R E C O L L E C T I O N S

Tags: Unit 9 Context / Unit 9 Practice Projects: Mumedi / Unheard Voices / Craft / Clerkenwell / D&AD / FMP

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Project Tag Links

Mumedi / Unheard Voices / Craft + Balance  Clerkenwell / D&AD / FMP

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Final Major Project 2018 Proposal

Unit 9 Professional & Personal Practice incorporating Unit 10 Blog

Project Summary

Exploring the visual language difference between western and eastern political protest specifically in woman’s rights movement

Context Feminism has been a very western world ideology and has had very heavily sexual undertones to it, but as society moves forward achieving better rights for woman, there’s also consideration of what’s acceptable in certain cultures and what would the main priority for their fight for woman’s rights?

Research Focus Gender Politics, Culture Design, Political Design

Audience Women of South East Asia, mainly Malaysian Woman who are currently 20-40

Media Technical Undecided

Outcome Undecided 

Professional Practice

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Revisiting Mumedi

I’ve had a bit more of a thought about the idea of posters, flying posting and the theme of death. My main concept was to celebrate my late grandmother’s life and the memories of her and her great personality.

As a new response, my focus is the celebration of her life and the fond memories I had when she was alive. She was huge fan of disco so I went to look at some disco covers and tried the idea as a whole poster

It wasn’t working all too much and the feedback I got was that it should be a square, and that’s when it started to work a little bit better. My experiments now were the placements of the title

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Research on Death & Funerals

This summer I went to Italy and found it very interesting that the town centre had these flyposting-esque things everywhere. They were actually death announcements, and they were customisable by friends or family of the deceased.

It’s an interesting way how the italian communities work, especially in small towns like Andria that I visited.

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Activism & Protest Research

There’s been a few exhibitions & talks I’ve been to in the last year I’ve been to which has really influenced me and made me think about expression of rights in a bigger context, especially outside of the outspoken western society.

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D&AD: JC Decaux #LondonIsOpen Final Thoughts

Out of all the projects in the year the outcome for D&AD is probably the closest to what I would like to be recognised and known for. I definitely attempted this in my second brief of the year with Unheard Voices, the historical context with current culture is another theme in my response for JC Decaux’s brief.

My biggest struggle I often notice in a lot of my briefs is getting context into a visual that communicates well and efficiently. It’s very hard to focus on the context and the idea and then let it muddle too far without ever thinking of how to get people to engage and find this as interesting as I do. Having Shari to write the copy for this brief definitely allowed me to focus more on the visual aspects on the project, collaborating with her helped tremendously. Getting to a point of a visual that worked was another challenge but it did start to become clearer, with what needs to attract attention first, that design hierarchy in images and copy is very important. The whole point is to draw someone in. Through all the experiments and visual revisions, the satisfaction of ‘THATS IT! THATS HOW IT SHOULD LOOK LIKE’ was very satisfying, I enjoyed the triumph of that a lot more than I noticed. 

Getting a tone of voice

The process of writing the copy began with a lot of difficulty because I obviously had not established a focus that’s specific about the London moves on quickly attitude as the brief did mention using the retail aspect of Oxford Circus as a main focus. When I decided that the main focus of the campaign is about the city of London and how it will carry on despite the it’s adversities, the copy began it’s refinement to it’s final stages through the sub-headline Our Spirit Keeps Us Timeless.

Creating a mood board and simple presentation for Shari definitely helped her and I to get to a place where I was happy with the copy.

Solving problems in visual hierarchy

The main struggle to solve here was just translating my idea of these very vibrant posters into actual posters. I had established that I really wanted a bright acid color for the headlines to be overlaid on the images that were darkened and editted to a nice deep black and white.

What helped most is working in a different color profile in the end when I realised that actually I could work in RGB as the posters are now screen-based rather than print CMYK. RGB colors are definitely punchier and made me feel more open to more possibility.

The placements of longer or shorter copy and finding a template or a system that could work seamlessly through out all six posters that will roll out, above was the first layout and arrangement of the copy without a traditional justify right, center or left. I wanted the anti hierachy and almost punk “F Your Establishment” element to come through without it being too obvious.

The off center placement of the copy was done to give an idea of non hierarchy for the copy worked better as a concept and didn’t translate well. It felt awfully jumbled and the sub headline’s placement felt like it was interfering with it’s placement in the center. Aligning all the text to the right definitely seemed most successful, it’s legibility was good and didn’t clash too much with the images chosen in the background. 

The outcome at the end definitely came out being very close to what I have envisioned in my head. The contrast of the old imagery of the Blitz with the witty headlines and followed with the sub headline definitely made me feel like the campaign has began to make sense and come together. I don’t think I will ever be able to get things to be exactly as I think of them initially but this project left me in a very satisfying and positive place as I approached the end of my degree.

The final thing I looked into before I finished of the campaign was an interactivity. The screens themselves at the bus stop didn’t have a screen to respond directly so I thought about a website to accompany the campaign that I titled thiscitycarrieson which then becomes what I call this project entirely.

The website functions as a information point of what’s ahead for the London Is Open campaign where interested by-passers could gain information and get one of the

Out of all the projects I’ve done for the year I think the process of this project albeit stressful was also incredibly fun to execute. I learned a lot about finishing and design processes, the frustration was rewarding. Collaboration definitely helps and having Shari work alongside me made this project very enjoyable.

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Feminism & Graphic Design

I did a project in my second year exploring Feminism and it’s visual communication, it was an ambitious project that I felt didn’t really achieve as much as I wanted to get to.

And without wanting to admit failure, I have decided to explore it again for my final major project.

Last year the main question I asked was how do I approach feminism and softened it for educational purposes and emphasising the importance of the woman’s rights movement. In my research last year, I found very aggressive language that definitely has attached itself to this political movement.

Gender politics are tricky to navigate and laced with propaganda of putting one gender above the other. My aim is to rework this, how could equality and feminism look like moving forward? How would someone who didn’t like the word or the political movement look at it knowingly it is feminism but didn’t feel repelled by it? 

How did feminism become this generic hypersexualized, anti-male and pink centric visual? 

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D&AD: JC Decaux #LondonIsOpen Process

I have gotten my copy and I have gotten my images, they both look great flat on paper and I’m excited and I’m stuck with visuals in my head but they’re all stuck in my head. Often in projects I find myself realising a lot of things I don’t, perhaps I am oblivious to these things before or I’m just very slow. Posters I would like to think are simple enough, they carry often an image and usually a headline and more information later on. Sounds simple enough but man has it been hard to find a way to communicate my idea through a poster and wondering if someone gets it or not.

Communication in design is tough cause it’s an abstract response to a concept and it’s hard to argue which visual way represents it best. But I do know that it needs to look good and it needs to communicate.

So begins my struggle!

Copywriting Process

Shari is a friend of mine and she very happily jumped on board with me to get the tone of voice for the campaign to be right. As a visual based person, I don’t think too much into articulating messages, I do think using fairly simple words and tone of voice to work successfully but without the right tone I don’t think the campaign would have been able to say what it needs to say.

The initial play around I did was in a good vein of what the tone of voice should be, it needed to be very London centric, quirky and witty like the people who live here, Londoner or not, after a while you do catch on to slangs and humours this city.

Designing the Posters

First challenge was the font choice. I wanted it to be a little historical, to keep the spirit of the Blitz present and liked the idea of the contrast of a bright coloured statement against a old aged photo. Almost very generically punk, ‘never mind the buzzcocks’ design aspects but keeping it very muted so it doesn’t seep itself to be camp and stereotypical. 

The images definitely needed some intensifying and cleaning up to work with the copy in orange. While some copy visually looked and others were fighting to align, they all looked too different and individual to be a part of the similar campaign. Nothing was making these images look like they are meant to be a part of the same campaign

It was clear then the alignment and placement of type wasn’t working and need reworking. There need to be a sub-headline to pull all of them together as a collection of images. 

The suggestions/feedback moving forward was to either shorten some of the copy, refining them. I found that some of the integration of Oxford Circus didn’t make sense, it wasn’t selling the idea that London isn’t closing itself to European nationals no matter the context, it just felt out of place. The introduction of a sub-headline then tied it all closer to getting to what I wanted to communicated.

Visually the images needed to be secondary to the copy, so a halftone effect was suggested and then a brighter color for the copy too. But then the images lost a lot of detailing and it was hard to make out what it was, it was just black and white shadows and highlights with some bright text.

This point was just frustrating.

What wasn’t working was also the font choice, the historical context was in the imagery and needed stronger contrast between the past and the future now. Post Blitz London has managed this far, so now it’s on to tackle Brexit London, so how would that translate into a visual?

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D&AD: JC Decaux #LondonIsOpen Initial Ideas

For D&AD Student Awards, I chose the JC Decaux brief in partnership with the Mayor of London for the post brexit campaign London Is Open. The campaign was about keeping the business ties in between the countries of the EU open and continuous despite the dividing vote of England wanting to leave the EU.

Idea Development 

The first session was very helpful when we discussed what were the predictable outcomes and that really allowed me to be more creative with my response. It’s absolutely very easy to fall into clichés when it comes to approaching campaigns like this.

I was inspired by a tweet I saw about an attack in New York City, where the idea of intimidation hardly affects big bustling cities like NYC or London. There’s too much to get done and too much to go through that while we mourn in sadness but we also do carry on nonetheless. The brief mentions a focus on the bus stops and retail aspects of Oxford Circus. 

Creative Response and Process

My idea is to use the spirit of the London Blitz in the second world war as an example of a major event that did not deter London as the great city it is. The Spirit of the Blitz was a response brought on by then Prime Minister Winston Churchill reminding the residents of London to carry on with their lives as usual as if nothing could phase them despite the heavy bombings from the Germans.

The archive images from the Imperial War Museum featured great photography of Londoners drinking tea and going about casual fun in the Underground, Churchill also often promoted the spirit of moving forward together as a city/country during the scary times of the war. In comparison, Brexit hardly would evoke such intense reactions and damages but the essence of this city being able to recover from such traumatic events.

The response to the brief is to capture the spirit of undeterred spirit of London in modern day. The focus needs to be clear that it’s welcoming the change brought by Brexit with positivity, that fear mongering doesn’t deserve a place.

The selection of images is where the real challenge begins as it needs to work with a punchy and witty headline, how do I bring forward the message of dealing with trauma with the British unfazed and calmness? Above are a few of the images of Getty and the Imperial War Museum that I think can work for the campaign’s main idea. But first, the copy and layout needs to be considered too.

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Web Design Session with Array

Coding definitely seems a lot more intimidating than it actually is and the session with Array definitely made me feel less hesitant with to actually learn the language. We started with a fairly simple one, that reminded me of my myspace days and blogger days, HTML was so incredibly fun and the whole reason why I went on after secondary school to go into graphic design and really liking the visual side of things

We were introduced to Sublime and were taught pretty straight forward prompts that after a quick minute I had catch on pretty quickly. 

What I liked about this whole session is the possibility of coding mixed in with graphic design. Most of the time web design to me is a mixture of complication when it’s really just a software or language I haven’t learned yet.

I definitely am excited to utilise this small skill set I learned!

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Craft & Balance: Sashiko

I struggled a lot with this brief especially thinking of an outcome of both balance and a craft. While I definitely enjoyed embroidery as a craft, it was hard to find how to get both to meld together and get an outcome.

I think most of the time I focus too much on outcome rather than the process or ideas. I also tend to get caught up with simplifying things or having shorter time making etc. I wasn’t too pleased with this outcome or the pattern, I definitely do think I could have been able to come up with a better pattern that translated the Japanese methods of balance and craft through embroidery.

I think going with a more denim texture in a different blue would have helped, or just a more defined pattern with a different world perhaps would have translated better for this brief.

Overall, I don’t feel like I could have done much more or much less. 

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Craft/Balance Experiment

My intial idea for Craft is the balance of taste and came across the Japanese’s concept of the 5th taste of Umami. According to the Japanese, the flavor of Umami is the satisfaction of a meal which many attribute to MSG, artificial food enhancer but in japanese cooking, it aims to attain that satisfaction through different food flavours and textures. 

My first experiment was mainly thinking about how the taste of Umami would translate into a visual that was digital. So I did some experiment on Illustrator, playing around with patterns and strokes and letterforms.

I then had more of a think about the craft aspect and remembered that Japanese culture prides it’s self on perfecting crafts and executing their crafts very well. I moved on to think about one of my favourite crafts: Embroidery.

Embroidery is definitely a craft often labelled as feminine and ties it self to mid century women sitting in circles with aimless chatter and floral patterns. However, it is a craft that’s incredibly refined and relies on great skill of cloth tension and threading and most of all patience. 

Seeing as I found a craft now and theme, I decided to experiment further with the embroidery method of Sashiko. This specific embiodery method puts emphasis the threading of the needle and it’s spaces to create a seamless geometric or organic pattern. 

Testing embroidery pattern

Sashiko embroidery uses a mending stitch method, one long continuous stitch to form a straight line or in a pattern. 

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Clerkenwell Design Week #YourToteCounts

Before the team in charge of the Clerkenwell Design Week came in I didn’t even know there was an event and I lived in Farringdon for at least 8 months in 2016. Interesting what goes under your nose.

The brief set out for us is pretty straight forward but also most of the time complicated when it’s a client live brief set out for students (squints eye suspiciously) and it’s to encourage the repurposing of tote bags. It’s a fairly straight forward brief where we had to make sure we used the copy they had provided and specific hashtags needed to be included.

I decided to look at the maps of Clerkenwell as the general area when you’re foot is structured very interestingly. There’s plenty of small footpaths which I assume is probably due to the history of the area I’m assuming?

I wanted to subtlety hide one of their strap-lines Prisons, Churches & Nightclubs within a map that looked like the area of Farringdon where the festival was going to be held.

Buildings despite their blocky structure and rigid forms also had a very organic shape. So I started to experiment, trying to make letterforms shaped like buildings and arranged them to seem like a map.

While the Prisons, Churches comes through, the Nightclub did disappear underneath all of it. And the feedback was also that it didn’t resemble a map at all, and needed more “map details”

A quick edit was to see if adding street names would help but it didn’t exactly translate as good as I wanted it to

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UV: The People’s Party of Malaya

Demi Malaya is a project dedicated to the unknown visual makers of colonial Malaya. British Malaya or more commonly known as the Federated Malay States consisted of Malaysia, Borneo and Singapore under the British colonial rule during the 18th and 20th century. 

Malaya under the colonial rule probably neglected it’s own visual culture and it wasn’t until the rebellion against the Malayan Union, Malaya saw self publications and simple design communication. I wanted to celebrate the possibility of potentially more developed protest identity that Malaya could have had even with the British colonial influence.

The font face’s design is inspired by the picket signs opposing the Malayan Union from the British establishments, which did not get their tireless work recognised but instead driven out for Malaysia independence and formation of Singapore and Brunei.

The font’s main intended use is for protest culture in Malaysia that I hope hits a revival in the generations to come. Having a voice and expressing it is still something my country is learning to engrain in our culture.

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UV: British Malaya’s Rebels

While there’s a big archive in England dating as early as the 17th century, it’s hard to find anything that dates back that far in Malaysia.

The Malaysian Design Archive apart from Malaysia’s actual Archive are the only two known records of what Malaysia was before it formed itself from the Federate states. Colonized by the British from year to year, the federate states consisted of West Malaysia, Singapore, the Borneo Islands of East Malaysia and Brunei.

The visual ephemera of Malaysia however existed, and it’s presence was barely recorded. The guerrilla parties against the British colonial rule was a major event and yet only two known images of the 4 parties rallying against were known.

While the controversy of the Malaysian Archive is a great discussion, my aim for the project is instead to preserve what is avaliable as malaysia’s first known political design.

My inspiration comes from the posters Memphis Sanitization Worker’s march and Craig Oldham’s projects on immortalising the typefaces of the Minner’s Strike. These two key events in western worlds are an example of how with a Past comes a Future, knowing your history I think prevents it from repeating yourself.

In my response to creating my own typeface from the posters of the protest against the Malayan Union, I don’t just hope to spread light on the importance of archive but the importance of design culture in my country. Design for communication, design for protest is a topic that’s unexplored in Malaysian cultures. 

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Reflecting upon the reality of South East Asian’s design community, I realised that Malaysia barely had any visual culture let alone design culture. My theory this could be attributed to the fact that during the British colonial rule plenty of immigrant workers brought from China or India were mostly focused on their skill sets rather than documenting and keeping their processes.

So my response aims to tackle a few things here, how would immortalising this typeface engage anyone who is like me a south east asian, specifically a malaysia to be interested in the recording and preservation of our history?

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Alternative Processes Workshop

This is one great example of what I like about going to school in the United Kingdom is that we get to venture into looking at processes and different way people work and different effects.

The idea of experimentation and unpredictable outcomes can be scary to me who’s brought up in an environment where everything needs to be controlled and predictable.

Overall I enjoy these days in uni, it’s a good to just do things and learn things without having to think too much into it.

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Mumedi: Death With A Smile

When one thinks about death in a western culture, it’s usually about open caskets, rows of chairs and mourning. I don’t know if any culture deals with death the same, each of them deal with them very specifically.

For this brief, I wanted to celebrate my late grandmother that I lost at 12. I understand it’s a very personal approach and the context of this tribute would be very difficult to capture.