comm design journal

Roby

[robydoescommdesign-blog]

Reflection

7/6

During this course, I have learnt so much about design and myself. 

One of the most significant things that I took from this course is that the making of the product, the materials that were used, the research that was done before, the creator’s intention, the day it was written, who the creator is, the time it took to create, may be more important the actual product itself. Most of the time, there is so much substance and meaning behind all that has been designed around us and (the comm design lectures have taught me) there is a history behind even the most simple things, such as the letter ‘A’ or a the ‘like’ button on Facebook.

For assignment three, during the process of creating the zine, up until the exhibition, I found that I would sometimes doubt myself and my overall style, due to all of the different things that other people had come up with or had thought of. I questioned if I needed to include different types of paper, include cutouts or fold outs in my zine, because it looked so interesting on other people’s zines. But I realised that the artist’s work that I chose to showcase has a particular style and overall feel, and therefore influenced my stylistic choices. All designers, including me, have a certain style that we tend to go towards whenever we design anything and this results in different outcomes - there may not be just one way to do something. Everyone has a different perspective and sometimes it’s good to look at something from someone else’s point of view as it makes you more aware and you may learn something from it. 

Since the beginning of this course, I hoped that I could learn to be more confident with my choices that I make and be able stick to them, even if I am not thinking the same things as the majority. I wanted to also experiment and try new things with my designs - challenge and push myself to produce the best possible results. I think I should keep working on these as I can always find ways to better myself.

My planning and time management have definitely improved over this semester and I hope to keep it up for as long as possible, as having more time for proof reading, refining and gathering feedback is always good. 

Thank you Karen and Andy for such a great semester!

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Assignment 1 Reflection

When deciding what question I would choose to present in this assignment, I knew I wanted it to be quite personal and emotional. This meant that I could incorporate a little bit of my personality into my choice of materials and overall presentation.

Instead of coming up with one ‘theme’ for my whole question, I came up with six different concepts for each of the words. 

Will - (conventionally) a boys name, blue is (conventionally) associated with boys and to juxtapose this, I chose pink items

I - chose items that are very personal to me, items that I always have with me

Stay - used items that are associated with the opposite of “staying”; “leaving”

In - put the word “in” something

Design - items that are usually used by a designer or an artist, mostly stationary 

? - made up of sticky notes that have other professions written on them

Looking back at it now, I regret my choice to take a picture of each of the words separately, as the lighting did not stay consistent, resulting in my final image to not turn out as well as I wanted. Secondly, I may have forced my items into the letters that I wanted them to look like, instead of allowing them to naturally create the letters that they ‘wanted’ to the most.

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“Ask Me Anything!” artists I was considering to interview

Suntur

Illustrator/painter based in Bangkok, Thailand. Minimalistic pieces therefore, there is lots of negative space - my zine will look nice and clean. The different colour palettes of his pieces go well with each other (mostly soft tones), so it will not be too challenging to have a harmonious palette throughout my whole zine. But he is quite popular and may not reply to me (did not reply).

Audrey Caabay

Visual artist based in Manila, Philippines. Each of her pieces are very beautiful and detailed. As they are all quite complex, I wouldn’t want my zine to be too busy or else it may take the attention away from the artwork. Would cut outs/ fold outs/ special paper suit the atmosphere of these pieces? - if I don’t include these aspects will my zine be ‘boring’? As she doesn’t have a very big following, there is more of a chance that she will reply (she replied).

Chester Lipit

Communication Design student in Melbourne - loves to illustrate. Each of his pieces are quite personal and filled with lots of emotion - this would give my zine a certain feel. His drawings are mostly of just one colour therefore I will be able to play around with my colour scheme! I could potentially have a monochromatic scheme! 

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7/6

Exhibition

Day of submission and exhibition of the “Ask Me Anything!” assignment! I am so glad that I explored building 100 yesterday night and discovered the guillotine and the printers that I am able to insert my own paper into - these definitely had a significant impact on the look and feel of my final product. 

After seeing everyone else’s zines I am so amazed with how talented and different everyone is in this course. I am sad but also relieved that this assignment is over, as I love publication and hope to do more of it in the future!

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24/4

We test printed our zines once again, I was more familiar with using the long stapler and the scalpel and I could therefore produce cleaner edges. I spread an image out onto 2 pages and aligned it so that there was a small blank portion on the right page. While I was trimming, I trimmed up to where the image ended (instead of cutting up to the trim marks and leaving the little blank portion), accidentally cutting out content on the rest of the pages that I didn’t mean to cut. I could possibly apply this onto one page but it may disrupt the clean, professional aesthetic that I am aiming for.

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24/5

Lecture

In this lecture we explored what the future of design could possibly look like. It is unpredictable how design will exactly evolve, but inventions such as the eye writer demonstrate how impactful it can be to those who are in need. 

We also discussed how much content we produce, and how we should instead think about reworking old creations - working with the mass data that is being produced every minute - rather than adding onto the tons of information that is piling up constantly.

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17/5

We explored printing zines through inDesign and got told about the things we need to consider when laying text and images out. We created templates for an 8 page zine, as well as a 16 page zine, in able for us to physically see how each of the pages would be separated when they are printed.

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17/5

Lecture

We discussed art-activism - artists using their platforms to make a stand about social and political issues. Some magazines and movements were based entirely around bringing attention to these issues and were able to make an impact to society and their attitudes towards particular topics such as race and gender.

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10/5

We looked through old magazines to find letterforms that could be created with the subjects of the images - with the tool of collaging, the placement of everything was able to be manipulated to help represent a letter.

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10/5

Lecture

We looked into the Postmodern theory, which was “part of the response to Modernism's perceived failure to deliver the utopias it had promised.” Design during this time was heavily influenced by Punk, Rock and things that celebrated chaos. 

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3/5

We looked around campus for letterforms, numbers or punctuation that were naturally on any objects, buildings - anything that we could find. Sometimes, I would have to turn my head or look at things from a different place to be able to make out what letters they could make.

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3/5

Lecture

The Bauhaus School was the first school of design. The selected staff were introduced new ways of teaching aspiring artists and introduced new and advanced techniques in design. 

The Bauhaus movement was revolutionary but in regards to gender equality with their lack of female staff and female students only being able to enrol in certain courses, they were not as progressive.

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12/04

Worked with Emma, Zoe, Arcadia, Thomas and Teagan, to create the typeface “Tilevetica” with semi-circles and squares, while making sure that all the letters look like they belong with each other in the same “typeface”. To keep the aesthetic consistent, we only included one black square in each letter.

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12/4

Lecture

We focused on the origins of page-space and the composition of letters. This led to a discussion about the influences of machines on communication and typography and how print was evolving and becoming more accessible to the public.

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29/3

Books had been deemed as luxury items due to each one being hand made/hand written - because of this, the printing press was invented and  publications became more accessible to a wider audience. 

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22/03

Worked with Emma, Thomas, Arcadia and Zoe to experiment using different mediums to present the pangram “The five boxing Kanye wizards jump quickly west”. Using water and paint brushes, each of us were in charge of ‘painting’ two words as fast as we could onto the floor before the water dried up under the sun. We decided to use one floor tile per word, to help us ensure that we left enough space for every word in the sentence.

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22/03

Worked with Emma, Zoe, Arcadia and Thomas to create a pangram with a roll of tape, while also incorporating dimension. We underestimated how quickly a roll would run out and therefore had to keep that in mind while creating each letter. Each of us were in charge of creating at least one word in the sentence and as a result, they were sized and shaped differently to each other.