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Designing Club Cluture

class five
dec 3rd

We watched the talk from Ellen Lupton. Using forests' photo as an introduction, the speaker made a clear point about how audiences seek certain narratives in various visual languages, showing us the inclusion of a path creates an inviting atmosphere. 

What is very impressionable for me is how the context of posters matters and wraps around not only the content but also the style of a poster. The tilted glass of water example is also very intensive on both design and content. The circle posters gallery show is so wonderful. Just as Lupton mentioned how designers find the existing images in people's heads, I hope to keep finding the gaps/nuances/surprises in the visual elements in people's consensus and utilize them for my works. 

Lupton also introduces a progression in poster design. Though one could argue the progression is subtle and blurry and that design is subjective, the method is extremely rigorous and physical leading us to the obvious visual progress. 

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The assignment is to create an ITP | IMA winter show poster. I feel lucky since the result is so prominent though I spent around an hour or so on this design.

The top version came first and is more readable, whereas the bottom one is less readable but more fun.

 

I highlighted the text and adopted the visuals for the text creating an interesting contrast and cooperation with the image background. For a more formal effect, I might need to change the technique, as the text part is literally a screenshot from the photoshop preview window slapped on the image. With larger printing posters, this might result in pixelation.

Something I hope to manipulate more in future iterations:​​

  • Try different images and different compositions

    • There are a lot of experiments that could be done with the same idea​

  • The angle of the text -

    • I think more irregularity would be fun with the content and context​

  • The color tone in general

    • It might be a bit too intense now​

class four
nov 19th

We listened to the podcast - 99percent invisible. The author raised an intriguing dynamics between language vs color. I thought about the word pink a lot too. The linguistic distinction in the lighter version of red in languages almost seems arbitrary to me. It is, however, hard to discover the origin of the ouroboros of intertwined cultural and linguistic preferences. 

Though knowing the red dye came from the bugs, I am still surprised by how kin in red caused the extinction of a species. My train of thought naturally connected to how the trade has changed the local ecological system and left its historical influence on a piece of land forever. It is easy for me to stand on the higher ground looking back at the classist and capitalist approach on natural resources. But it is the separation and distinction between classes and capital powers that brings us some of the cultural associations of colors. The intersectionality fascinates me. 

I was wearing black and green - not a vibrant one - when listening to the podcast. It is spooky that how colors were toxic.

The story behind Scheele's Green also brings up a lot of literature and other entertainments extensions. Virgin Mary's blue  -  ultramarine blue - used to be my favorite color. I had an acrylic painting that's almost fully blue and specifically ultramarine blue. In a lot of ways, though I am deeply impressed and connected with the topic of color, the podcast made me realize I rarely think of the extraction of the colors I used in my arts. I know I will be more conscious and aware in the future of making choices. 

Listening to the podcast, I also think about digital colors because they mentioned printing - the materialization of a digital piece. Lots of things are wrapped in the interconnection between digital and physical colors. When 8 bits - 00000000 - are used to store color, it gives us 256 possibilities (range from 0-255) to divide a shade. Using the three primary colors - RGB for the color storage only seems natural. Hence our OLED screens. CMYK on the other hand gives us a larger range of colors. On the lighter side because CMY is lighter than RGB. With the additional Black in CMYK, the color ranges are naturally wider. Deconstructing the digital and physical colors, I'm excited to be part of the evolution of colors in the digital era. 

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Design using color choices

class two
nov 5th

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The assignment is to redesign a plane ticket to signify the information. Looking back at it and listening to the class feedback, I hope I adopted more negative space instead of filling the space. The image below is the typefonts practice we had in class. The stars are put by the class for preferences.

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We also watched the Abstract series on Netflix
Season 2, Episode 6 Jonathan Hoefler: Typeface Design"
It is amazing looking at how intricated the typefaces we see in daily life are. The nerdiness echos my ethos in coding to some extend. 
I enjoyed the editing of the episode. In the elevator, the film editor laid over the different typefaces without interrupting the scene which brought up the variations between complex typefaces. 

The showcase of magazines reminds me of toilet paper magazine at https://www.toiletpapermagazine.org/Magazines has its power to communicate through dense visual languages. Such intensity in visual languages signifies the importance of typefaces. 

The culture wrapped around typefaces strings through its history and its modernity. Sometimes the history creates a tone and a background for some typefaces, while other times they promised the birth of new typefaces. Being the evolving thriving culture, typefaces fascinates me. However, the film inspired me into a related topic: typefaces in other languages. In English, there are 26 pairs of letters that the designer should be responsible for. However, with other languages - for example, Chinese and Japanese,  things seem to be more complicated. There are about 100 kana in Japanese and tons of Hanji. Even more complicated, there is an astronomical number of Chinese characters that a typeface designer needs to be responsible for. The workloads are entirely different from English typeface design. While the complication in design remains, the variation will grow polynomially. I feel a bit disappointed and overwhelmed by the fact that a Chinese typeface designer - for example- will be facing a significantly more challenging situation to create a complete and "perfected" set of typefaces. 

In the example of the Guggenheim Museum, one of the goals is to create a consistency that works on the exterior wall, printed matters, interactive applications, and glass windows. I struggle a lot with consistency in my works which I impute to the lack of practice. I hope I will master my own visual language from repeatedly working with and manipulating visual elements. 

 

class three
nov 12th

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Monograms and expressive words 

 

class one

class one
oct 28th

The assignment is to use five icons to introduce ourselves to the class. Tributing to Keith Harring's doodles, I drew these characters on Procreate as my icon. Each one of them presents a hobby of mine.
 

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For the poster visual analysis, I analyzed the comic cover of Pickle Rick's edition in Rick and Morty. The analysis approached the cover from four aspects: the general hierarchy, typography, graphic composition, and the grid system. Towards the end, I pointed out a small troublesome details about the design.

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