SANG

RMIT communication design

[sxngpxiyaa]

• Reflection •

Finally Sem 1 is over! GRAP 2199 has been such an interesting and pleasant class (so much so I would actually wake up for my 9 am lectures and that’s a big deal to me guysss)

My only personal objective walking into this class was to learn how to share my work and not be shy about it. It was really difficult at first and I think I only started to get semicomfortable with it towards the end of the sem. I’m still not able to do it confidently but at least now I can somewhat bring myself to share my work and that’s progress to me!

We learnt about so much history in the course and how it can be applied in today’s world. One of the historical movements that moved me would have to be the Memphis movement. I love how design got introduced into a new light and it wasn’t so serious and stuffy anymore. It was now more playful and sassy. Designs that are influenced from this movement are all around today and I’ve always been drawn to these contemporary design so it’s pretty cool to learn how it all started.

An activity that made me think differently about design was our collage activity. I always had a very narrow understanding of collage and was never too fond of it because it just didn’t seem like my style to fill a page with a dense amount of pictures laying on top of each other. But now after learning the contemporary approach to collage and understanding that it does not have to be thousands of pictures cluttered into a page it has made me view this aspect of design in a totally different light. I had so much fun doing this activity and will definitely be playing around with this more in the future.

Besides that, I also think another activity that I loved was our Ask Me Anything project. I’ve always been interested in magazine and publication design so being able to learn how to make a zine and to dabble in a bit of magazine design was very eye-opening. In the future, I hope I can explore this area more and possibly take this route when it comes to my career later on in life

But for now ...

[sxngpxiyaa]

• Basics of InDesign • 

 In the Week 11 tutorial, Andy and Karen went through the basics of InDesign which was so helpful as I have never used InDesign in my life. We were also asked to apply what we learnt in the class to make a quick zine which was very effective. The zine @purpl3rainb0w , @bee-anca and I made was titled “My best friends” and were filled with cute pictures of stuffies !

[sxngpxiyaa]

The incredible inventions of intuitive AI

What do you get when you give a design tool a digital nervous system? Computers that improve our ability to think and imagine, and robotic systems that come up with (and build) radical new designs for bridges, cars, drones and much more -- all by themselves. Take a tour of the Augmented Age with futurist Maurice Conti and preview a time when robots and humans will work side-by-side to accomplish things neither could do alone.

• What’s next for design ? •

In the Week 11 lecture, Andy and Karen introduced the question of “Whats’s next for design?”.  We explored ideas such as parametric design and generative design. After doing more research about the idea of human-machine relationships and how it will redesign our future I came across this TED talk by Maurice Conti in which he very simply explains the future of design in relation to evolution and growth. He talks about how because of this new future will stop craving obedience from our things an value autonomy and when we do this is when we will see a world filled with variety, connectivity, adaptability and beauty.  

“The shape of things to come will be unlike anything we’ve ever seen before because what will be shaping these things is a new partnership between technology,nature and humanity” -Maurice Conti

This is what is next for design. 

[sxngpxiyaa]

• Collage • In Week 9, we created a zine filled with collages. Before this tutorial I only had one understanding of collages and that meant a page filled with thousands of images in a cluttered and dense layout. In this class I learnt the contemporary notion of collage and how a little bit of actual photographic material works as well as suppose to layering a dense amount of photographic material onto each other. We are still dealing with traditional forms of collage here in the sense that it’s still about matter and material but we are using the matter and material to create something unconventional and less dense. We then placed our collages into a sheet of A3 paper and made them into a zine. It was really cool to see our designs come together in the form of a zine!

[sxngpxiyaa]

• Memphis Design •  

Ettore Sottsass founded this movement in Milan and introduced the idea that design could move away from guidelines and rules and it could be sassy and humorous. Memphis design revolutionised the stereotypical logic of post modernism design. 

The first two images are designs produced by the man himself, Ettore Sottsass and the next two design are designs produced by a New York based designer named Kelly Behun. These two designs are from her Neo Laminati collection and as you can see they look very similar to Ettore Sottsass’s designs. The influence of Memphis design was revolutionary and despite the number of years that separates these designs talked about above, it is still all around us today. You can check out more of her designs in the link below!

http://www.kellybehun.com/neo-laminati/

[purpl3rainb0w-blog]

Final!

Like, finally. 

So, the main concept is for my zine to look handmade because I always view my creative’s works as very crafty and organic. I tried to communicate my creative’s world by using lots of colours and mixed media too such as the textured papers and the different colour concepts for every question. I wanted to make my zine interesting and interactive by giving each question a concept.

For the front cover I used square cutouts to highlight each colour, so there’s yellow for question one, orange for question two, blue, red, green and purple to represent the following questions. 

As the first question’s concept is yellow, I used blue to create a contrast and also used an image which has yellow as it’s most vibrant colour so there will be that yellow focus. As this question talks about THE key moment, I used a circle to focus on that key moment and the words on the blue page creates a contrast with the emptiness (in terms of space) with the yellow (like narrowing down to that key moment).

For the second question, I used orange as the main colour. The image I chose includes orange, red and yellow which provides the harmonious tone with the colour theme. As this question talks about her past and she did not want to talk in detail about it, I used the two plastic sheets in front where she doesn’t talk about it but the answer at the back reveals her brief answer to the question.

For the third question, I used an image which has a lot of red highlights so it suits the red colour theme. I chose the folding technique for this question because she gave a layered answer as well so the main answer is only revealed when you open up the whole fold. 

As for the fourth question, I chose blue as the colour theme because the main answer is about the ocean and I thought that the colours would match the dolphin image. The next page visually shows her other inspirations which are movies, books and people. I used her paintings and handmade book to represent these elements. I also used a cutout concept here so that it can be seen as one whole answer but at the same time the ocean image cutout is at the front because its her main inspiration.

Although the fifth question’s colour theme is green, I used red as the background to create a contrast. The foldout part also includes colours from the background, to create that harmony. As her answer talks about how she wishes to give hope and joy to other people, the foldout contains comments from her followers where she did bring joy and hope to them. 

The last question is behind and it’s special because its a bonus question that I’ve been wanting to ask her. The colour theme for that question is obviously purple. I placed it sideways because the question needed to be viewed from both sides. Placing the question sideways gives the readers space to view it from both angles. 

All image credits go to Annette Labedzki. 

PS: Sorry about the watermark (I find it so distracting UGH) , just needed an app which can quickly speed up my video.

[sxngpxiyaa]

Love the craft look of the entire zine and how interactive it is! I can see how much effort went into this zine. Love love loveeee

[joannetriesdatavis]

Zine Progress: How I Turned A Brown Paper Bag from Takeaway Food Into A Vintage Piece of Paper

This is a story about a girl who was trying to avoid spending more money on materials for her zine :)

Here is what she did:

One Sunday she bought takeaway food and they gave her a brown paper bag to carry it home. She took the food out and realized that the paper bag was still in good shape and wasn’t even stained. She had a feeling she could use it someday (because art can come from anything, so who knows, eh?) so she kept it.

Long story short for a part of her zine she wanted to portray something as vintage-ish with a typewriter font, but she knew doing that on white cartridge paper would simply not do much.

Some dip their paper in tea/coffee which can lead to some nice effects.

But she loves her tea and doesn’t want to waste it for that reason.

SO

She was enlightened with an idea of using her perfectly clean brown paper bag. It was glossy on the outer part, but on the inside it had a rougher finish; just what she wanted.

She cut a side of it out, stuck it onto a piece of A4 cartridge paper, cut out the edges, and into the printer it went.

The printing worked. And she was glad with the results.

Moral of the story:

I learned to think twice before throwing things away if they’re still in good, usable condition. Now that I’m doing art & design, resources that first seem useless can actually go a long way. Make art + reduce waste. Win!

[sxngpxiyaa]

This is such a simple moral of the story but so accurate ! The amount of times I’ve thought to myself “I wish I had that”. Definitely going to start living by “ make art + reduce waste”. Let’s hope I don’t become a hoarder ! :P

[jarrydhardner]

Assessment Two: Development Work

[sxngpxiyaa]

Love the comic style of this illustration! Super cute and fun !!

[thisisjcuso]

FINISHED!

Finally, I have finished the ‘Ask Me Anything’ assignment and I am so proud of the outcome. Although I faced a few problems and it was a struggle to get it finished, I’m happy to say I’ve submitted it and I was able to achieve exactly what I envisioned at the beginning. It is so cool to see something that was once an idea in your head become a reality. 

And that is why I do design.

[sxngpxiyaa]

Love the colours and overall design of this project. Looks very elegant and expensive. I would totally buy this !

[lydiarosejones-blog]

Ask Me Anything!

I thought it would be a good idea to share the finished product of my Ask me Anything! assignment, I created a jam-packed and vibrant interactive A5 book to represent the colourful and paper filled world of Tommy Perez.

All images were taken from the Instagram page and Website of Tommy Perez, I am quite pleased with how the book turned out, the binding was by stitching in the centre of the pages and hard folding of 200 gsm paper. 

[sxngpxiyaa]

The colours are so vibrant they immediately grab your attention! Love how you used coloured paper to produce an interactive and fun zine :)

[sxngpxiyaa]

• Ask me Anything •

Here is my final zine !

This time my cut out on page one and the image on page two came out aligned and I was able to achieve the desired effect. The idea behind this cut out is that the normal world we live in is filled with colour but if you look through the eyes of my creative and immerse yourself into his world it is black and white as it represents the moody emotional tone of his music.

In relation to this idea I titled my zine “LAYERS” and designed my entire zine with shades of black and white.

To emphasise on the theme of “LAYERS” I used the effect of different sized papers in my design and printed it on tracing paper to give it a different texture and look. The reader can feel the difference in texture and interact with the book by peeling through the transparent layers.

As mentioned in my previous post I implemented the technique of negative space while designing my layout. It gives a simple yet dramatic impact. This embodies my creative best as he is very reserved and simple as a person but his strong vocals and music leave a strong and dramatic impact.

Overall I had so much fun designing my zine and interviewing my creative but I can’t say I’m not relieved to be finally done with this ! :)

[sxngpxiyaa]

• Failed attempt 2 :( •

I made all the necessary changes based on my previous post and printed out my zine in hopes that this was going to be the final product. I redesigned everything and it was now back to being black and white and the contents in each page were simplified (stay tuned for the final product post to see how it looks) However, this time due to my binding method my cut out on page one did not line up properly with my image on page 2 and some of the text was being eaten up into the border. I will have to figure out another way to bind my zine or make changes to my document to fix the issues at hand and I will have to reprint it all over again zzzzzzz

[sxngpxiyaa]

• Failed attempt 1 :( •

So this was my first trial in printing out my design and oh my do things look so different when you print them out. There were so many elements I didn’t even take note of like there were so many different shades of black running through my whole document (which looked the same on screen -.- ) Besides that, I didn’t really like the use of blue as an accent colour once I printed it out but on screen I thought it would add a nice touch and represent the sadness in his music so I think I might just go back to my initial plan of keeping everything black and white. Also after speaking to Andy and receiving his feedback I realised I needed to cut back on some elements on each page because it was beginning to look cluttered and very rigid so I would have to revisit my design to change things up a bit. One good thing though was that I was able to test my cut out idea on the front page with the coloured and black and white image and it was a success ! I also decided to give my zine the title LAYERS to show the depth of my creative and so that the reader can delve into the black and white world of my creative and peel through the layers of his music.

[sxngpxiyaa]

• Inspiration and research •

Here are some images I found on Pinterest that really grabbed my eye even before I had decided on my creative. Back then, I was just saving any pin that looked aesthetically pleasing to me or had some element that I found interesting. But now after deciding on my creative and scrolling through all of these pins I find the use of negative space ( as shown in the last picture ) very accurate in capturing the world of my creative. I think the use of negative space is so simple and plain but it provides such a dramatic impact and emphasis at the same time, much like my creative. I think I will incorporate this technique of design into my zine.

[sxngpxiyaa]

• Prototype for my zine •

After planning and drafting out what each page would look like for many possible layouts I took different elements from these various experiments and formed my final prototype. I used tracing paper as one of the techniques to show different layers to represent the depth of emotion of my creative. Besides that I also used a cut out in the first page and I think I might use this to draw emphasis onto the black and white theme. I might place a coloured image on the first page but through the cut out on the second page a black and white image will be placed.

[sxngpxiyaa]

• Colour palette •

I decided to have a chat with my creative to understand his style and identity better as I found myself getting stuck in the process of coming up with visuals for my zine. His response was very helpful and after researching and watching a few of his videos I decided that my zine would be designed in shades of black and white to capture the world of my creative best. 

[sxngpxiyaa]

• Brendan de Cruz •

Let me introduce you to my creative!  All of the e-mails I sent out to various creatives never received any response and as a result I decided to interview someone from Kuala Lumpur (my hometown ). I got in touch with Brendan de Cruz through my roommate who has been friends with him for years. He is a Malaysian singer-songwriter who produces alternative folk fusion music. I was very demotivated and upset when I didn’t get any response from the creatives I had initially contacted but little did I know interviewing Brendan would turn out to be really interesting and fun. His music is vey moody and emotional and is an expression of the pain and soul he feels as a person.The strong vocals and immense depth of raw emotion that is captured when he starts singing is what made me decide to pick him as my creative. The best part is through this project I gained a friend back home!

It’s also great to be able to promote and celebrate KL artists so do check out his Spotify: Brendan de Cruz if you’re interested !