3rd Project Brief

Ok, so by this point I have 3 projects going on at the same time which completely blew my mind. But I was quite excited to start this project because I love looking at layouts for things like magazines and books. I also knew some of Ian McEwan’s stories so I was always motivated to build on my knowledge of his work. His oldest books were somewhat disturbing and almost always had sexual connotations. There was a sense of cynicism in his writing which made me question his lifestyle and background. Thus I began my research into his history, his bringing up, parents, religion, marriage etc. It wasn’t surprising that some of the material I found was a little disturbing, and he didn’t have the normal family-life you would expect.

Final Critique

Stock was a very important part of this project because it added a lot to how the designs would turn out. The first impressions brought on by the texture of the business card is a vital part of my design choice. In addition I also decided to definitely use a hand-rendered font for the name on my business card because it showed the honesty of his personality. I looked at different finishing techniques I could use for my card, this included foiling and embossing which both I thought would work well to create an elegant design solution

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During this stage of my project I came across a very subtly textured maroon coloured stock which I thought fitted well with the emotional and deep side of Steinbeck. This colour also emitted a sense of professionalism as well because it was bold but in a stylish and underrated way.

After I had the business card sussed out, I needed to update my letterhead and compliment to suit its style. This wasn’t that difficult though I found that some of the transparent feature of the business card was difficult to translate onto a big piece of paper without it looking out of place.

Tutorial

After having a tutorial about the initial sketches I had drew, my tutor commented that the hand-drawn typography worked well to represent Steinbeck’s personality of being down-to-earth, human and realistic. Although my sketches of original business card designs wouldn’t be something he would want to represent himself as as he wasn’t a gimmicky sort of person. So I needed to go for a more honest card design, something that didn’t require fancy pop-up bits but instead was simpler. I then had the idea of having a 2 in 1 business card, maybe a double-sided one, which reflected his personal peaceful lifestyle and the other showing his professional novelist side.

My finalised meaning behind the two sides was that one would show his strong exterior and the other to reflect that he was a caring, emotional and compassionate human being. I wanted to use my business card to represent how John cared about the characters in his writing, how he took the time to understand through experiencing it himself. In addition, I wanted an exterior cover to protect the emotional business card, one which showed strength, determination and professionalism.

Interim Critique

As well as using the double-sided card idea I also added another dimension by having the card within an envelope which showcased the fact that Steinbeck liked writing. Within the black envelope (black representing his professional, novelist side) you would find a more neutral coloured piece of card on the inside (representing his emotional, realist side). For the back of the card you would find a yellow pad paper pattern because Steinbeck used to use nothing other than that and a pencil.

The yellowpad idea was carried through to the letterhead and compliment slip. The type fits well on the lines although I don’t like that particular type I used for ‘realist novelist’ watermarked. It stands out a little too much and reminds me of an American sports team’s logo. The pattern of the yellow pad makes the piece look a little childish and bold but not professional. I also incorporated the idea of having a pen you could take out of the card as a gift to the person who received this business card. But again, is was evident that this wasn’t working because the card would have to be very thick in order to hold a plastic pen.

Starting Business Identity

With the 1^st project still ongoing and the 2^nd project just starting I knew I had to keep up to date with work, it was so difficult being motivated to do anything for the 2^nd project because I just wanted to carry on and finish the previous one but on some level it was also nice to have the choice to switch between the 2 projects so I didn’t get too bogged down with one of them.

I began my research of John Steinbeck, trying to get a feel for the type of person he was, his lifestyle and what he was best known for. I slowly became aware that I had too much research and was getting behind with actually coming up with ideas. I was really confused about which path to go down so at this point I just took a step back and did the simple thing of writing adjectives that I thought represented him well. I started looking at typography that would reflect 4 of the best adjectives because (I feel) this is my weakest area of graphic design. From this I started drawing out initial sketches of what typeface he might use for his business card. I decided to hand-draw my typeface as a starting point because I thought this fitted quite well with the fact that he was a novelist.

Secondly I began researching the shape and layout of business cards. I drew some innovative sketches of cards that may work, things like cards with a swivelling mechanism or ones which were transparent or a collection of cards that when put together revealed a bigger image.

Final Manuel Game

After the critique it was evident that I needed to quickly come up with an idea of how to incorporate my paintings into a more viable solution of saying thank you. At this point I realised that I hadn’t really given much thought as to how my concept would work but rather just wanted to paint illustrations for my first project after coming back from the summer holiday. I received a few good pieces of advice during the last crit on how to push my idea forward so that it would meet the unit brief. The one that was most daunting but also stuck out the most was the idea of creating a game to thank Andrew Sachs. This resolution seemed like a difficult one and it was evident that it would take a long time to not only complete it but make it engaging and successful as well. Not long after, I realised that I was most interested in taking this game idea forward so I began using Flash to create a simple game.

I began drawing out story boards as to how the game flowed, which scene would lead to which and what questions and answers would be shown on each page. This required more illustrations as at that moment there was little to ask about my paintings. So I re-watched Fawlty Towers and picked out a few objects within certain scenes that would help set some funny questions.

To add to the humour of the piece I used a number of Manuel’s photographs and made them pop up when the question was answered, a different photograph would appear depending on whether the questions were answered correctly or not. During my re-watch of the series I also noted down the exact words Manuel said and the way he said it and tried to portray that in my speech bubbles.

In the end the game turned out to be one that required the viewer to click on items on the screen to answer a question that appeared. I think it was quite successful but it needed to be funnier. If I were to do this project again I would think about adding audio behind the flash game, maybe ask someone to speak Spanish when Manuel popped up and the typography definitely needed to be addressed.

Screenshots of examples:

Making the game

There was a random saturday when I felt I had the energy to tackle Flash. It felt like I was doing a bit too much work for just a one week project but I felt obliged to do it to get my point through, and for once I was looking forward to messing around with Flash. Getting a hang of the software took almost 2 hours but after that it was straight forward, or so I thought. It turned out I had to use action script which caused a lot of confusion. I revisited the previous Flash project I had done in hope that everything would come flooding back to me. Tutorials online helped a lot too:

http://technana.com/web-development/gotoandplay-and-gotoandstop-in-flash-actionscript-30

http://www.webwasp.co.uk/tutorials/005/MX02/index.php

http://www.echoecho.com/flashbuttons01.htm

http://www.brainbell.com/tutorials/Flash/Change_The_Hit_Area_Of_A_Button.htm

Here's the game put together roughly:

Manuel Game

Thank You! Critique

After presenting my pdf of my watercolour designs I received a number of useful comments which will help me further develop this project. The main problem with the idea at the moment is that it lacks relevance to Manuel, there needs to be more of a link between the hotel design and the fictional character; I could possibly bring in his personality a bit more to get this connection. In addition, I need to find a better resolution to show these designs. Rather than just framing the images and 'sending' them to Manuel or holding an exhibition to show the paintings, I could make a more interactive piece. Ideas that spring to mind are:

1) Making a game- spot the difference using added Manuel objects.

2) Question and Answer quiz- if you get question correct Manuel pops up and congratulates you.

3) Learn spanish with Manuel!

Designing Fawlty Towers

I've studied the set of Fawlty Towers by watching and taking numerous screenshots of the show and doing line drawings to produce a replica of the hotel. I chose the 5 rooms where scenes were mostly shot so the audience would be able to immediately recognise and relate to them: Bar, Dining room, Kitchen, Office and Lobby. This took longer than I thought it would as I had to try to include as much detail as I could in each room, in addition, the quality of the screen shots were quite poor so sometimes I found it difficult to pick out the tiny details that contribute to the familiarity of the hotel.

Next I need to figure out how I'm going to design the layouts I've made, what media to use. Possibly use found paper as the wallpaper and carpet of the rooms. Another alternative is to do watercolour drawings and then use a fine liner to fill out the shadows to give it definition. The final way is to transfer the layout to the computer and colour it in using Photoshop or even trace the outlines using vectors in Illustrator. At one point I did think about making the designs look really traditional and old to fit with the old style of the programme and interior design but I think I want to give the new hotel I'm creating a more modern twist and use this opportunity to bring it forwards from the 1950s. I will do testers on each technique I've talked about and see which one works best.

After that I need to re-watch the episodes and pick out key events that occur to Manuel and find objects that he would like or rather not have in his hotel. I doubt I will have time to make a model of the hotel which is a shame because I would have liked to have given this a go. Maybe after the critique if I have time during other projects I can at least turn one of the rooms into a 3D model.

First Assignment

I was very excited to get back to university and just start working on projects, I had all that experience during the summer at a design studio and felt like I'd been away from work for too long. After receiving our first brief I wasn't disappointed with the tasks we were set to do. Quite a lot to complete in 6 weeks but a challenge is always good and motivates me to want to do well. The first part of the project was the THANK YOU! project, I had trouble thinking of who to thank, I kept doing brainstorms to try and bring out who I truly wanted to base my idea around. I started thinking that because music is a big part of my life, maybe I could thank someone in the music business who had inspired me or someone who had taught me piano or guitar in the past. But thinking more about the matter I began to think that everyone would go for music as their main topic and I didn't want to become a cliché.

I then began thinking of more personal aspects of my life and looked into my childhood memories which has shaped me to be who I am today. A lot of experiences came back to mind and a lot of them were just random events that had occurred to me as a child. This lead me to think back to the days when I first learnt piano. I would go over the road with my sister to our neighbour's house to play piano, I would always go first and when it was my sister's turn I would go into the living room and pick out a video to watch. It would either be a disney film or Fawlty Towers. I remember re-watching this series so many times and it brought so many memories when researching about it. I then thought about thanking the character Manuel as he for me was the star of the show and made me laugh back in the day. This made my project a little different as I would be thanking a fictional character rather than the actor himself.

It was difficult to find a way to thank this character, I felt like I was falling deeper into the story and the ideas I had seemed a little too realistic for an unrealistic character. I then got side-tracked and thought about thanking the man who invented the bank holiday monday. I really liked the idea of doing a short film which involved the camera looking down at the shore and whilst the waves broke in and washed out again different words would appear behind the water. Then the final scene would be a bottle being washed up onto the shore, I would design the labelling for this bottle and the message inside it and actually give it to the inventor of bank holidays.

Even though I really liked this idea, I felt it were a bad thing that I already knew the solution in my mind at such an early stage. I didn't want to fall into the trap of having an idea at the beginning and sticking to it without developing it further so I decided to abort this idea completely and go back to how I could thank Manuel from Fawlty Towers. I brainstormed a number of solutions but nothing came to mind.

It was only until I watched a video of interviews with the cast that I decided to base my idea around designing a Fawlty Towers for Manuel, but in a way that he would have liked it. This came to mind because there was one episode where Manuel was left in charge of the hotel, and he took pride in that role; even though he wasn't very good at the job, it was obvious that he was trying his best and enjoying every minute of it. I thought about re-desiging a hotel from scratch for him but then figured that people wouldn't be able to relate to it, but if I drew out the exact set and props from the tv programme and added little extras for Manuel, it would be clear what I was trying to get at.

The next task I need to do is watch the episodes and map out what each room looks like and then think about what Manuel would want or wouldn't want in the hotel depending on what happened to him in each episode. Later I will think about whether I should design a mock up of the hotel, though this will be relevant to how much time I have to spare after getting it all down on paper.

PAL Training

I must say I wasn't as nervous as I thought I'd be in these two days. The first day probably more so than the second but that was understandable because I had the time to build up my confidence through the many tasks we completed on the first day. The only time I felt vulnerable was when they asked us to come up with a 10 minute pal session in pairs. During the preparation I felt a little unsure on what we were going to do, but then I realised everyone was in the same boat and it didn't matter if we messed up, it was still training after all. I just did my best and tried to show confidence and leadership in my tone of voice and how we lead the session. Wasn't as hard as I thought and it became more and more relaxed as the session went by. I felt it was better to not think too much into what I was going to say during the session; be prepared but also be spontaneous with random comments which may, in turn be the most memorable parts of the session the 1st years will take on board.

A lot of the training was common sense and dealing with problems on the spot using our general knowledge but it was extremely useful as it brought forward the most important aspects of being a PAL leader. One thing I will find very difficult is holding back with my opinions if a first year asks for advice on their work. I need to make sure that I let them discover their mistakes themselves and give them tips on where to find inspiration to help on the development of their work, rather than plainly saying what I like about their work because it is not my job to be their tutor.

It was useful to state what out worries about being PAL leader were at the beginning of the training and it was satisfying to be able to cross off a number of those worries at the end. I felt much more confident afterwards as we were given a number of different ways to fill out awkward silences which I was most worried about. The key to being a leader is to be prepared, even if it means to be over-prepared, this will help increase my confidence. I never thought I would become a PAL leader because I always felt I was too quiet and reserved, I thought this would be a good challenge for me, something that would help me develop into my future career and to boost my confidence.

At this moment in time I hope that I am teamed up with people who will bring out the best in me. I can be quite quiet at times and if I were teamed up with someone a little more chatty I feel I will easily learn from them and speak out more often. Fingers crossed.