Art Direction

1908 4 5 3 8D

Tutor

Abby Yang Shu Fan

VILCHIS ECHEVERRI Roberto 1

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EXERCISE

1 2 3 Through exercise 1, I learned how to predict the target auidence and build up persona. Persona is the guidance of every kind of design. Without persona, the design will be lack of focus and direction and therefore influence the clarity and become confusing.

Through exercis different comm approach to b communicatio image. There answer for wh message shou indirect. The a based on the o design want to

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Through exercise3, I learned how to analyse a brand VIS. Taking Yahoo as an example, Yahoo is a wellknown internet service brand yet facing depression in fierce competition. It is inspiring to see how Pentagram rejuvenate and play with the Yahoo's brand heritage to give a facelift for the company.

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Exercise 4 is the exercise I enjoyed the most. The exercise was like doing album design for the music and reminded me of the exercise we had in year 1 Communication Design 1(Also taught by you Roberto!). Through the exercise, I got chance to practice the abstract communication approach and tried out different materials for the creation to get my hand dirty.

se 2, I learned munication build up brand on and brand is no standard hether the uld be direct or approach should objective that the reach.

I was super sad that I couldn't see the amazing Warsaw Poster Exhibition in person :((. Every poster design is impressive and hits my soul deeply. It is really hard to choose which one is my favourite and which one isn't. I hope when I return to Hong Kong there's still chance for me to visit those amazing exhibition.

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Class Exercise 1

Define the Audience Clip 7 | La La Land Trailor Observation The opening started with a soft piano jazz and ended up with romantic kissing scence in the bar.

The following scenes are composed of music, movie, and dance related factors.

The tone of voice of the trailer is artistic, retro, and groovy. From the scenes released in the trailer and the movie director, we can assume that the movie is about music, drama, and chasing dream represented in musical way.

From how the writer and the director were introduced, we could assume that the genre of La La Land may be similar to Whilplash, and people who like Whilplash may be the reference of the target audience.

Possible Movie Genre Romance, Musical, Art, Uplifitng Target Audience Analysis The target audience of La La Land may be interested in romance and art movies, especially those who are facing the life choice about pursuing dream or facing reality.

Target Audience Age Group The age group of the target audience possibly ranges from 25 to 35. Since the protagonists look like in his/her 20s and 30s and the plot represents the delimma and life choice around this life stage, the audience around the same age may resonate stronger with the plot.

Target Audience Gender Both male and female, but female audience may be more than male because of the romantic plot.

Target Audience Profession/Interest The profession or interest of the target audience might be mainly related to art and music.

Target Audience Dressing The dressing style of La La Land's target audience may be similar to the outfits of the two protagonists, which are mainly casual and vintage to highlight the artistic temperament.

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Class Exercise 1 | Define the Audience

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Class Exercise 2

Two side of the specturm

3 The advertisement

replaced the shoe cushion with cloud so as to directly link the lightness of Nike Air Max model with the feature of cloud.

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2 The advertisement 1 The propaganda is literal, direct, and powerful to convey the urgency.

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directly conveyed the message that iPhone can protect you privacy and humorously compared it to the situation that requires privacy.

DIRECT

4 Paul Rand played with

the pronunciation of the images (eye, bee, m) to link with the company name IBM. The message may be more indirect to nonenglish speakers.

Class Exercise 2 | Two Side of the Spectrum

6 This is one of the ads from

a promotion campaign for a local market street in Osaka.

The promotion topic of the advertisement is a chicken butcher shop. Instead of directly showing a chicken, the residents of the market street used young local female as the model to convey the message in a humorous way.

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5 This is an ad for

IKEA’s shoes shelves.

The advertisement demonstrated how the shoes were squeezed together due to the poor restore spaces in a playful and exaggerated approach.

7 In ancient Japan, there’s a tradition that men would cut a handful of hair to show they had put down themselves to ask for forgiveness.

The packaging design of this yokan (a traditional Japanese dessert) borrowed this heritage and transformed the image of a handful of hair into the shape of yokan and package, implying that in modern society you can send yokan to ask for forgiveness.

INDIRECT

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Class Exercise 3

Visual Identiy System

Brand | Yahoo Rebrand Year | 2019 Designer | Pentagram

In 2019, th Yahoo's visu energetic an rejuvenate the

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Class Exercise 3 | Visuual Identity System

he rebranding of ual brought an nd young vigor to e IT companay.

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Class Exercise 4

Music Visualisation

Right Here, Right Now The lyrics of Right Here Right Now was about revolution and the turning point of an era. The song is full of revolutionary touch which reflects the public awakening of democracy in 80s. Right Here Right Now, in my opinion, isn’t an athemn for the victory in revolution. It sounds more like a prover for the first dawn in the coming new era.

The material used in this collage includes my watch band, the foil wrapper of my medicine, and the photograph of cloud and owl eyes retrieved from online picture stock. The faces in the collage were processed with the foil wrapper in photoshop.

Original album cover

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Class Exercise 4 | Music Visualisation

Midnight Express Midnight Express sounds literally like an express that brings me back to a disco night 80s. For me, the cling-clang and jangle in the background are the hook that brings out the energy and spirit of the funky 80s.

In this collage, I tried to visualize the jangle and therefore I fiddled and play around with all kinds of metal products in my home. The tubes of the water heater could generate the almost same feeling as the soundtrack. Hence I took the photos of the water heater tube and created those bouncing balls in the collage in Adobe Dimension and did the process in photoshop.

Original album cover

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Class Exercise 5

Warsaw Posters

My most favorite poster Among all posters, poster 2 is the most clever one for me. I like how the designer arranged the composition with wide white space and only left little margin for the typography. It is really clever for designers to deliver the message concisely by generating a sense of suffocation to the viewers through the water line that separate the negative space in composition. The more bottom sentences I was reading to, the greater anxiety and sense of oppression I felt. Without using the typical or sensational approaches to convey global warming, the poster instead delivers a silent urgency which is significantly powerful.

My least favorite poster Poster 10 is my least favorite one. I like the idea of using swarovski crystals to do a portrait. However, it would be more impressive if the portrait is a popular and well-known figure. For instance, the portrait can be the celebrity with classical and noble temperament such as Audrey Hepburn or the founder of Swarovski, Daniel Swarovski. By doing so, I think it can generate more surprise and association.

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Class Exercise 5 | Warsaw Posters

Portrait of Audrey Hepburn made by swarovski crystals.

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PROJECT

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Now, I think I am still lack of observation and attention to my surrounding and social issues.

Throughout the project, the most difficult part for me was not about ideation for solution and art direction but coming up a topic.

Project 1 was like an appetite for our FYP. It was challenging and interesting to solve a problem through the power of design.

From project 1, apart from the practice of visual skills and art direction, what I've learnt the most from the project is problem solving skills and observation.

Some people may misunderstand that designers are all about doing beautiful things for the sake of aesthetic and art.

However, in fact the appealing visual is only the communication approach of designers. In my opinion, designers are a group of polymath who have sensitive observation on their surrounding and dedicate to solve the problems through the creative and approach.

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I was rather panic that when I found out my mind was blank about the world. I found myself have become dull throughout the pandamic. It is very dangerous for a designer to become blunt and hollow. Observation is the key to get rid of this symptom.

I really hope my situation can improve and the pandemic can be over as soon as possible!

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To be honest, I think the collaboration experience with LCC and AD was quite chaotic and disturbing, which made me really painful in every Wednesday evening. LCC students waffled a lot yet did little and their suggestion was not constructive. As for AD students, they seldom spoke out and did the ideation. Therefore, almost all of the work were done by Jeffery and I . Although we had a group meeting on every Sunday night, yet I was still the one who were giving idea about the strategies and art direction. Hence I felt extremely tired every time when the Wednesday eveing class. What the other free rider did just acting active and enthusiactic on the final presentation.

Sorry for the complain but I really feel like I need to release myself ;((.

Despite the unpleasant teamwork experience, however, I enjoyed the guest speeches much and those speeches provide me another perspective, not from the designer angle, to see about the world, which is very helpful to build up a rich context for the design.

As for the art direction for the campaign, I think I am still too conservative and not brave enough to do more variation. Since I wanted to aligned the visual of the camaign with its mother brand, therefore the color scheme was directly transplant from the existing one. However, the analogue blue color scheme was similar with KLM and therefore may cause confusion. Compared with other group, ours color scheme seems lack of innovation. It would be better if there could be a complementary color to bring out more energy.

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Project 1

DBoard Problem | International design students are losing access to physical teaching and connection with peers under Covid pandemic.

Motivation It has been more than 1 year for international students to study from home online since the covid-19 outbreak. As one of the international students, I struggled to access to the learning resources conducted in physical classrooms, which compromised my learning experince and performance a lot. Also, we are not able to participate and discuss physically with our local peers, which let us experience more a sense of disconnection and the learning vibe.

To make up for the missing knowledge, I would look up for extracurricular events and visit the exhibition with my classmates, Jennifer and Justin.

However, during the searching process, I found out that there is little comment on the events for me as a reference to see whether the events is worth going or not. Also, there is little specific forum for designers to discuss about the events and related topics, which I found quite pitful.

Therefore, we decided to design an integrated application for designers to have a better experience in searching events and looking for further discussion as well as sharing their opinion with other design students and designers.

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Project 1 | DBoard

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Research on exisiting and related platforms We did research on the exisiting and related platform to find out their difference between each other and think about how we can design our app to be desirable for our target audience.

Initially, we intented to create a "wishlist" feature, which would work like user A in regieon A wish to attend to the exhibition in regieon B and ask is there any user in regieon B could introduce the exhibition for him. By doing so, useres could reach out more events than the events on the list.

However, we thought that the "wishlist" feature may be redundant and make the overall function complicated. Therefore, we decided not to add this feature into our design.

In addition, we would also like to include AR function to bring more fancy exhibition experience to our users. Nevertheless, the AR feature is less related to the searching engine and discussion forum direction for our design.

Hence, we didn't add AR feature into our design and put all focus on designing an integration platform for searching and discussion.

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Project 1 | DBoard

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Project 2

Atlas DigiBus Campaign Insights come first, design comes later The collaboration courses with LCC and PolyU AD students was a bitter-sweet experience for me.

Despite the unpleasant working experience, the courses still gave me inspiring insights and helpful knowledge.

Personally, I found the first lecture about developing insights and messages most useful and intriguing.

As a communication designers, we tend to focus on the elaboration on the visualisation of the messages. However, we often neglect that good messages are based on good insights. To generate impressive insights, designers need to have deep observation and be sensitive on the issues. With clear insights, convincing messages are then simultaneiously developed and visualisation will be the aid to support the delivery. If a designer only design for the sake of appealing visual without thinking about the context, then the design will be a beautiful wallpaper only.

The most challenging part for me throughout the DigiBus project is developing the creative brief.

Creative brief is the foundation for the following strategies and decision. Therefore, a feeble creative brief will only become a hindrance for the team.

Initially our group mixed up insights, messages, and taglines. Therefore, at the beginning our group was lost in developing a core foundation for the later strategy ideation and hence our strategies were lack of coherence and core value.

In our research, we focused on the motivation behind millenniels doing donation and discover that sense of reputation and participation are the main driven factor. Initially we were worried that the insight may not be "decent" and "noble" enough and hence not sure about whether adapting this insight. However, we found being honest and direct to our target audience, millenniels, is the best way to start the communication. Therefore we adapted the insight and set it as our core value and the later progress turn out to be more smoothly.

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DigiBus Campaign Art Direction

The overall art direction for the DigiBus campaign is designed to be coherent with Atlas foundation in order to show the relation between the mother brand and the subordinate brand. As for the typeface, we used Merriweather sans serif instead of the serif one adapted by Atlas foundation since we wanted to deliver the energetic tone of voice of DigiBus project and African children.

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EXTRA EXHIBITION

Xiao Bei Emergency Aid Pack One of my favorite designs is the collboration with a traditional hardware store, Xiao Bei, that has branches around every corener in Taiwan. The conveninent accessibility of Xiao Bei makes the knowledge and neccessity of supplement for the emergency aid more popular and widespread to Taiwan citizens.

Muji Emergency Aid Pack (top middle) Same as Japn, Taiwan is also located on the multiple plates junction and active tropical zone.

Therefore, disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes are daily occurence to the citizens.

Some of the designs are supervised under disaster pevention experts form Japan and therefore the 31 outcome is reliable and convincing.

Promotion Strateg

The exhibition holder de visitors to recap the know exhibitiob. For those who receiev a sticker pack. If site and share it to the in then they can receive a h promotion strategy is rea with the educational pur also did the worksheet a instagram story to get th

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Since Jennifer and I couldn't visit the Warsaw poster exhibition, therefore we went to Taipei see some exhibitions on the same day with the class together.

One of the exhibition was about a series of product design and plaything design for disaster prevention. The topic made me think of project 1 since both projects were about problem solving for a specific case.

The exhibition was very inspiring in terms of sustainbility from my opinion. Although some of the projects design a set of specific props for disastor prevention education, however, the designer also put the accessibility into consideration and suggest the daily necessity or furniture that can subsitute for the props. From these cases, I learnt that design is not always about creation.

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esign a worksheet for wledge they learnt from the o get full mark, they can the visitors take a photo on nstagram story with tags, hidden edition sticker. The ally effective and coherent rpose of the exhibition. I and tag the exhibition on he souvenir!

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EPI LO GUE

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Art Direction is like an elementary capstone subject in year 2. Throughout the courses, I recapped what I've learnt so far and applied them to the exercise and projects.

Art Direction is the visualized personality of a brand. The very first step of doing art direction is to clarify the target audience. Based on this foundation, designers then start the ideation, converging and diverging the messages and ideas. After the core elements are certained, then it is time for the designer to show off their capibility and play with the 5 senses.

The styles of design are getting saturated. In order not to blindly follow the trend just to reach a short-term benefit and become a kitsch at the end, designers need to do observation on their surrounding.

Observation is the magic recipe of all kind of design.

Obeserve, turn the familiar unfamiliar, and the unfamiliar familiar. The aha-moment of every masterpiece and classic is derived from the seemly boring and inconspicuous obersavation to our daily life.

Lastly and as a sum up, I want to deeply thank to Roberto for your meaningful and inspiring teaching for these 2 years. Time flies. Suddenly I'm turning from a rookie to a year 3 student and soon later I need to face the FYP! Thank you so much Roberto for your teaching and companinon in my first 2 years of the university life. I am so grateful to your prompt support and intersting knowledge sharing to me. It is really, really, really, pitful that we couldn't have the faceto-face interaction in the lovely Vcore. However, I hope the pandemic will die down soon and we can meet each other in Vcore! Again, thank you so much!!

Do you notice anything unusual in the photo?

Hint: We were facing mirror

Hope to see you in Vcore soon!

Roberto!

A: The signboard on the top ("The Fonts Went Wrong...") is actually in opposite direction. This makes the signboard turn out to be in the correct direction because of the mirror image!

The surprise hidden inside the mirror fits the exhibition theme: problematic typography. What a clever art direction!

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