COMMUNICATION DESIGN ONLINE JOURNAL

[isabelladesignjournal]

And in a blink of an eye...

GRAPH2119

... just like that thirteen extraordinary weeks have flown by! Thinking back to day one I was extremely unsure where I would be today and what my design journey would have looked like. Thankfully I can say I’m proud of what I have learnt and achieved this semester.

Each week provided me with a unique insight and an abundance of opportunities to achieve a variety of design aesthetics. I am extremely grateful for my insight into typography which this class has given me. I am able to now appreciate the many ways we use it to influence decisions and communicate with others. Now, forever being conscious of my environment around me, I would particularly owe this to my favorite the practical activity where we looked at letter forms in our environment!

Additionally, the modernist movement was a highlight of mine, in fact I recently picked up a book about this movement where I am exposing myself to this era in a greater depth.

Overall I achieved my many goals in developing as a designer but also making a wonderful group of friends from this course! I look forward to what’s ahead. Thank you Andy and Karan for an amazing semester!!

[isabelladesignjournal]

ZINE THERE DONE THAT!!

What an amazing way to end the semester! I loved looking and learning about other students creatives and the way they showcased their work! Very excited to have swapped some zines with my friends for theirs! This assignment was by far my favourite!

[maisie-hyett]

The primary colours nostalgic of the 90s era, for which my creative utterly ooses in her style.

My Zine emulates the imperfect nature of Shelby Hamilton’s creative work, believing “she is good at mess”. Her aesthetic helps to define the shift in the beauty industry that ItsAllFluff is attempting in their start up business - casual cosmetics that don’t promise perfection but rather a kind of self-acceptance for the everyday girl.

Because the ItsAllFluff brand and Shelby’s work is so message driven, I wanted to created a poster that spoke to the honesty of the brand (through the honesty in Shelby’s answers). The choice of my Zine format allowed for this extra dimension to the piece, which is revealed in the viewer’s own intercation with the physical zine when opened. A zine that can be more than just a little book. My rough hand writing on the type on the poster also helped me connect with my own style that shared similar characteristics with Shelby’s often random and spontaneous creations.

[isabelladesignjournal]

I love Maisie’s fold out poster zine! Serving two purposes at once it’s informational and gives the reader a poster!! Amazing.

[jazkenn-blog]

FINALLY… the zine is complete!

Today I finished making my zine, after numerous attempts. I was only able to make one other copy that I am happy with, as the hands on process made it very difficult to mass produce. I will also bring in one of my earlier attempts to our exhibition as it is almost identical to my final with just a few colour changes here and there, meaning that I have more work to share with the class. 

After completing this assignment I felt a sense if accomplishment, I am very happy with how my zine turned out. I also showed my creative, Nicola, who was very happy with the end result. 

Finishing this final assignment gave me a chance to get on tumblr and reflect upon all my old posts. I think it’s a very nice platform to be able to look back on my previous work and see how far I have come throughout this semester. 

[isabelladesignjournal]

I was interested in Jaz’s zine from the get go. Her final zine looks awesome! I reallt love the way she has used various materials to create texture and variation in her hand generated zine!

[isabelladesignjournal]

Approximately 20175 hours.(Dramatic but many hours of effort and thought).

One awesome and talented creative (Richard Parry).

And of course, my brain paired with a program as known as - Indesign.

Together we created a 16 page zine.

Richards unique and quirky photographs helped make my zine pop, I complimented them through a vibrant colour scheme which is evedient throughout. Through the choice of a timid and clean san serif font I was able to obtain a balance which did not distract from his images but still was impactful with getting the interview across! The pop out poster and paper throughout add variation to keep my zine engaging. Also adding a hand generated on element to my digitally created zine.

-

I learnt a lot on this creative journey! From making a zine to learning the basis of indesign! For my first time using this program I have to say I am fairly impressed with what I was able to produce! I look forward to improving my skills in the future.

[isabelladesignjournal]

And just like that .... my zines are all ready for tomorrow’s class!!! I’m very excited to swap and share with my friends to learn about each others creatives!

[isabelladesignjournal]

I can finally see the finish line! Today was all about test printing, evaluating and correcting my mistakes. I purchased some transparency paper which I originally intended to print onto it with a light blue ink (left image), however despite the initial print being physically successful it was clear that I needed a starker contrast thus I decided to use a black ink to obtain this for my final zine cover! 

Another challenge I was faced with was the alignment of pages I wanted to insert into my zine for pop outs! With a bleed when printed these were thrown out of proportion and no longer lined up as they did on my screen. With some editing I was finally able to overcome this issue.  

[onlinereflectivejournal]

Week 04

Following the discussion of blackletter and its history in the lecture, I stumbled across this contemporary example of a neoclassic blackletter-like typeface designed by type and graphic designer, Ultra Kühl. I really like its geometric aesthetic, in addition to the boldness of each letter.

(Source: res.cloudinary.com/tdfoundry/image/upload/w_3000,q_auto:best,f_auto/v1508375026/lxbxifx42ldhfoa9sszx.png)

[isabelladesignjournal]

Whilst reminiscing on the past 12 weeks, Dominique's post has reminded me of one of the first letter forms we looked at  ‘blackletter’. I remember being amazed due to it’s rich history and geometric precision upon creation. 

[isabelladesignjournal]

Our Last Lecture

A bittersweet feeling. Today marked our last lecture for semester one! It concluded with a recap of the past 12 weeks, it’s crazy to think about all that we have learnt from the historical movements to designers and design collectives alongside key design concepts. This lecture reminded me of the design movement that left me amazed - The modernist movement. 

I loved it’s innovation and experimentation with with colour, form, lines and shapes with a tendency of abstraction. Pablo Picasso was a key creative of this movement using abstract and symmetrical lines to create influential pieces of art which are recognised globally. Picasso can also be associated with cubism (an influential modernist art movement). 

Bellow is one of my favourite pieces of his:

Painter and Model, 1928 by Pablo Picasso

SOURCE: https://www.pablopicasso.org/painter-and-model.jsp

[maisie-hyett]

Left to right: F Z S I T E C V K

Today….Increasing our awareness of letter forms in the environment, where depending on your angle and position of objects, everyday scenes unintentionally reveal a letterform. 

Reflecting on this task, I found it quite inspiring how a simple change of awareness and taking a particular focus on one thing, can allow us to see things in our environment we may never have been able to see without adjusting our own visual process and awareness. Despite the task seeming difficult at first, I was very surprised how quickly we were able to find letterforms, simply by concentrating hard and being hyper-vigilant. With this, I’m inspired to be more observant of my surroundings, and to use this when I seek creative inspiration. I also learnt how deeply embedded language and writing is within our world and minds - thus making it such a powerful tool of communication that we are all exposed to all day everyday throughout our lifetimes. 

[isabelladesignjournal]

I love seeing what letter forms were found by other groups in our class!! Very cool! Crazy how many you can find in a particular environment!

[jazkenn-blog]

Week Twelve 

This week I made a more detailed prototype where I used similar paper to what I want to use in my final, as well as similar sized text and imagery. As you can see, at this stage I still didn’t have the answers from my creative so I just used white paper to fill the space I thought the answer would. I received my answers just before the workshop this week, so I spent this lesson reading over them and fixing any spelling or grammar, then printed out the questions, answers, and creatives work so that I could create one more prototype that is more refined. I also used this lesson to gain some feedback from others on my table about the prototype I brought in, which was very encouraging and helpful. Because I have decided to go with a more hand made, organic looking zine I was having trouble thinking of ways to make a few extra for our zine exhibition next week. After talking to a few people on my table I came to the conclusion that I can either scan the original to make more copies or even just print out the collages in a lower quality for the copies so that it doesn’t cost too much. 

[isabelladesignjournal]

Love how Jaz has decided to create her Zine though hand generated collage! It really compliments her creatives aesthetic!

[isabelladesignjournal]

Our last Communication Design practical class for this semester was all about pushing our ideas further and developing our zines while gaining feedback! Although it is extremely rough I was able to print a copy of what my zine may look like! Since then I have annotated onto the pages what I need to add, fix or take out in order to produce the most effective final design!

[isabelladesignjournal]

The Eyewriter

The one thing that left me inspired from this weeks lecture was the extraordinary case study of Tempt1’s eye tracker project! This project provides paralysed humans with a functioning and creative mind to be able to graffiti write by using only their eyes! This computer program has been proved successful and it a very powerful and inspiring creation!

[isabelladesignjournal]

Planning, planning and more planning! Today’s class was about creating zines and roughly marking out where content will most likely be placed in our final zines! My intended eight page zine soon grew to a sixteen page zine to ensure I do my creative justice and include all the necessary content! The sixteen page zine will also allow me to showcase a greater amount his work!

One thing I loved learning today was how to create a zine which folds out into a poster! Although I’m not using this design in for my zine it was a really great layout to learn!

[isabelladesignjournal]

Yes, you are looking at a very randomly pieced toegther zine and yes, it is far from perfect! Just like my skills in indesign! Fortunately today’s practical class was all about indesign basics to get us started on our upcoming project! For me indesign is a program I had never touched but was always curious about therefore this class was very beneficial for me! My favourite thing I learnt was definitely the double page spread which I will without a doubt include in my final zine!

[isabelladesignjournal]

This weeks lecture explored several case studies about art and design for social change. For me this was extremely interesting and inspiring. We looked at the rainbow flag and the peace symbol, I personally was very interested in the peace symbol. The peace symbol is something I always would see however never knew the story behind it. Gerald Holtom’s 1958 peace symbol is nearly a universal symbol of peace, created with a greater meaning than I thought. It was designed to oppose military action in which may result in the use of nuclear, biological and or chemical weapons alongside the building of nuclear power station in the UK.

[isabelladesignjournal]

In this weeks leacture we spoke about the post modern movements and the influence of the computer on design. I found this particularly interesting in terms of how things were made compared to how we do it now! Hand making everything gives a rather authentic aesthetic however with computers we are able to reproduce work in a more efficient manner.