Danny Riches

Stage 3 GDC - UAL Chelsea

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Final Statement

Reflecting on this year, I feel I have gained a deeper understanding of my discipline and have gotten closer to realising who I am as a Graphic Design - which overall, was my main reason for coming to Chelsea, I felt I would develop and grow as a creative. 

In terms of my projects, I’m happy with how I have conceptualised and researched each one, with each one having it’s own narrative but being a piece of my practice as a whole. In regards to execution, there are times I have felt some outcomes weren’t as polished or as finished as they could be, but my main priority has always been to find out who I am creatively and focus on the core concept of what I want to create, hoping that through my tutors and peers I could deepen that sense of experimentation and gain a deeper understanding of how executions of designs can unfold. Throughout the year, I have pushed to try new things and really pushed the concepts I have created, trying to achieve what I could and visualise them to my satisfaction, this not always being the case as with my spmp , but importantly through my mistakes I have gained more depth in understanding how I function as a designer and how I can grow further and improve. 

When I reflect on this unit, and university in general - I get a sense I have grown and matured ; with a lot more growth to come. Ultimately, I am pleased with what I have achieved this year and look forward to growing and developing even more-so in the discipline I love.

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Quantified Self Re-Shoot [4] : Final Outcome

The above is my final outcome for my quantified self reshoot. I am very happy with how it has been produced, reshot from the original photo I liked in the last photo set, to incorporate more of the elements I liked from it.

I worked to get the cluster of flowers just off of centre to give a sense of growth, while grading the image to give the photo a more monochromatic feel but with a hint of green top keep the natural feel of the image. I love how the white water I developed mists out some petals and has a sense of reflection and calm. Overall i am much happier with this outcome.

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Quantified Self Re-Shoot [3] : Shooting elements

Once I started shooting the elements together I realised the rose I was going to incorporate wasn’t fitting with the other elements, due to this I took it out of the composition, and played more with the framing of the plants in the water and how their different structures of branches and features could intertwine and work in harmony in the white water.

The above being some of my favourites from the shoot, with my attention leaning more towards the art two: The 3rd in the arrangement, due to the interaction the petals have with the water and my love of the negative space to it’s left, and the 4th as the negative space of the shot felt like it was framing the pointed composition of the plants. I think i’m leaning more towards the 3rd photo but think I want to it to be closer to the petals. I will reshoot more in this style.

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Quantified Self Re-Shoot [2] : Experimenting with Environment

As for a background for my botanical elements, I disliked the paper background from my original and wanted to use the environment to communicate another part of myself but have it also be related to the subject matter.

I have always loved being in water, and since childhood have visited family by the sea and spent my days there. I wanted to incorporate this into the shoot as an environmental feature however i felt like it could also resemble my love for minimal and clean design.

I had the idea of mixing acrylic ink into water, to give it a more solid feel, and have it immerse petals and branches giving them an abstract and almost foggy feel.

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Quantified Self Re-shoot [1]

In the Easter Break I wanted to re-shoot my Quantified Self, predominantly due to my disappointment with the level of image quality and a feeling I could expand on the point of the brief, communicating my qualities or an aspect of myself.

I knew I wanted to keep the botanical element in my re-shoot as it’s a large part of my fonder memories (planting trees and sprouts when i was younger and taking care of them), unfortunately due to the weather my lavender plant  from the original outcome wasn’t able to be used, so i sampled other plants I had a connection with that were in bloom. Seeing how they respond to other elements of my shoot. [possibly keeping the gridded element of my previous shoot but elaborating?]

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Authos - Final Outcomes & Reflection 

For the visual style of my outcomes, I went for a scheme that communicated a sense of a blueprint, with a blue and white contrasting in a more ‘manual’ type of setting. I chose to use a typeface with more structure, resembling the use of older manual styles and with a weighted sense of legibility - complimenting the nature of my project and it’s sense of stripping back the layers of language and the nuances of it. 

SPMP Reflection : Overall, I feel conflicted about my final major project. I am happy that I have realised a concept I really wanted to tackle, developing and creating a functional system, but disappointed with my quantity of finished outcomes I made with it. My system took a lot more research and development, with my correspondence with a linguist ongoing and time being needed to figure out the vast nuances in the english language - Due to this my time for the development of outcomes became shorter and tighter, with my priority being to get my system to work, with the alternate outcome being having a large quantity of prints but with bugs in the functionality of my project. 

I want to develop this project more outside of university and really push its Design potential and real world functionality. I am happy with my system and proud I persevered through the expansive subject matter of linguistics and phonology, and despite feeling out of my depth through the long development process, carrying on to devilled and finish the system itself. 

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Authos Outcomes 

Arranging my outcomes I wanted a simple and clean design, resembling a manual or blueprint style - reflecting Authos’ ethos of being directional and instructional.

The copy has been written to be instructional and comprehensive, explaining the build of my system and it’s modular nature.

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System Test

With my system functioning in theory, I moved onto testing them with words Christian recommended as having a low transparency of orthography. [From top left to bottom right] Unity, Snake, Neck, and Pharmacy. 

I feel the glyphs work well together, giving a sense of their own visual language whilst having the function of representing articulation. 

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Developed set in Visual style 

After finding a visual style I liked, nuancing the nature of sound with round and blocked shapes I worked through the set I had re-hauled and began to test how they would interact.

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Visualising Articulation

With my grid and glyph sets finalised and functional, I move onto aesthetic treatment. Taking from the guidance of my research into the development of Arrival’s alien language, I wanted to communicate the ethos of the project and visualise the articulation of the English language.

To do this I had the idea of making the shapes for square and giving the set a more modular feel, however keeping them connected though soft deeps and curves, visualising the style of affection; wherein the English language has strong and distinctive sounds yet curve and place them together to make fluent words and sentences, English being an amalgamation of the many points of rule and influence we’ve had over history. Keeping my project looking for modern and representative of how I feel articulation would manifest typographically.

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Re-hauling semiotics 

From correspondence with Christian, I knew I needed to deeper levels of categorisation with my signs as to be the most true to the project and brief at hand. I went over the semiotics I had and assigned either a core sound (such as labial, glottal, alveolar etc) to simple shapes and formations based off of the place of articulation - and accents to do with the tone and nature of sounds to smaller accents that are combined and locked in with he core sounds in certain ways to achieve sound.

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Correspondence with a Professional in the Linguistic field - Christian Ilbury, Phd researcher, Queen Mary university

After conferring with Matt, we agreed I needed someone who specialised in linguistics and specifically phonology to get my project as functional as possible. I e-mailed lecturers and Phd researchers from UCL, the university of Westminster and Queen Mary’s university - all held in high regard for their linguistics programs.

Out of those who I contacted, Christian Ilbury [Phd researcher from Queen Mary’s] contacted me expressing interest in my project and its prospects of transferring english typography into a more ‘transparent orthography’. Whether expressing concern for its plausibility, I gained confidence in the prospect of my project being functional and achievable. Christian gave me tips on terminology and brought up questions about prospects of the english language my research hadn’t provided - such as ‘plosive sounds’ , such as B and P which i held to be in the ‘dental’ category of sound. Conferring with Christian has clarified possible mistakes I couldn’t made in the categorisation and plausibility of my project.

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Rough Guidelines of System & Grid 

From practicing assembling my semiotics, I came up with the idea of the foundation of building the components coming from the visualisation of the mouth - with the higher parts being the upper roof of the mouth and lower the opposite.

I feel like this will give my project more structure and overall guidance when the system is in use. Even if it is more of a diagram to refer to how the minimal components are built rather than a mass produced grid system.

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Experimenting with Semiotics [2]

To begin visualising my system, I wanted to experiment with how I would visual song with basic shapes of circles and accents - through realising I would need more glyphs than these I felt it would be an appropriate initial method for me to be critical of what symbols and semiotics could be used to represent what sounds. How lines or dashes through circles could interact and show changes and difference in sound.

Once I had gotten an initial set of a handful of signs, I went to expand upon them with more linguistic research such as how palatal and upward inflected sounds (coming from the same area of the mouth) could be indicated and differentiated.

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Experimenting with Semiotics [1]

As an initial exercise I wondered how the use of a singular sign, once changes could indicate a difference in sound, beginning with an arrow as a means of using an existing symbol that holds several meanings when reflected (upward facing for up and downward facing for down, used in environmental design already). 

The above being a set of more ‘core sounds’ [from left to right] : rounded sound, inter-dental sound, dental sound, upward inflected sound, lower inflected sound, and a alveoral sound (the tongue’s interaction with the sides of the mouth)

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Tutor Group notes

After taking my initial mockup to my tutor group meeting I got the following notes:

- To get a linguist on board to give my project more validity and overall structure.

- The core concept is interesting and the level of comprehension my visuals can achieve will be key.

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Initial experiments 

After some sketching and thinking of how a designed language system could work, I was initially drawn to the use of simple semiotics inspired by the nature of sound mimicking the position of the mouth and (the centre circle elements) and the length of the sound (framing vectors around the centre). I wanted to start myself off with a general system that I could then refine while I further researched the complexity of how English is articulated.