#desn602

[tomasjgonzalez]

Visual Communication in Design : Final Presentation

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Bbae8Cae-5cPizerm8So3wdazk38jLyGpLwGhyEKvAA/edit?usp=sharing

Infographic.

Storyboard

Presentation Slides (link) = https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Bbae8Cae-5cPizerm8So3wdazk38jLyGpLwGhyEKvAA/edit?usp=sharing

[erfanalavi]

VCB - Semester Reflection

Over this half of semester, I feel as if I made a lot more progress compared to the first half. This half of semester begun with a bit of drama that kept me driven throughout, but my biggest challenged faced this semester was being grouped with people I didn't know. I was placed in a group with Holly, Jess and Shaista and although they are all amazing hard-working girls, it didn’t mean much because they didn’t show up to class to understand the process we are meant to be following.

Being the only member of my team that attended every lesson for this half of semester, I was deemed project manager. This was done at a very late date since I didn’t know these girls would be pulling a sickie every other week, and it caused me to have to do most the visual work myself so there will be some consistency in our work for the hand in at the end. In saying that I didn’t let them slack off, I arranged the girls so that they will be focusing on work from the day which they were here, and I’ll take what they have and collaborate their ideas with mine. I believe we got lucky for this type of system to work out the way it did, but I must give myself credit for guiding them.

The work produced at the end was to a satisfactory standard but felt as if I had done it all, one thing I would have liked to change was the amount of drawing we had of the actual mascot. I had to keep the mascot looking very simple so when I saw members of my team I could explain new concepts to them while keeping the structure of the drawing consistent. I believe that our focus was on the mascot so there should have been more of a development of it visually.

Overall, I am happy with the final results knowing they were to the highest standard that I could have done. There isn’t much more I could change to help express the potential of the mascot idea as I felt we had it all covered in the end anyway. I would like to continue this project and see how far it could actually go.

[erfanalavi]

Info-graphics With Shaista

So this has been the third week now in a row where I have had a different member of the team show up by themselves. Although this experience has been annoying, having to repeat what we have done in the prior weeks helped me stay on track as an individual.

This lesson was about getting information across through visuals. Shaista and I begun the class by going over things that were going to remain consistent for this project, In this case the idea of having a mascot and making it look like a can for relevance to the name of the company. We then started questioning what color it would be, we looked back at the storyboard and liked the idea of a white can for introductory purposes.

We then realized that the can be treated like a like a walking billboard in the sense that it can have all the information of the company on its back. My first thought was in the form of a nutrition label or something relevant to cans to give an indication of where the front and back of the can is. Through out the week i had drafted and completed these info-graphics, they weren't ready for the presentation but now that they done they suit the presentation slide very well :)

[austinlonie]

Non-profit organisation re-structure

Submission for  DESN602

We found that the main problem of this was the overload of information which was not presented in an easy to read way. Also, the explanation of what the organisation stood for was in extremely small text on the home page which I only noticed after 10 or so minutes on the page. The man who runs the site, Andy, dedicates a large amount of the site to his daughter which created a very unprofessional feel as it makes the organisation seem very emotionally driven. 

The data collected here was from a survey that was conducted within the Communications and Colab departments of AUT. This allowed for us to see what youth know about organ donation and their views on it. These are all represented in the inforgraphics of the presentation which GiveLife could use for identifying what they need to focus on in order to gain the support of youth or use these to highlight New Zealand need for more organ donors.

We also propose that on this homepage the organisation puts a display showing the current faults in the organ donation system. This immediately gives the user a clear understanding on the stance that the organisation has and gives reasons why the organisation pushes for law changes.

In the make a difference section, a timeline is shown showing the history of organ donation and how the laws have changed in New Zealand. This gives the user a simplified history as well as an understanding that laws can change. It is up to GiveLife to be the driving force behind this though. This section will also outline the organisation’s goals around changes in organ donation laws. It will then follow to a link to the Change.org page where users can use their new understanding of the system to advocate for change through an informal online petition. Although this doesn’t hold any value in bill hearings in parliament, it can still show the amount of support that the organisation has.

The Can I Donate? page is where the majority of the education takes place. Here the user is able to learn about the importance of organ donation and how they can sign up to the donor register. 

The current website overloads the user with an abundance of information around organ donation and it is very hard to identify what the organisation stands for. Our new website cuts away a lot of the unnecessary information that was displayed as bullet-points and replaces some of them with easy to understand inforgraphics. 

The GiveLife_stories Instagram page is another touch-point that is used for the sole purpose of sharing touching stories that involve organ donation. We see this used in other organisations through advertising campaigns. Isolating this to Instagram targets youth to see the real benefits that organ donation has on real people. 

[erfanalavi]

VCB - Storyboarding With Jess

This lesson was spent creating a story boarding by further developing on thethe ideas we had last week. Since this time i have a different partner in the group who decided to show up, i had to keep things straight to the point so Holly or Shaista dont come back to class thinking what whats happening The topic of choice was the mascot again, where Jess and I now drew out different methods that the can could be used to get the children involved more. During this time we spend some time drawing up different variations of a mascot and came to the conclusion that an actual can is the best suited option for a name like KidsCan.

The main area we are attempting to focus with the story board is social media. Last week there we looked into all existing webpages KidsCan had, and for a company that is trying to give off a positive vibe i think their social media is something that needs more attention.

This was the story board i had completed at home to show how a tin-can mascot could be used to educate the children of both high and lower decile school through the use of social media. The mascot sort of becomes a middle man for these schools to connect through a similar image

[erfanalavi]

VCB - Mind Mapping With Holly

Now that we had done basic research into our chosen company, we had a better understanding of what KidsCan stood for and how they wanted to be viewed as a business, but most importantly, we learnt what the company was doing wrong to be unnoticed.

This lesson was about Mind mapping to pin point multiple areas of the KidsCan company that can be addressed with a single action. We began the mind-mapping process by branching out from what we had learnt from the research period. The very first thing Holly and I agreed had to change was website, followed very closely by the logo. 

The Website: - Is just WAY TO BORING:  - It has too many pages and links for the amount of text on some screens.  - The photos do not communicate much    *other than they want to ‘be positive’ and show that ‘sharing is caring’ - There is barely any color on the pages, and it wasn't because they where trying to use white space, if that was the case the website would be a lot tidier. - There social media links should be utilized and made easy to locate

The Logo: Once again Holly and I agreed that it was a horrible logo because its was just boring to look at. It doesn't tell you anything in the visuals about the business other than being NZ  operated, and the color scheme doesn't make sense and is far from appealing. Ultimately this logo does the company no justice as the logo is only words, and to prove it i walked around to students in class and asked them if they knew what KidsCan was. I was not surprised when i got answers like ‘childs cancer services’ or ‘an orphanage”, this quick play-test confirmed that the mind mapping starts with the logo.

How the Mascot idea sparked

Holly and I began mapping out visual components that could be used hand in hand with the website and the logo. We threw a few ideas around and one that stood out was giving the company a mascot. We questioned if a mascot could be the face of the company where he would be used on the website headers as well as being in the logo to create a new personality for the company. 

Not only is a mascot useful for humanizing a company for marketing purposes, but it can also help you communicate with a younger audience much more effectively. We then decided that positivity was equally important for having a mascot if we were aiming to educate the children first. We need them to see the company as something unique and exciting so they go home and tell their parents about it. 

[kavitacreativetech]

Above is the proposal slide re-edited to be more clear and minimal. Below are the proposals themselves explained more in-depth by Tom:

We have conjured up various proposals instead of one. One common relationship our proposals share is that they are all corporate partnerships as shown through the storyboard. Our main proposal involves a partnership with Toys-R-US.

We decided to come up with a friendly mascot, the teddy-bear ‘Robearto’. Through a partnership with Toys-R-Us, Ro’bear’to would be manufactured into a toy line. Each bear sold would generate cash for Foster Hope and aid recognition, in-turn Toys-R-Us would also win for carrying out Corporate Social Responsibility in regards to Community Involvement.

Our next proposal is a sponsored event gala to help with the recognition of Foster Hope while also allowing the children to have some fun. The incentive of various sponsors is the positive publicity they receive from helping set up the events and to support Foster Hope and their cause. The money raised from food, merchandise and raffle sales would go to Foster Hope.

Our last proposal is a sponsored triathlon by Sanitarium for all children to be involved in. This event is completely run by Sanitarium as a part of their ‘Kids TRYathlon’ participation programme. Foster Hope doesn’t need to be directly involved in this fundraising event yet the money raised through this event will go to Foster Hope.

[kavitacreativetech]

Foster Hope Presentation

Minal Astor, Rahui Maru, Kavita Singh & Tomas Gonzalez. Foster Hope bringing hope to those in care

Final Presentation + Rationale

This is our (almost complete) final presentation. I say ‘almost complete’ because there are still minor changes that need to be made. The feedback we received after the presentation on Monday touched on being more clear about what the ‘problem’ is and on bullet pointing the huge wall of text in the proposal slide. The whole idea of a presentation is that it should be visually communicative in some way. Unfortunately, some of our slides have no evidence of this and are just walls of text. This is especially so for our proposal and conclusion. I’m hoping to create a clarifying diagram for our proposal highlighting what we want to achieve. 

Whilst creating the presentation itself, I wanted to go for a carefree child-like look visually and so I used the fonts, ‘Indie Flower’ for the main text and Amatic SC for the titles. The main title follows the font style, Impact, of the original Foster Hope Logo. 

The logo is blue and red but these colours appear quite jarring when used throughout the presentation so using pastel colours softened the colour scheme. I wanted to keep the presentation minimalistic so that the viewer’s eyes are drawn to the more visual slides like the storyboard and infographic. Below are some development photos:

I’m happy with Tom’s colour work on the storyboard, we discussed that keeping it minimal and only highlighting the foster kid makes it easier for the viewer to know whom we are targeting. 

Overall, the design experience in a group format was an interesting one. The workload wasn’t exactly equal nor was the quality of work. I find that it’s easier to group up in one place and discuss ideas than doing it online; Monday’s classes help with this immensely. I’m proud that my team represented our organisation well during the actual presentation even without Tom present. However, I felt that if there was an equal amount of brain power and imagination in our team, we would have been able to mock-up the drafts of the proposals as well.