Sketchin' Logo's

3 Weeks have passed, the Easter break was good it gave me a change to relax and de-stress, so I felt good when I came back yesterday morning.

Monday morning started off with an introduction to the new assignment, “Wailing Whales”, my version of this assignment is split into 4 tasks, which are to

• · Re-design the ‘emit’ logo
• · Re-design the CD Cover for my artist
• · Create a pre-flight package of the project
• · Project evaluation

This may not sound like a lot to do over the next 6 weeks but as I have began to notice, there is a lot of sketch work involved.

After this Steve went on to another lecture concerning logos, we were shown a variety of different types of logos ranging from just text, juts an image and a combination of both. The logos were from major companies like Ford and Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

After this lecture I began to create a production schedule, this consisted of the tasks I will do for the next few weeks, although I have put aside 1 week do some more work for the A1 Sketch blog task just so i can get up to speed with some inspirational artwork.

After that Steve began the second lecture on logos, it involved the main points of a good logo which are:

• · Shape – The shape of the logo
• · Contrast – make sure it looks good in gray scale
• · Weight – the logo doesn’t require thin lines
• · Presence – Making use all the white space

A former student named Johnny Haynes came in to speak of his job and the websites he has created, it was a god experience it seems that the work place isn’t anything like I thought it would be like. I expected Johnny to be in a suit, but he came in college in jeans and was very laid back.

The rest of the afternoon consisted of sketching logos for Emit; I had filled a page before I left.

Today began with a lecture form Steve, which was basically about the CND logo, also known as the ‘Peace’ symbol, the lecture was basically about the re-vamp of the logo, all the groups were asked to do the same, so ours, ‘Gamma’, decided to go our separate ways for 15 minutes and do some sketching, we ended up using one of Andrews Designs which was an eye with a globe as the pupil, after we presented it we were told that it is similar to the CBS logo, which it was.

In the afternoon ‘Gamma’ had a seminar group with Steve, we went over some of our logo sketches and once again went over the basics of A7.

The rest of the afternoon consisted of sketching more logos and collecting different fonts and experimenting with them.

My goals for the rest of the week are as follows:

• · Continue sketching in sketchbook
• . Gather more fonts
• · Collect one or two photos
• · A1 Sketchblog work

Strange Air?

These past couple of days have been, well, different I suppose. On Monday morning I was given the tasks that I had to do for the day, they consisted of making Mind Maps for the CD I was given, collect logos of famous companies, listen to the CD twice and give a positive review on it, these tasks were very straight forward.

The music I obtained was a from the artist ‘Woob’, I could have never imagined what the music was going to be like, when I began listening to it I though to myself, how am I going to make a good review out of this, it was the strangest music I had ever heard.

The class was online all day and one of the questions that rose up was, who was going to have the ‘Animal music’, and unfortunately it was me. The first track was full of birds squawking, and the final track had Penguin noises in it.

As I researched more into the Artist I found out that the actual front cover of the CD had Penguins on it as you can see.

I stumbled upon some reviews that people had given abut the CD; I found it odd that it had a 5 star rating, and the selling price on Amazon was $74.

Mind Maps

The mind maps were basically a collection of emotions, sounds and places that I had interpreted form the music, and put into words, I did this for each track.

Review

I had to create a review of Woob's CD, this was not as difficult as I first thought, and all I did was explain how the music made me feel and where it took me.

Logos

I compiled a list of logos, all of which were from major corporate enterprises, I also annotated them, explained what I liked about them, what typefaces they used, ect...

Mood Boards

Today had similar tasks to yesterday, I was asked to create 2 mood boards, which I created in design, I placed images that I found online and put them into the documents, I created 3 Boards this was just to show apportion of what the music said to me.

In each Mood Board I have included images of the words I included in my mind maps, it’s a visual version of them, and I have placed one image of one of them below.

The logos I have collected were mainly taken form a directory site which I found here.

I can honestly say that I am kind of getting into the music, some of it is bad but as it goes on it begins to become interesting.

Woob - Em:T 1194 Review

Woobs music is an ambient take on the peace and tranquillity in the world. The Em:T 1194 album has 6 tracks:

1. On Earth - 32'13"
2. Odonna - 13'15"
3. Amoeba - 01'45"
4. Wuub - 09'29"
5. Strange Air - 10'32"
6. Emperor - 04'28"

On earth takes first takes us on a journey to Africa, people talking in the streets, like a busy market place, you can sense that it is a very mellow atmosphere. we can then here a woman, from the middle east singing, this is a change in the atmosphere, and it seems very serious.

We are then taken into orbit around the earth, its quiet and peaceful, it then brings us down into a jungle, you can here the birds singing, it leads us into a sort of village and the woman is singing again. This track helps us to block out all the war and suffering in the world and leaves us with peace.

Odonna, is begins with beating drums and long high tone cords, towards the 9 minute mark the chords become deeper giving a sense off loss, something missing or gone, very deep and meaningful music.

Amoeba begins with a sort of printing machine going off, it then leads into a harmonica and guitar melody, gives the image of romance, on a river, then leads to the sound of frogs and heavy foot steps. This is a very good track, it gives a good atmosphere.

Wuub starts off with a line from a film "Alex, you know there's only one way we're going to end all this...", this was taken from a classic horror move called ‘Night of Dark Shadows’, there is a female vocalist, again middle eastern, through out the track, it gives off an very eerie atmosphere.

Strange Air first gives the impression of tranquility, the there are sounds of some sort of aircraft I would presume, there are samples of films throughout this track, a horror film, similar to the samples in Wuub. It then goes into a deep chord session, it gives the feeling of fear and paranoia.

The final track is name Emperor, it’s named this because of the Emperor penguin calls that go on throughout this track, it begins with a very deep base line and then gradually gets smoother and becomes more tranquil and the sounds of the penguins begin to fade into nothingness.

Overall, Em:T 1194 isn’t an album, it’s a journey that takes you’re around the world and back, and all in the space of 70 minutes.

A6 Evaluation

The A6 assignment was split into two tasks, a presentation on a typographer, and several timed typography tasks.

Presentation

I was chosen to create a presentation on a typographer named Zuzana Licko, The first part of my research brought me to the Émigré website, from this site I learned quite a lot about her, it mainly spoke of her typographies that were published in the Émigré Magazine, and told that she and her husband were the co-founders of the company.

I then stumbled upon an interview that Zuzana did in 2004, it included the most popular font, parts of her relationship with Rudy Vanderlans and parts of her past, I took notes of what I thought were key points, and what I could use in my presentation.

Once I had all the information I needed on Zuzana’s Background and her work, I developed a template for the presentation, all I included was a line on each page that the title went on and an image of Zuzana on the front page.

After the first practice presentation I realise that I had a lot of work to do on it, I dint include the Type Anatomy at that moment, I was still getting more information about the fonts, so I decided to do a font comparison of ‘Base Monospace’ and ‘Base Nine Twelve’, and another comparison of ‘Matrix II’ and ‘Matrix II Display’.

And I also decided to a page that just explained the anatomy of 3 typefaces. The content of the presentation was now complete.

Now had to find and image to put onto my presentation, one of the fellow class mates who were doing the same typographer as me unfortunately was ill so I had no idea of what image he had used, so really I could pick any at all.

I searched high and low for an image, I eventually found an image of her on a font site, originally the image had Rudy and Zuzana, I had to crop it down, but while I was at it I decided to attempt removing the background, I read the help files in Photoshop CS2 and found that the magic wand tool could do this. The process did take a while but eventually I got it done.

The handout was pretty straight forward to make, place the same image I use on the presentation into the page, make sentences out of the facts I had used on my presentation and add some useful links. I also place Zuzana’s two most famous fonts on the bottom of the page.

Once all the content was placed into the presentation, I felt liberated, but I still sensed that it wasn’t finished, I couldn’t understand it, I had everything placed with it, then it came to me, I needed to ad could to it, I looked too bland, I needed brightening up, I decided to change it to a cream colour, although, I had to carefully colour in the picture of Zuzana as well.

I was nervous on the day of my presentation, mind you, it would be strange if I wasn’t worried, I knew exactly what I was going to say, and how I was going to present it, but I was still nervous, even up to going to the door of Steve’s room I was nervous.

But I so over came this, as soon I started the panic just went away, and what’s even better is the presentation lasted exactly five minutes. The only thing I regret was not answering all the questions right, but I’m not worried about it, I can always get better.

Timed tasks

The second half of this unit consisted of Developing and creating a variety of Typographic pieces within a set time. These tasks came in a variety of forms, ranging form paint tubes, to news paper articles. Each task went through 4 stages, the first of which is planning; I used a single time sheet to plan out what tasks I was going to do, and how much time I would spend on each.

Hokai

The aim of this task was to create a paint tube skin; I had the choice of colour I could use on the tube. I was given the company logo, the barcode, and the first stage was to create sketches of it, and I drew two small designs and one final design. I was given the measurements for it and basically just had to colour it in, this is why I chose to not include this in my work, and there wasn’t much design work in the task.

Vodafone

The aim of this task was to produce a newspaper advertisement, the advertised a job position at Vodafone, and we were given the Vodafone logo and the text that was to be placed into the document. I had to design the layout of the document, deciding where to place the logo, what font the text should be and how it was to be presented.

Jonathan Gee

This task was based on creating a newspaper article for Jonathan Gee, a famous Jazz musician. I was given on image of him and the text that was to be placed in, I had to create the template and implement some typographic skills I had learned.

Grid & Story

This was one big task, but was split into two smaller tasks, the first of which was to basically create the template for the content; the trick was that I didn’t know how much content there was so I had to give myself adequate space that I could use to put it in. the banner that I created was very basic, I wanted to include an image but we were not allowed, it was disappointing.

After the grid was finished, I was given the second task, which was to add content to the grid; I had to firstly sketch two ideas of how I was going to layout the page content. I then chose the one I liked most and sketched it to a larger scale. Adding the text was easy, finding a font to use it was difficult but I managed in the end. I cropped the image and added a quotation onto the third column.

Overall I am happy with both my presentation and with the work I have created in the timed tasks, but o better my understanding of software I will learn more about in design, find out how to get more things working.

The Finishing Touches

Its the final week before hand in, I’m feeling very confident this time, if I push myself this week I will be able to have everything done by Friday.

Monday morning was basically “Get on with it” time, I used this time to re-compress the website images, this is because it was stated in usability forms that the content was ether squashed or blurry. I managed to get a lot done within the first hour then after break I decided to take some more screen shots of my beta site, after this I removed it so it wasn’t taking any space up on the web server.

In the afternoon I continued with the image compression for the website, once I had done this I uploaded it, ready for Steve to test it.

Steve gave a lot of useful feedback, he told me to use CSS to animate the buttons, he also told me to center the site, to see if it gave it a better look, but by far the biggest task was to redo the banner, ill admit it was a pretty terrible banner.

Steve showed me a few tricks in Photoshop that I could use to blend the keyboard image into the background, I used this and I can honestly say my site looks a lot better now that it did last week.

There are still a few things to sort out, for instance validation, I have found it very difficult to validate the site in XHTML 1.0 Strict, and so I may change it to transitional. I also have to change the layout of the text to make it look neater and I still have a few images to compress and replace on the website.

Today began with more “Get on with it” time, which I used to edit my presentation, I change the background colour and the image I was using, and I also edited the page layout.

The second half of the morning was a timed task, this one was to create a newspaper tabloid about Jonathan Gee, and I found this task was by far the easiest, so I took my time with it, made sure I got everything right. I handed it in 5 minutes before the deadline.

In seminar groups Steve went over what was needed for next weeks hand in, and gave a brief insight to what was in store for the last assignment.

The rest of the afternoon has consisted of changing the presentation and adding the Type anatomy slides.

Note: I will be uploading my presentation in a PDF, I would appreciate feedback please.

Task for this week:

• A5: Validation test, Evaluation
• A6: Finish Presentation and practice

Usability and Productivity

Before I begin with what has happened this week, Ill explain what happened last week, I spent at least 16 just doing the CGI script for the website, that’s on top of A4 referral and the A6 presentation.

Monday morning began with the website usability tests, basically the entire class went round testing everybody’s website, we spent roughly 5 minutes on each website, than moved around the room to test another, so everybody’s site got tested by everyone.

I knew that there was at least one problem with mine, which was obviously my feedback form, last week I didn’t managed to get it working and became very stressed, like you do.

After this we has a short break, when I got back, I went over the feedback that I had obtained and began implementing it, this included placing a link to the homepage on some of the pages, getting rid on the space between the banner and the navigation bar and trying to sort my CGI script.

I still had no luck in sorting out FormMail, to I tried a different one that was placed on the HND site. I had no luck with this ether, Luckily help was at hand.

I decided to ask James for help, he shows me an alternative method that he had used, something called “cgimail” all he did was created a text file and typed in the names of the objects in the form, and edited one of the hidden fields and uploaded it.

It worked first time, I was utterly astounded, and he did in 5 minutes what I had been trying to do for 16 hours in the previous week.
I was pretty upbeat for the rest of the day, and managed to tidy up the site a bit.

Today began with a lecture on newspaper layout, after that we had a timed task which was to create a newspaper job advertisement for a graphic designer at Vodafone.

I must admit I found the measurements rather confusing and unfortunately wasted half an hour trying to fathom it out. But I managed to sort it and design the banner and have it finished 15 minuets before the deadline; I feel that I am getting more confident with these tasks.

This afternoon was the first practice of my Zuzana Licko presentation, luckily the group I was in were last, so I had plenty of time to prepare myself.

I feel that the practice could have gone better, I was nervous and did stutter a bit, I have to develop on certain areas of the presentation, but I should have the final draft done for next Tuesday.

My tasks for this week are as follows:

• A5 – Continue to implement feedback into the website
• A6 – Complete a final draft of the Zuzana Licko presentation
• Create a homepage for my ePortfolio
• Obtain and comment on types of inspiration

CGI Hell

First of all, I would like to apologies for not placing a post up on tuesday, its mainly because I wanted to place the link on for the website up here, unfortunately I am still having problems with it.

Its mainly the CGI Script, it keeps coming up with "500 internal error", if anyone can shed some light on how to get it to work, please feel free to comment or email me, also, I intend to have my completed image restoration up on here later on, so you can comment that If possible.

Thanks in Advance