GDNM YEAR ONE 1

Thom Annison

Year 1GDNM

2 GDNM YEAR ONE

GDNM YEAR ONE 3

&Media 1Design

4 GDNM YEAR ONE

Design & Media 1Contents

Vernacular Typography3D AnimationKinetic TypographyStop MotionPainting AnimationBackground IllustrationProtest PosterAdvert AnalysisRhythms in Video and Sound

5 -12 -16 -18 -22 -28 -32 -36 -42 -

GDNM YEAR ONE 5

Vernacular Typography“The dialect of text of a particular country or region.”

One vanishing art that can still be studied in the interstices of the assault of global retail is vernacular typography. All over the world,there are cities and towns that retain their rich traditions of vernacular signage. Unfortunately, the fate of these typographic havens isbeing threatened by the uniformity of corporate advertising, which ignores and subverts local history and tradition. This website seeks to collect and document examples of these vanishing symbols of art and culture.The above passage is the ‘about’ section from a website called vernaculartypography.com, a photographer, Molly Woodward, has put together hundreds of images of vernacular typography from

around the world up on the web for all to see. It was the first and last stop when doing research about vernacular type for this project as it literally holds everything I needed to know along with prime examples of the kinds of images i needed to see. The two photographs above and to the right were both taken and put up on the site by Molly. The thing I found most interesting whilst browsing the site was how it’s not only cities and counties that have their own kind of vernacular type, but different countries all seem to, sometimes loosely, hold a theme. For example, in cuba almost everything is in a san-serif font and they tend to hold a maroon and/or yellow colour pallette. Whereas, in England you still do see san-serif but there is alot more serif around.

6 GDNM YEAR ONE

The Rule of Thirds

Split the page into 9 equallysized boxes when consderingcomposition.Strong elements of the pieceshould lie along the lines or inthe intersectionsThis creates more interest, energy and tension.

The Golden RatioWhen using the goldenratio, you must considerthe page dividing byway of the �bbonaccisequence.If done correctly, everyaspect of a piece shouldbe contained within oneof these divisions,depending on importance.

The Rule of OddsThe rule of odds statesthat if the main focal pointof the art piece is surroundedby an even number ofobjects, it becomes morecomforting to the eye.eg. A person standingbetween two others wouldoften be considered friendlyand approachable by theviewer.

SymmetrySymmetry is a couterargument for the rule of oddsas for symmetry to exist, there must be an evennumber of subjects.Symmetry would more likelybe used in a piece wheregiving one characterprominence was not necess-ary and when the symmetrywould force the viewer tocompare the two objects.

Compositional Techniques

GDNM YEAR ONE 7

Monochromatic Varation

Take one colour and varytonesshades

hues

Sophistiacted and calming

Split ComplementaryTake one colour and useone colour either side of itscomplementary (opposite side)

First colour for accentothers for areas of space

Double Complementary

Take two colours and add the complementary for each

This scheme gives you varietybut is hard to balance due toslight colour clashes

Analogous Relationship

Take two adjacent colours from the colour wheel

Similar to monochromaticbut o�ers more varietyPick one main colour andhighlight with other

Triad Relationship

Take three colours equally spacedfrom the colour wheel

O�ers most variety of all schemes, not as much contrast as complementary but allowsgreater funtionality

Colour Strategies

8 GDNM YEAR ONE

These are the traced finals of my abstract alphabet. I tried to be as creative as possible and not use obvious objects for certain letters and I made sure to always look letters in places i didn’t expect or where I had already

found a letter. I think this meant my final alphabet ended up looking, as the name suggests, abstract. This is as opposed to taking a hose-pipe for an ‘S’ and a streetlamp for an ‘L’ etc.

GDNM YEAR ONE 9

These are my traced pieces of vernacular text. After having a good look around epsom, most of the shops seemed to be chains and there was not much graffiti or any sort of hand made type around so I decided to venture

to London to do my research. Specifically the area around Soho. This was much more successful, because as you walk around you notice alot more poorer shops with chalkboard signs and things like that.

10 GDNM YEAR ONE

pleasing to a viewers’ eye.I decided the rule of odds would be useful for drawing attention to my chosen word, for example in my first piece, I use one colour twice in order to divert the eye towards the single colour to guide the eye across the first half of the word. My second piece incorporates some symmetry in the way the two arrows are positioned and the rule of odds has been taken into account for the actual type, I have used three

I chose a split complemantary colour scheme to take from my urban landscape. One of the assets of split complementary is that it becomes easy to chooseone prominent colour and use the other two to accent highlights and/or lowlights of a piece. This seemed perfect for the simple type and colour task at hand. In terms of compositional strategy the rule of thirds played a part in all three of my pieces as a technique to make them

GDNM YEAR ONE 11

different colours in order to keep the image looking comforting and easy to look at. I was not used to very closed, strict briefs when I first joined the course, as everything I’d done before in college or industry were very open ended with practically no limitations. So I stuck to the instructions very carefully and made sure I incorporated my pallette and the compositional strategies I had researched into each piece. Which is something,

for better or worse, I would have challenged when working on pieces in the past. All of the artwork around the words were created from the vernacular or abstract type that I had traced. I think being stricter with myself on limitations has helped structure my work. If I had been given this brief with no limitations they wouldn’t fit together so well on a page and would be three very seperate things.

12 GDNM YEAR ONE

3D Animation of Typographyto evoke memory and transport viewer in time and space

GDNM YEAR ONE 13

Before joining Graphic Design: New Media I never would have even considered using making a 3D animation, let alone using text and to be given it in the second week was quite daunting at first. First opening 3DS MAX was intimidating to say the least. Having said that after being taught and with the help of some tutorials it is definitely something I would consider using again. I always thought that 3D text, unless done really well, looked quite tacky and gimmicky, two elements I would never want to put my name to. I understand now that to stop the 3D text from looking awful it was necessary to practice the program and learn new things. If one day I feel a 3D element in a piece would suit what I’m trying

to achieve, I will experiment with it and now I know my way, somewhat, around an industry standard program it won’t be something I don’t give a second thought anymore. In order to progress in this course and in my career, I’m going to have to become a ‘jack of all programs’ and know what I’m capable of.

14 GDNM YEAR ONE

This brief instructed us to choose an image and think of a word that would transport the viewer in time and space. The way Iinterpreted this was that looking at an image with no words just allows you to think about what’s happening in that little window. With the addition of a word or some words, the way that viewer thinks about the image is changed and the photo or painting then becomes much deeper and has a crucial backstory giving it meaning rather that just looking nice on a wall. This is practically applied by titling a piece of work and making sure the title is visible whenever the piece is. I chose the word ‘home’ because, looking at the image above without the word you would maybe be a little confused as to what was going on and the photograph doesn’t really hold

GDNM YEAR ONE 15

any weight. There’s a character but he doesn’t do much more than blend into the background. With the addition of the word, this character gains a backstory, the viewers obtains an insight into his life as soon as they realise that this desolate, run down building is his home and that he has to climb up a rickety broken staircase just to reach his front door, something i think everyone takes for granted. The way I animated ‘home’ was to juxtapose the idea of home being cold and uncomfortable for some with how home is for the average person. I used warm coloured lettering and made them squeeze together in a comforting and gentle manner. Unfortunately when uploading to Vimeo the loss of quality resulted in the shadow in the text becoming darker than it should have been.

16 GDNM YEAR ONE

Kinetic Typographylining up lyrics with visuals in after effects

GDNM YEAR ONE 17

making the beginner mistakes I was in the beginning. Once I felt I had mastered the basics, I started to experiment with using the standard tools at my disposal in different ways, discovering tricks to cut down animating time or to make transitions smoother. While experimenting with the actual design of the piece I tended to just delete those frames as I went along so I don’t have any saved copies of experimentation unfortunately. However, this piece did evolve away from my original plan almost on it’s own while I was tackling the new challenge of

Adobe After Effects was another program I’d never familiarised myself with before this September, when I was told we would be doing an animation I assumed we’d be using Adobe Flash as I didn’t even know that After Effects was capable of this kind of animation, I thought it was purely and film editing tool.I found it incredibly slow, frustrating, and limiting at first, but once I had been animating this for an hour or so I stopped

After Effects. In my original plan I was going to give the piece a strong reference to ‘Fight Club’ the movie, but as things progressed I decided it would be more interesting and give me chance to create more variety if I just let the piece stand on it’s own. I’m getting more adept with After Effects every week with a combinations of briefs and tutorials in order to unlock the stunning capabilities it holds for the future.

18 GDNM YEAR ONE

Stop Motion Animationcreating suspense, anticipation and revelation

GDNM YEAR ONE 19

A first look at the work of Adam Pesapane, aka PES, brings to mind the films of Jan Svankmajer, the 73 year-old Czech surrealist whose food-related stop-motion animations can be seen as an influence in the University of Virginia alum’s playful and unusual uses of chow for all sorts of anarchic configurations and stories. “I learned a lot by watching [Svankmajer’s] films,” said PES in an exclusive interview with Tilzy.TV. “I liked what he was doing with objects, using them as ideas and textures.”But PES’ particular brand of stop motion carries his own distinct touch, one that is

resolutely American and of late 20th Century/early 21st popular culture.For instance, his short film Game Over recreates vintage video arcade games like Centipede and Frogger by way of cupcakes, muffins, salt shakers, birthday cake candles, watches, sequins, pretzel logs, and plastic cars. Others, like the recent short Western Spaghetti (above) turns food into objects by substituting puppet eyes, Rubik’s Cube pieces, pin cushions, dollar bills, dice, Post It notes, rubber bands, and yarn for common household ingredients in order to cook up a very unique meal.extract from an interview conducted by Michael Rowan in 2008

20 GDNM YEAR ONE

Stop Motion has always been an interest of mine, thanks to directors like PES (interview on page 19) but something I’ve never attempted to create myself. It’s never really leant itself to any of the ideas I’ve had in the past. But then I never used to do any moving image. The biggest lesson I learned the hard way whilst shooting my animation was that to make a successful stop motion video, you need to use a tripod. Once I rented a tripod from the University I tried again. I initially struggled for ideas for a word to use and disposed of my previous ones with much frustration as each scene takes so long to make I wasted alot of my time this project by not keeping the experimental stages recorded somewhere. This is probably the project I’m least happy with. I tried to create suspense by hiding the word

GDNM YEAR ONE 21

behind objects but I think I revealed them again too quickly and there was no time to build any tension up. This also wasn’t helped by the steady pacing of the video. Looking back I think it needs some faster and slower sections just so some parts hold emphasis and the boring travelling parts just fly by. On the other hand I was quite pleased with the pallette of the video. My idea was to pick a word that could interact with other objects so I chose newspaper as it is bold and can stand out but is also plain so as not to get lost in front of the things it’s interacting with. The video starts and ends with a plain neutral background to make sure the viewer is only concentrating on the word but in the middle I tred to use the most colourful and shapely object I could find to maintain interest.

22 GDNM YEAR ONE

Animation with Oil Paintingscreating a basic narrative using pieces which already have stories

GDNM YEAR ONE 23

24 GDNM YEAR ONE

Preparing for Adobe After Effects

When I first read this brief I had absolutely no idea on how to approach the task and it took alot of research to see how I could animate using purely paintings. Fortunately, by the time I came to this brief I had quite a firm grasp on using After Effects. That meant that when I was looking through animations of paintings on youtube and found a series called ‘flying through paintings’ on a channel called LibanPhotography. The videos were from the perspective of a camera flying through all the layers of the paintings. These videos were what made me

realise what I needed to do was layer via cut the elements of the painting I needed to animate, then fill in the empty space behind them with neutral imagery so I could move them around freely while animating. Then I needed to add them to an after effects composition, put the layer into 3D and drag the layers in the Z axis and resize the image so it looked normal again. This gives the painting perspective and allows you to freely move between the layers and animate the chosen element without fear of exposing blank space behind the arm or the leg etc.

GDNM YEAR ONE 25

26 GDNM YEAR ONE

GDNM YEAR ONE 27

I chose to make up a story about Dionysus, the Greek God of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy.The story of the video starts with Dionysus drinking as a baby and as a teen, until he has a nightmare in which there is a horrible vision of his drunken future.He seeks help from a wise old woman who tells him to throw the bottle away.Just after Dionysus has given up drinking for good, King Midas tempts him with wine in order to get him to come and liven up his party but Dionysus refuses.Unfortunately, temptation got the better of him and he ends up a fat, happy, drunken God.

““

28 GDNM YEAR ONE

Background Illustrationdesigning desktop and phone backgrounds using rhythmic techniques

GDNM YEAR ONE 29

Regularrhythm

Flowingrhythm

Progressiverhythm

A regular rhythm occurs when the intervals between the elements, and often the elements themselves, are similar in size or length. This makes for a well organised easy look at feel. For the type of person who likes things neatly arranged this would probably prefer this a background.

A flowing rhythm gives a sense of movement, and is often more organic in nature. This type of rhythm would probably be best suited to a phone background seeing as it very unintrusive and combined with the small screenand abundance of icons on some modern mobile phones it becomes an attractive backround that doesn’t obsure view.

A progressive rhythm shows a sequence of shapes and forms through a progression of steps. This technique is probably the most classically artistic of the three and is useful for developing one idea into another in the same background. This means you can gain more variety in the images that you use to make one.

30 GDNM YEAR ONE

GDNM YEAR ONE 31

32 GDNM YEAR ONE

Protest Posterclear design for use in a rally

UK unemployment has hit a fresh 17-year high after the public sector shed thousands more jobs and the private sector failed to pick up the slack.Youth unemployment held at a record high of over 1 million and the total number of unemployed people rose to 2.64m over the three months to October, according to official figures.

The Office for National Statistics said that at 8.3% the unemployment rate was at its highest since 1996.

Last year, figures showed that £5.2 billion was lost to fraudulent benefit claims and administrative errors and the Prime Minister promised to recruit private sector firms to enforce the crackdown.A trial has already saved £16 million after payments often exceeding £40,000 were stopped. Claimants were found to have been wrongly registering as single while living with partners who had jobs or other income.Left, article taken from the GuardianAbove, article taken from the Telegraph

GDNM YEAR ONE 33

Starting out on this project was the easy part, I didn’t anticipate making a protest sign would be as complex and intricate as it turned out to be. I knew the subject matter I wanted to address straight away as it is something I feel very strongly about. The idea for the slogan came to me quite quickly which was fortunate as it meant I could get on with my experimentation quicker. I have several sketches of plans for this poster which are all very slight variations on this design. Interestingly, only

one sketch is portrait, like the final piece. When I finished my first draught, above, I was quite pleased with how it had turned out. We then left the classroom and went outside and stuck our posters up on a wall and looked at them in stages walking away from them. This was incredibly valuable as, if we hadn’t done so, the above piece probably would have become my final. This has taught me to always think about my pieces in context and think about whether they fit on their genuine medium.

34 GDNM YEAR ONE

WHOBENEFITS

FROMBENEFITFRAUD

GDNM YEAR ONE 35

WHOBENEFITS

FROMBENEFITFRAUD

36 GDNM YEAR ONE

Advert Analysisunderstanding techniques behind advertisments and what they really propose

All bright colours 3D computer graphic animation.

Begins with shot of pink flowers pans away onto idyllic blue pond with bushes in the background spelling hate.

-Narrator spoken word: deep voice calm tone.“Here’s a little song for anyone who’s ever hated...”-

Shot pans to the right to follow sprouting rainbow, passing peacock fanning tail feather again spelling hate, to a pair of orange and yellow birds flying together.

warrens wearing ear muffs to block out the noise, shaking their fists.

The camera stops following the engines, and as they get out of shot the end of the rainbow transforms into a hand and flicks the engine at the very back behind a hill, where it explodes. The explosion resembles a firework.

The engines get further away and some pink and yellow flowers rear up as if they’re watching the engines fly away. Four pink flowers spin off of their stems resembling four shuriken or circular saws and home towards and engine at the back, the camera follows behind

-Song starts, lyrics to follow at the end.-

Birds are then frightened away by noisy, black and grey, dirty car engine with acrid black smoke billowing from exhaust at rear.

Camera continues to follow this same engine past some chickens, disgruntling them. The chickens launch eggs at the engine which fry instantly on the side.

A band of other identical engines then join the first from the horizon, scaring some rabbits on the floor on their way. As the engines pass, the rabbits pop back out of their

Honda - ‘Hate Something, Change Something’

GDNM YEAR ONE 37

Honda - ‘Hate Something, Change Something’

them as they fly. When they collide with the engine it is blown to bits with an orange explosion and the word hate written in a non-standard typeface appears, using the orange as a background, with pink flowers either side.

The orange background then changes to the sun with a perfect blue sky all around it, the sun has eyes and a mouth with a contented smile. There is a side on shot of the

engine each in one bite one landing where the other took off and vice versa. The camera follows the fish straight down to under the water where they start to swim away. The fish on the left burps an air bubble with the camera then follows the the surface where it floats in the air with an image of one of the engines inside it and the word ‘hate’ over the top and ‘something’ underneath, which is then popped by the two woodpeckers either side. When

mass of engines flying straight past the sun. When they are nearly past, the sun opens one eye and spits a ball of fire at one of the engines, destroying it on impact.

Cuts to a shot of a pond, bordered with pink and white flowers and lily pads sitting on the pone with the engines flying towards the camera. As the engines approach the camera two big, round, yellow fish jump out of the water and swallow one

38 GDNM YEAR ONE

the bubble bursts the words are obscured by a blue kaleidoscope effect then extends to all sides of the screen.

Cuts to one of the engines lying solo in front of an orange background of concentric circles with the words ‘change’ and ‘something’ above and below, like before. Two rams crush the engine from either side with their heads.Cuts to a shot of two penguins with hammers on either end of a see-saw on a sunburst effect orange background with red and orange flowers flying towards the corners, bouncing each other up and down to take turns hitting the solo engine, which is floating above the centre of the see-saw. When the penguin on the right hits the engine the word ‘hate’, each letter imprinted onto a red-orange flower, appears on the left, and then opposite happens but with the word ‘change’ instead of ‘hate’. All of the word mentioned in this paragraph appear at the same

from the beginning appear in the foreground with bows and arrows made of branches with flowers on the end.They both fire their arrows at the remaining engine leaving behind a glittering silver trail as they head towards the engine. Both arrows collide with the engine simultaneously and it explodes with the most dramatic, pink, flowery firework mimic yet revealing as it clears more, smaller multicoloured fireworks. The word hate is displayed in the centre as the fireworks become more spread apart emitting a firework-like glow themselves.

Cuts to the camera moving through the centre of two parallel rows of flamingos with their wings held out, raising them in turn using the method of a mexican wave with a golden sunny background.

At this point the music and lyrics stop and there is silence.

time they are mentioned in the song in the background.

Cuts to a shot of three engines side scrolling the screen to a backdrop of pond, trees, hills and sky as a flamingo swoops down and hit the one closest to the camera with a baseball bat, held in one of her wings.

The remaining two engines carry on side scrolling, and pass through a construct made of pillars arranged in a circle with flowers on vine wrapped around each one. As they pass through one wine begins to unwrap itself fro the pillar and just as the engines have cleared it the vine reaches out and pulls one of the engines off the shot.

The final engine takes a ninety degree left turn and the camera stops panning to watch it fly into the horizon containing spiral shaped trees and empty sky on either side, as two of the rabbits with ear muffs

GDNM YEAR ONE 39

When it reaches the end of the line the golden sun changes to a shot of a hill with a blue clear sky in the background and two of the ear-muff rabbits sat on top looking at something down the other side of the hill that we can’t see yet.

A clean, shiny, grey, streamlined engine flies over the hill barely making a sound. As the rabbits watch it fly over they remove their ear-muffs and watch it fly away. The only thing that can be heard is the very faint chugging sound of the engine as it flies loser to the camera.

The whistling begins again.

The two woodpeckers fly close to it and circle it in the air as it flies away and make audible bird noises. They continue to follow and circle the new engine until a frog jumps on top from the pond.A rainbow rises in the background and the engine flies itself towards

towards the camera passing two peacocks flaring their tail feathers, rabbits holding hands, dancing in a circle around the two chickens on their pillars, surrounded by flamingos standing.

The engine flies off the top of the shot and the camera pans down to an island of green in the shape of a tear drop with a thin stream around it with swans circling the island on the water. In the centre of the island is the logo for the Honda Diesel I-CTDi engine made of multicoloured beds of flowers, the logo is also tear shaped and has the words I just stated underneath, also made of flowers.

Cuts to a white screen where the honda logo appears and ‘The power of dreams’ underneath shortly afterwards with the woodpeckers from the video flying circles around each other above it. The website URL is displayed at the very bottom in smaller lighter text.

where the rainbow is going to be and slides on it before, the end of it morphs into a thumbs up this up.

Four seals sat on four pillars are balancing beach balls all with one letter of the word ‘change’ on it as the engine passes and a single purple and pink firework goes off in the background.

A ladybird bounces across a bed of pink flowers and is caught as it falls off the edge by the new engine and the lyrics of the song restart

The engine with the ladybird on top fly circles around a structure resembling a birthday cake and a water fountain with sparklers on top and golden fish jump several times fro the top tier to the bottom passing seals balancing beach balls at the bottom of the fountain.

The camera pans so that the enormous sun is dead centre in the top of the shot. The engine flies

40 GDNM YEAR ONE

Right off the bat, the soundtrack to the advert is chirpy, jolly and catchy. This instantly will get the advert lodged into someone’s head and get them talking about it to their friends and their co-workers. This creates awareness of the advert and means Honda don’t just have to rely on the right people watching TV at the right time. An advert so popular will get trending on youtube, twitter, facebook etc. Also, from what I’ve read, it seems the man doing the voice over is a much beloved best selling american author called Garrison Keillor. This would get the Americans talking but probably not people form other countries. I would have expected an english gem to have done the voice over for

the UK version. Maybe Stephen Fry or someone like that. But regardless, the advert was still a massive hit in the UK.

Looking at the bright colours, the style of the advert reminds me somewhat of the graphic style and feel of the 60s and 70s. There’s bright colours, flowers everywhere, nature’s running free and it concentrates on telling us not to hate. The people who were 18 in 1974 would be 48 when this advert came out. Which is definitely one of Honda’s target age groups. They could have giving it this feel in order to evoke happy memories of the fun they had in the 70s, ‘the good ol’ times’ seeing as looking back that

long ago causes you to generally only remember the god moments and you look back with rose tinted glasses.This will cause the 45-60 year olds to feel at ease as they identify with the piece and think ‘this advert was made for me’.

In 2004, people were just starting to get really worried about global warming:http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1229_041229_climate_change_consensus.htmlWhen you look at the difference between the old dirty engines and the honda engine that appears at the end, it’s not just the difference in sound you notice, but that there is no acrid plume of smoke billowing

GDNM YEAR ONE 41

out of the end. By the looks of the research i’ve done on the specific engine they’re advertising, it doesn’t actually pollute the earth much less, if at all, than other engines on the market. Honda never mention that it would pollute any less in the song or the voice over, so possibly that would suggest that it isn’t any better for the planet and that that was just a subtle element of the advert to convince people they’re saving the planet, which was the new fad in the year. With the green lakes, blue ponds and roaming wildlife, at first I found it hard to believe there wasn’t a message about pollution in there somewhere, but there doesn’t appear to be.With the repetition of the phrases

‘hate something’ and ‘change something’ with the visual aids and the grotty flying engines. This advert possibly even has a slightly subliminal effect of telling the audience to look at an engine and think ‘hate something’, ‘change something’ ‘what to I change to?’ ‘Honda, the power of dreams’.These are all things which appear in the advert along with visual aids. Like I mentioned before with the song being so catchy it’s going to run around in your head all day and, depending on how susceptible you are to suggestion, making you hate your car more and more and wanting to change to a Honda.

42 GDNM YEAR ONE

Rhythms in Video and Soundprogressive rhythm linking to sound based on proffesional music

GDNM YEAR ONE 43

These three stills are from an early surrealist film by Viking Eggeling called ‘Diagonal Symphonie’ in 1925. I looked at it while doing designer research for this project. While first thinking about this project I decided I wanted to use a monochrome colour pallette for this project. This film was very close to the ideas I imagined in my head so I payed close attention to the video in order to get some ideas on how to go about the project.

The aspect I especially like about this piece is the way the appearing lines interact with each other and create a structure. Which fit very nicely with my idea about using mechanical noises and abstract forms. The one critisism I would give this piece and I know Eggeling would tell me I’m wrong but I think it is too repetitve and when the graphics just flip horizontally over and over I began to lose interest in the piece.

The transitions between graphics is interesting but not quite what I would have used, or at least not every time. The idea of them coming from inside the screen rather than the side added compositional notability but, to me, made the piece look too dated for something that I would do. I did originally intend to the curves and intricate structures that Eggeling creates but in practice the ones I drew didn’t look delicate enough, so I deleted them and decided to do blocks.

44 GDNM YEAR ONE

When I read the choices of project for brief 11, this one instantly jumped out at me as the one I would complete. I thoroughly enjoy the kinetic typography brief and in my quest to become more adept at after effects i decided this was the one for me.When I was initially brain storming the actual brief wasn’t open in front of me and for that reason all of my ideas were of animations to do with the original piece of music and not to go with the collected sounds strategically placed over the top. This briefly threw a spanner in teh works but I scrapped my ideas and started again.Something that instantly popped in my head was to make the overlay of sounds

mostly mechanical. From what I imagined myself to be animating I thought that mechanical sounds would fit perfectly in the background. This is why most of the images animated are of things interacting with each other in a very planned and purposeful way, even if they are just majoritively black rectangles. While the rectangles are quite subtle in their point I put references to pistons and mechanical arms in to make sure that my idea was put across correctly. I wanted the viewer to understand that it was planned out and carefully considered in terms of a concept and final product. However, there were a couple of problems I encountered duting animation. The most prominent, and most

frustrating, was that due to the restrictions of the instructions the animated clips all had to be a certain length long. This was a problem for me in that I wanted all the images to synergise with the sounds perfectly. It took a lot of organising and reorganising to get them as close to in time as I possibly could.My song choice maybe gave me a bit of a hard time with this project as the introduction, which was the part of the song that I used, isn’t very rythmic. I think this probably gave me a more interesting arrangment of sounds on the otherhand. But, it is likely that a more straightforward song would have made the organisation alot more simple.

GDNM YEAR ONE 45

46 GDNM YEAR ONE

&New MediaDesignResearching

GDNM YEAR ONE 47

Design & New Media 1Contents

Researching

Interviews responding to workIn depth research on a chosen element

48 -52 -

48 GDNM YEAR ONE

Interviews responding to workdesgining questions to gain valuable information about pieces

In terms of suspense I found from research that it was necessary to originally mislead the audience then change what was happening. You need variety in order to keep them guessing otherwise the whole thing gets quite dull and samey. Without properly pacing the piece you end up with just nothing happening. It was agreed that my piece did, but only because it was a bit dull at the beginning and the professional didn’t because nothing really changed.

The things people imagine when looking at a piece really depends on the viewer, in my answers I got a huge range of different things that sparked peoples imaginations. When some people thought of china, others thought of cake.With the other piece it got people thinking about scientists and mathematicians which was definitely the intention of the designer. The only way to really capture someone’s imagination is to make sure there’s a lot going on for

continues on page 50

GDNM YEAR ONE 49

1. What do these pieces remind you of?2. Could any parts be easily removed?3. What were the first couple of things you thought of?4. On your first impressions what did you think would happen?5. Did the way you felt change?6. Which part were you most engaged by?7. Do you think someone else would react in the same way?8. Do you feel these are aimed at a particular audience?9. Could you describe these in a few words?10. Any ideas for improvement?

Ten Questions

50 GDNM YEAR ONE

them to experience.When people talk about their memories after looking at a piece it’s a completely personal thing. There are some designs that would give almost anyone a memory if it was something everyone would have experienced in the past. Memory is clearly an important part in a piece of design, for some people who I asked the memories completely made the piece great

for them, so if you can evoke that its definitely gonna be a more successful piece. Because with the other the memories were generally bad ones of school etc which wasn’t so successful. From the answers I got it was really clear that the beginning of my piece really lacked the element of anticipation it needed to grab peoples’ attention and I agree. If it were me watching the piece

i’d probably switch off about 15 seconds in and that would be it. This is definitely something i’m gonna work on in the future. Whereas with the other piece people seemed to be grabbed at the beginning and fade off towards the end.In terms of the revelation there were some things in mine that people maybe hadn’t noticed in the song before but with the text being there they discovered for the first time

which was definitely a positive thing. People seemed to agree that the professional piece didn’t really have any as it was maths from start to finish.

GDNM YEAR ONE 51

I conducted my interviews in several different ways to experiment to see which ones would produce different types of answers from the candidate. I focussed mainly on making the participant feel slightly awkward when answering to encourage them to say the first thing that came to their mind rather than let them be nice or harsh about my work. I consider an impartial opinion to be the most valuable for progression. The first interview I conducted was me with my current girlfriend due to the lack of awkwardness I thought she would be the perfect candidate to get ‘nice’ answers from. The interview was carried out in my room because I knew it wouldn’t make her uncomfortable and it was just the two of us. Sure enough, as expected, that was the interview I got the most praise from. For the others I decided to change my

Analysis of interview techniques

characteristics slightly in order to make people feel slightly on edge, as if something was wrong. I tried not to smile and occasionally I talk quietly so they’d have to ask me to repeat myself. I conducted the other interviews in places people would not feel comfortable: public areas with people listening, over skype and another one in my room but with someone who would not feel as comfortable. These answers seemed more insightful and although they also seemed to have less thought put into them. It would require some more experimentation to discover the perfect balance in finding a way to make it so the participant was comfortable enough to not just get it over with but uncomfortable enough to think on their feet. I think that situation would provide some very interesting answers.

52 GDNM YEAR ONE

In depth research on a chosen elementdesgining questions to gain valuable information about target audiences

The issue I decided to research more into was target audiences and who the pieces were aimed at so I thought i’d pick four film trailers to show people before gather the answers and these are the four I chose:

Howl’s Moving Castle by Hayao Miyazaki (2004)The Saw Series (specifically 4) by James Wan (2004)Brief Encounter by David Lean (1945)

Donnie Darko by Richard Kelly (2001)

I thought with these four movies I spanned the genres well and they all had a clear target in mind regardless of the outcome, which can always happen.In conducting my research I asked a few different demographics to try and gather how much each knew about each film. I designed the questions in a way that favourite films couldn’t dominate the research

and I could really just discover that demographic’s opinion of the range of movies but I could still get a sense of which ones they liked more.

Teenage generation

Most people had not seen Howl’s Moving castle before but they said it was something they might be in to and they said that they didn’t really know much about it, almost everyone said that they’d seen spirited away which is in the

GDNM YEAR ONE 53

same genre.No one had seen brief encounter and the only people who said they might want to were girls, this may have something to do with it being a love story or maybe they were interested in the elegance of the filming style of the 40s, none of the boys I asked wanted anything to do with it. They all however said they knew someone who would watch it, nans, mums and some friends.Everyone had seen the Saw movies but didn’t especially enjoy them, the music wasn’t engaging and they only watched them for shock value as they also didn’t include any actors they were fans of. And obviously they don’t evoke any personal memories.

Donnie Darko was generally a favourite, although not with everyone, a few people said they loved jake gyllenhall in all his films and that he makes it even better and it has the most compelling story and lots of memories of watching in groups and alone. Everyone remembers their first time watching it and not having a clue what it was about.

Older Generation

Donnie Darko was a favourite again, apparently Jake Gyllenhall is adored by all ages. It was also said that it was an ‘intellectually intriguing’ film. There was mention of the music by this demographic which could suggest to them the film is more

immersive that really needs to be concentrated and thought about.Howl’s Moving Castle was written off as a cartoon and compared to things like pokemon and digimon and that they would be watched by young relatives.Saw was so disapproved of it didn’t get mentioned in any of the questions apart from that the people who watched it would be ‘young people’.Brief Encounter and especially the music evoked memories of watching black and white movies as a child which brought interest onto watching the film as although I was told it was famous hadn’t been seen by any of the people I talked to even though they had seen a lot of films they thought were in the same genre.

54 GDNM YEAR ONE

Target Audiences

Radio 4 should continue to target “younger, lighter” listeners for the “long-term health of the station”, the BBC’s governing body said today.The BBC Trust said that Radio 4 performed strongly and that the station was a “high-quality and distinctive service” considered by many of its listeners to be a “national treasure”.But it said that BBC management was “keen to ensure the long-term health of the station”.It endorsed proposals to build loyalty among what it called the “replenisher audience group...

The station will also develop “formats and presenters which offer fresh approaches” in political programmes “without compromising the impartiality and authority” of coverage, it said.The tone of some serious documentaries should be “refreshed, making them sound less studio-based” and Radio 4 should be taken out of “the studio and into other locations”, such as universities, it said.

those who may have an interest in speech radio, but tend to be slightly younger and lighter listeners than the Radio 4 core audience”.The Trust said that Radio 4 should not “neglect its core listeners” while targeting the younger (aged 35 to 54) audience.BBC management hopes to build loyalty among this group by continuing to “develop the general tone of the station away from formality and perceived didacticism towards spontaneity and conversation”.

excerpt from an article written for the independent newspaper by an

unknown author.

GDNM YEAR ONE 55

Target Audience for Film Trailers Young Generation (10+)

Teenage Generation (17+)

Older Generation (40+)

Closer to the bullseye shows

more success in particular area.

Music

Story

Enjoyment

Familiarity

Scores:

Howl’s Moving Castle

Brief EncounterDonnie Darko

Saw IV

1

2

3

5 123

1

2

3

1 2 3

3 6 01 7 130 1502 7 1

56 GDNM YEAR ONE

Bibliographywww.vernaculartypography.com/All copyrighted images belong to Molly Woodward

http://vimeo.com/10473525 by Château-vacant 2008http://news.tubefilter.tv/2008/08/28/interview-with-pes-stop-motion-animator-extraordinaire/ by Michael Rowin 2008http://koikoikoi.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/pesthumb.jpgCopyright 2002 - 2010 PES

http://wallpapers.free-review.net/19_~_Colorful_backgrounds.htmFree image siteInsanelymac.comDesigned and copyrighted by Apple inc.http://www.digital-web.com/articles/principles_of_design/Small part of definitions Copyright digitl web magazinw 1994-2011http://www.the-area.com/userdata/image/inhouse/7/w65hn-dm1d4-eiz94-ehaau.jpgCopyright EMI 1969

http://www.americanprotest.net/images/rally/09102008/09102008-l-sm.jpgIntellectual property of designer of the sign, unknown yearhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/14/uk-unemployment-hits-17-year-highIntellectual property of author, stated in passage and copyright Guardain 2011http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8937217/Bounty-hunters-called-in-to-target-benefit-fraud-and-error.html By Tim Ross, Political Correspondent Intellectual property of author, stated in passage and copyright Guardain 2011

http://208tv.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/tv_interview.jpgIntellectual property of the photographer for 208tv.com

http://www.maurilioamorim.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/know-your-audience.jpg Intellectual proberty of ‘maurilioamorim’ est. 2001

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/trust-backs-radio-4-audience-target-2208339.htmlIntellectual property of author, stated in passage and copyright Independent 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwRCBHhyrAAHonda logo and engine copyright Honda est. 1948Intellectual property owned by designer, advert owned by Honda

Brief 1

Brief 3

URLs and credits to authors in order of appearance

Brief 5

Brief 7

Brief 8

Brief 9

Brief 10

GDNM YEAR ONE 57end.