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Here are some sketches I have done up for my final assignment: Storybook. The title for the book is Morris, the mischievous monkey.

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More improvements made to my assignments!

Assignment 1
Design 1

Design 2

Projects, assginments, research papers and term tests have just come to an end. I finally have some time to improve on my designs for my assignments.

Here are some improvements that I have made for my assignments:

Assignment 1

Assignment 2

Assignment 2 – Finalised symbol

Assignment 4

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Lesson Learnt

This exercise gave me an opportunity to apply all the design techniques and principles that I have learnt to critic a good design and a bad design. I have also learnt that it is very important to keep in mind all the design techniques and principles so as not to violate any of them during the designing process. By neglecting any of them, it might have undesirable effect on the viewers’ perception as observed from my the mistake I made in my previous assignment. Just to relate it to what I have learnt in my marketing module, companies could have wasted thousands of dollars on an inefficient advertisement if the designer did not apply the design techniques and principles. Hence, it is very important not to violate them in any design processes.

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Front (please note that the heart shape is a diecut)

Internal

Back

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Lesson Learnt

This lesson strengthens my knowledge on the meaning behind colours. Previously, I have chosen yellow as the background for my greeting cards because it has a good contrasting effect with the colour of the figure. Many of you would have made the same mistake that I did with the same concept on contrasting and neglect the meaning associated. The tone of yellow that I have used in my greeting card denotes “sickness”, which has a very negative impact on the viewers’ perception.

After much consideration on the colour schemes and the meaning associated with them, I decided to remove the “sickness” by changing the colour scheme to tones of red to depict the passionate of love. This lesson is indeed an important lesson for me.

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Hi guys, I have selected the second design out of the 2 designs and made some amendments to it. Please comment on them. Thanks.

 

Here are the 2 roughs that I have done up. Feel free to comment on them. Thanks.

Design 1
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Back view

Internal

Design 2

Comments received during tutorial:

- Most of my classmates voted design 2 as it is simple and neat. Also, the feel is more appropriate and nice.

Due to all the pollutions and carbon dioxide emission, the earth is getting warmer and warmer. I guess you guys must have feel it from the drastic change of weather through the day. Prediction of whether will it rain or shine isn’t that simple anymore. Although many countries have adopted measures to prevent further harm to the earth, many of us are still not aware of the outcome of global warming.

Hence, I would like to take this opportunity to raise awareness to people around so as to practise the 3 R (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle). Remember, this is your earth and it’s your life, do your part to help combat global warming now.

I will be making some amendments to this poster as I feel personally the fan is not very obvious. Maybe electrical hand-fan? Or any other suggestions?

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Lesson Learnt

Through this exercise, I have learnt the important concept of element positioning so as to control viewers’ attention and eye movement. By aligning the elements or grouping related elements together will surely make a huge difference on how the viewers process the information. This includes positioning graphical images and text together.

Representation of colours is another take-away from this exercise. Different colours, due to cognitive processing, culture and personal experience have different meanings. Hence, it is very important to know the meaning behind so as to bring information across to the viewers appropriately.

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The main theme for this storyboard is “Wonders of technology advancement”.

Hope you guys get the twist and the story behind it. Feel free to drop me any comments. Thanks ^.^

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Lesson Learnt

Through this assignment, I have learnt how to use images to depict a story without any words. This lesson enlightens me on human perception on images. If the image is precise and concise, words are not needed to explain or describe the meaning behind it.

Another characteristic that comes with images is the power to grab attention. Lengthy paragraph of words has the opposite effect. Thus by having a concise image, one could reduce the amount of words dramatically. And this is well supported with the well-known saying: ”A picture speaks a thousand words”.

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Below are some of the drafts that I have transformed from the sketches.

Draft 1

After reviewing my draft 1, personally I feel that it does not emphasize the crucial factors of a watch which might cause some misinterpretations to the viewers. Hence, I have made some amendments to it to show stronger emphasis on the belt and the hands. Many might argue that the 2 hands are the most crucial and watch started off without belt. In my viewpoint, not to confuse the viewers with clock, I decided to emphasize the belt too.

Draft 2

Most probably, I would be using the last level of abstraction design to develop my symbol as I feel that it does not contain too many unnecessary elements and the level of details is just nice and very appropriate. My approach towards designing my symbol would be neat, clean, precise and concise.

Feel free to comment on them. Thanks!

Some of the comments and suggestions I received for my design during the wonderful virtual tutorial session:

1) The joining of the watch hands and the circumference of the watch face might cause some confusion to the viewer.

2) The second last abstraction is creative and developing a symbol from it would be nice.

Personally I feel that the comments and suggestions are valid. I will try to work on the last 2 level of abstraction designs to develop my symbol.

Meanwhile, please continue to comment on my designs so that I can improve on them and stay tune to my blog for updates on the design. Thanks for those who have take up your precious time to comment on my artwork.

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Lesson Learnt

I have learnt a very important technique in designing process: Abstraction. A fine application of abstraction would be sketches. I guess most of you will sketch out the concepts by leaving out all the unnecessary details before deriving on the final design. Subconsciously we have applied the abstraction technique.

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In this week’s lecture, I learnt the human communication theory (Shannon-Weaver Model) which describes the 6 elements of human communication. They include source, encoder, message, channel, decoder and receiver. This isn’t new to me as the concepts have been covered in another media related module, NM2101: Theories of Communications and New Media. In brief, this model closely depicts how human communicate with each other and some of the factors that causes distortion to the message when the channel is noisy.

The lecture also covered the 3 basic types of representation namely iconic, indexical and symbolic signs and basically they will create noise due to specificity. Furthermore, the level of abstraction would also create noise that affect the receiver’s interpretation.

In this week’s assignment, I am tasked to choose an object and create at least 6 different level of abstractions so as to enforce on our understanding of the concepts that we have learnt during lecture and apply them appropriately.

I have done up some sketches on it and hope that you have learnt something as well. ^_^

Assignment 2 (Level of abstractions) sketch
 

Here are the final artwork for my assignment 1.

Design 1

Some of the comments and suggestions that I received for Design #1:

- The wording on the volleyballs does not symbolise the volleyball itself. To improve, maybe can alter the wordings to make it more like volleyball

- The colour gradient on the volleyballs is well rendered as it gives viewers the impression that the ball is being hit and moving towards the other court.

Design 2

Some of the comments and suggestions that I received for Design #2:

- The wording of my name does not have strong emphasis on my love for music. To improve, I suggested to replace the wordings into musical notes to symbolise my name and most of them agreed.

I feel that the comments and suggestions are very constructive and valuable. In the meantime, I will improve my designs and update them for another round of comments and suggestions. Thanks a lot for those who have given me the suggestions and stay tune to my blog for further improvements to the designs. ^.^

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Lesson Learnt

After going through this assignment, I have learnt how to use distinct elements to bring life to text (in this case my name) and also how to deliver ideas across to my audience better. This exercise has also strengthen my knowledge and experience on colour composition and positioning by trying different perspective and colour schemes.

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Allow me to present to you the roughs that I have selected for my assignment 1.

 

On top of it, I have also tried to use different combinations of colours and perspectives. Here are some of the examples:

 

After hours of brainstorming for ideas, it’s time to select the better ones from the pool! Personally, I feel that it is always better to have an open mind and seek for comments from family members or friends instead of rushing into selecting those that you feel are nice. Design is about bringing across information without knowing the information beforehand. By doing so, you would be able to know whether your intended message is brought across successfully.

After much considerations, these are the 8 roughs that I have selected. Feel free to comment on them.

Personally I feel that in any design project or any other project, the brainstorming process is one of the crucial processes in delivering an outstanding artwork. As expected, the first lecture on assignment 1 (Me, myself and I) is on brainstorming for ideas.

Below are some of the words that I have brainstormed during the lecture:
Love: volleyball, bowling, music, nature.
Hate: creeping crawlings, pests.

After brainstorming for ideas, it’s time to express the ideas with sketches. Here are just some of the sketches I did during the lecture and my leisure time.

 

 

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Lesson Learnt

Through this brainstorming session, I feel that it is really an important step in everything you do. Many may argue that brainstorming for ideas is a waste of time and they would rather rush into it and amend as it goes. Personally I feel that there is no right or wrong approach, you just have to find the most comfortable approach you feel. As for me, I would always allocate some time to brainstorm for ideas as it would be rather disturbing and disruptive to think of other alternatives when the first concept fails.

By having many possible alternatives ready would definitely ensure a smooth transition of processes.

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As technology advances, there has been an increasing number of activities which used to be on printed material going electronically. Even university has changed its learning process such as having a blog to share thoughts and information efficiently.

Blogging, though has been around for quite some time, is rather new to me. This blog is specially created to dedicate to my university module: NM2208 Principles of Visual Communications. I would be uploading my designs and some of the critics I have received from friends and classmates during tutorial lessons and conversations. Feel free to add on to the list of critics and give me feedback from a viewer’s viewpoint so that I can improve on them. Thanks in advance for your valuable feedback and have a great day ahead. .