Mastery Journal

              I’m Ian a SCAD Sequential Art (BFA) graduate, and Full Sail Media Design (MFA) student. This Tumblr will chronicle my mastery journey over the next 12 months. I view the creative field as the occupation of the future for humanity.    

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12.2.4 Reflection

1.nMaster: Personal Development and Leadership  I learned what mastery is, and a wide variety of methods used by others to attain mastery in fields from science, to music.

2. Defining Client Needs

I learned how to asses what client’s need, and formulate a plan for meeting those needs using tools like the Persona chart, and Human Centered Design questionnaires. This is important to defining exactly what my future clients will want.

3. Brand Development 

This course taught me techniques in developing a brand toolkit, what a brand is beyond the visual symbols non-designers associate with a brand. This will aid me as a professional designer if I work in branding.

4. Effective Copy Writing

I learned what copywriting is, and how to write copy which is integrated into the visual design elements.  Having a hook, information, and a call to action are the essential elements of effective copywriting. For example in a series of poster or billboard advertisements. Effective copywriting was key in developing the brand for my final project.

5. Design Research

I learned how to create wireframes, and use them along with sketches as preliminary research in the design process. This is especially important in the creation of web sites. This was useful in creating thumbnails of my mastery project in it’s initial stages.

6. Organizational Structures

I learned how to create designs using the currently trending motionography techniques: Animatic, 2.5D Parallax Image, General Motion Design, Cninmagraph, and Motion Posters. My focus was on the animatic technique.

7. Design Strategies and Motivation 

In this class I learned how to move through the design process from inspiration to implementation while incorporating user feedback in order to improve the design at each stage. 

8. Design Integration  

In Design Integration I conducted research, and ideation which was implemented, reviewed by my peers and then refined again. 

9.  Multi-Platform Delivery

A continuation of the previous course in iteration my animatic. I learned audio editing from online tutorials in order to tie sound into the visual design.

10. Measuring Design Effectiveness

I learned how to conduct a survey in order to quantify the effectiveness of a design. This is a standard industry practice.

11. Presentation of Design Solutions

Learned how to trim down my portfolio to present a focused whole. Now it is more presentable.

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Mastery Journal 11

This month was all about the presentation of my mastery via a website created on wix.com There were a few important things that I learned from the readings involved, and the experience of creating this presentation.

1.    “The use of stories can make your ideas stick in the minds of your audience.” In cases like that of an expert physician such as Semmelweis who simply relied on facts, not stories I was able to take-away the vital importance of telling stories to get a point across to people. People are not computers being moved by numbers, we are moved by emotion, and sentiment conveyed through what we see. Therefore, it is visual storytelling which is the most powerful of all storytelling methods when one wishes to rouse the human soul to act with haste.

2.    Consider that everyone learns differently. So, it is best to know the audience being presented with the visual story and tailor the presentation so that the audience is totally immersed in it. “Put your audience first. If you don't know your audience, ask. If no one else can tell you about them, then you must consider how to address the full range of learning and decision styles, and not just your own preferred styles (Best K, 2006).”  She goes on to say “first, identify your audience. Who exactly are they? Each person may require a different level of language, vocabulary, and formality (Best K, 2006).” This point stresses to me that designers and businesses should target audiences to which they relate to. Getting to know the audience in a genuine and natural way will make identifying them that much simpler.

3.     Another takeaway from what I learned this month is the importance of characters as Sykes, Malik, & West said “The characters in a story need to be individuals who the audience can identify with, not broad generalizations. They need weaknesses, personal desires, and specific issues to deal with. (Sykes. Malik. & West, 2006)” In other words, it is the characters that transform hard data, and research into an emotional experience which the audience connects with, and thereby motivates them to act.

4.    The final takeaway I got was that the lack of either enough time or enough money can kill creativity by forcing unrealistic deadlines upon the design team, or just not paying enough to make the expected quality of work worthwhile. Project management key to success. Based on Kathryn Best’s text Design Management: ‘It is the art of managing the client’s expectations along with the day-to-day duties of the design team so that everyone is on the same page.(Best, 2006)’ As Sykes, Malik & West said in Stories that Move Mountains: “success is a decision”. As a Project Manager and Media Designer, I aim to keep everyone’s decision at yes.

Sykes, M. Malik, A. & West, M. (2012). Stories that Move Mountains: Storytelling and Visual Design for Persuasive Presentations. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons. Retrieved from https://ce.safaribooksonline.com/book/communications/presentations/9781118423998

Best, K. (2006.) Design Management. Switzerland: AVA Publishing. Retrieved from https://ce.safaribooksonline.com/book/design/9782940439782

Below are screenshots from the development of the aforementioned website development which showcase the competencies I’ve acquired, and my ability to connect, synthesize and transform research data into effective design solutions.

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Measuring Design Effectiveness

Mastery Post

This month the entire picture of what my project was becoming really came together. The design work was complete so the pace of the class was quite different. I learned the importance of utilizing consumer feedback data throughout the human centered design process via conducting a real survey of people who viewed my work. This was then added to an updated version of the behance profile which contains the mastery project, and the previous storyboard/animatic project which informed my design process.

Only about 10-12% of the people I invited to do the survey responded. 

In addition to the survey I wrote a rather detailed paper which summed up the project, the research, and the survey data quite nicely.  The next step from here is to continue polishing my work in new projects in order to land a job, or entry into an advanced program.

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Mastery Reflection

With this class, my animatic mastery project is completed. The goals changed as often as they were met each week. I used Photoshop, Clip Studio Pro, After Effects, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro to manifest the visuals for the entirety of this project. The end result gives me a logo, brainstorming documentation, personas, a storyboard, script, animatic and animation keyframes of an 8-second segment of the storyboard. Of course, there are many more steps in the process of making this into a finished advertisement for the Metro Yum! non-profit so I could take it further in the future. Interestingly enough during this project I have had to bring donatable food from work out to a local non-profit’s pick-up vehicle multiple times. So, I can attest from personal experience that the procedure happens just like I envisioned it in the storyboards.

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In this course I responded to peer feedback while developing the script, character designs, thumbnails, and began the rough storyboards for the “Metro Yum!” advertisement. In the future I would like to complete the rough, and finished phases of these storyboards. My work follows the standard phases of production in the storyboarding industry. I didn’t learn any new software in this process. The design problem was to appeal to young rich business owners, and motivate them to donate goods to Metro Yum!; a non-profit organization that feeds the food-poor in large metropolis environments.

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In this class, I set a plan for my mastery project which is revising an NGO ad campaign. I started out by conducting research via brainstorming in order to pull together elements which informed logo sketches, tag-lines, and even an animation concept. I later made an iteration of the best four sketches in color in order to really test what is and isn’t working. Thus far it has been a great learning experience in project management which is essential for guiding any design from concept to implementation. I was able to solve the design problem of crafting a visual for a fictitious organization which appeals to the hunger needs of the poor in major metropolitan areas.

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For the final two weeks of Organizational Structures class we had the option of a style of motion media to create a 5 second presentation of the city logo with. I chose an animatic after doing research into all of the styles presented. There were some issues with the timing initially, but in the 2nd iteration that was resolved, and the camera work became more clear. I plan to make more animatics in the future, and perhaps add key frames as well.

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In the first two weeks of Organiztional Structures class we made iterations of a storyboard based on the city logo from previous classes. For this I chose the Kyoto logo. The initial storyboard was on paper, but for the second iteration I created it digitally. The consistency of the digital version allowed me to easily add sound, and turn the storyboard into an animatic. The sound was captured live at a Japanese restaurant where a friend ate takoyaki, and gave his critique of its softness. The textures were also captured at the restaurant. The greatest challenge was maintaining consistency between the newly textured look presented above, and the untextured, unshaded vector logo created in prior months.

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In Design Research I took a project from concept in the moodboard stage to completion in this final web site design stage. My critiques said the hippie flowers didn’t match the sea turtles theme, so I removed that imagery and opted for a sea blue background. The turtle needed to be animatable, and appeal to todays young hippies so I created a modern looking geometric turtle who swims from page to page. I made the mobile design first, and then came up with the desktop version so that the website can be made to be responsive.

Since I already know how to code I will likely move on to creative directing in the future, and delegate the web site creation work to other people.

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Of the three moldboards from week 1 the Peace stock one was the strongest according to class feedback. I made revisions to the hierarchy, & composition of the moldboard while also adding copy which set the tone for the brand. We were then asked to create one wireframe, and one sketch for a website based on our chosen moldboard. I made three wireframes which explored horizontal, vertical, and cross shaped navigation formats for the website while accounting for any animation, and parallax effects that may be added later. During this week I watched quite a few design talks from Chris Do on the Futur Youtube channel which aided in my process. 

Based on what I learned I chose the vertical format, and proceeded to creating the sketch of it.

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For the first two weeks of class we had to research, and design moodboards for an NGO concert. Being limited solely to pre-existing royalty free photographs for imagery was very challenging. I used what I do know of music genres to create three distinct moldboards; one each for Grime, Jazz, and Hippie concerts.

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Effective Copywriting

In the Effective Copywriting class, I learned how to write successful copy along with all of its components. How to integrate copy with images and take these considerations into an entire advertising campaign. In addition, I learned how to create personas to test the effectiveness advertising designs for a target audience. All of these are things I’ll take forward in my career as a media designer.

I read about the basics of advertising in George Felton’s Advertising Concept and Copy. Which covered Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

“This idea that a product can solve more than one problem at the same time owes much to the psychologist Abraham Maslow, who posited in human beings a “hierarchy of needs” ascending from the physiological to the psychological. He argued that people are driven to fulfill them all, although lower-level needs must be met before one can attempt to satisfy higher-level needs” (Felton 22, 1994).

I studied tutorials on ad campaign creation from Craig Smallish, and Ian Lurie on Lynda.com.  I had to learn new terminology, but the actual process is very similar to the one I’m already familiar with for creation of sequential art. I came up with headlines based on the clients target audience, and from there naturally developed sub headlines, and body copy with a call to action. All of this was done with images in mind which I developed from thumbnails into roughs, and eventually finished comps. Coming from an illustrative background I naturally chose the illustration method option as opposed to the graphic design method of photo manipulation. Which is complicated with the issue of legal rights to images found online.

By having personas my campaign message was directed at someone similar to people in the target audience.

I created eight sketches, and of those narrowed down the best six in order to try different approaches to the campaign. By getting feedback from classmates I was able to determine which three of the six worked the best, and which ones would not be a good fit for this ad campaign.

I used the feedback to revise those 3 sketches along with the copy while turning them into comps that my personas could relate to via their needs i.e. the homeless girl’s need of nurturance, and the businessman’s need to be socially accepted by his customers thus garnering more business. My goal in writing the headlines, and body copy was to be concise, witty, and pull at the emotions of the viewer.

I then revised these comps further based on feedback, and used research data to develop a unique ad campaign which meets the needs of the clients target audience, while being cutting edge technologically via mobile GPS location based advertising.

References

Felton, George. (1994) Advertising: Concept and Copy (Third Edition), 3rd Edition. W. W. Norton & Company.

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This is the SWOT Analysis for my Brand Toolbox project which is pictured above.

Threats

A common threat in this project was that those who are unfamiliar with the nuances of culture in Kyoto may not pick up on how certain images, logos, and other items are representative of Kyoto.

Opportunities

One of the opportunities present is to integrate lessons about Kyoto into the brand toolbox.

Strengths

The strength of this project was that each toolbox’s elements remain on theme.

Weaknesses

Limitation of potential resources by copyright image restriction was a great weakness. I was also limited from using gradiants in the design of the logos.

In the final revision I added the rationale for each toolbox, the typography names for easier future reference, and removed some of the unnecessary keywords as per my peer review. Visually not much changed since the visual elements were well accepted by both myself, and my peers.

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Mastery Journal Reflection

Logo Design & Documentation

In the Defining Client Needs class we are going through the process of designing logos for cities based on geography, traditions, and modern culture. The city my designs are for is Kyoto. I received peer critique on the organization, and descriptive information of the sketches which will be used to further inform the final design, and help me attain mastery in the future. I was successful in establishing a good Japanese feeling in the viewer based on the designs, and that is something I will continue to do with my work.

Critique:

Looking at all of your sketches it is clear you understood the directions. It is obvious that this took a lot of time when creating your drawings. Loved the different ways the city name was incorporate into each design.  Also loved how your designs fits with the location chosen, it has a real Japanese feel to it.

While reviewing your drawings there was an issue when it came to deciding which concept was being represented in each task. Also trying to figure out the meaning behind each design was a little confusing. A little more research on the geography, culture, and traditions would probably help make the meanings more clear behind each design.  Other than that your drawing were really unique and well thought out.

Maya Menzies

Connecting and synthesizing: Level 4 Based on the sketches you could tell that Japan was the city he chose. You could tell by the Chinese lettering and the objects that were drawn.

Problem Solving: Level 3 some drawings were clear, but some needed a little explanation.  

Unique or Innovation: Level 4 each design was very unique and had it's own style

Technical skills or competence: Level 3 I could not tell which area was being represented.

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Mastery Journel Reflection

The key takeaways that iI received from the live meeting that will have the most impact on my experience as a graduate student are the importance of showing advancement of technical skills, using the FSO system to turn in work in a timely manner, problem solving via critical thinking along with research, and coming up with innovative solutions is important.

I don’t have any particular questions about the program as of yet.

Action Plan:

My expectations of the Media Design Master of Fine Arts program is that it will teach me everything I need to know in order to excel as a media designer, and give me assignments which will build my design portfolio on a professional level. I am expected to commit myself 100%. My long-term goal is to become employed in a highly lucrative position in the media design industry.

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Weekly inspiration.

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