Discover Top Posts Tagged with #principle 5

The Responsibility of Love

There once was a harvest god who fell in love with a human man. After a decade of foraging and given thanks to the gods, the harvest god appeared to the man.

As their love blossomed, the harvest god birthed many plants with fruit. Holly plants, the manchineel, cerbera odollam, sapindus saponaria trees, and the daphne mezereum shrub. None of these plants bore fruit that the human could eat.

Finally, the forager asked the harvest god when one of their children would give him edible fruit. The god replied, "These plants were born out of our love, not to serve you. Some will house and feed animals, but they will poison and kill you if you stubbornly try to eat their fruit."

"Then we should chop them down, and start again," the forager suggested, but the harvest god weeped. "You will hurt the soil, which relies on the roots of these plants for stability and nutrition. You will strip animals of their home and source of food, forcing them to disperse and abandon this ecosystem. But most importantly, you will kill your children."

The forager listened, and offered a different solution. "Then we can abandon them, and start over somewhere else." The harvest god wailed. "How can you be sure their sapplings will grow? Storms can destroy them, and the result will be the same as chopping them down."

"Then what should we do?" the forager asked. And so, his lover replied, "We need to take care of them, because they rely on us now. We created them, so they are our responsibility. As they grow from your love and care, they will provide love and care for the soil and animals in the area. They may never serve you directly, but they impact the world you live in."

#ivkio #folklore #stories #principle 5

Rorys story Cubes allow students to create their own stories with images on the dice as they use their creativity, communication skills and imagination. This simple game is easily applicable for all students in Primary school.

#language #principle 5

Lit Genius is a community of scholars—and a crew of heroic hearts—devoted to annotating great literature. We host everything from the classics to recent fiction to spoken word.

Litgenius is a website which allows teachers to annotate texts in public or privately as a class. Students are able to add images, videos and texts to the annotations and discuss these annotations with their peers.

#literacy #critical practices #principle 3 #principle 1 #principle 5

Book your children/students in for a slow motion workshop at the State Library with industry professionals. These workshops run for the whole day, advocate different age groups and learning styles have been catered for.

#literacy #code breaker #principle 5 #principle 2

Lecture 4 - Research and Inspiration

Principle 5: An Audience

Who your audience is defines your work. Are you sending a message and if you are who is it to? If for example you where illustrating a child’s book it wouldn’t contain drawings fit for adults, If you where making an advertisement about cars you would incorporate the car and brand into the AD and If you where creating a magazine for an age group of 16-24 you wouldn’t put advertisements for child toys. Who you are intending your creation for defines your creation. By definition audience is the spectators or listeners assembled at a performance or spectacle. It’s also an opportunity to be heard or to express your views whether those views reach the intended audience is up to where you place your creation. For example if you created a piece of street art aimed at the youth of today you wouldn’t hang it in an art gallery as they are rarely visited by youths. You would instead present it around the streets in largely populated areas near schools or child populated suburbs to get the maximum effect and the intended audience.

My group is creating a magazine aimed at 17-26 year old audience of both genders over a broad genre. We would make it viewable via the internet as the majority of our audience is computer literate, the colour scheme would be catered to both genders. Not all pink signifying a girls magazine or all blue which is stereotypically a boys colour.

#principle 5 #audience #lecture 4 #reaserch #inspiration

ITAP week 7

Nowadays there is a massive variety of platforms that TV series, films, musicians, etc can use to promote their work and push out new interesting material. I find the way the music industry uses multiple platforms to extend the musicians work; in terms of visual communication you have the traditional music video and album cover, and if you’re lucky a ‘deluxe edition’ that may include a book of some sort. But by using the internet and digital platforms the creative possibilities can be endless.

Arcade Fire 'The Suburbs' album cover http://www.caroline-robert.com (last accessed 26th Nov. 2011)

A good example is Arcade Fire and their latest album ‘The Suburbs’. You have the album artwork (collaboration between Caroline Robert and Vincent Morisset) using photography and handwritten text. Cleverly they pushed the use of this artwork to make listening to digital files more visually interesting; resulting in each track having its own individual image and handwritten lyrics syncing with the song. I really like this idea as it brings back the physical touch that we’re losing through digitalisation.

Morisset: "I thought about the relation we have with the vinyl cardboard cover or the paper booklet while listening to the songs. Flipping through the lyrics, looking at a band picture or a cool drawing related to a song while listening to it. With the mp3 player, we lost that. I wanted to find a way to get closer to that experience again."

examples of individual images and syncing handwritten lyrics on iPhone http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2010/august/arcade-fires-synchronised-artwork (last accessed 26th Nov. 2011)

The deluxe version of the album comes with an 80-page booklet (containing B&W photographs by Eric Kayne and illustrations) and a short film ‘Scenes from the Suburbs’ directed by Spike Jonze.

All the singles released also have their own music videos as do nearly all singles do today, but Arcade Fire have employed the increasingly popular interactive music video that allow the audience to engage with the visuals. Such as interacting with dancers on screen via webcam movement and an interactive film by Chris Milk which uses google maps to show the users own hometown with other imagery through different pop-up windows. Really exciting stuff worth checking out for yourself.

click images below to watch short film trailer and interactive videos

images above from left to right: http://www.caroline-robert.com/ http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2011/january/fwa-website-of-the-year-arcade-fire http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2011/december/new-arcade-fire-site-by-vincent-morisset (last accessed 22nd Dec. 2011)

#ITAP #principle 1 #principle 5 #multiple platforms #Arcade Fire #The Suburbs

ITAP week 5

Legibility in means of visual communication is how successful a message is communicated; if it is legible the message is understandable and therefore seen as a successful piece of visual communication.

In visual communication typography has strong links with legibility; how readable is the typeface? Helvetica is seen to be the most legible typeface because of its simple and clean design. The popular typeface has sparked debate through its mainstream use, so much for Gary Huswit to make a documentary on the typeface including opinions of well known designers. I remember from watching the documentary at sixth form finding the work of David Carson. His work questions legibility and I find it interesting how far he pushes this experimental design most famously in the magazine Ray Gun, which he was art director. Most of the layouts in the magazine were highly experimental, avoiding the normal grid layouts and allowing the interesting style to explode.

Bryan Ferry spread from 'Ray Gun', issue 21, 1994. http://typegeek.com/history/dingbats (last accessed 8th Nov. 2011)

The layout above is from the magazine Ray Gun where Carson has questioned legibility to an extreme by using the font Zapf Dingbats; a font consisting of abstract symbols making the article completely illegible. In the documentary Carson explains he decided to put the article in this form because it was ‘boring’ and ‘not worth reading’! This editorial experiment has produced what I think is a great piece of design and expressing the designers in an interesting way.

Visual hierarchy is another aspect important to visual communication; it is the way the audience engage with the piece of work. What do they look at first and last? As designers we can control the way the audience look at the work using size, colour and placement.

In terms of magazine design there is an obvious hierarchy; titles, sub-titles, body text, images, captions, etc. all have their place. Titles are generally larger and bolder so they are the first thing seen and give a brief insight to what the article is about. Sub-titles follow giving a bit more information, then obviously the smaller body text. Images can come either before or after titles depending on their size and affect.

Using a mock layout I produced while playing around in inDesign as an example to show visual hierarchy. The first thing the audience will notice is the photograph because of its size and more notably the left page; the big face. This is obviously noticed first because of the size of the photographs main content. Next is the title which is the largest text on the page which is then followed by the body text. If I was improving this spread I would firstly want the title text to be larger so it would be more noticeable straight away, possibly more noticeable than the photograph as the image seems to be overpowering the rest of the spread. I could do this by placing a larger title over the ‘face’ or making the background image smaller or more faded.

#ITAP #principle 1 #principle 5 #legibility #visual hierarchy #David Carson

ITAP week 2

We learn new skills everyday through personal experience; our curiosity drives us to investigate and try new things out to keep us up to date with our fast moving lifestyle. Our thinking patterns are subject to the way we’ve been trained; education teaches us the way things work from a young age and attempts to control us. This affects our thinking patterns and can limit idea generation; only looking at things from one perspective or in one direction. We need to remain creative and generate original ideas through various creative thinking processes that allow us to push ideas in unthinkable directions. Developing this creative thought is very important; the way you get to an idea is just as important as the final outcome.

Approach problems with an open mind and start with a fresh perspective. Release yourself from habitual behaviour which can lead you into rigid ideas; ideas with no depth, ideas that don’t make people think... dull ideas. Noma Bar looks at ideas from different perspective; his work will make people look twice and think about it, he seamlessly brings two different aspects into one vector silhouette. People can interpret the hidden messages in his images through looking at the image and thinking about it, they receive a satisfaction when they’ve worked out the image. This is a great way to put across a message because they’ve had to go through a thought process to get to there; so therefore as they’ve thought about it for slightly longer, than a straightforward message, it will stay in their mind for longer.

http://www.dutchuncle.co.uk/illustrators/noma-bar/portfolios/portfolio (last accessed 10th Oct. 2011)

Creativity is much influenced by everything around us, from advertising, images, music, people, etc. and the work an artist/designer produces can be heavily influenced by their working environment and personal interests.

The working environment is important to the artist/designer as it’s the place where they’ll make their work and also an important thinking place. The workplace can help creative thought and development of ideas; inspiring images stuck to the wall is a great way of improving a workplace, by having these images in front of you all the time it can constantly provide inspiration. Similar to this is collecting (the passionate activity of appreciation, selection and classification) which can provide a source of reference but also reflecting a designers own personal interest.

A good example of collecting is illustrator Mr Bingo, he’s always kept a large collection of vintage postcards that he’s liked or found interesting. I don’t think it’s had a direct influence on his work but they could be used as reference points for his illustrations. Another example, illustrator/artist Tinhead seems to collect vintage images of landscapes which he frequently uses in his work, re-working them again and again to create a new image.

still from 'BLAB talk - Mr Bingo' http://vimeo.com/20786870 (last accessed 9th Oct. 2011)

tinhead's work environment http://blessingforce.tumblr.com/post/11118014378 (last accessed 9th Oct. 2011)

I’ve started a collection of images on my wall, anything really that I like, from artists/designers/illustrators work, random images, photographs and also some of my own work; so while working I can use these as inspiration. I’m also going to start putting up images related to the current project so I’ve got everything relevant in front of me while I’m working for direct reference.

#ITAP #principle 2 #getting rid of assumptions #Noma Bar #principle 5 #managing a creative environment