fedrigoni papers.

Fedrigoni UK Papers have released their new promotional calendars for 2011, it was inspired by the Matryoshka(Russian Doll) and each month the box gets smaller so they fit into one another. I want this! Why am I not in the UK??????!!!!

narrative. project7.

Mars Motion Graphics from Ian Arthur Spaeth on Vimeo.

This project started with a logo build of our company's logo through animating it in After Effects. You can see the logo build at the beginning of the piece above. We brainstormed for a few days as to how the logo should build onto the screen that brought another layer of information to the viewer about the company. We spent 2 weeks working on the logo build, and the last three weeks we worked on a second piece that was linear in nature and that some how worked in with the brand. I created an in-house, environmental motion graphic piece that would be installed in the store. It would be made up of 4 large HD flat panel screens. It worked with using the A in the Mars logo as a viewer into other information. The music in the clip is arbitrary, it was put in there to give an atmospheric feel as to how you would view the actual piece.

Story boarding this project was rather intense. I had four screens to work with and trying to figure out the best way to manipulate all of them was quite the task. With the logo build, i worked with using the sound of the sewing machine paired with the animation of the logo sewing in to create resolution in the viewers mind. Also trying to use the sound to help reinforce the tailoring side of the store. I found out that sound makes everything that much more cohesive. When there isn't sound, things just drag out much longer than what they really are. But something as simple as image and text together can create a very successful piece. You dont have to have every channel to make it great. With my project, I focused on the duration of how long things took to move on the screen and how long they stayed up on the screen. My piece was more of an ambiant piece that would run throughout the entire day. It had information up on it but I didn't want it to distract them too terribly much. I worked with trying to create unity across four screens by spanning information across multiple screens working in unison.

vislang. p3. pontificating.

Visual Communications from theory to practice
Shannon&Weaver brought up a few good points to keep in mind about visual communications:

1. Level A: Technical
1. How accurately can we communicate our message?
2. What system should we use to 'encode' and 'decode' our message?
3. Is that system universally compatible or does it require special equipment or knowledge
2. Level B: Semantic
1. How precisely does our choice of language. symbols or codes convey the meaning we intend?
2. How much of the message can be lost without the meaning being lost as well?
3. What language should we use?
3. Level C: Effectiveness
1. Does the message affect behavior the way we want it to?
2. What can we do if the required effect fails to happen?

The designers role is mainly the semantics of a project. Needing to communicate the message with out changing it or adding to it.

The technical level of design is often done prior/without the designer, which can be a fine thing or sometimes a bad thing. Figuring out which mode of communication can often make or break design. If your target audience is senior citizens who, for the most part, stay away from internet, and you create a website, you've completely missed the mark as to what would be the best mode of communication.

Feed back is a must in any good design. If you design something you think is brilliant and award-winning but never get any feed back it will more than likely bomb like no other if you dont treat it with the utmost care.

Noise is a rather big thing to keep in mind when it comes to design, and the successfulness of it. Noise, in this reading, is broken down into three levels. Level A are the obvious problems, printing smudges, spelling errors, etc. Level B noise is the receivers cultural background as well as their social group(s). Level C noise is, essentially, being able to pick it out from everything else. The overall effectiveness of the design. Noise can also be caused by excessive aesthetics applied to a message, thereby blurring what the actual message is behind unneeded and maybe even confusing aesthetic choices. However, if used right, aesthetic choices can actually help reinforce and reiterate. Redundancy adds context and aids understanding, and offers an "error check.

vislang. packaging. process.

(click on any image within this post for a larger version of the thumbnail shown in here)

Below are the sketches for each of the paths for the three packages. Cesar, Tylenol, and EVOO. For each packaging, we had to explore the other two modes of appeal and how they would look.

Cesar Canine Cuisine Sketches: Logos

Cesar Canine Cuisine Sketches: Ethos

Tylenol Sketches: Pathos

Tylenol Sketches: Ethos

 Rachael Ray Extra Virgin Olive Oil Sketches: Pathos

  Rachael Ray Extra Virgin Olive Oil Sketches: Logos

From here we chose one package to proceed with, I chose the Rachael Ray EVOO. From here we did more detailed sketches for the two modes of appeal.

RREVOO Detailed Sketches: Pathos

RREVOO Detailed Sketches: Logos

From here we picked one(or two) directions to start building in the computer and start building them in the computer.

RREVOO Digital: Pathos

RREVOO Digital: Logos

At this point, we were ready to pick our path for each mode of appeal and make iterations on those two paths. For my pathos direction, I needed a pattern of my olive trees to put in the window, here are my different patterns.

I also tried some different sizes and shapes of windows trying to get that iconic window shape.

For my logos direction I tried many different compositions of image to text.

From here I narrowed it down even farther and still iterated styles of the more specific packagings. I narrowed it down to two patterns and one window:

I narrowed the recipes down to one final layout and created a series of three recipes, all one of Rachael Ray's 30 Minute Meals:

Below are the final packagings with explanations about each mode:

original packaging(ethos) with the two new packagings(pathos in the middle, logos on the right).

the logos series. three recipes, pizza carbonara, basil pasta, & rigatoni.

callouts of the two modes of appeal.

in context shots.

Pathos

The pathos packaging was getting at the home-grown aspect of olive oil and olive oil production. Farmers of olive fields in Italy today still go out and pick the olives off the trees by hand before it goes through the process of becoming olive oil. The packaging is a simple die-cut of the iconic window on the front of the bottle that lets you literally look through the window, through the olive oil, and onto the back of the bottle that has an olive tree field on it. Again, trying to reenforce the idea of "Straight from the backyard" and the home-grown feel to italian olive oil.

Logos

The logos packaging focused on a series of recipes that the customer could make with the extra virgin olive oil they are about to buy. The recipes on the bottle are from Rachael Ray's 30 Minute Meals(all the recipes are also italian meals) The packaging focuses more about the recipe than the olive oil itself or the photography of the food. The ingredients of the meal are on the front of the bottle as well as the amount and the directions of how to prepare them are on the side. It makes it easy for the customer to know when else s/he needs to buy to make the meal. I was trying to figure out how to get the customer to pick up the packaging and turn it around instead of just looking at the front but never seeing the directions on the side. I decided that the label needed to wrap around the side of the bottle so the customer could visually see there was more information on the side of the bottle. I also used the photography of the dish itself to help renforce this direction of the customer to the side of the bottle.

vislang. proj2. mike mccoy.

Mike is an industrial designer who was head of the design department at Cranbrook for over 20 years. Some of the work he was involved in was more experimental design and taking risks. Prototyping is a giant must, you should be willing to let it change, be able to scrap it, build from it.

Activities, Environment, Interaction, Objects, Users, AEIOU is a way of looking at framing.

vislang. project2. modes of appeal. update.

ETHOS. ETHICAL. This is my new ethos packaging. Ethos is alllllll about credibility and trust and the ethics of others, especially with celebrities. This package is for Rachael Ray's EVOO(extra virgin olive oil). However, the packaging is all about Rachael Ray herself. Her photo takes up at least half of the space on the sticker. Not only this, but her company's name, Rachael Ray, is also written in her own handwriting. This definitely has her seal of approval, so you know it must be high quality.
INTENDED AUDIENCE. The busy mom.

LOGOS. LOGICAL. Medication is usually something that everyone has in their home. It's usually a staple in most peoples lives. When they run out of a bottle, they put it on the list to pick it up the next time they're at the grocery store. That being said, Tylenol doesn't really have to work too overly hard to sell its product to their customer. The only real competitors it has are the generic versions of tylenol, and possibly Advil and those other brand-name products. This product is straight up facts. It's the Tylenol red telling you whats in the pill and nothing more.
INTENDED AUDIENCE. Adults, both male and female.

PATHOS. EMOTIONAL. I chose Cesar Canine Cuisine as my pathos packaging. It's pretty straight forward with its emotional connection. A cute puppy on the front looking alert and excited. The colors and type treatment have been done up in a way that makes it come across as a higher-end product(when, really, this only cost 55¢). It's trying to appeal to the customer that this is a fancier food than the other products on the shelf next to it.
INTENDED AUDIENCE. Small dog owner, more than likely female over male.

vislang. projectwo. reading2.

Ethos, pathos, and logos are the three main forms of rhetoric according to Aristotle.

Ethos: Ethos is ethics. Ethos is talking about the credibility of the person/company/product/idea, about trustworthiness. Ethos is kind of like your morals in a sense. It is also affected by the reputation, if the person can be trusted.

Pathos: All about emotion. Pathos is the ability to make someone feel a certain way, anger towards someone/something, happy about an idea, etc. But to do this you need to know the ins and outs of pshycology

Logos: Logos is logic. Two types in fact, inductive and deductive enthymeme. With the first, you give them everything they need to come to the conclusion, no real work on their part. The second, you give them some basics and then draw them to the conclusion you want them to have.

source: ethos, pathos, and logos.

vislang. projecttwo. modes of appeal.

PATHOS. EMOTIONAL. I chose Cesar Canine Cuisine as my pathos packaging. It's pretty straight forward with its emotional connection. A cute puppy on the front looking alert and excited. The colors and type treatment have been done up in a way that makes it come across as a higher-end product(when, really, this only cost 55¢). It's trying to appeal to the customer that this is a fancier food than the other products on the shelf next to it.

LOGOS. LOGICAL. Medication is usually something that everyone has in their home. It's usually a staple in most peoples lives. When they run out of a bottle, they put it on the list to pick it up the next time they're at the grocery store. That being said, Tylenol doesn't really have to work too overly hard to sell its product to their customer. The only real competitors it has are the generic versions of tylenol, and possibly Advil and those other brand-name products. This product is straight up facts. It's the Tylenol red telling you whats in the pill and nothing more.

ETHOS. ETHICAL. This one was a bit harder, and I tried to find something that wasn't cleaning supplies or some sort of thing you apply to the body in some fashion. I found this product called Good Earth. It's a new brand under General Mills that is geared towards a healthy meal, one that isn't full of unnatural ingredients.  This is geared towards the people who are trying to eat healthier and more natural products. The packaging says no artificial flavors, no artificial preservatives, and 100% whole grain pasta. Good, hearty, healthy food. The packaging also is of the usual 'green' packaging. It has a moss green and light beige color scheme to it and in the top green there is a nice, simplistic, natural pattern/texture to it.

vislang. jazz poster. process.

In starting out with the matrix, i had to work on the concepts of rhetoric and had to tackle 10 concepts. Personification, hyperbole, pun, antithesis. irony, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, allegory, and parody. Some concepts were harder than others to say the least. From the matrix, I picked three directions. I picked pun, personification, and metaphor. 

FIRST DIRECTION: PERSONIFICATION: The first concept was about integrating 'Earl Klugh Quartet' in with the guitar. It's a very simple concept, but with a gorgeous rendering method it could have been quite a nice poster. Below are the five sketches that grew from this concept.

I ended up not going with direction simply because the concept behind it was very lacking, and simple, and rather shallow. The other two concepts were much better than this one.

SECOND DIRECTION: PERSONIFICATION: My second of the three concepts was a personification of the guitar as Earl Klugh's bright smile(he's a very happy man). I used the hole of the guitar as the place to put the smiling mouth. Below are the five iterations of where personification went. Of the three concepts, this was also not my final direction for the poster.

I ended up not going with direction because through the critique of them, they came across as too cartoony in the drawings. However I attempted to draw some with a more realistic mouth and it was just way too creepy and odd looking.

THIRD DIRECTION: PERSONIFICATION: My third concept was metaphor, taking the strings of the guitar and portraying them as wind to represent his light-hearted, airy, smooth jazz. This was the direction that I ended up going with for my final poster. Below, again, are the five sketches for this concept.

Of the three concepts, this was the most solid. It had the depth a poster of this size needed, while not being too cartoony or too boring. From here we explored rendering methods for this concept.

This first concept was about taking that idea of fluidity and smoothness in his music and apply it to the rendering method through a very fluid drawing style. I really like this idea but it really would have taken too much work to refine it to the point of it working successfully. Not to mention the colors would have to be spot on for you to see everything just right.

This second concept was a computer based idea that dealt with simplification of objects and a layering method of transparencies. I also thought about using a cursive-type hand rendered type for the poster. This idea didn't really go with my concept or artist, so it as well got scrapped.

This concept was taking analogue and digital and combining it together. I was working with building the poster in the computer but creating textures with watercolor to fill it in. I used this concept of digital and analogue together in the final poster, but just not in this way. I also thought about doing hand lettering of more slender style to echo the guitar neck.

This rendering method started getting me in the right direction. This was was a mainly analogue, watercolor only, idea that also involved vines rather than wind. I liked the water color but not the vine concept.

Now this rendering method topped the cake. This integrated the watercolor nicely with the digital, and it did it in a really nice way with the water color as part of the lines giving off a blue glow from the strings to echo wind/water and give them a second level of meaning. This is also the style of lettering i ended up going with, a more condensed lettering style(i ended up using univers in the end). From here we then went into building the actual poster in full scale.

This is the very first fully put together poster, and it's definitely rough. Everything was either watercolor or vector. Everything is also the same size, the text, the leaves, the strings, everything is competing horribly. The text was too digital feeling, and the leaves were wayy too big. For the guitar i watercolored a texture and built the guitar in the computer and put the texture into the shape. This guitar, however, doesn't even read guitar at all, it reads more vase than anything else really. The composition is even off in this poster. The guitar is perfectly vertical and doesn't interact with the foreground at all. The strongs are also too contained within the frame of the poster. There were so many good things i got out of this first round.

This was the next poster in the process. The guitar is now a photograph that has been put with watercolor background and watercolor leaves with vector type and vector lines on top of the watercolored strings. The type is now much more refined and now out in Univers. The issues with this was the guitar looking too dark, the text being too small, the color of the leaves, and the watercolored lines. The green wasn't working for the leaves and the blue watercolor on the lines were too dark and not big enough to see it. We also wanted to be able to see the hole of the guitar.

This was the poster that I had up on the wall for the Folly to see. The guitar looks much better now, it's a much better photograph, the strings of the guitar have finally all been removed from the photo. The text is much better and interacting with the strings much more successfully. However, it is suggested to me to add the bad back on the 'H' of KLUGH so they read it as an H and not as two I's. The leaves, however, are still not working as red, they suggest that I work with an unnatural color. The watercolor is working much better with these lines, but maybe still a bit too dark.

The judging happened and we found out who they picked, mine was not picked, but we got feedback from what they thought. The biggest issue was that the strings didn't come across well enough with the competing leaves. The way to fix this was to pull back the watercolor of the strings and either change the color of the leaves or just change the leaf to something completely different.

I first tried the leaf a different color, but leaf still overpowered the composition too much. From here I tried two other concepts, snowflakes, and wind swirls.

The wind swirls, I feel, are simple and nice and understated, but inevitably it simplified the composition down too much.

The snowflakes worked much better than both the leaves and the swirls. It gets the idea of wind across better while still being less obtrusive than the leaves but more complex than the swirls. I ended up pulling back the watercolor from the strings a bit so they weren't too overpowering and this is the final poster idea.

No, my poster didn't win, but i still stand by my poster and feel it is a very strong and well done poster. I also love Joseph's poster, I think it is a gorgeously simple and elegant poster that will represent the concert amazingly well. Yeah it sucked to not be chosen, but this was such a great learning experience that it really doesn't bother me at all. The final poster they chose was a gorgeous one.

Here are the corresponding black and white ads that goes with the poster.