Zachary RMIT @zachary-rmit - Tumblr Blog

SUMMARY of GRAP2199

Communication Design Studies (GRAP2199) taught me important lessons about design, which will be useful for the rest of my degree and career. Overall, I feel as though I have a much better understanding about the history of design, and the role of design in our current society.

Through online tutorials, weekly lectures, workshops, and assignments, my design skillset has developed dramatically - improving both my confidence as a designer and the quality of my work. By looking at the history of design, discussing each others work as a group, and receiving feedback for my own work, I was encouraged to take risks and develop my projects further.

Even though the transition from face-to-face to online wasn’t ideal, I still found the course interesting and enjoyable. Within a couple weeks, online classes felt normal. The tutorials were always engaging and the course work was fun.

Altogether, I really enjoyed Communication Design and feel like I have met the key learning outcomes of this course. I hope the following semesters will be just as fun as this :)

FF META ZINE // ASSIGNMENT

Its finally done! Helvetica interviewing FF Meta, in a simple 8 page zine. I had so much fun with the creation of this zine.

My original zine draft was a bit of a fail, so having this as the outcome is such a relief. Each page has been printed, folded, ripped, cut, scanned, and then touched up in photoshop. I used a free texture pack, source, as a final touch - adding to the final photocopier aesthetic.

REDESIGN

Decided to play around with my magazine by printing, cutting, folding, and scanning over and over - till I got the perfect page. Here are a few versions on the front cover and first two pages.

Doing this turned out to be a lot of fun! It allowed me to really develop my design ideas and gave me so many options for my zine.

HELVETICA vs META

Stumbled upon this on youtube !

lilsinclair-blr

work in progress

some WIP for my ASK ME ANYTHING task on Tupperware - I found this free layout photoshop file on Behance (which I have never been on before but it is GREAT and so helpful) and added my photocopy images onto this mock up zine layout.

Some feedback from my class suggested I should add some text to either the zine or overall layout to make it more like an archived document or something like that… not sure how I’ll do that just yet but better hurry up and decide because due date is looming.

zachary-rmit

Love this !!! Theres so much going on I could look at this forever. Can’t wait to see the final outcome

Week 11 // UH OH

From the tutorial in Week 11, I’ve realised I am NOT on the right track for this zine. My current drafts look boring and basic. After checking out other students work, I’ve realised I need to spice it up just a little.

Look how boring that is! Can’t believe I’ve done this. I’ve kind of shot myself in the foot for choosing such a basic font though, as representing it has gotta be a bit boring to be accurate.

But here’s new inspiration for my zine! I want to add texture, maybe do some cool effects on the fonts, etc... I just need it to look way more interesting than it currently is. Bit stressed but it’ll be fine.

source

Going to reuse some of the stuff I’ve already done, but attempt to make it look much cooler. Maybe print and scan it a couple times so it gets a nice photocopier texture. Make it melt a little. Do whatever. Just need something.

Pray for me #prayforzach

WEEK 11 // LECTURE

“Live Draw”, made by Karen and Andy, reminded me of a project called “Reddit Place” (/r/place) which I contributed to in 2017.

Similarly to “Live Draw”, people around the world can draw on this shared screen in real time over the course of a month. I remember drawing a smiley face and thinking nothing of it, until the final video was released later on. Now I kind of wish I had done something much bigger, so it could’ve been seen when I watched it back.

Heres the video of /r/place -

ZINE INSPIRATION

Found these awesome examples of zines. I love the simplicity, similar to the simplicity of Erik Speikermann’s fonts.

source

Also, slightly unrelated note. I realised that interviewing the whole Speikermann ‘family’ seems a bit messy and unnecessary. So I’ve decided to interview only one of his fonts, FF Meta.

ZINE LAYOUT

Here are all the zines I folded / made in the workshop! We looked at how trims and bleeds work, and what a zine looks like when on a single page.

This workshop gave me some cool insight into how printing books/zines/magazines work, and how they should be laid out. I never knew that they’re printed on a single sheet, and then cut accordingly. Always just assumed each page was printed individually, and then bound together.

This workshop also gave me a new appreciation for how much planning goes into this - and although I won’t have to worry about any of this for my virtual zine, I feel like this is handy information for the future.

WEEK 10 // LECTURE

Up and ready to inspire me for the rest of the year !

deafeningcollectionbear-blog

Week 9. Collage Typography:

This week we gained inspiration for the ‘Ask Me Anything’ assignment. We looked at other designs in books and magazines to see how they created imagery and type using collage.

For this task we used collage like the examples we saw to create our own letters. Our group created the word ‘type’ and I created the letter ‘T.’ I used a knife to appear to cut slices of salmon. I used half of a photo of already cut salmon and another half of a different salmon to create the letter.

From this task I have a new understanding and option for how I could design my assignment. I would be interested in combining hand made work along with digital design work.

zachary-rmit

Makes me wish I had something other than a covid safety magazine for this task. Looks awesome btw!

a-bab-ette

week 9 workshop task!

zachary-rmit

yooo this is so cool :0

WEEK 9 // COLLAGE

We worked in groups to create a word out of things we found in random magazines. Our word was “Ultralight Beam”, and here are my contributions. I used to hate collage stuff, but I found this activity pretty fun.

I had a couple other cutouts, including some other letters and a city skyline, but those were never used in the end.

The only magazine I had handy was a Melbourne Covid-19 safety book. Hope everyone got to read it before I chopped it up :0

WHO CAN I INTERVIEW???

I chose 5 different people/movements/fonts to interview, and did a little research on them.

Susan Kare

Susan Kare designed the icons and elements used for the Apple Mackintosh in the 1980s. Her work is so simple and cool, with many of her icons still being used today. She formed the foundation for all future software elements, so interviewing her would be super interesting.

Helvetica

After watching the Helvetica movie, I really think this font could be a good candidate for my interview. Theres a lot of information on it, and I’ve already seen the documentary!

Milton Glaser

Milton Glaser is the guy who created ‘I <3 NY’. It’s an iconic symbol used across the world, and has been adapted for hundred of cities. There’s heaps of legal copyright info about it to (people appropriating it without permission), so I’d love to get to know Glaser’s perspective on that.

Erik Speikermann’s Fonts

Erik Speikermann showed up in the Helvetica movie, which is why I thought his fonts would be great to interview. He’s got many different fonts, so it’d be cool if I could interview them all as one big ‘family’. There are so many resources online about his fonts too, which would help a lot.

Scandinavian Modern

Who doesn’t love Scandinavian modern furniture! Why not interview it? Just an idea.

Analysis:

Unfortunately I couldn’t do Susan Kare or Milton Glaser, because it turns out neither of them are dead! Can’t believe this. I decided against interviewing the Scandinavian Modern, as it didn’t interest me much. Helvetica would’ve been cool, but it feels like I’m cheating a bit after watching that documentary. Erik Speikermann’s fonts looks like the way to go :0

Sources

Susan kare

https://milanote.com/the-work/the-story-behind-susan-kares-iconic-design-work-for-apple

Milton Glaser

https://www.miltonglaser.com/the-work/81/new-york-state-i-love-ny-campaign/

Helvetica

http://www.expat-advisory.com/events/southeast-asia/cambodia/phnom-penh/culture-through-fonts-helvetica

Scandinavian Modern

https://www.scandinaviastandard.com/scandinavian-mid-century-modern-chairs/

Erik Speikermann’s Font Family

https://www.designworkplan.com/read/ff-meta-is-everywhere

Week 8 // LECTURE

During the week 8 lecture - we were shown Zang Tumb Tumb, an animated typographic film made in 1914. We looked at a few prints and poster before hand, using letters and words in dynamic and creative ways. But when put into a video, the words really come to life. After watching this, it got me thinking about my own project for the “ask me anything” assessment. Instead of a zine, maybeI could create my own animation?

Originally, I had thought about interviewing a dead person. But this just looks so cool, so why not interview a font.

ARCHITEXTURE

After looking out of Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Rear Window’, we looking out of our own windows to find typography in everyday objects and architecture.

I found an H E I W K, as seen above.

I heard this will be collected, along with everyone else’s type faces, and turned into an actual font. Keen to see that happen, and i’ll update you if it does :))

Das Triadische Ballet

“Developed by Oskar Schlemmer. The ballet became the most widely performed avant-garde artistic dance and while Schlemmer was at the Bauhaus from 1921 to 1929, the ballet toured, helping to spread the ethos of the Bauhaus”

Definitely interesting to watch. I couldn’t make it through the whole 30 minutes, but I fast forward checking out different clips. Its a great example of Bauhaus, and very entertaining to watch.

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