Design Module - Learning Task 14 Wedding Invite

Design Module, Learning Task 9 - Sketching Layouts

Business Card and App Screen Layout sketches

Web Layout Sketch

Learning Task 12 - Good and Bad Type

Good Type Examples

The letter shapes are generally rounded and friendly (except for the capital M with its pointy centre line) and there is lots of space between the letters making the title easy to read and suited to young children. The "Peppa Pig" typeface as baseline shift in a few of the letters and the squiggle on the last p (appropriate for pig character) enhances its friendly and appealing stye. I think the pointy capital M adds a bit of contrast to the other lettters drawing attention to it. 

The italics, close spatial relationship between letters, choice of colour, gradient colour overlay and shapes of the letters (legs of k, smiley look to e and a and capital C), rounded curves and upward slants gives rich, decadent and appealing style. "Eat me" it says.

Clever use of baseline shift, irregular  orientation/slant of neighbouring letters and plenty of space between letters in the main title of the book contrasted with close proximity of letters (kerning) in the Dr.Seuss label adds off-centre quirky interest and character. Block, capital letters of main heading with plenty of space between letters adds boldness while still maintaining child appear. Much like the stories.

Earth Juice - Rounded, friendly letters (see e and c shapes) but with some formality (see a and u), use only of lowercase with letters closely linked together accords with earth juice product intentions. The use of bold, regular (non italics) also works as it conveys that while this is a friendly product it also has a more serious/ethical intent.

What can I say that has not been said before. Everything about this logo works including the typeface. Big, bold letters, closely spaced together, forward leaning suggesting action and forward motion, integration between the  E and the "tick" makes everything come together. Its simple typeface (no baseline shifts, no extra complicated bits) and clever use of negative and whitespace adds punch. Clean lines in the typeface - there's a concept!

Bad Examples

For a product that all hospital workers are required to use after and before every time they touch a patient or their records, the choice of the typeface in Aqium is surprising. The evil, dagger shaped tail of the Q, the pointy serifs in the other letters and dot of the  I, close spacial relationship between letters and use of all uppercase makes the word look off-putting. Even the spelling is designed to repel not attract.

This from a school newsletter. The irregular, rounded shaped letters and irregular slanting between letters just does not fit with isometric drawings which have precise and detailed arrangements within and between all elements. The typeface suggests the opposite of that meaning.

Nourish typeface - While the rest of typeface on this packaging is appropriate, the narrow shape of the ascender and descender of the letters, particularly in the capital N, kerning between the u and r and the non-sensical baseline shift around the leaf shape (leaf shape?), makes the nourish word seem rather lean and hungry rather than nourished. Rounder, fatter letter shapes with lots of curves would have worked much better.

The Smiths - For an album called "Meat is Murder" the use of bold, block, straight, all uppercase, evenly spaced letters in "the smiths" typeface was incongruent with the album's name. Yes, I get that The Smiths is like a brand name but it was still a good example of how the use of typeface can enhance or detract from overall meaning.

From a school newsletter - I had to search quite hard to find many examples of use of bad examples of typeface in school newsletters. They are generally pretty good amateur publications now. However, this word and  is part of a school's moto to help guide and inspire high school students. For such an important symbol, I think the school could do more with the typeface to help inspire. The letters are blocky and there seems to be too much space between the first S and T. Capials work but adding extra interest via experimenting with italics, different typeface, gradient and pattern or colour overlay would work better for the techno-savvy, design/media-saturated target market the school is appealing to.

Design Module - Learning Task 11

A4 poster design of quote. Typeface used and related decisions for the following key words listed below:

- Main typeface used was Bodoni MT for ease of reading and contemporary style. I don't think Bob Marley was a "serifs" guy, do you?

- truth - white colour used as it symbolises truth in western culture. Extra spaces between letters to emphasise the unambiguous nature of truth. I used italics as it made the word seem softer. Also liked the rounded thick stems of the Bodoni MT Italics letters.

- Everyone - Book Antiqua bold used as I wanted something plain, square and strong for this word. I underlined for extra emphasis that this quote referred to "everyone".

- Hurt - Impact Regular used along with kerning effect, various layer effects and icy white colour to associate the word with pain, steeliness and icy cold. The outer glow actually hurts my eyes.

You and Ones - Arial Black with inner stroke. Also made vertical height on some of the letters higher than others in the words to add emphasis.

Suffering - Chiller Regular - what a great font! It looks evil and chilling. I made some baseline shifts and applied some warp transformations to increase interest and draw attention to the punchline in this quote.

Bob Marley - Bodoni MT bold with inner stroke and colour overlay. I just don't have the skill yet to add a dreadlock effect to this text (and background) but I would have loved to do so. Or my thought was to have a silhouette of him with this quote hovering in the background/foreground. 

Design Module - Learning Activity 11 Type

Typeface: Century Gothic

Designer & History: Century Gothic was commissioned by the International Typeface Corporation based on Sol Hess' Twentieth Century designs and released in 1991. Sol Hess's designs between 1936 and 1947 started the ball rolling when he created a design based on the popular Futura typeface. It was then redrawn to be metrically match the Avant Garde Gothic typeface and  released by the International Typeface Corporation in 1970. 

Character: This from Wikipedia: "Century Gothic is quite a light typeface, especially in default weight. While its structure is similar to Futura, its regular style is between Futura's book and light weights. Its bold weight resembles Futura's medium style more than its bold style. It is a geometric sans-serif typeface. It is strongly influenced by the font Futura and Avant Garde Gothic, though with a higher x-height. Its higher x-height (height of lowercase letters) promotes readability especially at small print sizes"

Interesting Facts: It is among the small group of fonts used in 85% of all computers used worldwide. It has universal applicability and is often use in websites as well as in printed and other media. It was used in the "Star Trek: Enterprise" TV show and "Casino Royale" movie promotional materials.

oh dear, I see a tension point ...the z is too close to the border!

Design Module - Gutenberg Design

While its a bit hard to see my arrow head, the example above illustrates that the design aimed to move eye flow from the top left "Brilliant Gifts" tag or Primary Optical Area (POA) to the bottom left Terminal Area (TA) where the brand signage and perfume bottle are located. 

I thought the text in the POA could have been slightly bigger to focus its priority more clearly. None the less my eye flow was from POA to TA in this case. There was white space in the fallow area of the top right page and a relatively non-distracting image in the other fallow area of the bottom left.

After going from the POA to the TA, my eye flow was then directed to the image "skin replenisher" image above the gold Clarins perfume bottle and then travelled up to the above image. This contradicted Gutenberg design principles which aim to reduce movement of the eye upwards and outward from the middle right position. However, the fact that the images of products were of consistent size, colour and tonal range made the overall design easy on the eye and did not cause excess eye movement/visual overload. The placement of product images also gave the overall design balance and. symmetry

 Design facts not withstanding, for the life of me, I would still not  want to buy these products.

Design Module - Learning Task 6

Reinvent objects - fork

Design Learning 7 Grid Layout

Examples below from magazines where grid layout is used.

Examples of grid layout in (1) architecture and (2) car signage.

Examples below of images that do not use grid layout. David Carson (from my brief reading) has broken the rules of contemporary design to create images and publications that deliberately defy the structures and norms of devising designs that make it easy for most people to understand and engage in the pieces In other words, his designs demand viewers pay attention to them and delve deeper into what the image is trying to say. BTW, I found "Ray Gun" way too confronting. Let's just stick to the "oh so predictable and terribly patronising" Women's Weekly mag I thought. Guides - what guides?

Identifying Whitespace

Whitespace used on softdrink billboard. Plenty of white area on billboard which focusses attention on high contrast red items.

Example of use of whitespace in a magazine cover. I often get this magazine for the look rather than to actually cook something in it.

Use of whitespace on road signage.

This website for Geelong Medical Centre uses whitespace for header section plus white/green space in centre section.

My choice. I saw this ad in the myer website and thought .....whitespace!!!!

Identifying Negative Space

Screenshots of negative space listed below in order: architecture, car body, human anatomy, film, film shot (wolverine background), natural environment (x2), street signage, car signage, web

Window frames "frame" negative space of window panes.

Grill car frames negative spaces in between grill plates.

The lens of the eye is an exquisite design illustration of negative space.

The inner circle area around the 3 remains unfilled i.e. negative space.

The background acts as negative space -focusing attention on Wolverine.

Two examples of negative space in nature - the water in the pond next to the grass and pier plus the black background surrounding the spider's web.

The unfilled yellow area within the traffic light drawing are examples of negative space.

The white within the red frame of the Holden car logo acts as negative space - very effective.

The unfilled white space within the blue tab with green search button is negative space used within this website for recipes.

CertIIIMedia Spatial Relationships Learning Activity 4

Tension Points more noticeable in the Increase, Tension and congested boxes. The order box also has tension points but because of their uniformity, its not so dramatic. The bold illustration reaches beyond the frame, are these tension points or another design effect?