Leena Jain Communication Design Internship Fashion Communication - VII
Internship Report
Leena Jain Communication Design Internship Fashion Communication - VII
Acknowledgements This internship is a brief exposure to the industry for a duration of eight weeks. However, what made me adept in contributing to the industry is what I learned over the six semesters at NIFT. All the courses, major and minor ones - add to the holistic academic experience that helped me to gain more skills and update the existing ones in the industry. So firstly, I would like to thank all the faculty members and mentors who have taken courses in the department, secondly, our former course coordinator, Prof. Ravi Joshi and current course coordinator, Dr. Hir Vyas, who mentored me throughout in developing my resume and portfolio to send out to the places I was interested to intern at. Next, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mridul Sharma, who gave me an opportunity to work at HELM Social Design Studio and mentored me in creating strategic creative visuals for social design, Rajan Zaveri for mentoring me to become efficient at work, and for expanding my visual and intellectual horizon and Shikha Siliman Bhattacharjee for guiding me in the content driven nature of work and giving me the opportunity to work by her side and creating a holistic industry experience for me.
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Introduction
About HELM
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4 Insights 119
CONTENTS
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Projects Undertaken
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Death Penalty in India
Exploitation of migrant factory workers
3 Building a repository on Women Police
4 Case Matrix Network
5 Other Projects 9
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Introduction The eight-week internship is a a small introduction to the design and communications industry that seeks to provide exposure with real-time work experience. My approach towards communication design has always been content driven and I’ve truly aspired to work in a holistic environment that uses visual, verbal and written skills combined in a content driven process based application. System Thinking and Design Methodology are two major courses that inspired me to take this direction. HELM (Hands on education, law and media) Social Design Studio was a perfect place for this as they are focused on socially charged content - driven multimedia design.
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About HELM HELM - Hands on Education, Law and Media founded in 2015 is the social design wing of Ananas Design Private Limited. HELM Studio seeks to collaborate with Human Rights Defenders and organizations to create social design solutions by strategic social design, creative ideation and funding. The approach manages to utilize expertise in law, media and technology. “Together, we use cutting edge education, legal and meda tools to magnify human rights violations and support marginalized communities to claim their rights and access justice.� As a team of three - a human rights lawyer, a designer and a media producer who work together to create strategic social design.
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HELM Studio collaborates with human rights defenders and organizations to design strategic solutions and expose human rights violations across the world. For instance we collaborated with Society for labour and development to expose human rights violations towards migrant workers in garment manufacturing factories and help the migrant workers understand their rights.
After the collaboration stage, we ideate possible communication strategies and mediums to create an impact. In the migrant workers rights, we worked in phases, where in the first phase we exposed the human rights violations and documented living spaces of the migrant workers - ‘lockstitch lives’, the next phase of the project was developing ICT training tools to educate migrant workers about their rights against exploitation of all forms - wages, sexual harrasment, health and safety. The third phase is upcomign and built towards capacity building of MRCs.
At design and development stage, the content director, creative director and media producer team up together with coders, lawyers and other professionals to develop what was discussed at the ideation stage. For instance as a part of migrant workers rights programme, we built the ICT Training tools which were to be used on 60 tablets through MRCs through coordinators - it involved training the MRC Coordinators to conduct the research and the tools to be easy to understand.
At the testing stage, a representative from HELM team, and members of SLD and other affiliations went to the source(small villages of UP, Bihar and Jharkhand) and destination locations(Gurgaon, Delhi, Noida) to test whether the tools are apt for the target audience and the retention value. It also involved learning what can be improved in the tools, with inputs from the organization heads, MRC Coordinators and common folks who were using the tool.
At dissemination stage, it is all about the collateral reaching the desirable target audience. In the case we are discussing, the migrant workers recieved the tools and the IMA Website developed for information to the MRC Coordinators was also efficient in guiding them about governmental procedures. Dissemination plan takes care of when, where, who, what and how of the launch.
At the outreach stage, the major deal is to create a busz about the project among the most influential and concerned about the social issue, in this case - it could be union leaders, union alliances, governmental bodies, NGOs working for migrant workers rights, journalists across the globe and other organizations interested in the cause. A Public Relations and Outreach plan is chalked out and a media calendar is scheduled with copywriting for each post or article. 15
The Team HELM Studio is a strategic partnership between a human rights lawyer and researcher, Shikha Siliman Bhattacharjee who heads content direction and legal research, a designer, Mridul Sharma who heads creative direction and a media producer/ photojournalist who heads production and project management. To experience how a socially charged content driven design agency works, I worked across the three departments - Content, Design & Media and Project Management to have a holistic learning outcome.
Mridul Sharma is the creative director and co-founder of HELM Social Design Studio and has a vast hands-on experience in the design industry, having worked with brands and organizations including Satya Paul, W, Madura Fashion & Lifestyle, Arvind Mills and Ranna Gill.
Mridul Sharma Creative Director
He graduated from the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Gandhinagar and pursued a degree in Fashion Design, and went on to take different roles in his 15 years of experience in the design industry graphic design, textiles, visual merchandizing, user interface and experience design. He believes that with the world around us rapidly changing, the best solutions often lie outside the boxes of a specific design stream.
Rajan Zaveri Media Producer
Shikha Bhattacharjee Content Director
Rajan Zaveri is an Australian/British freelance multimedia producer, a Knight/Vice fellow, a photojournalist and co-founded HELM Social Design studio to use the mixed media reportage to focus on the social needs of the community. He has covered several social issues with projects in the UK, Croatia, Bosnia, Egypt and India. Rajan’s work has been featured across publications such as Al Jazeera, Wall Street Journal, Ford Foundation, BBC, Save the Children, the Guardian, Telegraph, Storyhunter, Vocativ and Vice. He graduated from Newport University with a BA in documentary photography and also trained for video, sound and journalism at the SAE Institute in London.
Shikha Siliman Bhattacharjee heads content direction and legal research at HELM, while she is affiliated as a human rights fellow and a consultant for a number of organizations including the Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley, Society for Labour and Development, South Asia Women’s Fund, Human Rights WatchDisability Rights, Professional Assistance for Development Action and many more. Currently pursuing her PhD in Jurisprudence from UC Berkeley, Shikha did her Law Education from University of Pennsylvania and has a bachelors degree in English from Yale University. She is an expert at legal research and content and is constantly connected to HELM by online mediums and frequent visits.
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Past Projects HELM was founded in 2015 and since then they’ve worked on a variety of social led design and media projects - the Assam tea gardens, Lockstitch lives, Virtual police station, Think and Throw, Colonial to Corporates which are interactive training tools, gamified training tool, VR Interactive documentary, Interactive infographs and virtual exhibition tour. A major project in the pipeline is the Mythologies of Mumbai slotted to launch in November 2017. Interestingly all the organizations who collaborated with HELM on the past projects, either have another phase of the project ongoing, for instance after collaborating with CHRI on Virtual police station, we also did an e-repository of women police in India, and further these organizations also referred HELM to other organizations for further projects, for instance CHRI referred us to the NLU Center for Death Penalty. Current projects that HELM is proposing include the Death Penalty in India project with NLU, Delhi; an interactive on repressive legislations around the world with Amnesty International, Tiger Time, ImPact Game for Human Rights Defenders with Amnesty International, Lex Situs for International Criminal Code e-learning MOOC for CILRAP, optimizing the ICT Training tools further for SLD etc.
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Projects Undertaken The projects I undertook at HELM were quite diverse, with one common element of social design for protecting human rights. The internship was planned in such a way that I get a good understanding of how one project works, although the timelines of neither of the projects were within eight weeks, but I was exposed to different stages of a project under different projects assigned to me. 1. Introduction (Tiger Time, Repressive Legislations) 2. Collaboration (Death Penalty In India, Repressive Legislation) 3. Ideation, pitch and proposal (Death Penalty in India, Repressive Legislation) 4. Design and Development (Migrant workers rigts, CILRAP MOOC Development) 5. Testing (Migrant workers) 6. Dissemination and Launch(Migrant workers) 7. Outreach(Migrant workers) 8. Post Launch meetings and next phase discussions(Migrant workers) 21
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Death Penalty in India
The National Law University in Delhi has a center for Death Penalty. They are actively involved in the criminal justice system, its research and critique. The Death Penalty in India Report is a result of their first study, infact first of this kind in India to analyse the impact of the death row on the prisoners and their families. The report is in three parts, with one being an executive summary, and the rest two include eleven chapters on different aspects of the Criminal Justice system and the death row.
DEATH PENALTY INDIA REPORT
The Part 1 of the report includes a study on the nature of the crimes, the socio-economic status’ of the prisoners and the custodial experience. The report is also rich with infographics on the details of the crimes specific to different states in India.
The Part 2 examines the criminal justice system and the death row closely with the impact on the prisoners and the families involved. Rich with interviews, infographs and tables, the report ends with facts of the death penalty cases from 2000-2015.
DEATH PENALTY INDIA REPORT
About the Project The National Law University, Delhi is one of the most prominent law education and reform institutions in India. The Death Penalty Clinic at the campus is a revolutionary step in redefining where human rights and law unite. The report on Death Penalty in India is in three parts, an executive summary and two parts - a total of eleven chapters outlining a detailed research of the issue - from the nature of the crimes to the impact to the families. The report studies the issue of death penalty but does not debate over abolition, instead brings out facts and interviews of the accussed and their families who have narrated their experiences. It also studies the systems and sub-systems in the Indian Criminal Justice System. 25
The project brief is to create a digitally consummable interactive documentary from the report, making the information widely accessible and impactful.
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Content Analysis Visual Research
Pitch
Visual Language development
The Process The Process is engaging and ongoing presently, starting from the content analysis, reading through the report and analysing important factors while also looking at the visual language already developed in the report. The research included delving deeper into already existing video and audio documentaries, photodocumentations, interactive documentaries, for instance The Syrian prison of Sadynaya or the Tihar Jail rehabiliation documentary and also the Solitary confinement virtual reality interactive. There were meetings and discussions with the researchers at the Center for Death Penalty at National Law University, Delhi for further discussion on the content.
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Content Analysis The entire report of roughly 550 pages was reviewed, analysed and summarized as a 60 page review which included a quantitative and a content-based analysis. The content based anaylsis is a cross-referenced analysis of the interviews spread across different chapters altogether - compiling about 135 of such. Along with this, there is also a list of all facts, infographs and tables (as a count) as they come along in the report. The quantitative anaylsis is a table of the number of different types of details in the report - the number of infographs, facts, tables, interviews etc. After this initial analysis, three grids were created - the first one was between the issues and the prisoners. This helped find out gaps in each human story. We picked out the human stories with the maximum information and laid them on a seperate grid that had their human stories bifurcated in the themes, the infographs, tables and facts that go along with their numbers. This grid is the basis of the visual interactive documentary. The last grid is a quick visual reference on what type of information is available for which human story under which issue. This is how the report was analysed and the content structured for further development of the visual and verbal narration of the interactive documentary.
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The review included series of cross-referenced human stories from all chapters of the reports. Along with that a list of infographs, tables, facts as a part of the content analysis.
Grid 1 This grid is laid out to visually look at all human stories involved by showing different aspects and then selecting which ones are the most impactful out of the 135 stories that cover all the issues on death row. This led to a selection of 16 strong human stories that cover all issues related to the death penalty and are the most impactful on an interactive level.
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Grid 2 These are the chosen 16 stories with the 8 issues across, the colour coded numbers are red for the infographics that go with the particular part of the story and the blue are the tables. In the same workbook were a list of infographs, colour coded to the chapters.
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Grid 3 This grid is a visual reference of what type of content is present in the report for the human stories and the particular issues. The type of content is segregated in the form of Narrative Table Infograph Quote.
Example of a Narrative For Ainesh Singh (As a voiceover by wife) It has been a difficult time for us, I have to put up abroad for unavoidable situations, while he lies here, all alone. He used to work at the university as a lecturer, before everything happened, and he has very few traces of memory left. Held in a solitary confinement for almost 10 years, without any meaningful interaction from anyone, he gave into mental ailments. He used to be a bright student in his childhood, however, now he had to be shifted into a mental health facility on a permanent basis. The high court and the Supreme Court have confirmed his death sentence, at the mercy plea, the President didn’t consider his mental health situation, for which we challenged the decision on the grounds of inordinate delay and filed a writ petition seeking commutation, which was later executed by the Supreme court on account of a delay of 8.4 years in disposal of the mercy petition. 37
Stills from Tihar Jail, Delhi documentary that study the daily lives of prisoners on death rows.
Stills from Saydnaya Prison in Syria
Visual Research The report did give a lot of details by tracing lives of prisoners undertrial and on death row in expressive verbiage. For visual research however, there was a need to go beyond just the report, so we started looking at possible references - Tihar Jail documentary, Sadynaya Prison in Syria documentary, interactive web documentary called Prison valley and Solitary Confinement Virtual Reality experience. Apart from these we sought out to develop our own visual language by looking at various ways of expressing human stories, by both visually articulating human figures or just by smart symbolism. Moreover, we looked at different types of interactives and tried to blend in our concept of dual navigation - by human stories and by issues on one screen in different ways, so we could discuss those in the pitch meeting. A few sketches, initial moodboards and ideations were done at this stage to enter a clear picture of the final images.
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1. Prison Valley is an interactive documentary about Canon City Colorado which has about 13 prisons, and is popularly known as the Prison Valley. The documentary not only traces the lives of the people inside the prison but also those living nearby, as all their lives are dependent on the prisons of the valley.
2. The Solitary Confinement virtual reality is an experience interactive that allows one to feel what prisoners felt in a solitary confinement for years.
3. Syrian stories of refuge - human stories. This is particularly the last part of the interactive where each person has a wall, and a timeline of from when they came from Syria and how their memories have faded.
4. Canada’s human stories of homelessness in an efficient navigational interactive with impressive data visualization.
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The idea is such that every screen is an animation, and the quotes from the report are used, for instance “Who, by and large are the men whom the gallows swallow?” Which is followed by a commentary on the lower socio-economic status’ of the accused men. Followed by impactful infographs, about torture, socio-economic status’ and impact on families.
Initial Ideas
After which there is a screen with names/faces and issues around them so you can navigate by story/issue.
Other ideas included jumping on directly to the page to navigate with names, faces or symbols and the human stories be told as a Virtual experience, as voiceovers, detailed narrative read with infographs appearing in relevance to the human stories.
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DEATH PENALTY INDIA REPORT
Pitch The pitch meeting was to meet up with the researchers at the Center for Death Penalty at the National Law University, Delhi. The discussion was about what we had analysed from the content, who the target audience is, what the researchers expect the digital interactive to represent, other research material they have and ideas. We discussed some of the major content analysis that we did, discussing the grids of the 16 human stories we had cross referenced from the report. Then we got to the visual research and refined ideas we had for the interactive. They told us what they had experienced in interactive documentaries and what their expectations were, and how we could research further to focus on a target audience. The discussion also included future research, budgeting and interactive development.
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Visual language development Post the pitch meeting and our content analysis and visualization, we moved on to creating the visual language for the interactive. This also required a lot of visual research, but here it requires ideation, application and art direction. There were many ways in which we ideated, first just by imagination, and then to refine the ideas, we looked at all types of visual communication art - portraits, interactive, semoitic or even documentaries. Both the mentors were involved in guiding me for the ideation step by giving a fresh perspective every time I came up with a bunch of ideas. Whether it was using human forms or just symbolism or even simple usage of ‘black-red-white’ as the report itself uses this visual language. There are many themes ideated, a chosen created as visuals digitally, and eventually would be executed with further refinements, as the project is ongoing.
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Some visual references to go about developing a visual language for the interactive, works are credited to Arun Ferriera, Naji Chalhoub, Magaly Ohika.
Illustrations and drawings for human forms in abstract forms, experimenting with form, shape, structure, line quality and density. 51
More references to work with - Sin City, Arkham Asylum for the use of red-black-white, the old man’s game for the transitions. Kabul portraits for its navigation by splitting the screen.
Splitting the screen into 16 parts 53
The idea of using lines/ropes to create a structure, while when you click on the name, the rope is pulled back with a sound effect. A quote of the ‘spider web’ on the 1st chapter of the report can be used in the intro.
Using a weathered prison brick wall and the barbed wire, an interface can be created. When you click on a person’s name, the person’s story starts appearing in other bricks with a movement, while the rest of the names disappear.
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Jail bars and names/faces in front of the bars. As you click the name the bar slides up to a screen to a page for that person’s story. Also, a screen lock is possible for viewing a person’s story. Also there can be a feature of horizontal and vertical alignment, asking the user.
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Creative data visualisation is a major part of an interactive, and here we gathered a few references of data visualization that also gave the mood of the interactive documentary. Similarly, we tried using the spider web as a data visualization for the death penalty report, using the quote - ‘A spider never gets caught in it’s own web’ which is a strong commentary on the Criminal Justice System of India.
Radial chart for all the 16 prisoners for 8 issues. The lines represent the prisoners and the curves represent the issues. The Radial chart as a spider web - in both ways, lines as human stories or as issues.
Spider Web
THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM IN INDIA
Screens for the spider web idea 59
Each web layer is an issue and each line diagonal is a human story. Whenever a layer is clicked or the navigation is by an issue, the web layer structure stays constant and each human story related to this issue has points in it.
Each diagonal line is a human story, so while navigating through human stories, the structure of the line stays the same and every point is the issue faced in the personal experience.
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More ideas for the visual language and navigation, while keeping in mind that the navigation should feel like how prisoners on the death row feel.
Creating new ideas going back to the old ideas here we have thought of changing the jail bars into chains and shackles and creating an interface where the issues are at the bottom as lock or key, the chains & shackles are the human stories. Every theme that is a reason for the death penalty is a lock and a reason for mercy is a key.
Developing old ideas into better ideas keeping in mind the navigational experience reflecting the death row
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Dinbandhu
Umang
Rubiram
Ainesh Singh
Roshini
Aatmaram
Ramanand Rajul
Haunt & Amarpreet
Dinbandhu
Chetak
Mahmud, Zaid & Fazil
Inder
Gopesh
The Musahars
Rubiram
Ainesh Singh
Champak
Dinbandhu
Umang Roshini
Aatmaram
Ramanand
For creating the sample screens I’ve used an unlicenced image and elements that have been added by photomanipulation. When this would be finalized, it would require purchase of elements and the image.
Rajul
Dinbandhu
Haunt & Amarpreet
Chetak
Inder
Mahmud, Zaid & Fazil
Gopesh Champak
The Musahars
Shackles and Chains
First, I tried keeping a blackwhite-red language as we had initially been doing. However, later to get some character in the narrative, we decided to create a realistic three dimensional environment.
When the user navigates by issues, the screen splits, and the shackled chains of the human stories involved in the issue, get onto one side and the other screen has three parts - an introduction to the issue, human stories related to this as a scroll and infographics related to the issue. 65
When the user navigates by human stories, only the particular chain-shackle pair moves, and the rest disappear behind the split screen which has a narrative, a voiceover and infographics related to the human story.
Virtual Reality Experience
The Google tilt brush is a great innovation in the world of digital art and technology, it allows you to draw in space, in real time. The moment you wear the gear, the world is a completely new place - you can be in a desert, a snowland or even inside someone’s brain. The equipment helps you draw and create an environment and as a part of the internship, I was given a chance to explore this new medium of visual communications and think of a relevant concept that could work as a virtual experience for death penalty. This has a lot of approaches, and I have suggested a few ideas from the earlier navigation ideas as they could work in this medium perfectly as intended. 67
Learning Outcomes This project was the most important responsibility on me during the 8-week internship. It was an enhancing experience, from the content analysis to the visual development, the research based design is what kept me interested and going. This was an interdisciplinary project which gracefully utilized my capabilities in research, system thinking and content analysis and further enhanced my visual vocabulary and design process as I was constantly exposed to new ideas, visual work and the digital medium. I learned how to think from a digital viewer’s viewpoint and also how to transform a research oriented data into creative visual representations that can create an impact. On a ‘skills’ perspective, I not only gained skills in further holistic thinking, digital media visualization and content analysis, I also enhanced software skills - Adobe Suite - Illustrator, Photoshop; using the google drive functions on the cloud efficiently comments, corrections and structure of data on Docs, Sheets; experienced using the newest in digital communications - the tilt brush, also used a management uitlity called DaPulse to manage and keep deadlines in check, XMind to structure and analyse data, especially the ideas that grow, for instance meetings!
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Exploitation of migrant garment factory workers
Lockstich lives The training tool for garment factory workers.
About the Project
This website is also a part of the project. The website is an initiative to help migrant labourers know their rights and methods of registration on Aadhar, Ration card and voting card for every state (in the NCR Region)
The SLD - Society for labour development along with the Naarishakti Manch, the IMA, Interstate Migrant Alliance (with MRCs, Migrant resource centres), RLS - Rosa Luxemberg Stiftung Organization, Germany collaborated with HELM Studio for this project. The project mainly is focused on the exploitation and living conditions of migrant workers’ rights, specifically garment factory workers and domestic workers. The project went on in quite a few phases, the first one was called the Lockstitch Lives, which documented the lives of migrant workers - their living conditions and daily routines. The next project was ICT Training tools for migrant garment factory workers to protect them from exploitation by making them understand their rights. The project is at launch stage and the next phase is also discussed. 73
Launch The project is a long one - the phase 2 started in Jan’17, and the launch was in Jul’17. The project includes the training tools with animations, quizzes and videos - the animations needed to be scripted, re-scripted in Hindi, the quizzes needed to be corrected, the videos required translations from Hindi to English and transcribing. Also there was a need for a guide to use the tools on the tablet for MRC Coordinators. The Public Relations material needed to be curated for social media and emailers, and a contact list needed to be curated for sending in the emails to influential people - journalists, lawyers, labour unions, NGOs and media across the world. Another important aspect was the post - launch meeting that needed to be framed as a budget for a funding from two seperate funders to SLD for the one project. The project needed my contribution in four aspects - English to Hindi and visa versa for animations and videos - Correction of the quizzes, Video Editing - PR material curation & contact lists - Documentation Guide for MRCs - Budget Sheet preperation according to the post - launch meeting at SLD with Shikha 75
The video interviews of seven garment factory workers, the head of the Allied Workers in Gurugram and the head of the Naarishakti manch are all in Hindi and needed to be translated in English for Shikha to understand and suggest the Video Edits. Later I also worked on the video editing bit.
Translations Script and Videos 77
Every aspect of the training tool was included, a few snaps and short videos were curated and the descriptions explained the content of the picture or the video. The Public relations is handled by Alys, an Australian journalist who has been in close association with HELM Studio. After this Alys looked over all the stills and created a social media calendar and the taglines which were then fed into buffer to reach every social media platform by me.
Contact list and social media calendar for buffer.
Public Relations Material Curation 79
The documentation to guide MRC coordinators to use the training tool on the tablet with proper installation and help the migrant workers to use the tool and quizzes to the fullest potential.
Documentation Guide for MRCs 81
Colour Coded according to the year, the sheet is about a proposal for two funders who budget for one year and three years respectively (RLS Foundation and GFW Foundation). The Information about what would be done in each phase by SLD and HELM was discussed in the meeting and a consolidated proposal sheet and budget is designed to be presented at the foundations.
Meeting Notes as Proposal Budget Sheet for Next Phase
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Learning Outcomes This project was an important part of the internship because it was getting ready for its launch. I learned what goes into building a project and promoting it to attract the target audience you need to communicate the message to. It also helped me understand how organizational collaborations happen with proposal and budget meetings. From correcting quizzes on ISpring software, to editing audio on Adobe Audition, I used a variety of softwares to complete and correct different aspects of the project. The project utilized my writing and translation abilities putting my bilingual knowledge to use and also my ability of structure content in an organized understandable way was put into use. Majorly this project was about handling last minute pressure and changes - whether it is by working through weekends or just browsing through all quiz questions to make sure everything is in place.
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Building a repository on Women Police in India
Desktop User
About the Project CHRI - Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative is an organization that helps in strategic good governance in commonwealth countries, their last project with HELM was the virtual police station which is an efficient training tool for police stations and the next project is about building a repository of all women police across India in a digitally accessible format. The project has three parts to it - Desktop repository - Mobile repository - Back End My contribution was ideas for the mobile repository and designing the backend user interface. The target audience in this case are the policy makers, policemen and ministers so the interface needs to be extremely simple to use. 89
Initially I was unaware of the target audience and the fact that it is not an application, it is a website (as that is the next phase of the project), I doodled out ideas thinking of making an app instead of a website and that too for common people by making the data ‘interesting’. However, later I was corrected saying that it needed to be straightforward and the visual language to be similar to the desktop website.
Mobile User Interface for Women’s Police Repository
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After understanding the brief, I put across a few options in context with the website interface, trying to maintain the visual language of the website.
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Back-End user interface for the e-repository 95
Learning Outcomes The aspects of this project that I handled were the first few tasks given to me at the beginning of the internship. Coming from a fashion communication background where most of the work we do academically, is about generating interest, I might have interpreted the brief incorrectly, however what was interesting for me to learn here was how to make interfaces easy to use and minimalistic - and how to visualize data creatively yet in the most straightforward manner. This project helped me gain skills in Adobe XD which is used for Experience Design and Adobe Illustrator.
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Lex situs e-learning MOOC Development
About the Project The Centre for International Law Research and Policy (CILRAP) is an organization seeking to educate people on the International Criminal Code. Lex Situs is an e-learning platform that has professors and lawyers from across the world putting across videos of their interpretations of each code of the Rome Statute and how it can be used in varied cases. This project required my contribution in helping with 1. Video Transcribing and Editing 2. Developing icons for use on the website interface. 3. Redesign of the website interface - Typo 3
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Video Editing and Transcribing for Article 6, all the vidoes under the category.
# Exported by Aegisub 3.2.2 Article 6 Paragraph 1 Of the Rome Statute The International Criminal Court sets out for the act of killing The crime of killing under the article 6 is committed as a part of the intent to destroy or with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such, in other words we join that paragraph with the Chapeau with the definition of genocide It’s quite similar as a punishable act to what we find in the first paragraphs of the article 7 and 8 crimes against humanity and war crimes all of them involving a crime of homicide or of killing or of murder that’s associated with the contextual elements of the crime Ofcourse it probably seems obvious
Video Edits and Transcriptions
enough they are not really difficult or controversial than genocide because it involves the physical extermination of the group rather than the destruction of its culture that at the core of this is of course going to be homicide in effect killing and one might also add because the crime must be intentional it must be with the intent to destroy as a very general proposition it is going to involve murder that is intentional homicide The courts have excluded cases of killing associated with victims who were not members of the punishable group or who were not intended or were not understood by the perpetrators as the members of the punishable group Otherwise we basically in terms of applying the notion of killing, follow the rules that we know from ordinary criminal law, from domestic criminal law in terms of the crime of murder
i LIBRARY
LEARN
CASE MATRIX
i LIBRARY
LEARN
CASE MATRIX
Icons designed according to a grid format for the website interface for Lex Situs.
Icons for interface 103
User Interface re-design Option 1
BRIEF Keeping the visual language the same. Not changing the structure of the interface, just work with the aesthetics.
Existing layout of the user interface
User Interface Redesign 105
User Interface Redesign Option 2
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Learning Outcomes This project was already in progress as I started interning, I helped with designing parts of the interface, editing/transcribing videos for Lexsitus and giving ideas for redesign of the existing interface of CILRAP. I learned new tools, specifically Aegisub, Final Cut Pro for editing and transcribing videos, DaPulse for managing multiple projects with teams across the globe and also learnt how to make pixel-perfect icons.
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Organizational Development and Other Projects
Meeting Notes template for HELM Studio to include objectives, aim, organizations, funders, budget, challenges, content development, social media and channels of content dissemination. Also there are spaces for all the contact information of all attendees and key working people for the project.
All the meetings while at HELM, I documented, recorded and structured all that was discussed, and after I designed the format, I used it twice for meetings for Tiger Time and Labour development.
Other Projects Apart from these major four projects. I also contributed in developing basic structures for the organization A Meeting minutes worksheet compatible with working on as a google document or printed. Meeting minutes worksheet for Tiger Time and Migrant Work Social Media posts curated for HELM Studio Data Mapping for all projects and defining the space that can be utilized. All the hard drives were labelled, numbered and colour coded and then a consolidated excel sheet was produced.
Data Mapping for all HELM projects - previous and current Visual Research for website UI Proposal Development for Amnesty International
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Copywriting and curation of images for Social Media for HELM Studio. This was for promotion of recent projects that were undertaken by the studio.
Visual Research for a website interface 115
Proposal assistance and content structure grid for developing the proposal for Amnesty International.
Learning Outcomes These tasks were smaller compared to the projects done before this, but they are quite critical to the efficiency of the organization. Before the meeting minutes worksheet template, we used to scribble handwritten notes, record them, sometimes type on Xmind, but nothing was as efficient. This worksheet made meetings quite easy to handle, without fuss and all the important information needed was typed and shared in real time on google docs. The mapping of data was essential to recognize gaps in the disks and filling spaces wherever possible, so that all the files can be backed - up and the space is used efficiently. The proposal for Amnesty International needed a review of a research document and identifying which countries had which issues and mapping them out for helping out Shikha in creating the proposal with all the required data accessible easily. These tasks made me realize the importance of time and efficiency in an organization and that is something I’ve also gained to utilize in my personal and professional creative projects hereafter.
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Insights The internship thought me a great deal of professional jargon and approach, the most significant one being efficiency and productivity. Every task that needed to be done had a more efficient way - managing project deadlines on excel sheets is a daunting task, but the same on DaPulse, makes it easier and also the interface is extremely user-friendly, so collaborating with individuals across the world is easier. Another major learning was to be a patient listener to all ideas being thrown in the room as the most creative ideas are a combination of more than one idea. Also it made me more observant of the technological aspect that could be put to use for good communication design - from virtual reality to interactive documentaries, they are really efficient in allowing good consumption of digital journalism in the coming future. 119