Category: Uncategorized

Concept Selection & Visual Consideration

Light Pollution Rationale

I have decided to push forward my light pollution concept, leaving neuroplasticity behind was initially not what I thought I would do, but with intervention from my peers as well as my tutors, the exploration of the brain is a very easily explored rabbit hole, the huge amount of research available would be that I could easily spend the whole project researching and discovering new ideas, without the refinement of any of these, resulting in a poorly made, but expansive range of outcomes. The critiques about my concepts have also resonated with flaws within myself, I already enjoy the theoretical side of research enough to the point that a research rabbit hole would have its effects massively amplified for myself, Light pollution has massive potential and the research will be more focussed to one area, allowing my message and work to have a more coherent and developed translation towards my clients/audience.

Further Research and Unearthing

Now that I am able to fully commit to researching light pollution, I think I need to develop my message and my desired outcome further, this is not my deliverables as such but instead what I hope to change in the world rather than how I will do it, although how i will do it is to come immediately after this step.

The formation of my message is being supported by extensive research, such as TED talks, scientific & Journalistic articles as well as examining previous campaigns that have a similar goal to mine, identifying then avoiding any pitfalls that I may encounter.

This TED talk, by astronomer Kelsey Johnson has an interesting tone, considering Johnsons background, an astronomer, she is of course concerned about the effect that light pollution has on the night sky and sees that the awe inspired state of an open sky can have positive effects on all those who are able to access it, but she also puts this aside and realises that this will not resonate with everyone as well as it does with her. She brings up striking statistics that I had no idea about, this talk certainly changed my perceptions of the impacts of light pollution. Some key pull out stats are found below

“$3 bn wasted every year due to light pollution”

“The amount of light pollution doubles every 35 years”

“Light pollution causes as much obesity as junk food”

“60-70% of outdoor lighting is wasted light”

“Disrupts Melotonin Production & the circadiant cycle”

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/artificial-light-during-sleep-linked-obesity

Although all of these were stunning to me, it is the last two that particularly interested me, the fact that outdoor lighting is only 30% effective stuns me, particularly when you put a 70% inefficiency rate into a different context, such as surgery or even something like betting odds.

I am sure that these stats will fuel many of my designs as I move forward, they are sure to resonate with a large audience as light pollution appears to impact every aspect of people life, it is much more than simply just light that causes disruption.

Circadian Cycle & Melotonin Exploration

A mention of Melatonin production and the Circadian cycle is mentioned within the talk, and so this has been explored further through research.

Melatonin is heavily involved in making the body ready to rest, calming and tiredness allow you to rest well and deep, the constant disruption by streetlights and other artificial lights during the evening disrupt this process, by disrupting the bodies circadian cycle it sets of a chain reaction of faults simply just from the lack of melatonin in the body. Known as a master or biological clock a circadian cycle keeps people awake during the day and allows for rest in the night, without this people suffer from the same symptoms as sleep deprivation, which in extreme cases can lead to permanent depression, anxiety as well as more physical illnesses, that go as extreme as a 50% higher chance of contracting breast cancer due to hormone imbalance. Alongside a general fatigue and lack of focus during the day, while the monetary cost of light pollution is priced at around $3 billion, the disruption to work due to a lack of real, well rested focus throughout the year has no number that I can find but is likely to be higher than $3 billion from other, mentally draining based statistics acquired from my Menstrual cycle Empowerment project earlier in the year.

A circadian rhythm is also responsible for the cause of jet leg if anyone is curious as to what a short-term experience of melatonin disruption is like. Full information can be found here, the information I have provided is merely there to give my response to the article as well as pull out important information for my own convenience when seeking statistics and design system inspiration later in the project.

https://www.nigms.nih.gov/education/fact-sheets/Pages/circadian-rhythms.aspx

Visual/Typographic Language Brainstorm

After my research further into the depths of light pollution I now feel i understand a greater extent of it, it appears to affect the population more than people realise, and the cost and death toll of light pollution is a large number, but impossible to numerically list.

My thoughts for what forms my visual language can take:

I still think that light pollution maps are a good source of design, the RGB shapes and graph like look with bright and vibrant arrays of colour would work well on screens, as well as give my designs a way to connect with the aesthetics of light pollution without having to extend into the cliche. This would be a challenging colour scheme, it being the full RGB spectrum to work with, but I think if done carefully and with high skill, it could open up large amounts of opportunities and the full range of colours available would become a great asset to my designs.

The shapes and forms of the maps themselves are interesting to me. Within my project timetable I have to submit a short sentence that sums up what I want to do for my FMP, my sentence read;

Advocating for a positive, darker future that promises to connect people closer together.

I think the key part here that draws most attention is that i am advocating for a darker future, I found an element of subversion in this part of the sentence, of course often in good design campaigns and charity work in particular a phrase is often to do with bringing a brighter and happier future, while I still hope to repel a negative future and bring about positives, my subversion in wishing for a ‘darker future’ attracts people’s attention, the majority of my audience will be used to assertive models of campaigns, generally uttering quite similar, blandly positive phrases, this quick change in vocabulary should hopefully snap people’s attention and make my campaign stand out from the crowd upon first interaction.

As well as being an interesting phrase to base my campaign upon, I think it could be take further, I wonder if I can base my campaign around subverting and challenging the usual campaign you would see in the advocation for lowered light pollution, engaging even my preconceptions that light pollution is mainly about tiny animals preservation and looking at a merely ‘pretty’ night sky, then I can hit the audience with stunning, hard hitting facts, such as the causing of cancers and huge cost to the economy that light pollution has.

The usual, assertive model of light pollution campaign can be seen in the examples listed below.

http://www.darkskiesawareness.org/faq-what-is-lp.php

As well as having a general unengaging, passive and cliche set of visual language, these campaigns only focus on the night sky aspect of light pollution, while to me this is a massively important part of reducing light pollution and will hopefully come into my project soon to create a feeling of missing out as well as connect people through the images of their night sky. This lack of consideration for the other impacts light pollution have not longer lessens the message by making it seem less urgent of a problem, but also, if an individual is not particular interested in viewing the night sky well, this may be due to the simple lack of consideration for what it will look like. They will immediately switch off from the advocation in front of them, my message needs to be refined and engaging if i am to create impactful designs.

As mentioned, the lack of night sky quality is still an important part of light pollution as it allows individuals to see the difference that can be made, and be put into a state of awe by their difference, a phrase ‘falling into space’ presents many interesting creative opportunities, it is spawned from the sense of vertigo that individuals often feel when starting into the night sky, a feeling like you’re going to fall back into space is common, and the phrase can be explored further and dissected for its metaphorical potential. Combined with this, when examining the patterns that light creates on the earth at night, they do not look like bright bulbs of lights on the earth’s surface, but instead seem to resemble a glowing golden spider’s web, or the growing extremities of cells in the human body, this metaphor interests me and I am wondering if it could be used within interfaces or formats in order to create the shapes and objects within my deliverables.

Deliverables Brainstorm

At this moment, my initial, single sentence long proposal is inspiring my deliverables. I am primarily advocating for a lowered level of light pollution, and hoping to do this by bringing people closer together in a dimmer future, I hope to create an application that will be social in nature, allowing individuals to contribute their photos of the night sky, whatever the quality and allowing for interaction based upon their night sky quality, hoping to pair up contrasting individuals in order to inspire both to explore my content further, seeing my other deliverables which at the moment include additional formats that will be more informative in nature, as the emotional connection to lowering light pollution has been made and this step is giving that emotional connection an action that can be completed, that action being inspiring the individuals to advocate the message of lowering light pollution as well as raising awareness for the seen and unseen effects that light pollution has on the population, these deliverables can be a website, information design style posters and digital banners or informative motion graphics, I think that motion graphics would be a useful format here not only due to the lack of them in my level 6 portfolio, but also because the issues I am communicating are complex and will need crystal clear translation as well as maximum visual impact.

Moving forward I think that I now need to utilise this ever more summarised message to create a plethora of potential outcomes and being applying my theories and viewpoints to a coherent, engaging set of visual and typographical systems, my project will now begin to move from the theoretical, the identification of the problem, to the conceptual, the creative solving of that problem.

Dissertation PDP

Researching and writing my dissertation has been the longest and most academically challenging project that I have undertaken to date, while it has been exceedingly challenging, it’s rewards have matched it’s difficulty, I think my research methods have been dramatically increased as well as particularly my ability to write extended papers, the tenacity and perseverance required was something that I thought of as a large elements of writing a dissertation, but it was far more prevalent that I first thought.

My dissertation covers the transgression of propaganda and its dynamic relationship with branding and advertising. I found some issues upon extended research due to this transgression occurring covertly, however this found its place within my dissertation as a way to alert readers to the issue itself. I found this area of research is something that is useful for my degree area of graphic communication, I was able to offer my expertise on multiple occasions as well as develop my skills as a designer throughout but focussing on design theory throughout.

My preliminary documents of my dissertation, such as my proposal ensured that I had a strong concept for my dissertation as well as to check if the thesis document was the best choice for me, this ultimately made my dissertation much stronger as well as offering opportunities for feedback. I think I used my tutorials well and engaged in sophisticated academic discussion that guided me into the right direction and ensured that when my motivation was stalling, I was still able to find new ideas and information from which to write from.

The research stages of my dissertation were extremely interesting, I found new topics that I had not considered before and unearthed an issue today’s society faces, then developed this into my 8000-10000 thesis. Throughout my process of creating a dissertation I was always sure that I would choose the thesis option as I felt that my academic and extended writing has always been strong, and this allowed it to grow ever stronger. I felt the actual topic of my dissertation was found early in the process but found constant development once extensive research had begun. I discovered additional research potential, even while writing my first draft, my structure was fairly straightforward, I think this was because my first two chapters are a relatively simple structure, simply describing key terms and analysing examples. I found my third chapter particularly challenging as it felt much more dynamic and investigative, my third chapter explored how propaganda had come to influence branding, and vice versa, this was the most interesting part of the dissertation to me and really motivated me to ensure it was written and researched to the highest quality.

I felt my research was of high quality, the sources I used are a mix of academic papers, independent sources as well as online newspapers, this ensured a well-rounded and engaging thesis that serves to both educate and inform those that come into contact with my dissertation question. As for my dissertation question, it was something that I found did not take as much prevalence as I expected, I think this is since I could simply write it after the main planning stage of my dissertation, this allowed my question to suit the text perfectly, ensuring that it was titled correctly.

I think that in my previous years of constellation, i would have benefitted from further practicing of referencing, this is not a skill that I think has been focussed on enough. My lack of knowledge on referencing did not affect my end result much at all, but did ensure that I spent a day learning how to do it immaculately, however this meant that my referencing skills were fresh for when it was needed within my dissertation.

I think the strongest elements of my dissertation is my structure and topic choice, it is something contemporary and historical, but that still had lots of undecided factors about it, allowing for multiple paths of research to be conducted. However, I ran into issues when trying to conduct primary research and instead swapped those research methods to a more traditional secondary approach. This type of research did, however, allow me to gain a greater amount of credited, academic opinions on my chosen topic area.

The lack of library access towards the end of my dissertation limited me somewhat, but I was still able to access most of my needed material from home and what facilities were available to me. This was made easier by my chosen dissertation topic, the majority of my dissertation discussed visual material and so the support of images and photographs helped to condense my word count while ultimately expanding my dissertation inclusivity. I think that if I were to do this project again, I would like to focus more on an older topic that it more documented, this would allow me to conduct a greater amount of research in older and more traditional books and papers as opposed to relying on newspapers and website to find the majority of my content. While I do not think I would find this type of dissertation more interesting than what I have created here, I do think that it would appear more academic and perhaps, be a greater source of information for others to examine and review.

Moving forward I now hold greater academic skills that will be used throughout my professional career as a designer as well as an overall greater knowledge on both propaganda and branding, alongside this I think I hold a greater confidence in myself as a professional that will assist in the highly sophisticated and competitive interviews that will follow my post university life. giving me a greater chance at succeeding as a graduate Graphic Designer.

Reflections & Considerations for ISTD Submission

This project has been a challenging task, with very large amounts of work to complete in every aspect, heavy research on Italo Calvino and Marco Polo themselves revealed interesting prompts for formatting and type setting, and even heavier research into each of the 55 cities available allowed me to understand the book, this was supported by large amounts of research into the themes and tones of the book. All of this combined with the demand for a large format book made me stretch far out of my comfort zone, originally choosing this brief due to the lack of real, thought out typographic design within my portfolio I found myself undertaking the most typographical experimental brief I have seen to date within my studies. This has not been without reward; I find myself more experienced and confident in both my typographical and time management skills. My researching skills continue to develop incredibly well throughout Level 6 thanks to more complex briefs with ever more challenging design problems to solve. My current outcomes suitably challenge the current systems used to read books and demand an active engagement from the reader throughout, I think this matches my target audience of experienced readers who are looking for more from books. I found that I never stopped experimenting throughout this project, consistently coming up with new and innovative designs throughout the project, even up until the day before when my message behind my end papers were discovered. I have considered elements for the first time, such as choosing from a wide range of paper stock and delving ever further into type setting and layout options within InDesign (even stretching the tools available to me to greater lengths by designing round spreads). I think that my work could now be more improved by first answering the questions I have given myself in my previous entry, mainly further experimentation into stab binding and font weight. But I also think my outcomes could be improved by creating more expressive cities type, while I think that my outcomes express the themes and characteristics of the book in general to an exceptional extent, I do not think that the cities characteristics and idiosyncrasies as individuals are celebrated to a good enough extent. I plan to improve this by creating further atlas spreads and seeing what works in the future. Overall, I think that these outcomes have the potential to be awarded an ISTD, but they still require further revision and development to reach the level required, the ideas and concepts are good enough, but I think it is now a case of stopping the concept experimentation and refining my now outcome into a professional, rounded typographical celebration of Invisible Cites.

A link to my full, unedited personal notes for this project are found here: https://www.icloud.com/notes/02c0dLxHMt_1ljdL48ENLb5Kg#Despina_Co_ords_10,0,40,8

Outcomes & Format

Book Layout without tearing open french fold pages

Layout-for-book-not-tornDownload

My choice to include some blank pages into my layouts is an informed and purposefully done one. I wanted my reader to feel a sense of discovery in every aspect of the book design, every opportunity within this book something new and surpising is implemented, from similarly coloured elements on the cover, using large amounts of small letterforms to form an overall silhouette skyline image, to using my end papers ot deliver a message (and a map) of venice, eluding to the fact that each of these cities that Marco Polo describes is indeed, simply different parts of venice, a place he is afraid to lose if he puts into words and so disguessies them by giving them the names of women and stating they are these 55 different cities that are mentioned throughout invisible cities.

the biggest discovery and surpise of the book is within the french fold pages, the need to use the map that is given to the reader proir to each chapter to direct them to the correct place on the large format (500x320mm) atlas style coordinate utilising map found when the french folding pages are fully revealed. Using double folded pages allowed me to hide thhe entire content of each chapter within the pages, not just the map with the five cities per chapter on, this allowed the book to, at first glance, only contain the end papers and the wheel, a tool needed for the reader to progress any fither within the book.

Torn French Fold Spreads

french-fold-pagesDownload

For my French folding, I have some options as to it’s style. I can use traditional french folding, where the end of the page is simply torn or cut open, revealing a hidden spread within (or in my case, one double spread and a double sized map). I also have the perhaps more interesting option of utilising japanese stab binding to hold the hidden spreads together, techniques and examples of this style are in the link below.

Bookbinding 101: Japanese Four-Hole Binding
A tutorial on specialist stab binding

More complex stab binding allows for not only the concealment of folded spreads, but also allows me to incorperate small designs or patterns on the actual page ends themselves, this could reflect the types of cities (E.g. cities and desire, thin cities) in the stab bound pattern. Or this could be used to inject a flash of colour to the book, given the rest of the book is in blacks, grays and whites, the binding string could use bright and attrctive colours that reflect the emotion of desire, or of thought as well as functioning to make the book stand out on a shelf more. This binding could be torn with a blade to gain access to the folded pages, or could be untied to preserve the string for aethetic appeal.

As for the content within the concealed pages, I used large 27mm margins in order to echo the looks of the old manuscripts that I have previously analysesd as well as to make the text appear smaller, more concentrated on the page, attempting to reflect the large cities that are bordered by massive, expansive deserts seperating them. I think that the justified text used helps support this by having the text appear more ordered as well as showing more consideration and care, justified text is something that looks simple and create on the surface, when infact the elimination of rivers is often more work than simply using an align left/right setting.

I think I have done a professional job in setting the text, empty space is utilised and I have not felt the need to overfill the page, while I think I could include the “type fall” effect to the empty space within the margins, I think that the empty space surrounding the text actually says more than if i were to fill the space with hardly visible floating letterforms.

Atlas Spread

The entire chapter conent quite easily fits onto one of these large atlas spreads due to it’s large format size of 500x320mm. This meant that careful consideration of space and ration needed to be considered, I think this worked well, the point size is 6pt and so scaling up is being considered, while the titles and pull out quotes are still substantially larger as to attract more attention and direct the heirarchy without taking away too much attention from the overall image and map feel of the large spread.

I have attempted to replicate the small blocks of text with large spaces between effect seen in the utilisation of large margins in the previous spreads by the continued use of full jusitified text, this is once again a timely process to carefully and meticulously build each paragrahp of an approratie size as to ensure rivers are eliminated, but yet the line length remains professiona and engaging, this then had to be balance with the fact that a strong heriarchy had to be input in both each individual city and within the large spread overall, to help direct the heirarchy as well as demonstraight that while these cities exist as seperate entities, there are key elements that link them together by incorperating small japanese dots that draw from several cities, breaking up to paragraphs or linking one paragraph to another.

Creating a spread of this size without much of the needed timeframe for prototyping and print testing was challenging, I had to constantly remind myself of the size of the spread, and as a result I think this spread has a sense of impact and is engaging to look at as a whole, but still has delicate details and layering when each cities typography is looked at individually.

Map Wheel

mini-wheel-1Download

The map wheel has been ammended massively from my origional thoughts, origionally to be the size 400x400mm it now only contains the names of each city and some small dummy letterforms, it has been reduced to a size of 150x150mm in order to fit into the books natural size of 160x250mm, allowing it to sit on a shelf when folded. I think The map wheel is where my improvements lie, the font needs to be ammended as I think that it is too bold to exist on such a small document, however I only have access to the two weights used, a medium weight would allow a balance of impact and delicacy, the full weights are available for purchase (although they price at $400), for clarity, here is the medium weight font I would choose for the map wheel letterforms if it were availble to me within the free version of Migra Serif.

I think having a medium weight font would help bridge the gap between headings and body copy, possibly using this weight for my pull out quotes as well, as I think this would allow my designs to be more interseting and dynamic with the inclusion of a third weight.

The small coordinates are placed nicely next to the titles, I think the wheel would need to be a larger size for these to be improved as a greater contrast between the size of the coordinates and the city names would make for more of a discovery when they are made sense to the reader, however If the wheel is made any larger, it is then not able to fit within the book itself and would need to exist as an individual entity, I think this would discupt the immersion and inclsusivity that has been created by having everything within one small book and so would require further thought if change is needed.

Overall I think that these spreads show a clear concept, as well as clear potential within the colour scheme and formatting, however they will need further thought and refinment, as well as multiple chapters being created as to allow me to contrast and compare the different visual language as well as more experimentation and prototyping into the binding of the book, there is potential to use a plethora of techniques and this will need to be figured out if my work is to be submitted to ISTD.

Layouts & Alternatives

With the introduction of a circular format, I have experimented with different layouts, all of which attempt to make this circular format work for me, as opposed to seeing it as an obstacle. I am unable to create these slices in InDesign, but I can draw out the slices using the pen tool and then input body copy and titles accordingly. I think these layouts show a variety of styles, pace and hierarchy while still containing some key themes throughout, the existence of body and letterforms on the border between two rings is done on purpose in order to more interestingly distort the text when the rings are not spun correctly, initial thoughts for my final outcome to ISTD would be to create strange letterforms with the half and half sections that would be resting on each side of the ring and then photograph the “homemade” letterforms that form as the different wheels are spun round. I like this idea as it makes for a more organic and interesting reading and interactive experience.

I took my rough digital sketches and then input them into InDesign where I met with difficult challenges that made my body copy paragraphs lack both impact and immersion.

Due to InDesign need to create documents in a rectangular format, the circular support tools are lacklustre, therefore the body copy paragraphs here are appearing less dynamic than in the sketches previously. There exists a type on a line tool, where you can draw a circle and type a single line over it, however there is no option to type more than that one single line onto the path, and so to create the circular paragraphs seen in my rougher digital sketches I would then have to create each paragraph, line by line, this would not be achievable within my timeframe and would also make experimentation much more difficult and much less free flowing, I do not think this would be a good idea to do due to the fact that I could spend my remaining time available on this project experimenting more elsewhere, with more ambitious formats and layouts, as opposed to simply create small amounts of copy paragraphs that would curve with the discs.

Moving forward I think it’s best to leave these copy paragraphs in the square and rectangular shapes that are currently in, then proceed to move on with more varied ideas, if this proves to be my most successful idea, I will then take the time to create each paragraph line by line for my final submission.

After assembling the separate layouts into one full size map, I find the rings to be very heavy and flush with text, however the cities do begin to build their own pictures and make imagery within themselves, allowing the quite close together to still exist separately, while the heavy amount of text will still make for some interesting combinations before the rings have been correctly assembled, this enhances the feelings of discovery as well as illustrating each cities characteristics and idiosyncrasies.

City Deconstruction & Selection

Invisible Cities is split into many categorys with 55 cities in total. Given that they are all very different and the brief suggests to complete just four tales I feel I should deconstruct all of the cities by analysing the text in its entirety and then proceeding to take the most interesting/expressive cities out of the 55 and then select four that I will work with more closely to discover my more refined concepts, these four cities can then be used as subjects for examples of visual and typographical experimentations throughout the remainder of the project.

Input Slideshow of the four pages with my chosen cities on here

Images from Ipad of deconstruction of chapter one cities here

After deconstruction and analysis of the cities it not only allowed me to find the most interesting and expressive but also gave me much better insight by allowing me to build up my own opinion of the text rather than simply examining others deconstruction of the book. Given that perception is a key theme of this book and so the consideration of myself and my thoughts is as vital as others I think this will assist me greatly moving forward with competition brief.

My four chosen cities for experimenting fall within several chapters but all share some very similar themes, this variance in execution but similarity in theme will allow me to treat them not disimilar to a brand, with repeating visual elements that are consistent throughout but different pace settings and hierarchies that keep the reader engaged with the content throughout.

treating the cities as a brand allows me to engage most of my preivously learnt knowedlge, given brands commonplace occurence within my studies, I have a plethora of techniques and process on how to develop them while still allowing me to create different styles of experimentation within this newer format of publication and editorial design, actively pushing me out of my comfort zone, but still allowing me to draw on my specialist techniques learnt previously.