Typography 2

Todays workshop was a continuation of the previous typography session, refining ideas and choosing the three best designs to move forward with. I chose to continue with the ideas inspired by Milton Glaser and Wyndham Lewis, generating the alphabet with the typography that I had created, I will continue to refine these ideas and chose between the three of them to develop further and digitally. 

Helvetica

Helvetica

The workshop was about Adobe InDesign and the development of the Helvetica lecture, using our hand rendered work making paper based typography that represented a re-imagining of the letters that contained the words 'hand gloves' or 'Helvetica.' Our creations were scanned and then put into a folder for us to use in this workshop.

In groups we were asked to create a cover and sample page spreads for a design publication, we started by working on paper creating sketches and drawings to work from when going to produce the work on InDesign. We were given specific dimensions to use for the publication and then used the scanned work from the seminar to create what we wanted. This helped us with the development of discussing design concepts in short spaces of time and practice quality artwork production on InDesign, I found this lecture useful as practice for working in industry as it gave us an idea of what it could be like to be presented with a brief and work within a time frame.

Publication specification:
Page dimensions - W 152.4mm x H 228.6mm
Spine - 7mm
Cover overall - W 311.8mm x H 228.6mm
Bleed - 3mm all round
Full colour cover artwork, minimum of five interior double page spreads - as PDF files with bleed and crops
Time allowed, 3 hours.

As a group we had to consider what everyones role was in putting the publication together: creating a name for the document, creating the front page or producing a specific style that could be used throughout the pages. Every member of the group designed a few pages each after thinking of the name for the Helvetica publication and then we put them all together to create the ones shown in the blog post.

Seminar - Descriptive Writing

We started the class with peer marking and exchanged writing with each other to continue to give feedback and points about how we could improve our writing. The previous task was to create a visual diagram that described our essay or told other people what it might be about, we then discussed what and why we had drawn the images or mind maps and how we interpreted it into our essays. I found this task quite useful for finding out how other students work and what techniques other people use to create their work that I could maybe take on and use in my own way.

Animation Heroes

Animation:

"the state of being full of life or vigour; liveliness"

We looked at how animation effects us and the theories used to describe it like, theories of play:

• Child Development Theories 
• Social Development Theories

Child:

People like Sigmund Freud focussed on abnormal behaviour, children beyond the norm with delayed abiltiy and B.F. Skinner looked at the idea that children's behaviour is determined by its consequences which make it more or less likely that the behaviour would occur again. 

Social:

John Bowlby - 'Attachment Theory' which looks at parents and their relationships with their children

Albert Bandura - 'Social Learning Theory' - observing and taking on behaviours which reinforces satisfaction in others 

Jean Piagets - 'Stages of Cognitive' - mental processing and recognising how children got some understanding to become active learners, they are naturally curious and driven to learn new things for themselves by doing new things

Lev Vygotsky - 'Sociocultural Theory' - looking at imagination, children are unable to do certain things adolescents can e.g. riding a horse. Therefore when children grow older their imagination starts to change and become different

Culture & Emotion 

"Popular culture is a category which floats ambiguously between the anthropological and aesthetic" 

"The idea of culture" Terry Eagleton Oxford Prof. 

Goleman 'Emotional Intelligence'

HAPPINESS is a universal positive core emotion 

Kobayashi & Hará ' Facial Recogniton'

Surprise/Fear/Disgust/Anger/Happiness/Sadness

McCloud 'Storytelling and Meaning'

Meaningful connections and communication through animation and products

Playful Politics - They reflect what is going on in the news and how they portray it makes us the audience know that they are just having fun, by showing that it is funny for the children however adults know that there is a something against them or the audience that is going on in the world. Giving people the narrative to change their opinion on things and the only things that could really be read or watched all convey the same messages, animation is something that allows others to read another message from it. An example of this would by The Recession - 'Top Cat' showed the view of homeless people trying to get through life with less money. 

Sofa Satire - The Simpsons and Family Guy make fun out of the media and sometimes take jokes too far, following real life stories and shows them through humour.

Girl Culture - consisting of all things nice like The PowerPuff Girls, Dora the Explorer which provides advertising towards certain audiences e.g. purchasing merchandise like dolls

Authority - South Park looks serious issues that have not been looked at in America and turns them bold issues into things that children would not understand but after watching the programme they then continue to pass the messages on which means the show gets to the point much easier and quicker.

Us & Them Branding - SpongeBob SquarePants and Fairly Odd Parents cater too all needs and make it something that you can watch repeatedly suggesting that there is something in it for our children to understand and causes adults to look deeper into the show to understand it 

Seminar - Writing by Comittee

Today was about marking each others work at the start of class as a way to receive positive feedback and make improvements if necessary. We were asked to read the piece of writing three times, this is to help us notice any mistakes we might miss the first time we read something - it could also be helpful for my own use when I continue with my essay to ensure that everything reads properly without mistakes.

The task was to write down 3-8 words in connection to my essay, this was to help open different paths and ways of looking at your own essay and each others. The class then got into groups and were given an image to write down 10 key words, making sure they were descriptive, creative and 'over readings'. The image and key words were passed to another group for them to write a description using the words that had already been written down.

Boucherie

Boucherie from Maria Lynam on Vimeo.

A few extra slides that I had created but didn't make it into the motion graphics clip: