typefour. concept map.

Symposium vs Conference. what we could come up with was that a symposium is more relaxed and laid-back. It's also more hands-on and personal, whereas a conference is a more formal type of meeting.

This is my beginning concept map for our Typographic Symposium. This is the start of a fourteen week group project with the entire junior class to create a typographic symposium for high school students and kcai freshman. This symposium is hopefully going to give high school students and freshman here at kcai exposure to what design is, is not, and what it can be.

i feel that i definitely over-worked this concept map design wise. i kept pushing and pushing it. if i had more time i would have gone back and stripped it down some. but for the amount of time we had, i'm quite pleased with what i was able to come up with.

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.