DESIGN STUDIO 4
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final presentation Unit 15: Questions What is the field of design? Where are my interests in it and why? How do my interests reflect my design values and why?
Stemming off of the discussion of what graphic design is, I was extremely intrigued by the concept of good design. I was curious about how we as designers, and an audience make judgements and comments about things we see. What influences us? And how does this impact the making of a piece? I looked back to things I have liked and saved, and evaluated what I liked about them. At the end, I only had more questions.
good design = visual design + usability good design = pretty things good design = POV of audience
What is good design? Who decides what good design is? Is Good design simply a question of legibility and illegibility? What is universal design and how do you make it? What are we, as designers in the grand scheme of opinion making? Is good design a democratic decision? Or a decision made by the elite few? How do we and should we assess design? Would non graphic designers be better graphic designers? Are our opinions about design really our own? And how do we form our own?
How do I make my questions into a piece? How do I get my audience to think about these things? Will the audience understand? Is it something worth exploring?
In response to my questions, I came the understanding that the best way to pose these to an audience, would be to make them question it themselves. The audience I envisioned, wasn’t graphic designers, but rather the real audience of work that we as graphic designers make. I wanted to know what this audience would think of when they had to make their own piece and what impact this would have on their way of categorizing it as good or bad design.
final presentation section title pages
To do this, I had to arm them with knowledge any graphic designer would learn. Therefore, I came up with the form of an activity book. Just like those we used when we were children, this activity book would have general rules and information followed by activities, which would have resources for them to use.
Part of the process included creating an individual identity for the book and enforcing that in a way that made it visually interesting for the audience. I attempted to create my own compositions incorporating them on the title pages. However, the most difficult part was making sure my thought process and the questions I was prompting to ask the audience came across. I was extremely curious to know what they thought of. Which is one of the reasons I was intrigued but the cold critique. Some of the responses made me rethink certain parts of my project, while the others reinforced the idea that I was trying to get across. Part of my presentation also included presenting this as analog design. The book in itself is an analog representation of my questions as it includes the DIY squares for the gestalt principles activity, a DIY Poster and print resources for both. I decided to push this aspect too. I presented all the materials with the digital icons for each to draw a parallel between the two. Did this variation of analog and digital have an influence on my questions?
final presentation
I decided to make the presentation of my book interactive because I wanted the audience to engage with it like it was meant to be. I didn’t want to prompt the interaction, which is why I didn’t indicate it by sticking anything or drawing anything on it. However, in the end, the audience did interact with it, and their reactions were an interesting response to my questions.
Some of the changes I would have liked to include are an introduction page which told the audience exactly what to expect and what they would be seeing in the book. Some of the audience was confused about the purpose of the book. I could have included this information on the back of the book, like is usually done. Another thing I was curious about is how I could have packaged the book. Does it come with the materials? Or is the book simply the whole package itself.
logo gif screens
Things & Other Things
Unit 16: Working Together How can collaboration catalyze design action?
group portrait
As a collective, we aim to teach, encourage, experiment, and explore the world of graphic design and other things. We used this platform of collaboration to support and share each other's individual interests. Our practice encourages the members to create bucketlists of things and other things. The members must help, teach and motivate each other to start tackling them.
mission statement
For this collaborative project, I chose to work with two people I have never worked with before. When Ja Yoon, Urooj and I were talking about possible working together, we spoke a lot about our strengths and weaknesses. We knew we wanted to try new things and learn new ways of working. As a person I am very organized. I like to plan ahead and dont like to leave things for the last minute. To be honest, sometimes I have a difficult time letting go and I stress too much as well. I can’t focus on the process and have fun with it, but rather I stress about the output and therefore don’t end up experimenting too much because I like to work with what I know. This is something I knew I wanted to change and therefore we all, for our own individual reasons decided to pair up together. During our first group meeting, we came up with a long list of things we could possibly want to do. We didn’t know where we wanted to start and we didn’t know which one we wanted to focus on for this collaborative project. This was very stressful for us, because each of us had different styles of working, different content ad different forms we wanted to work in. Therefore, this is how we started to categorize things. While talking about things in general, we started talking about food and places in providence we wanted to go to. Ja Yoon and I had never been to Talullah’s and Urooj insisted we should go. We came up with a whole list of things like this we wanted to do, and this is how Things & Other Things was born.
BUCKETLIST
CONTENT
Go to Tallulah’s
Food
Go to Boston together
Myself
Make a noun project account
Home
Walk in the tunnel after midnight
Family
Potluck
Belonging Future
The Kitchen Aesthetically Pleasing Alcohol Make our own ‘Ja Yoon inspiration books/ folders/ collection’ Mail letters to each other
Fair representation (Ida B Wells Obit)
DELIVERABLES Zine (something in series, volume)
Travel
Poster
Language
3D type/3D things/
Boycotting (Sabra, etc.)
Cinema 4D
Photo Flags Small cute precious things Custom lettering
UMAD/ Event
Friends
Newspaper
People
Collections
Screen Printing
Aesthetically Pleasing Alcohol
Government
Patterns
Packaging
Immigration
Branding?
Collecting
Flags
Packaging/ (Branding?)
Restaurants Culture Dogs Fashion Music (Artist)
Knowledge sharing Movies Maps Food I need to start eating
Weather
Summer Sports
Future
Games
Summer Sports
Print v Digital
Games
Psychology
Print v Digital
Government
Psychology Government Women Oreos
Women Oreos
Website
Screen Printing Patterns
Useless/Useful
App
Artful Photography
Something physical
Something Finished
Typeface!
Brochure Clothes/ Fabric/ Weaving/ Textile
Signage Maps Packaging Poster Brochure Clothes/ Fabric/ Weaving/ Textile Game/Cards Stamps/ Letters etc. Weird things that aren’t really used anymore
system
Boardgame
Summer
Responsive Things
bucketlist
Make a group
Make a bucketlist
Make a group chat
Game/Cards Stamps/ Letters etc. Weird things that aren’t really used anymore
Present your idea
Receive Feedback
Create things
After speaking with all the faculty, we decided to come up with a system of working collaboratively in a way that we could all accomplish the things we wanted to work on together. Part of this system included working together, even if we weren’t working on the same project, having frequent check-ins and giving each other constant feedback. Similar to the class structure, this system was about accomplishing those things that we wanted to work on, while creating a structure that other collaborative practices could work with. In a way, we were creating a model for practices like Pentagram, where individual designers with different visions and methods of working, work with their own teams under an umbrella.
For my individual project, I decided to play with aesthetically pleasing wine. We took a trip to the wine store and found the most fun aesthetically pleasing wine we could fine. I choose a bottle of Fritz Muller wine. I really liked how unexpectedly it was designed. It didn’t look like something I would see on a wine bottle. I decided I wanted to play with their existing brand image and see what I could do with what was already there. This was fulfilling for me a way, because I was able to explore and just have fun with a project for the first time.
my personal project
However, during the critique, we realized that the way we set it up, didn't allow for enough collaboration, and therefore it felt like we had a small section of things we we worked together on from our bucket list but in the end the output we had was our own individual work. This is something we felt like we lost sight of during the process and ended up going away from the things we wanted to do. If we had stuck to the original plan of working on multiple smaller projects, some of which we collaborated together on, depending on our interests, we would have been able to achieve more from this concept of working together.
final presentation
Regardless of this, I felt like I did learn a lot from this process. I was able to experience new things and places. I got to eat at new places. Learn new things. Make new friends. With my personal project, I was able to experiment more with after effects and learn how to animate type. I tried to have fun with it. I was able to make fun colorful posters and just go with how it looked. I learned how to work with an existing brand image. One of the things we were sure about, is that we wanted to draw inspiration from physical objects. I was able to start making my own inspiration folder where I collect things that inspire me and I could use in a future project. This is something I learned how to do in this project, and is something I hope to continue to do.
will you share?
Unit 17: Package How can graphic design communicate a whole that is greater than a sum of parts?
post interaction
mapped interests When we were asked to make a list of things we were interested in, I made two lists. One that had graphic design related things and one that had more general things. The following week we make a locating territories presentation, presenting these things. One of the things that I am very interested in is that of likes, dislikes, behavior, identity, persona and personality. How is this influenced and how does this change in the public and private aspect. Is what we do in public purely performance based? Therefore if we like, share and follow someone or something on social media, is it purely for validation? And how does this change? What is the value of this? and does this change? And how does this, in turn inform our likes, dislikes, behavior, identity, persona and personality?
I decided to expand this into a piece that had two parts. One physical and one digital.The aim was to see the audiences response to both. I explored my concept further by questioning this behavior. I wanted to know if, when put into a physical sphere where liking could mean something else, would people share something? I took the last 10 graphic design things that I saved or shared on social media and incorporated them into my piece. One of the biggest doubts that I had here, was if I should be working with things I created. Would using someone else’s work be as effective, or was it more effective? While thinking about where my voice came into this, I decided the only way to personalize the work, without making it about myself, would be to use things other people had made.
back of the box
physical prints front & back
digital gifs screens
I took these pieces are wrote out the questions that I had. I noticed that the questions weren’t effective enough when they were generalized, so I wrote out two lists, one for the physical piece and one for the digital. I kept thinking about the value of something in a physical and digital sphere and how it changes. Online the more likes/shares something has, the more it is valued, the more famous it is and the more validated the designer feels. You probably wouldn’t think so much before tapping the like or share button. You as an observer don’t loose anything by participating it. However, when the same thing is in print, would you like it as easily? How would you share it if you had to? If you tore it in half and gave that someone in lieu of sharing it, does it have the same effect? Is the value of this decreasing because it is torn, or is it increasing because it is something new? How likely and how inclined are you to share it? Do you want to keep it? If it is incomplete before you know, then does it have the same value? When something is in the physical form, how do you know where it has come form? Who made it? When it is digital, is this information more easily accessible? I designed the package as an open top box with the pieces inside face up and the questions on the back of these. The first one was a cover and the last one had the link to digital part. The box had vinyl cut text on the bottom which said, “a collection of artifacts liked and shared by me”. The pages inside had perforated sections that subtly prompted the receiver of the package to tear and share the things they wanted to. I decided to include the digital part as an invasion prototype interactive gifs (with changing like, share and comment numbers) with links to the original pieces. I wanted to know if someone would really make the effort of liking or sharing something.
When Gabby ‘opened’ my package, I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was for her to understand and interpret the questions I was asking. She tore and shared part of my package and distributed it. She engaged with it liike it was meant to be. However, the digital part stumped her a bit. She, and everyone else in class, was confused about why the digital part existed, as the physical was enough. This is something I did agree with. And therefore, although the gifs were fun to make, I decided to in a way scrap the digital part of the piece.
package
Moving Matter
Unit 18 What constraints shape your work?
moving matter’s shop
interactions
The questions that I was interested in exploring for this unit were, ‘Why not Just try it?’, ‘How do tools affect the work?’, ‘How does the dynamic nature of the screen influence static forms?’ and ‘Is it loud enough?’. While thinking of ideas I wanted to explore in general, I decided to go with the concept of motion packaging. This is something I have been interested in a while and just hadn’t had the chance to explore. Through the discussion during the first critique, I decided to explore Augmented Reality and how I could use this as a medium to bring my motion packaging idea to life.
software used
When I began my research into AR to find out how to get started, I was extremely intimidated. I didn’t know how it would be possible and if I would even be able to accomplish what I wanted to. When James suggested that speak with a grad student (Jinhwa Oh), I contacted her to find out more. I was extremely intrigued by our conversation and decided that I would definitely try learning how to use Unity and the Vuforia plugin. I tried for a few days, watching tutorials and googling things, but I couldn’t figure it out. This was the hardest point for me, because then I had to resort to my backup plan of using an existing online tool that does the AR for you. The downside of using this was that you had to use their barcode in your design. This is something I was very very reluctant to do. After a lot of encouragement from James, giving it another go and sitting down with Jin, I realized the reason behind it not working was extremely stupid. I had downloaded the newest version of the software that didn’t work properly with my computer. I was really relieved and started planning out my process for this point forward. However, time had become a bigger constraint than ever and I only had the weekend to finish this piece.
phone cover
I solidified the notes that I had earlier, and came up with Moving Matter. This would be a store with products that have an AR component. Therefore, if you open the app and look at the things sold in the store, a new aspect of it would reveal itself. The color scheme and concept of the lines emerged from the fun moving nature that I wanted this store to embody. In the end, I was really proud of what I had acomlished. Even though everything didn’t work 100% of the way I wanted it to, I was able to learn something new. I know that this is something definitely want to spend time exploring and something I want to try and incorporate in my own practice at RISD and outside. My exploration with the motion packaging is still not over either. I would like to see and experiment with different objects and forms. I want to know how to make it so that things animate in AR, how to play with shapes so that every time the camera sees a certain shape it has a reaction, how to manipulate the software for it to have a response to something with a plain surface and more. This was definitely the most fulfilling project for me, because I was able to explore a concept I have always been interested in, with a medium that intimidated me, but always wanted to learn.
all merchandise
Tanya Agarwal Spring 2018 Section: James Goggin