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Final Project

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In Lecture Exercise G

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In Lecture Exercise F

The five hues in this image are: yellow, red, brown, beige and grey

It’s an analogous colour scheme that is pleasing to the eye because they are all colours next to each other on the colour wheel. The hues, in particular red, work to increase one’s appetite and present a homely atmosphere to the image. The red hue is also of a darker tone compared to the other hues and the contrast helps establish Ya Kun Toast’s brand identity visually.  

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In Lecture Exercise E

Firstly, the image utilises the same font for both the header and the main body which creates a lot of discord as if someone is shouting at the reader.

Secondly, there is a distinct lack of structure in the main body text and the centre alignment makes it hard to read as there is no consistent starting point.

Perhaps it would be a better design choice to use a mix of typefaces: a sans-serif typeface for the title to catch the attention of the viewer and a serif typeface for the main body text so that it will be easier to read running sentences. This contrast will also help to further establish a hierarchy within the image.

Additionally, the main body text could instead be aligned to the left and paragraphed so there is a distinct structure as well as create a natural flow for the reader.

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In Lecture Exercise D

For these photos I tried to follow to the rule of thirds as expounded upon during the lecture. This is done in the form of having at two thirds of the image be negative space for the first two images and one third of the image be negative space for the last two images.

For the first two images, more negative space was given as I wanted the viewer to contextualise the eraser to the setting by using a wide angled long shot and other stationary to frame it in a way. Thankfully, the eraser also had a bright colour that broke away from the monochromatic colour palette.

In the first image, the eraser was further away from the other stationary to isolate it and draw attention to it. 

The second image is a more zoomed in look through a mid-shot and there was a distinct light cast on the eraser which highlighted the eraser even though it was closer in proximity to the other stationary. 

The third image was a close up shot where the font is the most visible and one can even see the eraser dust still on it which aimed to focus more on the function of the eraser. 

The last image was also a close up shot but taken in landscape. It was more of an artistic attempt to focus on the shape of the eraser by propping it up and placing the other stationary in the background. This new composition is still able to contextualise the setting within a close up shot yet looks and uses different techniques from the first image.

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In Lecture Exercise C

The signifier is a Heinz ketchup bottle imagined as a whole sliced tomato that features a glossy finish on the tomato skin whereby the tomato stem is still present.

The signified is a farm to table concept with the inclusion of the stem and that the product is a symbol of freshness with the glossy skin.

Furthermore, the colour red itself signifies the idea of hunger as most food outlets and products utilise a similar colour in their branding.

The tagline also features the word ‘grow’ despite Ketchup being a product that is mixed together in a food plant. This leads the viewer to think of whole tomatoes rather than the reality of ketchup being preserved mashed tomatoes. Due to the short length of the sentence, readers will not be attentive to the lack of logic in the sentence but instead fixate on the verb ‘grow’ – reinforcing what is signified further.

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In-Lecture Exercise B

This item is a cutlery holder in the shape of an elephant whose trunk is able to drain out all excess water left on the cutlery after one has washed them.

There is an attempt to link how an elephant’s trunk is often depicted as spraying water in cultural references and thus draw a parallel with the design function of the holder. However, if one remembers the function of an actual elephant’s trunk, an elephant’s trunk is first used to suck up water often to drink and only sometimes used to spray water on themselves.

Since that is information that might not be common knowledge, the product still achieved its intended goals as the relationship the trunk has with water is still acknowledged. Yet, I might imagine that in terms of functionality, there may still be some residual water left near the legs of the elephant unless the elephant was designed tipped at an angle.

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Assignment 5

I wanted to do my piece on Elderly Suicide in Singapore. Mental health is quite important to me and I’ve done quite a bit of research on Singapore’s suicide rates when I was taking a class on suicidology on exchange.  

I started by collating all the data and visually representing all the numerical that I have collected from the following sources: 

https://www.sos.org.sg/pressroom/suicide-rate-lowest-but-number-of-elderly-suicide-highest-recorded

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/number-of-suicides-among-seniors-hits-record-high

https://www.sos.org.sg/media/annual-reports

https://www.singstat.gov.sg/-/media/files/publications/population/population2017.pdf

I ended up with this result: 

The number of elderly suicides increasing while overall suicide rates have decreased

Age demorgraphic of SOS hotline callers whereupon 23% of callers are the elderly

The number of calls made by the elderly decreasing while the number of suicides have increased (correlation?)

Other data I have found include the barriers the elderly have to getting help, their struggles and ways to help the elderly. 

However, in my first draft, I made the mistake of just putting everything together into one long image rather than having an overall theme. I thought following the SOS colour scheme would suffice in establishing an overall theme.

Tried to incorporate the data in a visual manner but made it look too ‘academic’ which isolates people who are not familiar with graphs

There were too many words and did not form a narrative

The image did not have a cohesive theme resulting in it looking like chunks of information at a time

My second draft saw me attempting to create a narrative surrounding the data but still running into some issues.

Continued with SOS colour scheme

Created a narrative of someone in distress at nighttime

Someone throwing a phone off the building to illustrate that the number of calls made by the elderly have dropped

The building to represent the increase in elderly sucicides (most people in Singapore commit suicide by jumping)

Used icons to visually represent the words “reach out” and “redirect”

However, this resulted in a lack of data. It seemed to now only focus on one part of the data. Also, the narrative was not very clear visually and needed more work.

My final submission aimed to rectify everything.

Data was added and edited to support the narrative

“Almost ¼ (23%) of hotline calls were made by the elderly”: to show significance of this drop in calls

“Overall suicide rates are at its lowest”: to showcase the severity of the increase in elderly suicides. Elderly woman at the top contrasted with young people. Placement also visually represented the word “lowest”.

The data narrative reads from left to right and downwards with the yellow thick font acting as signposts for the eye to follow.

Asking the general viewer, who may not even know if the elderly in their lives are suicidal, to call the hotline did not seem to empower them to help. Using proxemics, the hotline number was still paired with the phone icon that was also next to the data on the number of calls dropping, so viewers can make the deduction that this was the hotline number.

To empower the viewer, methods to help the elderly on their own were added which were sourced from the original data collection. Night time clouds and moon were added in to create add to the narrative of night time, with the slogan “you are the silver lining” heading the different ways people can help the elderly when they are alarmingly not seeking help on their own. The theme of the clouds portion was to symbolize the importance and ability of the viewer to enact change in the situation.

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Assignment 4

I quite enjoy typography to create an mood for my writing but never thought of it as a form of art. This assignment truly expanded that world view and really helped to further refine my design thinking. I will now be bringing you through the developmental process for my piece.

Step 1: Ideate  Descriptive Pair Words

Split Decision

Look Closer

Tough Luck

Balancing Act

Family Tree

Step 2: Come up with some designs based on wordplay and kinetic typography.

Step 3: Looking at all the ideations, I felt that my ideas for Split Decision was able to convey the kinetic meaning of the two words the best. 

Step 4: Turning it to a digital format on Adobe Illustrator.

I tried to make it look like the split drived a wedge between the words and warped the text such that it looked like it was impacted by the wedge. I chose two different colours for the necessary contrast and hoped to drive the eye towards the word Split first so they can be read in the right order. However, I had some remarks from my tutorial mates that I had to work on.

Remarks from the class:

Overall focused too much on the literal meaning of the word split rather than the meaning as a whole.

Colours made the viewer focus on the word decision first instead of split.

The way the words diverged was also too wobbly rather than an impact.

However, the wedge was a good idea.

Step 5: I refined the meaning according to the meaning of the PHRASE itself which was not captured here and further brainstormed how I could bring it out in the design. 

A split decision (SD) is a winning criterion in several full-contact combat sports (such as boxing, kickboxing, Kun Khmer, Muay Thai, mixed martial arts and other sports involving striking) in which two of the three judges score one fighter as the winner, while the third judge scores for the other fighter.

- Wikipedia

Ideas to convey in the design

The 1:3 element

The ‘closeness’ of the decision

Possibly, the aggressiveness/tension aspect?

Reference to some form of identifiable combat?

Step 6: Final Edit.

Design Intentions

Decision

I thought of what to do with decision first since it took up more ‘space’ in the design and was ‘impacted’ the most - hence showing the meaning the clearest.

To establish the 1:3 effect the letters were separated to a rough equivalent of the ratio.

Font for ‘decision’ reminds viewer of a combative sport logo with the gritty effect to convey the idea of being worn out after a fight.

The letter ‘C’ was also dragged out to feel the full weight of the word ‘split’ hitting it. This is because the minority vote loses. This also caused a distortion to mimic the impact of a punch.

The letter ‘I’ was slightly impacted as well since the vote isn’t unanimous. The space between ‘split’ and ‘decision’ is also very narrow to establish how ‘close’ the decision is.

Split

A font that conveys speed and painful (sharp and piercing) was considered for the word.

It was also set at an angle to mimic how a punch is delivered at an angle as well as to possibly mimic a knife to again, suggest a painful decision.

Red was used to mimic the colour of the gloves for martial arts which is most commonly red. It also draws the reader’s attention to read ‘split’ first.

A big bubble font to mimic a glove was also considered but it would interfere with the meaning of ‘split’ and hence was not used in the end.

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Truth Eclipse by Leander Eisenmann - Switzerland, 2017 / offset, 594 x 841 mm - Graphic Arts

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Spray typography

done with fineliner

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Assignment 3

I worked on the storyline first so that I knew which were the pivotals points of the narratives that required a frame. The story would be about a boy who woke up in bed to an invitiation that he was looking forward to, only to have it be cancelled. He would then go back to bed in disapppointment. From there, I knew I had to have two establishing shots of the boy in bed that would be in sharp contrast from each other. I would also need 2 reaction shots to both messages. The other 2 shots would be to convey his mood and expectations towards the events. 

The shots were decided based on conventional movie compositions from slice of life and romantic comedies. However, visually I wanted to play around with colour and lighting to parallel the boy’s mood. The shots would first start out bright and warm only to darken and vignette with a cool toned tinge. I also wanted to add more and more grain to the pictures to mimic the noise and frustration that is hidden within the boy. I also the last frame to have a lot of hard light to show the harsh reality that the boy is facing. 

I chose the middle image in the end for the first frame as it showcased clearly the incoming message and him waking up with his eyes half open. I decided against the shot on the right in the end as I felt that the jacket distracted the viewer from the boy’s facial expression.

I chose the shot on the right as I think it subtlely captures the boy’s nervousness towards the event (a raised eye facial expression) but also the mise-en-scene informs the viewer that he is getting ready for the event. The other two shots seems to establish a sense of formality or vanity rather than the idea of putting in effort for the event so they were not used in the end.

I decided against the shot on the utmost right as I thought that the facial expression would be important for the scene after reviewing them in sequence. The shot in the middle expressed the most disappointment without it being over the top. The shadows for the picture on the utmost left were too dark and the facial expressionw as not quite accurate and could be interpreted as happy due to the lack of the head tilting downwards.

I wanted to convey the idea of him returning home. The middle photo just seemed to blatant and didn’t convey enough emotion. I decided against the photo on the left as it was not as emotional as the photo ont he utmost right due to the lack of a body. The disarrayed shoes did not convey as much as the slouched back boy hunched over in disappoint with the visual conventions of hands in the pocket conveying a feeling of rejection.

I wanted another shot to showcase the boy’s emotions with more dark images but felt that it was overall uncessary with regards to the plot. The other images could convey the plot succintly even without the addition of these photos. The colours of the other image were indicative enough of his mental state.

Of the three harsh lighting shots I shortlisted, I felt that the shot of the boy unobstructed by the phone and from a top down angle showcased a sense of vulnerability by making the boy smaller. His facial expression also captured the disappointment better rather than the other two which seemed more neutral.

In conclusion, this assignment was built upon other concepts learned from the previous assignments such as the attention to semiotics and playing with perspectives. 

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Assignment 2

1: I chose a photo of my female friend looking out of a bus window with her chin resting on her knuckles and the other hand holding her smart phone. 

2:Firstly,  I started the abstraction process by first identifying the main colours of the image and removing the details of the houses, the railway tracks and the fields. Once the image was simplified to strokes of colour, the central focus of the image, which is my friend and her actions, rather than the scenery, became clearer to me. I decided to focus on this concept for my subsequent frames for refinement.

3. Hence, I removed the scenery from the image and thought about how I could simplify the sihoulette of my friend further so that it is more easily recognisable as a human being. 

4. Therefore, I turned the sihoulette into a series of shapes that rely on conventions such as stick figures. I made it female with the use of the triangle and showed the idea of her resting on her knuckles just by tilting the triangle to an angle. I also removed the phone because the phone was irrelevant to the action of contemplating out of a window. 

5. Then, I realised that the bus window did not really look like a window unless I was referencing the original image. Therefore, I relied on the conventional idea of what a window was instead to make the message clearer that it was a person looking out of a window. 

6. I abstracted the image further where the focus is not so much on the act of contemplation while looking out of the window, but rather the act of looking itself. The hands were no longer necessary and thus removed. Additionally, I shifted the position of the stick figure to convey a sense of distance between the window and the ‘person’ to show the act of looking out of a window. I kept the triangle to continue signifying how it was a woman looking out of the window. 

This assignment impressed upon me the importance of having a well defined message but also how good design be simple and leave no room for differing interpretation in order for the message to be clear. In order to do so, one has to rely on visual conventions that provides the necessary grammar to for the viewer to understand the message. 

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🌸✨My rose quartz sphere from @bekkathyst came! I am in love with it!✨🌸 

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Clear quartz

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this turns me on 💕✨🌸 (thecolourfuldot)