Project 3 “Speedy Recovery” – Brainstorming and Development

Brainstorming and Development

After the initial visual research, I tried to branch out on the third concept as I felt that it was the one that most suited the brief.

I brainstormed out 2 ideas based on the mechanism of the pop up card: planets and oceans – as both were interesting landscapes that had elements that could be stacked against each other.

Based on these 2 ideas, I made 2 prototypes to try out the visual effect. I made a half-sized model to measure and check dimensions, then created the illustration draft based on those measurements.

Prototype for initial measurements

The initial prototype for measurements was especially important as the illustrations had to stay within those boundaries, especially when folded together so as not to leak out of the card. At the same time, the different layers (I decided on 2) had to be balanced with each other propotionally so each had enough space to contain the illustrations but was also different enough that the stacking effect would be obvious.

After confirming the dimensions, I created the mini prototype with illustrations for each concept.

01: Planets

02: Oceans

After feedback from class critique, it was felt that the second concept (oceans) fitted the brief better. However, while creating the prototype, I realised that the connectors were too small and thus made the pop-up very flimsy. Smaller parts such as the steam from the whale’s blowhole and the dolphin were also very fragile. Thus there was a need to revise the design to make it more secure.

Further feedback was also given that there could be a stronger narrative in the card to create better flow. Also, as I mainly focused on the mechanism itself, I now had to think about the placement of text and narrative.

After the first trial, I edited the design, and added in the required body copy, sample text and logo. I tried to create some form of narrative as well in the form of an additional caption (hope your day goes swimmingly!) to tie in with the brief and the little fishes to aid the viewer in the reading order.

Project 2 “Combating Zika Outbreak” – Initial thumbnails + development

After the initial brainstorming, I chose a few ideas to develop into draft pieces:

Hit By The Bullseye

This piece hones on the idea of the mosquito bite looking like a bullseye – marking the victim as a target for Zika infection.

Personally though, I found this concept to be a bit too overdone and too direct, which might defeat the purpose of the poster as people will tend to skip over it.

ZIKA – Not a Love Bite

For this poster concept, I tried to go for a more interesting/ provocative route – love bite referring to the mosquito bite but feedback from the class was that the concept was too sexualised and might not convey the intended meaning well.

Suggestions were given to focus on other parts of the body (e.g. the neck) to put more focus on the mosquito bite.

Human Slurpee

Personally this was my favourite out of the three – I liked the slogan as I feel that it was the most original out of the three.

However, feedback was that the image of the slurpee was not obvious enough to convey that the poster was about Zika – the viewer had to look closely to the smaller tagline at the bottom to find out.

Hence, the central image could be clarified to serve the message better.

Revisions

After the first session, I made some revisions on the last 2 concepts based on my peers’ feedback:

This was a variation of the “love bite” concept, but I tried to focus on the mosquito bites on the neck to simulate hickies/ focus on the bites to make it less sexual. I did a few variations on colour/ layout as well:

I also applied the same treatment onto the image of a man to create the “guy” version:

For the “human slurpee” concept, I tried to change the image of a slurpee cup to something a little more direct – a blood bag! I also tried to juxtapose the image of a mosquito head to make the reference more obvious. For this concept, I mainly experimented with the relative size and placement of both the image and the text as the combined image of the mosquito sucking on the blood bag became very long in shape and quite clunky to manipulate.

Project 1 “Therapeutic Graphics” – Further Exploration and Final

After getting feedback from the class, I decided to do more research on the kinds of landscapes that could inspire me to create new forms of therapeutic art.

I turned to Japanese woodblock prints, both traditional (e.g. Hokusai) and modern as I felt that the clean shapes and natural forms depicted in the prints suited the style of my work.

While both styles of Japanese woodblock prints often derived inspiration and subject matter from scenes in nature, he more modern woodblock print works were even more simplistic in style than the traditional ones and often reduced the landscape into simple silhouettes.

There were also a lot of overlapping shapes and colours to create texture. Hence, emulating that, I created my piece based on the idea of depicting one of the 4 seasons, spring.

Spring – Field of Flowers

For this piece, I chose to depict spring as I wanted to explore a series based on the 4 seasons, and I felt that spring fitted the purple colour scheme the most. I played around with the various opacities and colour combinations to create variation in the work while still maintaining the clean cut shapes similar to the style of the woodblock prints.

I also explored an alternative composition (Summer) to explore the possibility of developing the format of the work into a series.

Summer – Dunes of Sand

Project 1 “Therapeutic Graphics” – Initial Colour and Composition

After the initial experimentation with abstract compositions, I was dissatisfied with what I came up with and hence decided to branch into more narrative-based compositions.

I came up with a basic composition of a character within an imaginary landscape to create a dreamy atmosphere that the viewer could immerse within. To frame the image, I used the idea of a window-within-a-window by creating a porthole frame – to give the experience of peering out from a vessel (e.g. a submarine) to see new lands.

For the colour palettes, I picked colours from various nature photographs to compose a variety of colour palettes. Then I superimposed that colour palettes on the composition to test out the mood each colour palette could create.

Colour Palette

(From top) Earth/Forest

Sky

Woods

Sunset

Colour Composition 1 (Earth/ Forest)

Colour Composition 02 (Sky)

Colour Composition 03 (Woods)

Colour Composition 04 (Sunset)

Based on the critique from the class, most of them liked the second colour palette (sky) and thought it to be the most dreamy (and thus the most therapeutic). In contrast, many people found the presence of the figure slightly disturbing and to hold pretty negative connotations with regards to the viewer and the hospital environment – something that I didn’t really notice until I was done with the work.

Hence, I decided to

Branch out on purple/ blue colour scheme
Do up a more general landscape (without the character)

(to be continued in next post!)