Only (Guest Lecture):
Only is a digital design company based in Leeds. Firstly, they described misconceptions about web designers:
Web designers don't need to know code.
Web designers ARE real designers.
Its not boring.
It is important.
It is a fast pace industry.

I learned from them that the primary way of interacting is branding and this can be done through images, typeface and a colour scheme.

They have worked on projects such as:
Rebranding Goldsmith's university,
Design for Europe,
Lost Village,
That's the Spirit,

and Digital Day.
We were told ab

http://www.residentadvisor.net/event.aspx?662106

https://www.bimadday.org.uk

I was most interested in the design side of the Lost Village project as I really like the way it is designed, the typeface and the ideas behind it. I like the idea of having a tribal background and I was impressed with the fact they had also worked with Bring Me the Horizon. The group of 4 has done really impressive work and I am interested in how they approach their projects. They also offer an internship which is also encouraging. They demonstrate that you can start a successful and growing business from as little as two people. I enjoyed the lecture very much and thought it was useful and encouraging.

After Effects:
In this tutorial, we made an animation on After Effects. We began by creating or getting an image from the internet. It had to be quite a simple image and I chose this:

http://www.clipartpanda.com/categories/deer-clip-art-vector

I then digitally traced this in Illustrator and gave it my own colours. I didn't like the gradient effect so I stuck to block colour for my design. I did come across a problem in this session, however. The line that was around the deer could not be deleted because of the way it was traced around the shape. I therefore decided not to animate the deer and instead chose to animate leaves falling around the deer. This is what the landscape looked like: 

The background is very basic as well as the leaves and I could have made it more impressive. However, it is minimal which is effective and the deer and the leaves definitely stand out as the main elements of the image.

I struggled with After Effects as there was a lot of steps that I struggled to follow. However, we began in Illustrator, which I am comfortable with. Before I realised there would be a problem with separating the sections of the deer because of the black line, I split up the clipart into layers.

I originally planned to animate the antlers, the tail and the ears but later figured out I could. However it was a useful part of the process as I had never sectioned up an image into layers and will probably need to know how to do this in the future. I then converted the image into After Effects:

It was important to select Composition-  Restrain Layer Sizes so all the layers would remain the same and this gave me my project opened up in After Effects, with all the different layers. 

I was now able to move around my image as well as open the image back in Illustrator and change parts of it and then it would automatically change in After Effects. The duration of the movie would be 10 seconds long and the preset would be HDTV 1080 25:

I was now ready to begin animating the image. I then realised the fault in my image and created leaves to fall past the deer. When looking at each layer by the timeline, you can rotate each layer as well as gradually move them down the page, according to the timeline. This took a lot of perfecting as I found, when I was rotating my layers, that some would rotate too quickly and then have to redo the rotation to fit the length of the sequence. I eventually made them effectively fall over my deer but sometimes they would go behind the deer so I had to set the deer clipart far back so they would all look as if they were falling in front of the deer. The end result was successful, although it took me a while to get here because I struggled to follow the steps. 

The tutorial was very informative and I came away with a whole new set of skills when it comes to Illustrator and After Effects. Although the artwork is basic, I think the animation is very effective and this is the most important aspect of the task. I enjoyed the workshop and I am happy with the result. 

Visual Storytelling
We have always told stories, even before language. We enjoy stories (films, books, comics etc) that take us out of our existence and place us somewhere else. This is what we thought about  at the beginning of the seminar. However, a successful story needs to start with a storyboard. The seminar was about how to storyboard, with some good examples given.
Step 1 of storyboarding is introducing a character. Step 2 is exploring the human condition and step 3 is realising the impossible followed by the final step, to suspend disbelief. These seem like very abstract sounding concepts but they are crucial to a story, as in a story there is no boundaries. We first looked at a famous storyboard, the Hollywood Formula.

https://www.marsdd.com/news-and-insights/what-hollywood-can-teach-entrepreneurs-about-a-great-pitch/

Following on from the previous lecture that focused on plot and essential assets to a story, we can see that this formula is a linear approach to a plot. An example of this plot is an animation called The Lighthouse by Martin Jonmark. This follows a pattern similar to the Hollywood formula as there is a crisis which is resolved but interrupted by another crisis which is also resolved and followed by a plot twist that may be described as ambiguous as I was unsure whether the lighthouse sank or whether it only appeared to sink. Nevertheless, the man in the end is playing his violin, alive. This is the resolution of the story.

http://www.martenjonmark.com/short/short.html

The actual plot for The Lighthouse is this:

Act 1: the lighthouse keeper is living in the lighthouse playing the violin > The light on the lighthouse goes off

Act 2: He looks out to see a boat heading straight for the lighthouse > He panics and finds a light > Did he survive? Is the problem resolved?

Act 3: The lighthouse is restored > Is the lighthouse under the sea? Did the boat impact?

(Ambiguous ending).

We were also given the example of the Nolan's Chedder Extra Strong cheese advert:

This advertisement is an example of a good story line as there is a crisis that is resolved. The mouse doesn't die and gets the cheese in the end, following this storyline:
1)Mouse eating cheese on track, happily 2) Trap gets mouse 3) Mouse lifts the trap as if it were lifting weights. This is a plot twist as we expected the mouse to die and not revive. It also reinforces the fact that it is 'extra strong' cheddar which is an intelligent way of incorporating the message in the advertisement.

For an example that followed a more graphic design point of view, we looked at the 'I'm bored' book which was a story in a brand guide line as there is a conversation between the black and white type. The branding guidelines were for First Direct and it is a very effective way to deal with branding.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dingridsystem/sets/72157631015878602/ 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dingridsystem/7758535722

For the next part of the seminar, we were given the task to create our own storyboard on our proposal. This meant planning which part would go where and what would be in each section. Based on what I had already done, I planned this:

This task was helpful as I could visualise what my project would look like (roughly) and what it would include. I like the idea of planning things in this way as it helps me to get an idea of where to go next as well as being an effective way of organising my work. Storyboarding is essential to design as we need to know where the design is going and what we want it to achieve. I enjoyed the seminar for this reason and thought it was helpful. 

Narrative Design
In this lecture, we were taught about narrative design and how to tell a story through graphics and image. The utilisation of narrative design is the key concern when eveloping visual communication which is important to consider because we need to tell a story to convey a message.

We began with a quote from Aristotle that said, 'a whole is that which as a beginning, a middle and end' which is basically the three elements a story has to include. We were shown a diagram which illustrated this point:

This is what a story should contain and is the liniar approach to storytelling.
A story should contain: a set up > a confrontation > a resolution. This is how the majority of stories are told and this is the way we expect them to be told as we can be satisfied that the confrontation is resolved at the end.

We then looked at exposition which means setting the scene and also the content. I wasn't sure of the exact definition of exposition in a narrative/story and I looked it up. It is the 'insertion of important background information within a story'.  The background story and the historical content should be given and this can also be called the establishing shot. The beginning of Starwars is a good example of an establishing shot.





      

We then looked at narrative as this is an essential part of any story. A narrative is a spoken or written account of connected events; a story.
'The event is not what happens. The event is that which can be narrated' -Allen Eeldman. This means that an event cannot be expressed without the use of narrative, which highlights its importance. The job of a designer is to illustrate or demonstrate a solution. To visually narrate a sequence of events that explain the solution. This is where it becomes clear how the lecture is relevant to our course. We need to know how to visually express a solution (a narrative).

Story based messaging was the next section of the lecture which began with explaining: if you can connect through a message it is effective. You need to appeal and connect to emotional needs to be able to have a successful design.
'The audience does not need to tune themselves to you- you need to tune your message to them' -Nancy Duarte. This very key to consider when desining anything as the audience needs to connect with a design personally and emotionally for able for it to become a success.
Toms, a shoe company did exactly this. They appeal to the audience on a very emotional level as for every pair of shoes you buy, another pair goes to someone living in poverty. This attracts the customers to buy the product as they feel as though they're giving charity and doing something good. This is a very intellegent way to attract an audience.  



  

Imagery was the next concept we focused on.
We began by being told the complexity of the image does not mean its strong and vice versa. A minimal image could tell a very complex story easily as well as a very complex image could tell a simple story. This is a very key fact as a designer to know. I admire simlplicity and minimal graphics as I feel over complicating an image can sometimes make the story ambiguous and hard to follow. The more minimal, the more effective- in most cases.

Heierachy of informtion:

The most important points need to be communicated quickly and efficiently. This means selecting the most important information so the audience can quickly grasp the concept. A famous example of this is the short story by Ernst Hemmingway which reads: 'for sale: baby shoes, never worn'. Which conveys a very emotional and deep message through six words. This is proof that information can be communicated very minimally and easily. Keeping a story concise and not using a lot of text or type is key.

 

http://www.writeincolor.com/2011/03/26/plutchiks-color-wheel-of-emotion/

Colour is also very important. This is Plutchiks colour wheel of emotion and demonstrates the many different emotions colour can display. Considering colour and coinsiding that with what we want to convey is two very key concepts.

We ended with a list of questions to consider when story telling:
'What do we  want the story to tell?' which is the most important question

'What is the issue?'

'What will be the events/ moments?'

'Who are the characters?'

'Context?'

And I can consider these questions as well as the rest of the lecture in my project.

Territory Studios
In this lecture, we had a guest speaker that came to talk to us about Territory Studios. David Sheldon took the lecture and we listened about his multi-disciplinary company. The company focus on graphics and motion graphics and use many programmes such as, Illustrator, Photoshop and After Effects, which we are very familiar. It was incredibly interesting to learn about what you can do with these programmes and what the company has achieved. I was particularly impressed to hear they had worked in films such as, The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy and Casino Royal. The graphics that they produced for these titles were outstanding.

 

http://abduzeedo.com/extraordinary-avengers-ui-design-territory-studio

Their aim is to tell a story through motion graphics and the attention to detail in these graphics is amazing. The graphics they use can tell a story in three seconds whereas an actor could not do this. This means that they are vital to the plot and the whole film. They even got the chance to create their own character.

We were told about the process of these graphics are and it is: Pintrest for the concept > Photoshop and Illustrator for the design > After Effects and Cinema 4D for animation > Director and C++ for programming > Nuke for comping > a hard drive for delivery. 

I felt very privelaged to be taught about this company as their work is highly impressive. They also did a video for the OFFF festival which shows how impressive the status of the company is. We were talked through the concepts of the film that we were shown for the festival and I really enjoyed the film.

http://www.territorystudio.com/work/motion/?p=OFFF_titles

We were even shown how they did the typography for this movie which was interesting for me as it was more directed to Graphic Design. 

Overall, I enjoyed the lecture and really was inspired by the work Territory do. We were shown how a project was carried out which has influenced the way I approach a project, just obviously not to that scale.

Style

In this seminar, we looked at style and began with the question,'what is style?'. My answer to this was: 'a consistent theme' and the dictionary definition is 'a particular procedure by which something is done; a manner or a way'.

We discussed clothing style and the main conclusion was that it comes from inside and that clothing is just one element of style. We looked at a video which described style as a 'sense of life' and used the analogy that clothes are the package to the parcel and don't reflect the whole thing. 

'I invent, distort, deform, lie, inflate, exaggerate, confound and confuse as the mood seizes me. I obey only my own instincts and intuitions' (1960- Henry Miller). This is one persons perspective of style and Miller saw style as a fluid motion. 

It is interesting to look at peoples perception of style such as Truman Capote who said, 'mirror of an artists sensibility- more so than the content of his work' which lead us onto form and content. We were asked 'can there be content without style?' and 'can one act outside of style?' To which the answer was no as there needs to be style within a content and for the second question, you can't act outside of style. Even those who try not to be stylish are following a style they have formed themselves. It is impossible to be without style.

We then went onto look at a familiar designer, Marcel Breuer. He designed a modern day chair by making it minimal. Breuer believed, 'purposeful construction of logical designed objects' whereby the 'essential forms for functioning instruments require he styleless utility of design'.  This means redacting the product until it is logical, which is exactly what Breuer did with his chair design. This 'styleless', which I would argue is a style, was logical problem solving.

 

http://themagazine.info/products/-/6.html

These chairs are still often used today and shaped chair design until this day. Susan Songstag said something along the lines of: atipathy (a strong desire) to design is always atipathy to a given style. There is no style-less legal writing, only wrighting of more or less grace and adaptness and belonging to different stylistic traditions and conventions. In other words, it is impossible to be without style as being without style is still conforming to some sort of style. Not following stylish patterns does not mean you are style-less. You have to like style because everyone is with style. Each style is agreeing with one style and disagreeing with another, this is style. 

From this chair, it was obvious that Breuer was opposing stylish ways at the time and redacting the style from the chair to create a new style. 

Each style fades in and out and reappears somewhere and can be the smallest thing to the biggest thing.

This lecture was easy to follow and triggered some interesting points. It has widened the way I look at design as I haven't before thought of style. These lectures will come in handy when I am later writing essays that may include some of these concepts. They do not fit with my current studies so much although I feel some give me a new and different perspective which helps with my project work and how I approach my studies. The most important aspect of these lectures is the fact that it makes you think and question and view things in a very different way.

Unlocking Innovation
In this seminar, we looked at perspective and looking at something from a different perspective. An example was given of Joshua Bell, a violinist. In concert, people pay large amounts of money to go and see him perform and even cry at his performances. However, he was taken out of this context and played in a subway and was barely noticed apart from people who recognised him. This is a good example of perspective as the situation was in a different context and gained a completely different response.

 Another example is making prosthetic legs fashionable. A prosthetic leg is usually seen as undesirable, however, fashionable prosthetic legs are now available. This flips the perspective of the product and is very effective and innovative.

http://www.thestar.com/life/fashion_style/2014/03/18/toronto_fashion_week_a_couture_twist_to_prosthetic_design.html

We then looked at ambigrams which is where one word forms into another word or can be seen from different perspectives to look like two different words. 

http ://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2094681

This is an example of an ambigram and we were given the task to create our own. I decided to use typography to form love into hate. However, the 'hate' lines can also be seen as saying 'whatever', so it includes three words in this ambigram. It was a good task for exploring typography and thinking about perspective and different ways to view things. 

Design and emotion lecture:
We can achieve meaningful design by taking an emotional approach. This means contributing to society and enhancing life in someway. This was what introduced the lecture. We were told that to create meaningful design, we have to look from another perspective, the perspective of the consumer as this is what we're appealing to when it comes to advertising, the field that I am interested in.

We looked at examples of perspective and illusion and how to look beyond the design brief. This means that just meeting the specifications might not be enough as this will not stand out. It is more effective to think about how you can apply the specifications of a brief and what it means to us, this is an individuals perspective and connects you emotionally to the brief.
The function of the eye takes this into a very literal sense and this was used to demonstrate that out brain deceives us as the image through our eye is flipped. It is only when the brain decodes the flipped image that we see the image the correct way round.

http://www.expat-journal.com/breaking-the-perception-deception/

Humans, unlike other animals, have a less sensitive sense of smell but touch is essential to development. An example of how important touch is was given as an experiment took place where baby monkey's were deprived their mothers touch through to maturing. It turned out that these monkeys that were deprived touch had a very different manner to other monkeys who had been allowed touch. They were more aggressive and less developed. As we are similar genetically to monkeys, we can apply this to assume the same. Another experiment took place in a library where the exchange of books between the customer and the librarian was focused on. In one scenario, the librarian touched the customer very briefly when handing the book over and in the other scenario there was no contact. Both customers were interviewed after and asked to give an overview of their experience in the library. The customer that was briefly touched said the experience was good in comparison to the customer that received no touch. This change in mood over a very brief touch demonstrates how essential touch is to us. This was very interesting to hear about but I struggled to see the relevance with Graphic Design as well as the rest of the lecture however I can see some relevance as we then went onto talk about how the brain only sees what it expects to see and ignores the rest. If we consider this when designing something, it can help and this means looking for what you'd expect to see and including this in your design. This links back to the original point of looking from different perspectives, which is key to any designer. 

We are deceived by our environment on a day to day basis and this was also a key point of the lecture. It was interesting to learn about illusions and do some illusions ourselves as this proved that we are deceived by our brain and I also learnt to think of the consumers viewpoint when designing something. 

Design Art lecture (Professor Alex Coles):
The lecture began by talking about Bauhaus, an art school in Germany. This school had artists such as Kandinky, who taught Graphic Design and Textiles at Bauhaus, and Marcel Breuer, who was famous for the chairs he designed and taught Product Design and Textiles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus

Breuer also designed The Whitney Museum and was an influential person in art and design.
At the time of Breuer, there was the Mondrain movement, De Stijl, (Piet Mondrian) which probably influenced Bauhaus's work. This movement was moving away from traditional art and moving towards modern art and minimalism. As well as De Stijl, the Dutch Avent-Garde movement was occurring, which worked alongside art, politics and culture. These movements were influential to art at the time and must have had some influence over Breuer's work.

http://www.tuttartpitturasculturapoesiamusica.com/2013/03/Minimalist-Art-Movement.html

Gerrit Rietveld designed the Rietveld chair and the Rietveld house which was iconic in modern design. It took ideas from the De Stijl movement and made it 3D. Both of these designs are widely recognised and have effected products even today. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truus_Schröder-Schräder

http://www.rietveldoriginals.com/en/

The products he made used primary colours and a minimal style. This minimal style was adopted in Breuer's work. Breuer redacted all detail and only kept the essential essence of the chair. This was an incredibly different style to traditional chairs that were large and covered in detail. His work is still used today in modern day chairs. 

http://www.bauhausitaly.com/bauhaus-furniture/marcel-breuer/cesca-breuer-bauhaus-chair+i67.html

Other artists that explored this modern way of designing were Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko and Henri Matisse, who used constructivism in their work. I learned that constructivism was a Soviet Union practise that formed formal and ideological principals and rejected autonomous art (meaning art that was self governing and independent). Constructivist art was in favour of art as a practise for social purposes and did influence movements such as the Bauhaus movement and De Stijl. 

In the 50's, the Independent Group formed whom were a group of designers, painters, sculptures, architects, writers and critics. This included artists such as Richard Hamilton, who was a proto pop artist and foresaw one of the key elements for art and design, which was pop art. Following this was artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. In this way, Hamilton was a very important part of art and design. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/art-obituaries/8760860/Richard-Hamilton.html

However, in the 60s, Richard Artschwager began minimalism. At this time, abstract art and impressionism was the main focus of art and design. He is famous for the furniture he designed that were incredibly minimalistic. 

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/artschwager-table-and-chair-t03793

We were also given other examples of minimalist artists such as Donald Judd who was an American artist and is a major player in minimalism. As well as this, Dan Graham was talked about who moved his work into the outside world and made it interactive. He used the vocabulary of minimalism and was a post minimalist for this reason. 

The lecture then went on to give other examples of how effective minimalism is and looked at The Beatles, White album. The Sgt. Pepper album was over the top, vibrant and full of image and Paul McCartney wanted to work with Richard Hamilton, the pop artist, for this next album. Hamilton decided to do the exact opposite of the Sgt. Pepper album and made the album cover almost blank, with just 'The Beatles' and serial number engraved on the cover. Inside the album, Hamilton created a poster filled with 'insignificant' images of the band that had been rejected by editors because they were out of focus or unclear. This was used to give a minimal and real effect and it worked very well. This is a good example of design and art coming together. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_(album)

Finally, we looked at Jorge Pardo who built a house in the 90s, the house was incredibly minimal and bare when it was shown to the public but then was used as his own house after the expedition. This project was extremely radical for the 90s as nobody had ever done this. It also caused some controversy as some people claimed he built the house, using the budget for his own desire. 

The lecture was insightful and gave me some good examples of modern artists as well as how these artists have influenced todays art. I even formed my own opinion on the art as some of it, such as Richard Hamilton and Artschwager, I liked because of its aesthetics and ideas behind it. I particularly like Hamilton's work with the Beatles and think it is very effective. Whereas, I am not keen on Rietveld's work nor Donald's Judd as the overall appearance is outmoded and the meaning behind it is ambiguous. The reason behind my lack of interest in this art is probably because art has moved on significantly since then although it would have been radical at the time.