Portfolio (Reflections)

Here are my reflections after each assignment!

Assignment 1: Me, Myself and I

Tackling this assignment without much knowledge about Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator wasn’t easy. The drafting and conceptualizing process was interesting and enjoyable. It was a chance for me to reflect and think of the different things that represents me, interests me, or play a part in my life. I came up with 8 different designs. (All forming the alphabets of my name: YING) I was comfortable with sketching and designing, because I liked what I was doing and at the same time, I was drawing and working with the things I like. The process of computerizing my sketches was less straightforward. I had to explore the different programs and figure out some tools before I managed to finalize my image. The process was a little more taxing and knotty at the beginning, but after getting used and familiar with the Adobe Illustrator interface, I started to know how I could play around with the tools to edit my image.

So here are a few things I’ve learnt from this assignment:

Creativity (The essence of this design assignment: incorporating things that represent myself into a design of my name)

Learning how to use the programs as I explore them with my designs

Importance of legibility (upper and lower case/rules of primary-school-handwriting)

Importance of communicating via our designs (has to be understandable, focused and straightforward)

Designs should be intentional and planned (natural and not too deliberate)

Assignment 2: Abstraction Process and Business Card -- MILK' CHA

The conceptualization of the idea for this assignment wasn’t easy. I tried to relate the themes that I used in assignment 1 (art and animals), but it wasn’t successful. In the end, I got my inspiration from a friend who happened to be drinking my favourite drink in front of me. After deciding that the theme for assignment 2 to be; Bubble Tea, I did my research and came up with quite a creative name for my company – MILK’ CHA. I might have spent quite a hard time thinking of the theme or concept for my business card, but once I’ve decided on selling bubble tea, the process became very much more interesting and enjoyable. The abstraction process was really fun. I tried Julian’s suggestion of zooming into the different portions of a cup of bubble tea, placing different focuses as well as using different angles to capture the different abstractions of my image. It made me uncover the different simple abstractions that could be used to represent a much more realistic and complicated image. I had lots of fun doing my different abstraction symbols and finally chose the one, which could visually communicate my product most effectively. My final abstraction symbol is a top view image of a cup of bubble tea, with pearls in it. The pearls are then designed to contain each of the additional toppings that are available for the customers to choose from. The computerizing process was different from assignment 1, because I decided to use the tools to draw directly on illustrator this time. (rather than scanning my image, and trace the image on illustrator) This was something I haven’t tried before, and it really gave me great sense of achievement upon accomplishment of this assignment.

So here are a few things I’ve learnt from this assignment:

The art of abstraction (removing details that distracts the audience, placing much focus on the important points of an image)

Recognizing the different key visual communicators of an image (just like ‘keywords’ in a sentence)

Looking at an object in various ways (e.g. zooming, different angles and emphasis)

Drawing using the tools illustrator (without tracing)

Designing a business name card (providing basic contact information and promotion the product at the same time i.e. bubble tea and additional toppings available)

Assignment 3: U C What I C -- It's 3 O'Clock!

My story in 8 frames was a true story that happened to me. This assignment taught us to bring across a message through a picture. Different focus and camera angels will result in different messages sent to the audience. The audience must understand our story by interpreting the information provided in the 8 frames. It was quite challenging for me to choose which scenes to include and exclude, because I had to prevent the real time of the day from being revealed before the last frame. I even got my mother to help with the taking of the photos, instructing her camera angles as we took the photos.

So here are a few things I’ve learnt from this assignment:

Camera angels to show different expressions

Doing without details which will distract the audience

Using Adobe Photoshop to edit the photos

Assignment 4: Fear Appeal Poster – Anorexia Isn’t Pretty

I had many ideas for this assignment, from anti-smoking campaign to traffic safety campaign posters. In the end, I chose to design a poster for a health campaign, which discourages anorexia because I wanted to try to use a cute cartoon image to convey my serious message. There will be a pun intended in using such a cute representation, so the fear appeal will still be present. In addition, I did not want to use realistic photos to disgust my audience, or offend some other patients who might look like the models in the photos due to their other illnesses. To be honest, I was very satisfied with my concept for this poster! (The thought process summarizes my intention and message of my design)

So here are a few things I’ve learnt from this assignment:

Organizing the different components in a poster

Making the design look structured and coherent (so that the design can facilitate reading and information flow)

Coming up with impactful, creative and memorable slogans/taglines

Inserting puns in my design

Framing a design (in this case, I used text to frame my design)

Assignment 5: Christmas Card – 6 Colour Schemes

The designing process for this assignment was once again, very enjoyable. I could relate to the theme very well, because of my past CCA records (English Literary Drama and Debating Society, Voices, Choir). The concept of the design was to use 4 different characters to represent the different performing art activities that CFA is involved in. However, I had some difficulties creating the Christmas feel for the card. In the end, I created the Christmas feel by editing the background into small little round snowflakes. The assignment taught me the different possible colour expressions of an image. By exploring 6 different colour schemes, I understood the importance of colour, as well as the different expressions that can be created by each colour scheme.

So here are a few things I’ve learnt from this assignment:

Colours and their different meanings (For example, the background that I used; Red can be used to relate to the CNY festive season, while blue represents the snowy Christmas element)

Colour expressions (different schemes portray a different feel, as shown by the 6 different colours schemes)
Creating the festive theme by adding relevant elements

Assignment 6: Good and Bad Posters – Gestalt Principles

I paired up with Hui Ting for this assignment. This assignment made us reflect on the things that we have learnt in lecture, and to use the different theories and concept to analyze the 2 posters. Huiting chose the movie poster of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” as the good example while I chose a book cover of “The World’s Worst Websites” as the bad example.

This assignment is a summary of everything that I have learnt from this module! (:

Storybook - Chickie and the Storm (Part 3)

By our next meeting, our script was almost finalized. We then started to design our pages with text. (our story book will be alternating between pages with the body text, and pages with illustration, such that the illustration will describe and show what the text on its adjacent page says)

We explored different fonts for our scripts and different colour schemes for our script pages.

and we decided to use pastel colours as the background for the body text because they are sweet colours that will appeal to the children. In addition, as a background colour, they are not too striking and will not fight for too much attention. For the font type, initially, we decided to use Hobo Std. But after a consultation with Julian, he pointed out that the font is not readable due to its short tails for alphabets like 'y' and 'g'. We all agreed that it is important for the font to be legible, recognizable, and readable for the children because at the age of (6-9), they have just started learning to read and write. So the type of font that we use, is very crucial and important. In the end, we decided to use Chalkboard, which has a clear distinction between the upper and lower case. The tails of 'y' and 'g' are also long enough for people to read them easily. Lastly, the font type looks handwritten, thus we hope that the children will feel less distant when they read our e-book.

At the same time we were working on our script pages, we are also working on our illustrations. However, we encountered problems of inconsistency. Because illustration done by different people will result in different images. The chickie page 1 can look different from page 2. Our illustrations were not standardized and the differences could be easily recognized. Thus, we decided to change the way we work. Instead of splitting the storybook into 3 parts, we split the workload into 3 big categories:

- drawing

- tracing

- colouring

By doing so, our illustrations became standardized, and the resulting computed image was also much more standardized. The colours used were repeated in the different pages to achieve consistency and coherence.

At this stage, our e-book is almost completed. So we started working on the other parts of our e-book. Zhenyang being the only computing student from our group, had to help us with the interactivity components of our e book. As he figure our the programming codes, we designed 3 colouring pages that are available for children to download, so that they can print them out to colour them physically. We also moved on to design a page which allows children to fill in their names, giving them a sense of ownership. Zhen yang managed to conquer the codes and made our activity, "spot-the-difference' work. encouraging words will be given as the game progresses. Children are also able to type in their names on the page which says "this book belongs to ... " at the same time, the cover page and back page of the book were also designed and completed.

With everything completed. we made inserted our pages into an e-book which works in a flash project such that the pages will flip by clicking on the number page.

These are our finalized pages:

Colouring pages

And this concludes our e-book project! (:

Storybook - Chickie and the Storm (Part 2)

So after the first meeting, we went back to work on the script and the storyboard. We did encounter some problems with the script, because making the last word of every sentence rhyme, wasnt easy. Coming up with the sketches for the storyboard was less problematic, because we had the story outline done already. However, in our initial storyboards, we tend to miss out on a lot of details. so, changes were made and this was our final storyboard.

After finalizing our storyboard, with all the positioning of the characters, settings, details fixed. We started working on the computerized image of our characters.