#my capstone

[gravehags]

my longing to write more curator!reader fic vs. my current inability to look at a computer screen for more than five minutes without wanting to pass out

[thedesignerinprogress]

January 11, 2018—Getting back in the Saddle

Four months have come and gone, and it’s back into the thrall of capstone! Here’s an overview of somethings from today’s two classes

Over my Co-op

I realized I want to include more print EGD included in the project. So in addition to the kennel card, a social flyer for the web and some weekly pet feature boards for around the kennel itself.

Also want to try to make a small motion piece. Whether it’s a mini process video or a small animation of some of the finished icons, I don’t know.  -Found a helpful book called Infinite Icon that is just a plethora of different icon systems and their functions/projects. Should prove helpful.

During Classes

–Group activity of categorizing and finding relating themes among all of the Senior’s capstone projects –Broke into groups to look at the trends and patterns across all projects to come up with a name for the DAAPworks show. –My group came up with the name RE: Changing Convention. We’ll vote from all the group’s options to decide the name possibilities of the show.

Personal Growth

–Exercise helped me focus my project: the motivation is to invoke a response or action, the mood is friendly and easy to comprehend, and the activity is adopting. This will help dictate graphic styles and choices later.

—Idea for project display to have a replica cat kennel such that these fliers could live in context

[pink-link]

Here’s the video of my senior capstone!!! I wrote this short peice all by myself and I’m really thrilled with how it turned out! Please share!!!

[thedesignerinprogress]

Round-Robin Group Critiques — February 12, 2018

Today we hosted a series of group critiques in class and I got a lot of feedback on my project! I printed out some of the above layouts and showed the sketches to showcase how my capstone is coming.

4x6 Card

Not all the information needs to be there: name, sex, age, photo (small), informative icons, personality icons? Utilize front and back Reasoning for the card: helps direct traffic flow to “profile wall” and gives possible take away for adopters to reference later Put the SPCA contact information onto the card (small) Volunteer note option on the back? -When filled out, either slide into a separate container on the kennel (keep it organized to each animal), give to the front desk workers, or put into a box at the front desk to be checked at the end of the day by staff?

Icons

Draw the “No Dogs” icon Personality icons scale- utilize analogous/transparency to dictate the scale of how much it is of the trait -If not color, then fill in the circles to show the scale? -Personality set includes: playful, shy, curious, loving Smaller 7/8″ good size -Scale change for info icons? No cats icon- put multiple cats in it: change wording to “no other cats,” Decrease the stroke on the icons Declawed- remove the cross out: make it a clawless paw Use symbol for sex (M, ♂: icon for age? Include kennel number/numbering system

Hierarchy

Each print out (8x11 vs 4x6) is going to have a different hierarchy Sketch on paper grids and type layouts Softer typeface but with a lot of fonts (Tondo, Proxima soft, etc) Different sections of the icons (information vs personality) is helpful: allows person to quickly see the grouped information they’re focusing on Smaller body text (currently 15pt) Line of icons (horizontal or vertical) reads better than large group Breed of cat is less important than Age, Sex and Name Include kennel number/numbering system

General

Rewrite the paragraphs to exclude redundant information that’s demonstrated in the icons and the unnecessary openers and closersPossible taglines of the cats? (written by me or by the SPCA worker)-Ex: “Frisco—the flirty cuddly guy”-Maybe use hashtags?Multiple photos of the cats on the print out?Include the history of the cat: where it came from and why it’s there

[thedesignerinprogress]

Icon Drawing and Process Start— February 5, 2018

Been busy working on sketches of my icons. There’s still a lot of  refinement, but I have a draft for every icon drawn (of my list I currently have).

I also started planning out my process book and my DAAPworks display. I’m considering bringing in a few fake pet carriers to the show to showcase the pet information system I’m developing.

[thedesignerinprogress]

First Round of Sketching January 19, 2018

Delayed in posting this but I drew out a few icon styles a few weeks ago after doing some gesture studies to understand cat anatomy. After doing a few and narrowing to two sorta styles (line or shape) I realized that I need to take a break from the icons to decide how these icons will live. Mainly I needed to know how large they will be as the style will be affected by how large the icon will be.

[thedesignerinprogress]

Inspiration Gathering January 21, 2018

As I started working on sketching styles for the icon systems, I conducted some visual research and found a few icon sets that I felt were strong in conveying their message or in conveying the gesture of a cat. These along with my book I picked up “Infinite Icons” are helping me to develop an easy to digest style for the kennel card icons.

[thedesignerinprogress]

July 10, 2017—A Look at the Present

I spent some time in class today looking at the current kennel cards from a few perspectives. In the first set of images I compared the printed out kennel cards to what information is available on the website. The second set of photos is looking at the layout of the information on the kennel cards as well as the information that could be removed and what it would look like. The final set of images are the current hierarchy of information to what a first look at reprioritizing it could be.