Page 1: Great Expectations, seventy graphic solutions

I took this book out from the library as it was on the recommended reading list, and also because the concept for the book sounded quite interesting: seventy designers were all given the same task- to lay out the first page of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. The instigators of the project (Lucienne Roberts & Rebecca Wright) stated it as an opportunity for the designers to challenge the conventions of book typography, or to work within them. They supplied the text as it appears on the first page of the current Collins Classic paperback version. An intentionally open brief, the designer's responses vary greatly with different interpretations, but an important part of the brief meant that these design decisions had to be explained through a written rationale.

From the results, Roberts & Wright distinguished different categories to order the designs they had received. The six categories they came up with are: Book, which encompasses designs conceived as systems to be applied to a whole book; Word, which covers designs that deconstruct the text; Interaction, the designs under this heading foreground format and reading; Image - a smaller group - which includes designs where the type is treated as image; Tone, which includes design systems that could be applied to the whole novel but where the typography is as much a graphic interpretation of the text as it is to be read; and finally Story, this includes designs that attempt to encapsulate the entire story in some way.

I found looking at all the different designer's interpretations of the brief really intriguing to see how differently people think and apply their creativity to something. Reading the designer's rationales also made me understand some of the intricacies of typography a bit better and it was insightful to see the research the designer's must have to done to inform their decisions. 

From the book I have picked out my favourite interpretations of the task:

                                                 

  

                                               

                                                 

                                                  

 

I picked these 14 designs as my favourites due to varying reasons; some I picked because visually I found them eye-catching, in the case of the illustrative ones, for example the page design which had been hand wrote and show visible signs of smudging, or ones where multiple different typefaces have been used in a way which displays the type as an image, and others I picked due to the clever idea behind the design - for example the redacted text design, where all the words have been omitted apart from 'My Struggle' which encompasses the whole story plot itself, or Ellen Lupton's design which displays the text in a tweet format, with the first sentences appearing at the bottom, as is the case with social media timelines/forums. I also picked another design that plays on this idea of modernising the text through format, one which has been designed to appear like the page in an e-book with 'brightness' and 'zoom' icons apparent. 

I really liked the participatory design incorporated in to this book and is something I may try myself.

Analogue Communique - Further Exploration

For my final 3D typography experiment I decided to try out one of my initial ideas using lemons to create the word 'Bitter'.

                         

I created an animated gif to show the process consequentially and finally the final outcome.

Overall I enjoyed the 3D typography workshop task and there are more ideas I would like to try out.

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Taking my final outcome I then experimented with different coloured backgrounds.

Out of the two I think the black background works better.

Affect in Graphic Design

Moniker - Dutch design video

- People interested in experiences and emotions
- return to forest/nature design, movements coming from that

' Affect in Design'  - how we experience phenomena 
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behaviour and behavioural changes

Dutch design movements interested in behaviour not functionality 

Music video by Moniker - crowd sourced music video, gives user instructions 

























Almost performance art.   Performative side of 'affect'.
Prevelant in idea of relation design
Conditional -> participatory design,   'prompts' - all quite political prompts

don't know agenda behind cursor

'open' design -> no constraints  
trace it right through design history   - Graphic Affect (Spinoza) 1677


"I shall consider the actions and emotions of man precisely as if i were studying the nature of lines, planes, and solids"  

                                                                        - Spinoza

Hybrid of virtual, graphic, ad actual in service of entertainment.


Suffragette movement -> chalking pavements --> non linear communications, relational, open design?

- to generate mass publicity

- ideas of circulation --> passed around through media

-'Still life with rhetoric' - Laurie Gries
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Shepherd Fairey's Obama hope image - Gries tries to find every documentation of this image - interested in how it mutates 
-images encounter hostility --> mutated / permutation satirically - image muted if no one satires it

"semiotic tumbleweed circulates through different political ecosystems" 


- links to Bauhaus and Black Mountain College --> performative reliant on chance factors - less of a house style

Robert Rauschenberg - 'White Paintings' -> 'receptors' -> dust and shadow

John Cage's '3 minutes of silence' -- all about chance, collisions and documenting them somehow

- Marina Abramovich
-Stefan Sagmeister     
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body carving to show pain that accompanies design piece

-emotional design - half of 'affect'
transmission of felt pain - hard to watch someone hurting themselves

stages possibilities

Creating happiness by design - Stefan Sagmeister
closer interest between happiness and behaviour   
- got to put yourself through ordeal to materialise concept 

- other work --> room with wall removed to  see the sky. The scene of the people watching the other people watch the sky is more interesting than actually looking out the window.

printed speech bubbles and stuck them around for people to engage with

- politically relational

- situation to participate in rather than a spectacle to observe

- provocation based art project rather than talking about design

Cinema 4D Packaging Prototyping

 I found this session quite challenging and still feel even after three sessions that I am struggling with this software and not really enjoying using it. I would need to practice a lot more with this software for it to be a more accessible tool for me to use and one I could use confidently. 


We started off in Illustrator and had to make sure the rulers were set up correctly so the artwork would be set up correctly in cinema 4D.

 

                   

Once in Cinema 4D we extruded the object to make a 3D looking can.

 

We then created a material to add to the can to make the can look metallic.

After this we created the top for the can. This was a bit difficult.

We then created a material for the background and floor. 

Final rendered outcome:

I learnt afterwards the reason why the background was grey and not white, was because I had not ticked a box in the material options.

The second packaging prototype we had to create was a bottle. We started the same way in Illustrator. 

 

We then merged the Illustrator file in to Cinema 4D.

Once again we extruded the object to create a 3D looking shape. After this we then added a preset to make the bottle appear glass and have visible liquid in.

We then added materials to the object to add colour.

After this we added the supplied artwork to the bottle and bottle cap.

                                                                                   

We then create the bottle cap using circles.

  

Final outcome: