing) and reach beyond the design community? Should students be required to have a blog and be graded harshly on that blog? The blog can be a way to get feedback from anyone all over the globe, as well as a way to get excited to learn about the design community, would having a blog prompt you to delve deeper into research in order to be able to intelligently comment on the world of design in your blog?
Monday, December 1, 2008
Well Rounded Design Education
Questions for Community Conversation: Version one.
Would you define your education in the area of design as well rounded? Do you feel that classes in related areas are/would be helpful to you as a designer (fine arts, business, etc)? Is it to the designer's benefit to be able to draw without the aide of the computer? Is a basic knowledge of marketing/business/communications necessary for a designer (and not just in a freelance aspect, but for any and every designer)? What classes beyond the typical design courses do you feel would be most helpful to the designer? Is there a big need for public speaking classes to prepare the designer for presentations as well prepare them to be able to speak intelligently, confidently, and clearly on their feet within smaller interactions with clients/colleagues?
Reviewing Concepts of the Overall Class: Sound
As discussed in a previous post, sound can add to or take away from a piece. Much in the way print design needs to have a hierarchy within it--head, subhead, body, caption, etc.--a piece with sound needs a hierarchy and a balance between what is seen and what is heard (between sound elements and non-sound elements). A strong motion or complicated visual would compete with a strong sound making it difficult for the the viewer to take in both, resulting in a loss of the meaning and detail in the visual, sound, or both. The sound needs to enhance and work with the visual. For emphasis the absence of sound (silence) is effective allowing the viewer to focus on the visual. Likewise, a simple visual makes it easier to digest complicated sound sequences.
The exercise of "swapping sounds" in class during an assignment one critique was informative, emphasizing the idea that stepping back and creating a sound piece totally unrelated to the visual can result in "happy accidents" such as synching. The swap could also highlight areas in t he piece where the original sound worked really well or really poorly, allowing the designer to be able to make better educated adjustments to the piece.
As a designer that always has several layers of conceptual ideas in each piece, sound allowed me to convey more. The visual could convey idea A, the sound idea B, and the contradiction or concordance of the two could convey yet another idea (idea C). The multifaceted nature of sound with motion, while posing a bigger challenge, allows for more creativity and deeper explorations of the concept at hand.
Reviewing Concepts of the Overall Class: Interaction
Interaction adds another layer to a project. Not only are color, composition, form, etc. an issue, but now there is also an aspect of chance and of the unknown. Will the viewer interact with the piece? If not, is the whole piece lost or are some aspects of the design conveyed from the static piece that exists before the button is pushed? How many times will/should the viewer interact the with piece? Does the piece need to be viewed more than once? Of course, interactive pieces are created with the idea that they will be interacted with, but what if they are not?
Interactivity has the ability to halt narrative and time, the scene starts static and stays static until something sets it off, or visa versa--the viewer has the ability to start/stop/change what is happening. However, even tho it is the viewer that will ultimately start/stop/etc the piece, the designer needs to take all of this into account when creating the work and allow for the piece to work at all times, before, after, and during when the viewer has pushed or rolled over the button.
Motion, Sound, and Interactivity
Assignment two culminated in drawing and animating the symbol we came up with for ourselves in Flash and then adding sound to the project as well. While Flash was (and is) extremely difficult for me to use at first, the adding aspect of controlled motion ultimately helped explain all of the ideas I wished to convey in my symbol. As a narrative over time I was able to present an original symbol on its own (in this case the 5 circles of the solar eclipse), as well as present the symbol again in conjunction with the other original adjective symbols in the new combine symbol. The motion I chose to use was simple, allowing the viewer to focus on words, which more dramatic motion would have taken away from. I also chose to center the narrative and leave the objects on the page (never exiting or entering, except in the form of a fade) in order to allow the viewer to focus better. After several revisions, I concluded with a sequence that begins with a very graphic simple symbol, and then fades to a more sketch-like symbol, and ends bringing the original symbol back, combining the graphic symbol with the sketched symbol and with text.
In terms of sound, I wanted to approach the sound in this piece in a very different way than I approached sound with assignment one. Instead of creating the sounds myself, or going out into the world and finding them (on the street, etc.) I wanted to use a sound that already existed, more in the realm of music than in the realm of sound effects. After various tries with very different types of music, I still wasn't satisfied and finally got a piece that I liked, by altering and editing a piece that was largely based on sounds rather than music, even though it came from a piece of music. By selecting sections of the sound and repeating them, and taking out chunks in order to get a start and stop feel, rather than a connected string of notes, I created a piece that has a circus-like fun quality and also a sense of building that I feel reflects the ideas of traveling, wandering, searching, and taking in everything you see.
Lengthening the piece by just a few seconds allowed me to extend the time the view sees the original symbol, so that they can fully take it in, and recall it when the eclipses come back at the end. It also allowed me to prolong the time the words appear on the fortune cookie long enough to have them be read. Since I chose this concocted sound made up of repetitive pieces of music it was easy for me to extend the sound when I extended the piece simply by adding in a few more repetitions. The simple motion at the end leaves the cookie static, but keeps a subtle movement going so that it is clear that the piece is not yet over, my take on the idea of a "pulsing movement" at the end.
If I can figure out how to post the flash animation as a swf file or convert it to a quicktime movie and play it that I will.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Abstract Combinations Maybe Not the Answer
I combined by symbols abstractly, using tiny details and extreme zoom. I wanted my combined symbol to have both hard and soft lines (curves and sharp angles) as well as to have both line and solid shape. While combining the elements, I did not think about movement, although, looking back, I should have--I suppose I didn't learn my lesson with my stop-motion movie as well as I thought....
After looking over the images and getting some feedback, I realized that the images in and of themselves are so drastically different that having them present in a non-abstract manner together would be just as, if not more, intriguing. I picked the most detailed and illustrative image--the fortune cookie--and the most symbol like/least detailed--the eclipse--and combined them. The eclipse, while originally symbolizing the adjective "Contrasting" also represents math and science, so can be used to show two different symbols, and, when combined with the cookie, my mark will still incorporate three adjectives. In fact, the mere act of combining the cookie and the eclipse can symbolize contrasting as well.
I believe that the combined symbols, before I resulted to the Non-Abstract version incorporated enough visual elements of the individual symbols to still convey the adjectives and so they remained "self portraits." Now, with my final non-abstract symbol, they convey their original meaning completely and so the combine symbol is unarguably still a self portrait.
I see the flash animation moving by first either cracking open or having the paper fortune slip out the side. Perhaps, as the eclipse comes out of the cookie, the cookie itself fades, in a blackout-like manner, so, in the end, the viewer is left seeing online the eclipse--just five circles of varying patterns. This light-to-dark effect could again emphasize contrast, and leave the viewer focusing on the mathematical nature of the eclipse symbol. If that is the case, then the "final" mark is really just the five circles, and the Lucky fortune cookie, is only seen an the beginning and through the animation.
For sound, I am unsure. Depending on the motion, the animation could start with a cracking noise or not. Throughout the clip, there could either be stereotypical Chinese music emphasizing the cookie, or else something the complete opposite to emphasize, yet again, a contrast. I would like to work with the light-to-dark idea, not only with motion and a fade, but also with sound, choosing a track that either gets louder or softer with the fade in light, and by loud and soft that could relate to volume, pitch, or tempo.
After looking over the images and getting some feedback, I realized that the images in and of themselves are so drastically different that having them present in a non-abstract manner together would be just as, if not more, intriguing. I picked the most detailed and illustrative image--the fortune cookie--and the most symbol like/least detailed--the eclipse--and combined them. The eclipse, while originally symbolizing the adjective "Contrasting" also represents math and science, so can be used to show two different symbols, and, when combined with the cookie, my mark will still incorporate three adjectives. In fact, the mere act of combining the cookie and the eclipse can symbolize contrasting as well.
I believe that the combined symbols, before I resulted to the Non-Abstract version incorporated enough visual elements of the individual symbols to still convey the adjectives and so they remained "self portraits." Now, with my final non-abstract symbol, they convey their original meaning completely and so the combine symbol is unarguably still a self portrait.
I see the flash animation moving by first either cracking open or having the paper fortune slip out the side. Perhaps, as the eclipse comes out of the cookie, the cookie itself fades, in a blackout-like manner, so, in the end, the viewer is left seeing online the eclipse--just five circles of varying patterns. This light-to-dark effect could again emphasize contrast, and leave the viewer focusing on the mathematical nature of the eclipse symbol. If that is the case, then the "final" mark is really just the five circles, and the Lucky fortune cookie, is only seen an the beginning and through the animation.
For sound, I am unsure. Depending on the motion, the animation could start with a cracking noise or not. Throughout the clip, there could either be stereotypical Chinese music emphasizing the cookie, or else something the complete opposite to emphasize, yet again, a contrast. I would like to work with the light-to-dark idea, not only with motion and a fade, but also with sound, choosing a track that either gets louder or softer with the fade in light, and by loud and soft that could relate to volume, pitch, or tempo.
Happy go Lucky Mathematician
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