Assignment 7 - The final assignment

The final assignment, assignment 7, incorporates everything we have learnt throughout the course of the module. The concepts of colour, gestalt principles, and the many other concepts were of concern to the assignment we had to do. The assignment, creating a children's storybook, would be difficult in the sense that we had to think of entire layouts, which colours to use, how many pages to write etc. Without proper planning of the layout, I am almost certain it would be difficult to create the children's storybook just like that.

In detail, the assignment goes like this:

Theme: God created fly and forgot why (Group project)

§Design and prepare a story book for children (Ages 6 to 9)

§Number of pages - around 12

§Do not use more than 900 words for copy (story)

§Prepare design document

§Book Size: 7 X 8.5 inches

Medium: Print

Important:

–Pay attention to layout and information flow

§Objectives

–Proper usage of type and content organization

–Developing skills in defining visual treatment specs

–Understanding the process and importance of creating design document

As such, my group members, Eugene Timothy Poh and Ang Jie Li, Jeremy, sat down to discuss our plan for the storybook.

After much discussion, we decided to keep the book simple and uncomplicated in terms of graphical layout, so as to prevent children from losing interest in the book. Children, as we have discussed, have short attention spans which would be detrimental towards creating a confusing book for them. In any case, we think that they would just put down the confusing book and go on to play with their toys (which were of more interest and fun to them).

Also, from the discussions that we had, we had to implement the many concepts that Mr Reddy had introduced during the course of NM2208. With the previous exercises and assignments given to us, we were more than prepared to observe the "rules of engagement" in making the storybook more enticing for children.

For example, we understand that figure and ground, from gestalt principles, play an important role in storybooks. Furthermore, storybooks for children should be in colour, since during the child's learning process "colour" is important to convey the story better. During the tutorials we attended, we have received constructive comments from our fellow students that our drawings were very well-done, and should be left alone without colour. However, we felt that giving the drawings a selective colouring, instead of colouring it totally, would give a better result than leaving our storybook in black and white. This is because, as I have mentioned above, colour is an important component in conveying the story and attracting the attention of the child, since they are undeniably visual creatures.

Our story, "Timmy and the Tree", is a story of friendship. The story revolves around our main character, Timmy, and his friend "Tree". The friendship blossomed into one where even after many years had passed, due to unforseen circumstances they lose each other, they are able to find each other again. The storyboard in rhymes, we felt, would attract parents and children alike who might like rhymes instead of normal reading.

This is our storyboard:

Storyboard: Timmy and the Tree

Page 4

There once lived a boy named Timmy

Who was lonely and had no friends.

A little boy an age of three,

Who did most things full of glee.

Page 5

Timmy plays alone a lot,

And wonders if he’ll have friends someday.

It is not like he cries or bawls,

But just that he was shy and small.

Page 6

Little Timmy was bored one day

As he ran out of toys to play

Suddenly he had this wacky idea

And decided to plant a seed

Page 7

Timmy stayed with the seedling all day,

And made a wish before sleeping that night.

“I wish this tree grows big and strong,

To be with me forever long.”

Page 8

In the morning little Timmy woke up

And his first thoughts were of delight.

A bigger tree made Timmy know,

That’s a companion within his sight.

Page 9

Timmy said hi,

But without reply

Page 10

Timmy was sad, but only for awhile.

And so he continued to care for the tree.

Page 11

One day Timmy sat under the tree,

Exclaiming, “I’m bored to bits come play with me!”

Then suddenly, the tree said to him,

“Tie a swing on my branch, we’ll have some fun!”

Page 12

This marked the start

Of a beautiful friendship between Timmy and the tree.

Timmy shared all his thoughts with the tree,

And in return, the tree lent a listening ear.

He took good care of the tree,

And spent all day with it.

All was well between Timmy and the tree.

Most importantly, Timmy had a friend.

Page 13

In days of hunger and of rumbling stomachs,

The tree bore fruits for Timmy’s tummy.

Page 14

In days of scorching heat or chilly rain,

The tree was there to ease his pain.

Page 15

But alas, nothing stays forever!

Timmy had to leave his village to study.

And in turn left behind his buddy.

It was sad but life went on.

Page 16

A few years passed

Little Timmy had finished school in the city

More years followed,

Little Timmy grew up and started a family

Poor Tree had been forgotten, had he not?

This was exactly what growing up had brought.

Page 17

Decades passed, and Timmy retired.

Suddenly, Timmy remembered the friend whom he admired.

“How is he I wonder?” thought Timmy

And took the next bus back to his old place in a hurry.

Page 18

When Timmy reached his old house,

He almost broke into a run.

So excited was he,

That he tripped on an old tree stump.

Tree said “hello Timmy”, and Timmy was sad.

Where were the glorious branches that Tree once had?

“You must be tired”, said Tree, and raised his stump

Timmy sat down and they started to talk on.

Page 19

Memories refreshed as both looked back

Hours passed and night began to creep

Words were few as both stayed silent

And before long Timmy drifted into sleep.

From this assignment, I personally have understood the importance of implementing the concepts learned from the module. I have also learnt that a children's storybook, despite looking easy to create, is a tough task to handle because of the many details that we had to include. For example, even the choice of paper was a tough decision to make. During the tutorial session, Miss Swati suggested that we use different kinds of paper to experiment with as our images had a nice rustic feel to it. Hence, we set out to Bras Basah and Funan Center to source out the different kinds of paper.

From our selections, we decided on either brown parchment or grey textured paper. With the grey textured paper in our hands, we went ahead to POD (Printing on Demand) at Bras Basah to print out our finalized book.

The font we chose, Ninifont, was decided after much experimentation with other fonts. We originally had a few fonts to choose from, but ninifont turned out to suit our storybook better.

Ninifont looks like this.

Hence, the experimentation process was actually one of give-and-take between our group members. Lucky for us, most of our ideas were agreed on without much complications.

Another issue that was placed into our discussion is that a few of our tutorial members mentioned that it was too sad a story to be for children. However, we decided to keep the ambiguity at the end because we felt children should, while their learning process is at its peak, be exposed to a meaningful story such as this, rather than the typical storybooks that only highlight the happy times of life.

That's all for assignment 7.

Assignment 6 - Gestalt Principles

Assignment 6, like most of the rest felt (I think), was a breather as compared to the other assignments. However, Gestalt Principles were not.

The assignment goes like this:

Theme: Design analysis (PowerPoint presentation)

–group project (group of 2)

–
select one good and one bad (in your opinion) design (e.g. poster, magazine advertisement or information brochure)

–
analyze both designs and build a case to support your opinion.

–
analysis should be based on visual principles (visual form, visual harmony, colour and gestalt principles)

Hence, the assignment required us to create a powerpoint presentation. Together with my group mate, Eugene Timothy Poh, we sourced out 2 posters that were in contrast to one another. Its a classic case of the Good v.s. the Ugly.

These are our presentation slides:














As you can see, we thoroughly analyzed the two posters side by side with Gestalt Principles, for example Figure and Ground. From this assignment, we have understood these concepts taught by Mr Reddy during lecture better. After all, with practice comes perfection. :)

Classroom Activity : Gestalt Principles

In this classroom activity, we are supposed to come up with 3 different designs to demonstrate the gestalt principles. We were given 20 minutes to come up with these 3 concepts, which incorporates the shapes of a square, triangle and circle.

This is the assignment in detail:

Gestalt principles: (20 minutes)

–Create 3 images to demonstrate any 3 gestalt principles.

Procedure:

–Create 3 simple shapes (e.g.. Circle, square and triangle)

–Using these 3 shapes try to demonstrate any 3 principles of gestalt.

–You may repeat, scale and change colour of the shapes

With this assignment in mind, my friends and I sat down to discuss what the assignment meant. As such, the process of experimentation occurred. I decided to draw upon the concepts of Figure and Ground, Proximity and Continuity. This was what I experimented with:



After much experimentation, I decided to draw these concepts.

This concept on Proximity. As you can see from the roughs earlier I didn't want to add the black triangles inside. However, I thought that it would explain the idea of proximity better in this context.



The concept of continuity. Yes I know its a little cheap, however I felt that this concept shows a continuous flow, through direction and movement from inside to outside, or vice versa.

And the concept of Figure and Ground, with the different symbols within one another. The ground here would be the triangle, and the figure would be the square. And then the square is the figure to the circle. As you can see, the circle is blue in colour, which sets it apart from the "ground". In any case, the colour is also different in the square, and also in the triangle.

By drawing these concepts, it was initially difficult to grasp the concept of Gestalt Principles. It was after much discussion with my friends that helped me to draw the concepts out. With their constructive comments, it made the class activity easier to handle.

Assignment 5 - Greeting Card - Theme : Love

In assignment 5, the students of NM2208 are expected to come up with a possibly the most difficult assignment of all - a greeting card. Here is the assignment in detail.

§Greeting card: Theme - LOVE

–Pick your favorite quote related to the theme (love, romance, tenderness, etc)

–Design a greeting card (sponsored by cupid greeting card Pte ltd)

–Card should convey the theme primarily through colours with minimal use of photographs and other visual elements.

–Size of the artwork: A4 or smaller

–Submissions should be in the form of colour print out.

–

The greeting card, on the theme of "love", is related to the lecture on colour. Colour is an important concept in art and design, as it compliments whatever beautiful drawings that one can draw. I feel that colour is an important concept because sometimes black & white does not convey a message very well.

Hence, I present to you my greeting card, "Passion".



and this is the inner page:




As we all know, Love is a mind-boggling thing. Somethings with love one can feel happy, yet sometimes with love, it can also be dark and sad for that person. Also, when one is in love, one gets hit with different feelings and emotions that identifies with love. A better description of this would perhaps be the delirious feelings that one encounters when they are madly in love. This was the intended effect of this greeting card.

I chose the colours of Red and Black to show this point. Using colour burn, I edited the background to become the reddish hue it is now. White was chosen for the font to represent the purity of love amidst all the dark, delirious love.

Also, I used different words and sentences to create the "delirious" words at the bottom.

Throughout the entire experimentation for ideas, I kept in mind the importance of colour for this assignment on love. Love can be described in many colours, depending on the definition of love. My focus here is more on passionate love rather than adolescent or happy love.

During the experimentation of different colours to suit my greeting card, I had tried the colours of light blue and pink. However, it did not turn out so well for the theme of "passion". Also, with the colours available in the standard colour palette, I realised that giving the card a deep red hue will do the job.

From this assignment, I have learnt that different colours can provide different meanings to different words. For example, if I had given a baby blue colour to my greeting card, it would not have come out alright. Colours can, and will, play a part in conveying an effective message.

Assignment 4 - Save, prevent, kill... : Poster design

Here is assignment 4. In this assignment, the students of NM2208 are supposed to come up with a poster design along the lines of "save, prevent, kill (something)". In detail, the assignment goes like this:

§Save, prevent, kill…: Poster design

–Pick a topic related to the theme (e.g.. Save forest, kill mosquitoes, save singlish, stop pollution etc.)

–Write a copy (text which goes on poster) of not more than 150 words

–Design the poster such that it coveys the meaning through layout (placement of visual elements - photos, text, graphics elements etc)

–Size of the artwork: A3

–Submissions should be in the form of colour print out.

For this assignment, I figured I would do a "stop animal cruelty" kind of poster. I am not an animal activist, but there is this particular cat, nicknamed "Tripod", that hangs out at the void deck of my place. Tripod is a 3-legged cat that I have seen "prowling" around my neighbourhood, and the moment I laid eyes on him, I felt intense hatred for the person/dog who did this to him. How could anyone do this to a poor little cat? After asking around, I found out that apparently he was a victim of animal cruelty by his previous owner who had left him to die.

Hence, who better than Tripod deserves the lead role in my poster? :) And here it is:


I chose to give the poster a black background because I felt that black, being chic in nature, would attract the audience-on-the-go to take a glimpse at the poster. Also, it is a simple colour that represents a sombre mood, which I thought fit the mood of the poster perfectly. I chose a simple font, garamond, to present a simple message for the viewers, so as not to complicate the poster. I felt that with a simple message and a good choice of words, the effect intended on the viewer could be heightened.

As Mr Reddy mentioned in lecture, a good poster has to tell the story quickly. This is because in the busy lives of the average person, they can only afford a quick glimpse of the poster. This is also a reason why I chose little words instead of many to convey my message.

Also, a good poster is attention grabbing. The attention-grabber in this poster would be Tripod himself. With his 3 legs and a stump for his 4th, I believe that the message is clear: "STOP ANIMAL CRUELTY"

Lastly, the last line "STOP ANIMAL CRUELTY" is presented in red because I feel that red brings out a sense of "warning" to the viewer. Red, as explained in lecture, represents "danger", "blood". Hence, through the use of a red font, my intentions are to explain to the reader the cruelty against Tripod.

As mentioned in the lecture, a stark and simple poster can convey a message more effectively. I hope my poster is simple enough. I have observed "harmony" throughout the experimentation of the poster. After receiving comments on the original poster I created, I decided to change the layout of this poster so as to appear more harmonious with my message.

Another thing that I have observed while creating this poster is how to control the attention of the viewer. In this poster, the attention is caught by the picture in the middle, which then goes to the top and to the bottom.

Assignment 3 - U C What I C

This is assignment 3:

§U C what I C: Visual story

§Visual narrative – Telling a story with just 10 pictures.

§

§Procedure:

§Buy, Beg, borrow, steal (don’t quote me on this one) a camera. Even 8$ disposable camera would do.

§Load it with a colour negative roll/Memory Flashcard.

§Write/Select a short story

§Try to communicate the story using no more than 10 visuals (no text).

§Create a storyboard of your idea/s in your sketchbook

§Translate you storyboard into pictures using your camera

§Get it processed and printed (size 6x4 inches). Mount them neatly on A5 size paper.

§

Important: Story should

–Have a plot

–A beginning (hooking the audience)

–Middle (drama, building tempo)

–An ending with a twist

This assignment requires the use of a camera to take pictures, from which we use to describe a story. The story, as written above, should have a plot, a beginning, a middle portion, as well as an ending with a twist.

In the lecture by Mr Reddy, he explained about the importance of a picture frame and the rule of thirds, expressing the need for it to present a clearer picture to the viewers. This is also required to ensure that a clearer message is conveyed to the reader. I tried to include the rule of thirds into my pictures, as well as to focus on selective focus

These are my pictures:













The story goes like this.

1. This picture shows the setting, somewhere which involves palm trees and wind and darkened day.

2. A girl is evidently lonely and sad

3. She is pondering over love and thinking of someone she loves.

4. The girl looks out into the vast ocean, reminiscent memories invading her. She makes a prayer.

5. A collage of photographs are spread over a table, showing a glimpse of the person whom she misses. All the picture-perfect moments with him.

6. The girl mourns over the loss of her loved one. She grips tightly a shirt that used to belong to him.

7. The girl mascara-filled face shows that she has been crying.

8. The girl sits alone at her void deck.

9. The twist: The silhouette of the person walking into the distance. He is not dead, as some of the photographs might have suggested.

10. Life is still and empty.

I chose to represent some photographs in black and white and some in colour to symbolize the depression of the girl. Many a times when a person is under depression, life appears to become slower while they start reminiscing, and quickens when they return to reality. Hence, the colour contrast between colour and black and white is supposed to represent this shift from dreamworld to reality. Also, I tried to implement the rule of thirds into the photography.

Lastly, I also used Adobe Photoshop to edit the pictures so as to present the photographs as part of the rule of thirds.

Assignment 2 - Making images talk

Making images talk

This exercise is for developing skills in controlling visual message

Exercise:

• Subject: Select an object or activity or location (telephone, running, bus stop, car, cooking etc). Try not to select an existing subject (eg. Toilet or well known sports symbols)
• Create a representative image of the object (you may choose either iconic or indexic representation)
• Distill the image through process of abstraction. (atleast 5 levels of abstraction from realistic to abstract) Indicate at what point in the abstraction process the object looses its specific identity and communicates generic meaning. Select that image and develop it into a symbol.
  
• Print level of abstraction on A3 size paper and final symbol on A4 paper

Well, the crux of this assignment, as explained above, is to create levels of abstraction on a particular item. I have chosen a slice of pizza as the item. And here is the original JPEG file:



With the pizza in mind, I had to create 5 levels of abstraction. From what Mr Reddy described during lecture, the abstraction relies on "stripping" away the details of the item to make it more minimalist in nature. This means that part by part, the picture's details are to be removed, until the stage where it loses its generic meaning (e.g. no longer a slice of pizza) and lastly a symbol.

And hence, this is my answer to the question:



I chose stage 4 as the point where the abstraction loses its identity and generates generic meaning. The triangular shape and its dots may not appear to be a slice of pizza as compared to stage 1. At first sight, a friend whom I showed stage 4 to (without showing the other stages) thought it looked like a slice of cheese with holes in it. Also, I removed the colours from stage 3 to stage 4 because colour, as part of the abstraction, represents a layer on the pizza.

Stage 5 would be the end product of the abstraction - the abstract symbol that represents more than one meaning. It may perhaps signify a pie chart, or a slice of pizza out of the entire pan, or many other interpretations. I personally chose this as the symbol because it has a general meaning to it. Personally, I can picture pizza restaurants with this symbol as their signature icon. The reason why I chose to invert the colours inside out (black in and white out) is because I do not get a better effect than that I get from doing the opposite of black out and white in.

That's all for assignment 2.