PNNGUYEN

Collection of photos for the work I complete in GRAP2199 at RMIT.

[pnnguyendesign]

ASSIGNMENT TWO: Online Reflective Journal

OBJECTIVES

In week one, Andy made us answer a question about our goals and objectives while in this course. I said I wanted to be able to be confident in my abilities as a designer and be proud of my works.

I am very glad to announce that I have achieved my goal. I think I’ve come a long way as a designer from twelve weeks.

DISCOVERY

I have discovered that there are a lot of design movements. But my favourite is probably the Memphis Group and the Swiss Style. Something about their aesthetic is very appealing to me.

I have definitely unlocked the skill of zine making. Three weeks dedicated to a craft will do that to you.

And in terms of concepts or ideas, I really like the idea of design books and technology being used in design. It’s so fresh and sci-fi-esque.

INSPIRATION

I was really inspired by the Guerilla Girls and the United Colors of Benetton campaign that were mentioned in week ten. As a coloured female, it really speaks to me.

Going along with the above thread, I would have loved to see designs in different countries.

[pnnguyendesign]

ASSIGNMENT THREE: Ask Me Anything!

Another assignment, another daunting task. The prospect of this sounded really fun, but the idea of reaching out to someone I looked up to and asking them questions was yet another scary aspect. I had so many people I was thinking of that I couldn’t nail it down to five, let alone one, creative. Seeing as the limitations were very vague, it could have been anyone. But I managed to create a list of five individuals;

Michele Feghali; a graphic designer at Rooster Teeth who I really wanted to interview because of this project,

Josiah Brooks; a youtuber,

Baylee Jae; a youtuber,

A friend who’s a make up artist

A friend who’s a cake decorator.

I contacted the top three people through the contact section of their website, but none of them replied. I was a little upset by that because I really wanted to try printing the interview on a shirt for Creative No. 1.

I then reached out to litographs because I was still in love with printing something on a t-shirt. They did reply, but it was a negative response (they don’t have a team of designers who do their designs; they work with freelancers).

So I messaged Cognitive Surplus on tumblr. Didn’t get a response until I was already working on my project, which by then was too late.

The make up artist friend isn’t really someone I talk to all that much, so I felt weird about chatting her up after a few months of silence just to ask for help.

The cake decorator friend had too much going on all at once and I didn’t want to add to that, so I let her be.

I reached out to an internet friend for help, who told me she knew someone who was professional creative.

After asking questions, I found out her name was Maria La Duckworth, and she designs and makes jewellery, which I think it is pretty dang cool.

I asked her the questions, she answered, and then I asked for pictures of the jewellery she makes.

Because her profession is jewellery themed, I decided to stick with that, and go for a jewellery box where I put cards in the box that have pictures of her work on it.

I made a little prototype at home so I could see what it looked like, in terms of dimensions.

After seeing it all put together, I decided I didn’t want the box to be that deep. And I wanted the compartments to hold life sized jewellery in there. So I took my own necklace, found a box that perfectly fit it, and measured that for the necklace compartments. Did the same for the bracelet compartments, and I had a really big box (27 by 28, roughly).

Pretty big, but I did it anyway. It’s only on imgur because it wasn’t uploading to tumblr for some reason.

I’m very happy with how it turned out!

[pnnguyendesign]

ASSIGNMENT ONE: Hello, My Question Is...

This first assignment was pretty scary. I had no idea what question to ask seeing as there was just so much freedom with it.

I finally decided on asking the question of: Is Space Needed in Design?

This is due to the fact that a lot of designers either fill up every corner of their canvas with detail, or, they leave it with a nice background, giving the design room to breathe.

Personally, I prefer the white space, but other people say it just looks empty and needs more work.

Now that I had my question, I needed something to do with it.

I went with a play of words thing, where space can be interpreted to mean the thing outside of Earth, where the stars live. Because of this, I used paper stars for my project.

There are 229 of them. There’s another pile that’s called “no”, but they don’t deserve to be on camera there’s 102 of them taunting me.

And it still wasn’t enough. I had to reuse some of the stars which irked seeing as I wanted each star to be different and unique from each other, but I ran out of star paper.

After I put all the stars together to form their letters, I edited them and compiled them so that I could see what they look like. Once I was happy with position, and gave the poster some white space, I added a white fill and set the Blending Mode to Difference because negative and space.

I’m quite happy with how it turned out. I really does look like it’s glowing against a night sky, which is what I was trying to achieve!

[nickys-visual]

What was the most important thing I learned from Grap2199?

“Everything will be OK“

[milovisuell]

GRAP2199 | Lecture | Week #3

Week three’s lecture followed by a Melbourne Art Book Fair(/National Gallery of Victoria’s other exhibitions by the way) tour.

Friday 16 March

- Lecture on artists’ books;

- Melbourne Art Book Fair;

- the NGV Triennial

- NGV Collection International Art

Got chances to have a look of some creative & refreshing books and talk to excellent artists, also visited some other interesting exhibitions.

[redbatty]

Just finished this lovely oddity. Altogether strange and intriguing.

[pnnguyendesign]

WEEK THREE: What is a Book?

The lecture on this was very interesting. Not only did we look at design books, we also looked at fictional books that were designed to look pretty. And not just the cover. House of Leaves really stood out to me; so much so that I went and bought it. I blame you, Andy.

I’m really excited for it to arrive so I can read it during the semester break. I have no sense of self control.

[plantlas]

Indesign tips:

18.05.18

- Page ‘A’ = Master page (use to enter titles, page numbers, guides, etc).

- Ctrl+Shift+Click = click on page (chance background colours, etc).

- Ctrl+D= apply images into containers

- Recommended dpi for images: 240 or 300

- ‘W’ = preview for printing

- ‘T’ = type tool

- Pages - layer - type - style & paragraphs - change type for one paragraph

- Always save during wip!!

[jasmineb-design]

A great summary and reference of Indesign tips, Thankyou for sharing! :)

[stav-ros-deactivated20190312]

That was helpful, thanks!

[mmmmancy]

YES!This is a great summary!Really useful!Thanks!

[pnnguyendesign]

WEEK ELEVEN: What’s Next For Design?

This week’s lecture showed us new and interesting futures for design. The concept of technology and artificial intelligence is always really fascinating, and seeing how people have utilised it to their advantage and made it part of design is very exciting.

My favourite so far has to be inspirobot. I liked it so much I went home and generated a bunch of quotes. The above are the best ones I got. I think the AI is trying to tell me something.

[pnnguyendesign]

In class, we were introduced to the concept of franken-models, or rapid prototyping. It’s sounds like normal prototyping, or mock ups, but less refined and more experimental I think?.

For the AMA assignment, I was going to interview my friend who decorates cakes and cupcakes. I wanted the questions and answers printed on the cakes and have an origami cake where each slice would have a paragraph.

But she had too many things going on, so I couldn’t go through with this idea.

[phillipsa2ddesign]

Odd Bouquet Analysis

In the Ad by United Colors of Benneton the visual elements of point, line, plane, and the illusion of volume all combine to create form. The image itself employs Organic planes which are touching each other in a figure-ground relationship with the negative space made up of the color white. The Symbols comprising the words “White”, “Black”, and “Yellow” each overlap the heart shaped organic forms along with a relationally small, green logo on the right side.

The plane that is the symbols or words, along with the logo, are rectilinear in nature. The shadows of the hearts, are organic in nature as well.

[pnnguyendesign]

WEEK TEN: Why Design?

United Colors of Benetton was a really great campaign. I’m so glad I was introduced to it. Their models and the photo shoots they have really display what diversity means. Unlike Hollywood “diversity”, where they throw in a few token people of colour, but real diversity. It was great seeing it all on screen.

But the above picture really stood out to me. It just annoys me that something from so long ago is still relevant today. We haven’t really progressed at all, have we?

[zagrebist]

Exhibition “Nesvrstani” at Lauba, ZGB, May 2018 photo by @zagrebist​

[pnnguyendesign]

WEEK TEN: Why Design?

This week’s lecture was probably the best lecture I’ve ever attended. I had not heard of the Guerilla Girls before, but I'm glad I have.

[pnnguyendesign]

We were given copies of magazine pages and told to cut pictures of interesting letter forms. With the letters that we found, we made a collage and put it into our zines. I managed to find A, Y, W, M, U and V.

[cxudotsai]

Week 9

This week’s lecture discussed post-modernism design. This was a movement from 1970 to 1990 which was a response to modernism.

It was a rejection of formality, uniformity and products with only function in consideration. This was also aided by the economic boom post World War.

This movement reintroduced bold colours, patterns, form over function to design.

I decided to look into the Memphis group, who focused on design and architecture in Italy. This group was founded by Ettore Sottsass in 1981

They main influences were art deco, pop art and 1950s kitsch. Memphis was most well-known for their colourful plastic laminate furniture. Other identifying features of this group was: - Asymmetry - Bold bright colours - Geometric shapes - Pattern, specifically squiggles

In a way, you can see the explosion of ideas that the collective had in one evening of venting their frustrations about modernism. It appears to be a violent rebellion to plainness.

Further Reading:

https://creativemarket.com/blog/trend-alert-1980s-memphis-design http://www.design-technology.org/memphis1.htm https://www.thecut.com/2017/05/the-memphis-design-movement-is-having-a-moment.html http://www.historygraphicdesign.com/the-age-of-information/postmodern-design/792-memphis`

[pnnguyendesign]

WEEK NINE: Who Decides Design?

As a small design kid, I was always fascinated by post-modernism. It had everything I liked; colour, shapes and a very fun aesthetic. Even now, I look at it and think it’s still very cool.

[pnnguyendesign]

In the workshop, we learnt how to fold and make zines. We were told what a signature was, and how paper can saddle each other.

It was all very interesting. I remember learning the smaller zine technique in primary school, but I never thought it was a legit technique. Who knew folding zines was so easy?

I decided not to trim the edges in case I needed to look back and see the layout of the whole page.

[stanbdesigns]

Swiss style inspired Zara Larsson gig poster

[pnnguyendesign]

WEEK EIGHT: More Bauhaus (International Typographic / Swiss Style)

We explored type and grid in the lecture, which I thought was very cool. Use of white space as part of design is always a big discussion (or so I’ve seen). People tell you to fill up space because it looks to plain otherwise. Other people will tell you take take things away because less is more.

Personally, I prefer white space.

[pnnguyendesign]

Step one: pick a partner. Step two: go outside. Step three: take pictures.

We didn’t manage to get them all, but 17 out of 26 is still pretty cool. I forgot that we could find numbers and stuff too, so wasn’t on the look out for that.

W might be a bit of a reach, but I think it works.

[sineadhdesign]

The Real Bauhaus Wives of Weimar, Germany

Because Friday’s lecture was a sausage fest (by no fault of Karen and Andy - it’s just the way history was written), I did some research into the wonderful women of the Bauhaus. 

Despite Bauhaus accepting more women than men into their school of design, its hard to find any evidence at all that the gorgeous gals pictured above even walked the halls of the famous german school. 

I’ve included an image of a tapestry woven by Bauhaus’s very own Gunta Stolzl. Just one of the talented ladies to finish the 3 year course. 

Here’s a great article that gives a brief overview of the women at Bauhaus: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/nov/07/the-women-of-bauhaus

And you can find more about Gunta here: https://www.bauhaus100.de/en/past/people/masters/gunta-stoelzl/

[commcooper-blog]

I am obsessed with this post Sinead!!!!

[pnnguyendesign]

WEEK SEVEN: What Was This Bauhaus Anyway?

This Friday’s lecture was on the Bauhaus, where we looked at designers who made weird ballet costumes and videos. The lecture was a bit of a mess but this post is beautiful.