Overall reflection

Actually I find this module very taxing (As in it wears out my brain juice) BUT! This is also the module that I've enjoyed the most throughout this semester. I'm more illustrator-based when doing my designs which explains why my designs are all quite cartoonish. I love drawing vector graphics!

design principles? layout? abstraction process? rules of 3rd? fibonacci? golden rule? what the...?! I never knew such things before BUT! now I actually start to consider all these when designing stuffs.

Personally, sometimes I feel quite intimidated by my peers and get demoralized. Their works are so so so good and appealing. I've learnt a lot from my peers throughout all the critique sessions. Sometimes having a 3rd party to see your work helps a lot because everyone views things differently.

But anyway, I think I'll miss this module a lot.

Assignment 5 (Fighting Climate Change) - FINAL

Final piece:
I took this comical approach as it can both appeal to kids and also to adults. Initially I designed this infograph for kids to understand the importance of trees and hopefully to build their interest in planting a tree. (Kids are indeed more curious).

However, when I showed it to some of my friends, they liked the infograph too. Although they did not say if they will actually plant a tree. But they get the gist of the messages by looking at what the trees were doing.

So yea I chose this for my final piece.

Assignment 5 (Fighting Climate Change) - Processes

For this assignment, we are supposed to come up with an infograph about the theme of fighting climate change. The first thing that came to my mind was to show an Earth on fire but I think that it's rather common.

My inspiration came when I was watching the discovery channel talking about the logging industry. This sparked me to do an infograph related to trees.

I finally settled on the idea of planting trees because I feel that paper is an essential object in our everyday lives and there is only so much we can save and trees will still cut down. Planting trees would be a great alternative to increase the number of trees.

Here are my initial sketches.

i tried to do my design on a 3x3 grid layout. However when i digitized it it look like a 4x3 layout.

Digitized:

I actually got feedback that the font is rather difficult to read. I wanted to choose a font that shows a medieval feel, matching the battle hats and shields of the trees. But I think I better change it.

Another point is that the tree fighting noise pollution has not much connection with the building.

There's another possibility of a vertical layout too. so i went on to try...

vertical version:


I actually preferred this version. The different level represents different aspects of what trees can do to protect the Earth.

I also deleted one car as having 2 cars is redundant.

I added in more trees at the top to suggest that trees produce oxygen.

Also I enlarged the shield of the warrior to suggest that it is blocking off urban noises.

This final design is done on a 3x4 grid.

Assignment 2 (Less is More) - FINAL

Final Prototype:
The meaning of the sign gets very clear when it is placed in the lecture theatres. I think it is because of the common practice that students have of chopping seats for their friends. (I do that too!)

Assignment 1 (Me, Myself and I) - FINAL

Final design:

Assignment 4 (Colour Coalition) FINAL

This is actually the final piece i've chosen:

I chose the one with black background as I think it can bring out the vibrancy of the different colours that the facial abstractions have.

The organization I chose is actually youth.sg. This is a website where youths can get together can connect with each other, share each other's experiences and share their hobbies. Youths can actually check out this site to know the happenings of other youths and activities available for them. Through meaningful activities and interaction, they will then be able to know truly who they are.

Assignment 4 (Colour Coalition 2)

I have decided to throw away my initial theme of "youth: live it or leave it". First of all I didn't really like it. The tutorial session was kinda like a 'pushing' factor that made me wanna change it. In terms of the layout it was quite boring and expected.

So I have come up with another theme.. which is youth identity search.
I got my inspiration through a notebook that my cousin has. There are different clothes suggesting different identity of people. So it triggered me to do on this topic of identity search .

The first thing that came to my mind when i think of 'identity' is actually the word 'FACE'. So I decided to draw parts of the faces and fill them with different colours to show the multiple parts a youth can choose from.

This is the first version of it:
I placed the 'blank' boy at a corner as it suggests isolation and also create some form of dynamism in terms of the placement of the facial abstractions. I also placed the 3 words "who am I?" at the bottom left to kind of balance the picture but I think it did not work really well.
P.S. There is actually a hidden spiral that suggests a question mark.


But anyway, I tried to replace the words.


I think this design works better. The 2 extra person with the eyes and mouth in place kind of represent the idea that 'they have found their own identity but what about yourself?'


Here's my colour exploration:


As the front design is rather abstract and some people may not understand the underlying meaning, I designed the back such that people would get the meaning of the postcard design.

back design: "Have you found your own identity? Find out more at youth.sg"

Final Project (Storybook - My 3 wishes) - Printing

We manage to find Goh Brothers to print a hardcover copy for us but it turned out to be not what we expected. As in......... they did not cut to size. We already provided guidelines to cut. but they did not follow.

And I was rather pissed that day as most of the pdf files were unreadable on their computer. Files were either corrupted or there were missing images. So I had to reluctantly delete some glowing effects and shadings (omg so angry!!).

I thought it was my fault that the images were corrupted or that the effects i did were unprintable.. but after getting the shop at bras basah to print the initial effects-unremoved-version, they were able to print it! (so happy!!)

Although the final book turned out to be on a soft cover, I was satisfied with the printing qualities.

Final Project (Storybook - My 3 wishes) - DA BOOK!

Lecture Exercise E

For this class exercise, we were asked to "Use basic elements (dot, line, shape…) to create 2 abstract / semi‐abstract images conveying meaning of these words (1 image per word)".

The 2 words which I have chosen to work on are 'WEAK' and 'SILENCE'.



I made use of curvy lines to portray the weakness as straight lines are usually associated with hard, strong or solid.By adding 2 black circles on the rounded head, this picture resembles a weak person with an arched back.





For silence, I made use of circles to portray the meaning of the word. Here, I was aiming to show the kind of awkward silence that we sometimes encounter.