Monday 18 October 2010

Typeface evaluation

Which personality traits did you choose to respond to and apply to the typeface?
STRIKING - features
CONTRAST - colours
DIRECT - no confusion when talking together. very to the point but not blunt
LAYERED - theres more that meets the eye. Quite reserved.
CLEAR - very understandable and confident when talking and socialising

What are the reasons behind the design decisions you have made for the typeface?
I used both upper and lower case in the typeface to show the use of contrast and further more the use of negative space. The negative space also gives the font the dramatic 'striking' feel needed to respond to the adjectives. I used a bold Arial Black font to give the impact and it created a frame around the lower case making the font seem layered.\

In what ways are the results effective?
The results are effective as they are answering and communicating all the adjectives I was responding to and the letterforms remained legible.

Wednesday 13 October 2010

Typeface rationale

Brief:
The problem i intend to solve is to create a typeface that appropriately and effectively communicates the personality and characteristics of my partner. In this case its Sadie Thompson. The final piece must be presented on an A1 piece of tracing paper along with a 4.5cm by 9cm name badge.

Who needs to know?
The audience is my partner and some external members in the final critique.


What do they need to know?
The audience needs to gather from my work what Sadie is like as a person both visually and personally and they should also be able to see the reasoning for my response to the brief.


Why do they need to know?
the concept of my problem is to communicate the solution to the brief effectively and for the audience and my partner to agree whether it works or not.


What will they respond to?
Each aspect of the font should be relevant to the brief and be in context with the subject.


What research is required?
Primary: questionare, conversations, observation, initial judgement of personality and atmosphere.

Secondary: online research e.g. where shes from, her favourite things to do, to eat, to listen to, her inspirations etc.

Visual thinking final pieces

Visual thinking evaluation

What is being communicated and how?
The letter O through the means of photography, use of light sticks in a darkened environment and digital editing to combine the image with my letterform to create the final typeface.


How well does this answer the brief?
I think it answers the brief to an OK standard mainly because the idea is quite generic so its easy to understand but lacks innovation.


How well has the idea been visually explored?
I'd say it was explored to an average standard. I used photographs and experimented with long exposure as primary research and sourced images from the internet and used cutouts from magazines and flyers as secondary research.


What are the strengths of the resolution?
I think the initial idea really communicates the words definition. Also the combination of photography and digital imagery works nicely together.


How could it be improved?
I think I could have made it better if I generated more ideas and took them further to discover more alternative responses and generally further my innovation.


General comments...
I found this word quite challenging to communicate and its stretched my imagination and creativity. I'm taking it as a positive note as its pushing me further.

Visual Thinking Rationale

The brief...
Design 10 letterforms that communicate your interpretation of the word GLOW. They can be in sequence or series but have to be the same letter.

What do you need to communicate?
My own interpretation of the word GLOW. It has to be legible as a letterform and the idea has to be clear and relevant to the word.

Why do they need to know?
They need to be able to understand the idea behind the response and also be able to make out the letterform  so it must be legible.

What will they respond to?
They will respond to a set of 10 A6 visual printouts of my chosen letterform that i feel best communicates my response.

Where do they go?
It will be presented during the projects final critique to all others who have the same word as their starting point.

HOW TO...final piece

HOW TO...Self Evalutation

1. What role(s) did you take on in the group?
I wouldn't say there were any definitive roles within our group and everybody collaborated well. A lot of the time i took it upon myself to be proactive and get the creativity, and idea generation going. I did so mainly by raising the questions that we needed to respond to and i also organised a group brainstorm and blogging session outside of college timetable.

2. How well do you think you performed in the role(s)?
i feel i performed well but theres always room for improvement and being tired doesn't help but i didn't let that become an issue and i contributed equally to the project.

3. How well do you think you worked as a group?
I was really pleased with how well we all got along in the group we collaborated well and everybody contributed with ideas development research and attendance.

4. What were the positives of working in a group?
Whenever we had ideas we would all have differing opinions but it had a positive effect in the sense that we could learn how to view the same idea from a different perspective giving us a new light on the idea. I really liked being able to bounce ideas of others and develop them together.

5.What were the negatives of working in a group?
Having never worked in a group before, in the beginning it was a slight discomfort to accept others opinions and ideas and merge several peoples ideas together but i felt more comfortable throughout the week.

6. What will you do differently next time?
I feel that my presentation skills aren't very strong and also my organisation was time keeping makes it harder to get work done so i will focus more.

7. Where could you have improved your resolution?
I think at times we drifted from our original concept and that drove the finished piece away from solving the problem in some areas although it did stay relevant. Also the quality of the finished product could have been better in terms of the materials used to print because i felt the colours didn't quite work with the brown paper.

8. What were the strengths of your presentation?
We had an extensive and thorough documentation on our blogs and we handed out bits of our visual research so people could see more closely what we were trying to achieve, for example photographs of places where you could go for a nap.