Tim Burton @kompykastle-blog - Tumblr Blog

Organizational Structures

This past month, I was given the opportunity to explore and understand the concepts behind organizational structures. That is, to thing about various abstract layers and components of a project. While we focused mainly on motion graphics, this concept applies to any project where multiple layers of concepts, meanings, and elements are at play.

For example, when designing a single 5 second animation logo, there are several layers of concepts, meanings and elements at play. One of these is word choice. When I was designing my logo for the World Elephant Day concert event, I originally chose the name “Indie for Ivory.” I was then challenged on the word choice, being prompted that it may wrongly communicate that the event is FOR illegal ivory sales and not AGAINST, as I had originally intended. This word choice is just one of many organizational components in design. As a result, I changed my event name to “Indie Sans Ivory”

Original:

Revised:

Another component of my project that I faced a challenge with was visuals in my rough cut video. I wanted to communicate a message of elephants being poached and how wrong that is, and chose some very shocking imagery. In my revision, I cut back on the shocking imagery, but still needed to communicate the same message. I stuck to story telling through visuals to get the same message across, but without shocking and disturbing imagery.

Original:

(Disfigured elephant)

Revised:

(Replaced disfigured elephant with additional ivory imagery)

Prior to this course, I had a basic understanding that branding and design is more than just pretty visuals - that different types of word choices, color choices, etc helped to communicate the overall message. However, this course allowed to explore these structure elements much deeper and to understand not only how important they are, but how to perform the research necessary to obtain a base starting point in what elements to choose from when creating rough versions of the final product, so that I may better hone in on ideal choices of structure elements.

Writing Effective Copy

Being a wordsmith takes a lot more creativity than I ever imagined. It’s one thing to create something visually interesting, like images, graphics or even a layout. However, copy is its own beast when it comes to being creative with it. It takes a different approach in order to know which words to use, which can change dynamically based on what colors, images or even medium the copy is being used in conjunction with.

The three biggest things I have learned from my course on Effective Copywriting are the following:

1) Brainstorm! From our reading, it states that it is important to use basic thinking techniques. Sometimes I take an idea and latch on to it, trying to form my copy around that very idea. However, this creates a limitation. Instead, I should be drumming up a handful of ideas, jotting them down, then expanding on those ideas by coming up with potential headlines, listing words associated with that idea, etc.

2) Creating copy is like creating logos. From my BS course in Digital Arts and Design, I learned that the best way to come up with a logo is to create a list of words associated with the client or theme, make some logos, then pick the best ones. Then, make more logos based on the best ones! Creating headlines, slogans or short copy can be the same way. You can say one thing 100 different ways, but only a few of those will actually be effective. I can’t know which ones are the good ones if I don’t explore the 99 other bad ones.

3) Copy requires research. Lots of it! It’s not enough to skim a website or client’s about page to see what they do. Sometimes it requires visiting the competitors, visiting clients of the clients, and more. To even begin to create copy for a client, I must first understand what that client is all about. Assumptions can lead to me missing the mark - completely.

Design Research and Usability

I will admit that I’m not the best web designer in the world. In fact, I struggle quite a bit when it comes to creating compositions or layouts for them. However, the underlying concepts pertaining to web design, such as usability, flow of information, etc - I get that, and I get it really well.

I may never see myself designing websites, but I can certainly see myself helping with making decisions about why certain parts of a website are included or not. The kind of things I learned in this month’s course, which is usability and how elements of a product or object which people interface with are laid out, doesn’t only apply to websites. Websites are certainly the most widely used example of this, but in my current line of work, I deal with another kind of ‘thing’ in which these same concepts apply to - GUIs and courseware.

I was recently tasked with creating an interface for a course that has interact-able objects, like buttons. Part of my task was to also create a set of standards in which page elements were laid out, such as image and body text.

This was partly my job, but also had the input of coworkers, who are instructional designers. So, at that, there’s a crossover, and another aspect - how is the interface usable by students using this course? What kind of elements and the placement thereof are best to prompt users in order to guide them through the course?

In the past, we’ve came up with solutions that seemed a bit... not-that-usable. Things like buttons not reacting when you click them. And it were things kind of things that threw me off. Why not? Is this intuitive? How can I make it more intuitive? Part of that required some research about the project at hand, but the end goal was always the same, which is to make something easy and intuitive to use. To make it fun and smooth-flowing, not cumbersome and confusing.

Reflection upon Brand Development

The importance of including the design team from start to finish.

This is a big one. Depending on where you work, this may be a default thing, or it may not. For those of you who get included automatically in a project start to finish, great! However, someone like me doesn’t always get included in new projects. Based on what I have learned in this month’s course, combined with the experience I have from my current job, I realize just how crucial it is to include designers from the ground up. Even if a client already knows what their brand is going to be, it’s still important to have a design team giving input and to identify possible challenges as well as early-solutions.

Constructive criticism.

When criticizing a brand, project or some other design related work, it’s important to think about the initial approach - the goal - of the critique you are giving. It can be easy to take a piece of work, brand or project, and criticize it without knowing why you’re criticizing it, which can lead to useless feedback. However, by doing research on a brand, project or company, then compiling and organizing all the strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities, then identifying a purpose to the critique, it allows you to critique it in a constructive manner.

Communication is key.

Keeping a design team in tight communication internally can be extremely beneficial to the overall project. Some of us can be quiet, including myself. However, design is a creative process, and, while you may think you can tackle a piece of a project on your own, it’s still a great idea to let everyone else on your team know what you’re thinking. It can help keep yourself in check, but also inspire or brew ideas among the rest of the team.

Include your designers!

Including your designers in company projects and development of a brand is a crucial step to the company’s long-term success. This is because “the internal group has insight into the challenge of making things happen.” (Wheeler, 2013, p. 114) Designers know how to develop a brand, so getting them involved from the ground up can help ensure a consistent and effective campaign and brand.

The whole process should be a collaboration between design team and corporate, rather than giving one more power over the other. Often times, it’s corporate that has the data, numbers and perhaps even the insight or experience to know what works for their customers, but it’s the design team that knows how to communicate the big idea to the consumer. Keeping a healthy relationship between the internal design team and corporate can help ensure both sides work effectively towards establishing a powerful brand.

A good example of this is Margo Chase’s relationship with Starbucks. (Chase, 2008). By collaborating with Starbucks, Chase’s team was able to not only provide a service to Starbucks by executing their brand vision (Wheeler, 2013, p. 115) but also able to build new aspects of the Starbucks brand by keeping in close communication with Starbucks, working together to overcome challenges.

Wheeler, A. (2013). Designing Brand Identity: An essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Retrieved from VitalSource Bookshelf.

Chase, M. (2008, April 9). Creative inspirations: Margo Chase, graphic designer. Retrieved August 28, 2016, from Lynda.com,

https://www.lynda.com/Design-Documentaries-tutorials/Packaging/685/38840-4.html

Main Takeaways from Defining Client Needs

Typography and Hierarchy.

This part of the course has taught me how important it is utilize the correct fonts and font families in design. It also how to utilize font sizes, similar fonts and font colors to lead the eye to important information first, followed by additional information, all the while ensuring the piece is easy to read.

The Critique Process.

This process is vital to any piece of design work. A designer must always be open and responsive to feedback. The designer must also understand that critiques are crucial to refining their work and improving upon the work’s ability to effectively communicate and reflect a client’s needs.

Knowing The Client.

Designing something isn’t just about choosing colors, fonts and imagery. It’s about understanding how those decisions fit within the scope of the client’s needs. To understand the client’s needs, a designer must understand everything there is to know about the client, such as their philosophy, design choices that have worked or failed in the past for them, their audience, and even their location(s).

Using a set of poster templates, I utilized typography to deliver a message that fit the theme of each poster.

This is a mockup checklist for a fictional client. The purpose was to demonstrate my ability to create a checklist for allowing a client to provide meaningful critique and feedback on design concepts I may present to them.

This poster demonstrates my ability to utilize type in a hierarchical manner to communicate effectively to the viewer. I chose a top-to-bottom flow, emphasized by the shape of the vial, which fits the theme of the poster.

Defining Client Needs Wk 4

It is important to understand your client’s need because it allows the designer to make effective design choices based on criteria set out by the client. Going beyond this, the client has a goal behind their needs, but they do not have the means to ensure those goals are met since it relies on the visual communication of design. It is therefore necessary for the designer to understand how to ensure those goals can be met through the visual communication of their design.

In A Designer’s Research Manual by Jennifer VIsocky O’Grady and Ken O’Grady, they state that “…designers are visual people” and “designers speak an industry-specific language.” (Visocky-O’Grady, 2009, p. 89). Because of this, it is important for designers to articulate value in the work they do and to clearly communicate with clients the reasons behind their design choices. Designers must act as bridge between this industry-specific language and the language clients understand.

Visocky-O’Grady, J. and O’Grady, K. 2009. A designer’s research manual: Succeed in design by knowing your clients and what they really need. Rockport Publishers.

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My Mastery Timeline

I’ve created a timeline outlining my Mastery in Media Design, and goals I’ve set for each course.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/quaeyup08qiimkg/Tim_Burton_Mastery_Timeline.pptx?dl=0

View Tim Burton’s professional profile on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the world's largest business network, helping professionals like Tim Burton discover inside connections to recommended job candidates, industry experts, and business partners.

My Papaly Profile

I’ve created a Papaly profile to store the resources I commonly use plus resources I come across while researching for projects.

I only have a few right now, but I will be sure to add a lot more in the future.

https://papaly.com/timburton/0nU1r/Mastery-Journal

Glitches, databending, and understanding codecs and file formats.

For one of my classes during my studies in BS Digital Arts and Design, I was assigned a project that involved creating an experimental video. We were also given the task to explain why we chose the project that we did. My experimental video was a glitch video.

I grew up on videos, VCRs, digital video formats, etc, and even made my own videos on my parents computer as a teenager. What I learned was not only the use of digital formats and their importance in today’s society, but also the fact that videos use different file formats, such as AVI, MP4, etc. While I understood that different file formats served different purposes, I never quite fully understood what was going on “under the hood” so to speak when it comes to file formats and video players. Why is it that some video players can play some videos but not others? Why is bitrate so important? Why do videos lose quality when transferring them to other mediums like high quality DvDs as opposed to low quality CDs? These are questions that most video editing professionals know the “end result” answer to, such as “bitrate is important because people have slow internet” or “crappy CDs play back video at a crap quality because, well, it’s a crappy CD you picked up from Wal-Mart for a dollar per 100″ - but, nobody ever quite knows the technical reason.

Interestingly enough, in a previous class, I was introduced to something called datamoshing. I played around with this effect to get sort of a glitched effect for a previous project, and so for my experimental video, I explored this even further. I came across an artist named Nick Briz, whose portfolio you can find here:

http://nickbriz.com/

For my experimental video, the only part of Nick’s portfolio I really explored was the glitch codec tutorial, which was a tutorial on how to glitch videos. His process is very different than datamoshing, but still results in some very interesting effects. The reason why I chose to utilize this glitch codec tutorial for my experimental video is because it involved cracking open codec files, messing with the algorithms and data contained within, then viewing the videos on different players, such as Windows Media Player vs VLC. Even though it was the same glitched video, different players would play them differently, and I would get different results - which taught me quite a bit about how different video players handle videos differently.

Overall, I learned quite a bit about video formats, players and codecs from the experimental video. I also learned that Nick Briz does a lot more than just glitch codec tutorials - he does quite a bit actually, and even teaches his methods, philosophies and thoughts on technology and the use thereof online and in front of audiences.

It is this person who I’ve decided to do my research on - to learn why he chose the path he did, to see what I can learn from him, and to understand how he thinks - because quite honestly, his stuff is very interesting, and a tech savvy person like me can learn a thing or two by breaking stuff. To me, breaking videos and files and observing the results is sort of like smashing a clock to see what makes it tick, then seeing what happens if I put it back together incorrectly.

If you want to see the experimental video I mentioned, here is a link to it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPzRLffd5Ew

#datamosh #nickbriz #codec #video #technology #glitch

Mastery Introduction

Hello world! My name is Tim Burton. I am a graphic designer, with a love for digital media. I graduated Full Sail University with my BS in Digital Arts and Design, and now currently pursuing my Masters in Media Design. I will be using this blog to track my progress during and after my journey to my Masters, to inspire myself and my readers, and to collect my thoughts and research in a single location, because honestly, I can get lose track of myself!

I decided to pursue my Masters in Media Design because I wanted to expand my skill set and to be able to better communicate my ideas and thoughts to those who matter - clients, employers and coworkers. I’m often filled with great ideas, but getting them across to others isn’t my strength, and I want to improve upon that.

My passion for media, digital art and graphic design started when I was young. As a child, I would play with cameras and camcorders. I would often times download editing software on my parent’s computer and make videos. Even when it came to new technology, I was always interested in it, such as figuring out how to put a movie on an old flip phone and trying to understand things like video formats and conversion. I found myself always staying on top of the latest tech and digital formats, ensuring I stay current.

I took this passion forward to my high school years, having taken every art class they offered, including yearbook for print media experience and a shop class focused on old graphic design techniques like the use of a printing press, arc light table, dark room, and silk screening. After high school, I joined the Navy, and left early in order to pursue my BS in Digital Arts and Design.

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