Folding Videos

Letter Form - Pan in

First story board

includes a zoom in (indicated by pink arrows)

But not rotation of camera.

Second story board, on post it notes making it easy to rearrange or rectify mistakes.

This one includes a 90 degree camera movement as well as a zoom in.

The folding movement proved difficult to render by hand.

I preferred this method of stop framing where possible, as the subtle highlights and shadows created by the camera made it so much easier to follow what was happening.

Letter Form - vertical/horizontal movement

Taking the initial folding animation, I tried to storyboard a possible horizontal movement across the frame. As 

always, start simple and get the rubbish ideas out first.

Considering ways in which the circle could move

Trying to make it resemble the 'O' o the word FOLD a little more.

Folding and moving? This idea would need a lot more refining if were to work.

The folds would need to coincide rotation of the rolling I think..

I decided to take photographs of the actual process of the paper unfolding.

I think this better explains my intentions, as without a lot of hard work shading and 
colouring the story boards, it is hard for others to see what I can in my head!

Design for Digital - Storyboards

Initial words drawn from the 'randomiser' were 'ting', 'fold' and 'cold'

We had to interpret each word as best we could, using gestures of line etc to suggest movement, or convey a feeling. I was pretty disappointed with my work, though we did have a very limited amount of time to produce these pieces and I was feeling particularly uninspired!

Fold is a little difficult to see, though I liked the concept of working with folding letters, and decided this was the word that would offer the most potential as far as a piece of motion graphics goes. So this is the word I decided to move forward with.

Stationary animation

Horizontal movement (above)

pan out (below)

Different concept

These 3 story boards are the result of the first workshop with Fred, where we explored the very basics of camera movement. I still wasn't happy with what I was producing here, though I think it's evident that I at least understood what I was doing!

I loved working on post it notes, brilliant idea, simply because it allowed you to commit to drawing in a frame with the knowledge that if you did it wrong you could pull it off and start again, or rearrange the frames into a better sequence. I also feel it allows for more experimentation, and ideas generation. Super.

What is good? THE PRODUCT

What is good? EVALUATION

The beginning of this brief was quite an eye opener for me, and looking back I can happily say I've learnt a good deal. I found the Photoshop and Indesign tutorials particularly useful, how to prepare a document for print is something I've always felt a little confused about, and to finally have clarity on this is fantastic. Then on to the seminars with Lorenzo, which were also extremely helpful, usually leading onto an in depth group discussion which in turn lead to my own personal research into print processes. 

Although I have done an adequate amount of research into the many areas of print production, I feel this is the area my project is most lacking, as I have always found it difficult to show evidence of this. I forget to mention sources or print off relevant websites as I browse through them. I made it priority to gather research from books so I had a hard copy to start with and in doing so managed to obtain information from a far more varied and useful set of sources. However, I think I failed to show as much evidence of research into print as I should have, as this is a print module after all.

From the research I had gathered however, mainly the primary, I began to piece together the foundations of this brief. This process was slow and difficult, and the least enjoyable part in my opinion. This process however, made it clear to me how much I progressed through the first year. Instead of getting frustrated because the project was unfolding so slowly, I began to take measures to speed it up and to get things moving again. When the project reached a point of confusion, I took steps to clarify it; this is such a huge change in the way I was working last year I can't quite believe it. I do however, feel as though I spent a little too long on the product concept, the identity design and such like. Though this was an important part of the module, I realise now that other areas got neglected. This was a print module, and I was getting a little too involved in the product itself. 

As far as practical, hands on research goes, I didn't feel it was necessary to try foil blocking or flock up in the print workshop. Mainly because this wasn't relevant to my project, but also because industry doesn't the same techniques to apply finishes, so I wondered what there was to learn from this process. I did enjoy the results of those who did however, and I feel I learnt from their failures and achievements anyway.

As the project moved on, I began to get really involved in it. The feedback from group crits was positive and insightful, helping me develop my ideas further. I continued to expand my research and knowledge where appropriate, and I eventually got to the stage where I could begin making the elements of the product, ready for photographing. With each element of the product came clarification of their print methods, and I experimented as much as I could with the tools that I thought necessary. Soon the box was made and I could begin to but all the elements together. The photographs of the product turned out well, and with the help of Photoshop I was able to make them look worthy of a professional design board. I booked a print session down in digital print for the 5 A2 boards to be printed, as the glossy paper bought out the best in each photograph. I did learn one thing though, spell-check your work before sending it to print, no matter how much of a rush you're in! There was at least 5 mistakes in the final boards, simply because I was so rushed. I'll not forget in future. Apart from this, the 5 boards looked professional, clearly identifying the product and how it was to be printed.

Overall, one of the most successful projects on this course. I really feel I had a chance to pool everything I had learnt last year, and too great effect as well. I no longer feel that the problems I pointed out in previous evaluations are holding me back, and I think this is evident in what I have produced.

What is good? Pt. 2 UPDATE

It's about time I posted some of the work I'm actually doing for this brief.
A lot of the research and explanation can be found on my design context blog, so you should have a look there first if you're interested.

I have made a great deal of progress in the last week or so. I have redefined the context and audience of my product, and so clarifying its direction. Again details of this can be found on the context blog.
Anyway, I have had a wooden crate mocked up for photographing, and I am very close to identifing the specific style or identity of the product I am packaging.

I think I am getting a little too caught up in this aspect of the brief, and worry I might neglect the focal point; print processes.
Anyway, there is still plenty of time. For now, here's the logo I've been working on.

Finally decided on a butterfly style logo.

Butterflies being a symbol of change, and so relating nicely back to my

original argument. It's also a nice shape to work with.

Type Workshops.

I never really considered myself a type based designer, it's something that doesn't come naturally to me at all. That doesn't mean, however, that I do not appreciate it's worth, or admire when it is done well. The type workshops are already beginning to make my head hurt, and it hasn't helped that I have missed a few. So this is me trying to make sense of what I have been told, and filling in the gaps of that which I have missed.


The first session.
We looked at how different aspects of a piece of typography can change, however subtly, how it is interpreted. We started off by picking typefaces to reflect out voices, I chose Curlz, just for a giggle, but it proved to have some interesting results. We managed to pick out exactly what kind of voice someone who spoke in Curlz might have, and it certainly wasn't mine!
We also looked at how we can portray emotion using type. Using the word 'dog', we tried to change how the dog was feeling using different typefaces. The results were all relatively similar, but it was the minor changes in positioning, size, and weight that really made the word seem 'happy' or 'sad'.


For the 'sad' dog, I chose Baskerville - regular. This serif font is more formal than most of the sans serif fonts out there, and the lowercase letters are less attention grabbing than if I had chosen uppercase. However the real reason for me choosing this is because the 'ear' on the G, actually looks like a dogs ear, lowered like it has just been told off. The loop of the G also looks similar to a tail. 
The positioning of the word on a page also has a huge baring on how it is read. For instance, I've made this image bigger so that you can see it, but I would've made it very small, and positioned it somewhere towards the bottom of the page, possibly to the right hand corner, or central. Both of these create a feeling of loneliness or solitude, adding to the dog's unhappiness.. :( 

The second session.
This session I missed, though I have tried my own experiments based on what others have told me. They were looking at sentences, and how the problems faced in the previous session are duplicated by the presence of more words! 

The first problem being, how to break a sentence up without destroying it's readability? Sometimes what looks good, doesn't always read good, and therefore this should be one of the first things to consider when laying out a piece of type. After a while of playing around, these are the two variations I chose for my proverb. The first example reads almost like a line from a poem, there is a slight rhyme in the words 'cannot' and 'spots' which I quite like. But then the second example totally breaks that. It reads slightly disjointed, but seems to have more impact this way. 

Interesting stuff. These are the things that go totally unnoticed, 

unless you spend a bit of time trying to decode them

Finally, there was a mention of kerning. The way to do this properly, so I have been told, is to take the biggest area of negative space and  reflect that across the entire word. As you can see using my name, the biggest area of blank space is between the L and the A. Using that as a base, I spaced the rest of the letters to reflect that area. Simples. 

(the top example is the newly kerned version)

The third session.

(will be posted as soon as I recover the work from college!)

Summer Postcards.

This was the first project back after summer, and our introduction to the print module, which I'm currently enjoying very much. This year seems a lot more lecture based already, as opposed to last year where we spent most of our time finding things out ourselves. It's quite refreshing to sit and listen to someone tell you things. Anyway, I digress. We were asked to produce 4 postcard sized pieces. One full colour, one 2 colour logo, one 3 colour word, and one single colour pictogram. The idea behind this being an exploration into the possibilities when faced with a problem such as a limited colour palette. How can you used those two colours to create more colours? Using variation of tints and overlays, a lot more is possible that I first thought. Or not even that, I just didn't think to think about it until it was pointed out. Anyway, You may notice that my 'word' postcard is in fact two colour, not three, but that was sue to a misunderstanding.

Another thing I enjoyed about this brief was how easily I slipped back into the way of working, I thought I had forgotten how to get things done this summer. I know it was only a short brief, and not really worth much, as well as the fact that this is marked mainly on our knowledge of print techniques...

Despite this, I knocked out a fair few design sheets, I had an overall theme, a message, the whole lot.

What a great project to start back with.

Summer Project.

I won't post anything to do with what I did over summer, a lot of that is already on my first year blog, in all it's barely comprehensible glory. Instead I shall show you the out come of what I finally decided to look at.
As I spent a lot of my time working in the pub, and I've been looking for an excuse to do something with rubbish, and there is a lot of waste in that place, I put two and two together. I asked my co-workers to save what they swept up off the floor when I wasn't there, and when I was there I did it myself. I ended up with a full black bin liner of everything swept up from behind the bar at the end of each shift. There was all manner of surprising objects in there, and I began the mammoth task of separating, washing, and recording all I had collected.
The result was a set of books, a book for each material collected, i.e. glass, plastic, metal.. Each book was laid out differently, using a different method each time. In theory it would have been brilliant! Had I put the time in and got the whole set complete. I ended up with 3 books instead of the desired 5. However, I do feel I got a good deal of what there was to get out of this project. I put more thought than physical work into it, which I feel was necessary to mentally prepare myself after a good two months of vegetating. Overall, it could've been better, but a good effort and concept none the less.