Yella Designs

A little bit more information about my current projects, how I work through them and a collection of things I find interesting.

[yelladesigns]

Global Health Challenge 2017

Today marked the conclusion of the last five weeks of work towards this project with Pecha Kucha style presentations given by all the groups involved and honestly, it was sad to see it end. The past five weeks have been filled with meeting new people, creating new ideas and working towards a worthwhile finale, all things I will sincerely miss. So, for this weeks post, I thought I would run through the project as a whole in a sort of ‘best bits’ or ‘highlights’ show reel covering the process from start to finish.

So, what is the Global Health Challenge? In the words of the organisers it’s “an opportunity created for people from across different knowledge domains to work together to make a difference and transform lives by tackling one of the key challenges that the University has identified: improving social, cultural and physical well-being.”, that sums it up pretty well really.

How did it work? WEEK 1 This week marked the start of the project, and after a bit of Northern Soul dancing as an icebreaker and hearing the different pitches from the various organisations involved, I picked which one I wanted to work with, the Dundee International Women’s Centre.

WEEK 2 This week we had been invited to attend the Diwali Lunch at the DIWC to both see the centre itself and meet some of the women who use its services. This was fantastic to see and the food was lovely. This week we also properly met for the first time as a group and started brainstorming where we might take the project.

WEEK 3 This week we again met up as a group and collated the research we had done to form a better understanding of what we were doing. We worked really well as a group and the ideas flowed easily and quickly.

WEEK 4 This week we met up again to finalise our ideas and work to complete the presentation so it was ready for next week. We then met up later in the week also to divide the slides up between us and to make sure everybody was ready.

WEEK 5 This week was the week of the presentations. We decided to meet up before they started to make sure once again that everyone was ready and once we were all happy we headed to the lecture theatre where they were taking place. The presentation went really well and we ended up winning the award for ‘Best Teamwork’, the icing on the cake.

Overall, the project was something I am so happy I took part in for the new people I met, the organisation I got to work with and what it taught me along the way. If I got the chance, I would definitely do it again.

[yelladesigns]

Broadsheet Header

One piece of feedback I got from my tutorial about my broadsheet this week was to make the headline more exciting and interesting as how it was worked but wasn't either of those things. So, this week I endeavoured to fix this and set about changing it to something better.

Initially I had the idea to combine many different typefaces into the one title. I decided to call my broadsheet ‘Curator’ so bringing different typefaces together fit this idea of a collection, but after trying it out I decided it didn’t look good so tried to apply the same concept to a different idea. 

Instead of typefaces, I tried bringing different shapes together and found this worked a lot better in terms of how it looked and sat on the page. Working out how I wanted it to look and how the letters would work together was a fun process and once I had a general idea down, it all happened pretty quickly and easily.

I tried the type in different colours to see how it would look and if this made a difference to readability and legibility. I found that the dark colours contrasted with the lighter one worked best.

I then tried the type in grey as there are lots of colours on my broadsheet cover where the headline would sit and so making sure it didn't clash with those was important.

I like it in grey but think that maybe the light grey and the darker one are maybe a bit too different and so harder to read than they could be. Trying it with greys that are closer together in shade could be an idea.

[yelladesigns]

Myth, Mystery and Meaning

Today was the first lecture for the elective class I chose to take this semester entitled ‘Myth, Mystery and Meaning’. The class explores folklore, myths and legends though analysis and asks you to produce a final piece based on a story of your choice.

For today’s class we looked at different theories surrounding the analysis of fairytales. It was really interesting to look at stories I have grown up with in this way and to really start to understand the meanings behind them and the connections to other stories that aren’t always obvious.

These are the notes I took from today’s class:

ESSENTIAL THEORY 1 The Aarne-Thompson-Uther Classification System • Two indexes used to classify folktales ◦ The Aarne-Thompson Motif-Index ◦ The Aarne-Thompson Tale Type Index • Used in folkloristics to organise, classify and analyse narratives • Essential tool ESSENTIAL THEORY 2 The Morphology of the Folklore • Vladimir Propp      ◦ Soviet folklorist who analysed basic plot components of Russian folklore to         identify their simplest narrative elements • Book published in 1928  • Unnoticed by the West until it was translated in 1958  • Used in media education  • Can be applied to almost any form of media  • List of 31 'functions' (events) that take place in narratives

ESSENTIAL THEORY 3 Claude Levi-Strauss • 'father of modern anthropology' • Built upon the work of Propp • "mythical thought always progresses from the awareness of opposition • s toward their resolution"

ESSENTIAL THEORY 4 Carl Gustav Jung • Founded analytical psychology • Worked with Freud • Analysis of dreams, myths and alchemy revealed representations of archetypal             opposites at work in the psyche and helped understand his theory ESSENTIAL THEORY Joseph Campbell • The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)         ◦ Theory of the archetypal hero found in world mythologies he had studied • Explored the theory that important myths from around that have survived for    thousands of years share a fundamental structure          ◦ Monomyth  • His work has been hugely influential          ◦ George Lucas

Listening to how stories such as Red Riding Hood and Cinderella can be dissected and analysed is really cool as fairytales and folklore are both areas I have always been interested in, whether it be the books I read or the movies I watch, they seem to be a recurring idea in my life. Seeing them like this though, is a whole new perspective and I can’t wait for the rest of the lectures to learn more.

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Some photos from the D’Arcy Thompson Museum visit. 

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A Trip to the D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum

This week we took a trip to the D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum on campus to take photographs that we can use in our magazine spreads. The trip to the museum was really good and seeing all the different specimens they had was awesome. Seeing insects preserved in jars and skeletons of elephants and gorillas was really cool and not what I really expected at all from a museum as small as it was.

[yelladesigns]

Gathering Content for Zines

This week, as part of the zine project, I sat down and interviewed my dad to gather all the information I would need to inform the content of the zine. Sitting down with my dad and talking with him about his life and his musical interests and influences was really interesting and cool as it is not often I get chance to chat to him like that, and finding out all this stuff about him was fascinating. We sat down for a few hours whilst I was back at home for a weekend and catching up with my family in general.

I am really happy with the results of the chat and I have plenty of information to work into some content for my zine. I am so excited to see what comes of it and even more excited to show my dad after I have completed it.