Recap

So, the event that I chose to do is a stand-up comedy show that is a little dark and/or sarcastic. The concept is lemon-related puns with a lemon as the main character for the design.

The collaterals that I decided on are a poster promoting the show, a bottle label, and six-pack packaging for the bottles. The idea is the audience will be given a bottle for free to drink during the event, but they can choose to purchase packs of the drinks after the event. (Disclaimer: the drink is lemonade. This is a lemon event, after all. But for the sarcastic points, I do admit that they look like alcoholic beverages.)

 

Process & Final

Poster

So I came up with the character (lemon) and the “title”: When Life Gives You Lemons. Here are some of the drafts:

At first I came up with this, but it felt very limiting and way too similar to Yeye Weller’s style.

 

After some trial and error, here is the final poster:

 

For the typefaces, I chose a thick handwritten-style font, paired with an elegant yet friendly cursive for contrast. I think they make a good pair in the theme I’m going for.

The biggest challenge with this poster was adjusting the colors, but I’m satisfied with the end result.

 

Bottle Label

So for the drinks, I used a pun with lemonade and called the drink “lemon-aid”. Since it’s an “aid”, my immediate idea was to draw the lemon sick or injured. Also, since the concept of the event is pretty dark, I figured that drawing a lemon cut in two will be perfect. So that’s what I did.

Here’s how the label looks like:

 

It’s definitely not perfect, but I’m really happy with how it turned out. Again, adjusting the colors is one of the biggest challenges I faced in the design process.

 

Six-Pack Box

Again, same with the other two, my issue was adjusting colors. So pretty much I did a lot of trial and error with different colors.

Another issue that I had was the composition. Unlike the poster and the bottle label, I wasn’t sure what to put at the front and how to arrange them in a way that is still within the theme, interesting, yet not too similar to my previous designs.

This is my first draft:

When I put it on the mockup file, I thought that having different colors for the side and front would be fun. Also, the side was too empty and it was too much of a “drop” compared to the front, so I added more stuff to the side. Here is the final:

 

 

Others

Besides the collaterals, I also made a label for the neck of the bottle.

I came up with two designs for the neck label:

I decided to go with the first one after trying both out on the mockup file since it looks less packed.

 

Final (Bottle & Box)

Putting everything together on the mockup file, here’s how they look like (minus the poster):

 

I think it turns out fun and cute while being a little sarcastic, just the way I wanted it.

 

Reflection

I find out that I really like doing this style. Also, that designing with this style is not as easy as it looks. I’ve always been drawn to flat illustrations and softer colors, but doing things with a fixed set of strong colors is actually good for me since I’m weak in color composition.

While doing this project, I asked for my friends’ opinions a lot (since we study together a lot) and I find that I can be quite stubborn with my ideas. When they give me feedback, I keep trying to justify why I did it that way. Now I’m a little worried about having to deal with clients in the future.

Adjusting colors has always been a big weakness for me, and I think there’s no other way rather than trial and error to come up with the best color composition. The thing is sometimes I’m not patient enough; when I see something that’s “pretty good”, I tend not to continue trying and settle with that. Which is also why feedbacks from my friends helped a lot in pushing me out of that comfort zone.

In addition, since the style for the design direction is more playful and “packed”, I had to be smart with the arrangement and styling of the words. Even just adjusting which component comes in front can make a huge difference in creating the overall look.

Also, designing things for 2D and 3D objects are similar, yet different. I had to adjust the label for the bottle several times to make it fit better with the face of the bottle, considering the way the bottle curved and everything.

All in all, I had a really good time working on this assignment. I think it’s become one of my favorite works. I might just use the concept and the character for something else in the future.

Here’s the link to my Google Drive folder for the final PDFs. Cheers!

Event Ideation

For assignment 3, we have to come up with an event and collaterals for said event. For the event, I came up with 3 initial ideas:

 

1. Home Party (video call party with friends)

Collaterals: invitation, gift box with things you can use/wear at home i.e. comfortable pajamas, indoor slippers, scented candle, etc.

 

2. Virtual Run

Collaterals: invitation, medal for finishers, a certificate for participants, T-shirt, drawstring bag

 

3. Stand-Up Comedy Show

Collaterals: ticket, poster, banner, canned/bottled drinks, souvenirs i.e. stickers, iron-on patches, tote bag

 

After discussing with Lisa, we agreed that the stand-up comedy show would be interesting to take on. Personally, I also like that idea the most and it would fit well with the design direction that I was thinking of, so I was ready to go into it.

 

Design Direction

I was looking for inspiration when I came across Yeye Weller‘s works. I was immediately taken by the style, so I decided to go in that direction.

 

 

 

I picked several strong colors, including white-that-is-not-so-white and black-that-is-not-very-black. As for the font, I wanted to pair bold typefaces and serif (like the light blue image at the bottom left of the first picture, the moodboard).

 

Character Ideation

Yeye Weller’s works always have a certain “character” in the center, so Lisa suggested I create a character. I asked my friends for ideas since I was stuck, and they suggested something similar to a character I made before, which is a lemon head. It came to mind that I could make the theme of “when life gives you lemons” for the show; something punny, witty, and a little sarcastic. (Also, I like it.)

 

Lemonhead: a character I sort of came up with? This is a sticker I made for fun

 

So those are my inspirations and initial ideations. For the rest of the progress, you can see my final post!

Process

Thumbnails

I came up with the thumbnails. Some of the keywords that I used in my ideation process are light, mirror/reflection, possibilities, symmetry, beauty, research, and discovery.

 

Sketches

From the thumbnails, I decided on three of the strongest ideas.

  1. Corannulenes under the hard spotlight from magnifying glass. Straightforward, simple, illustrating discovery and research. The corannulenes would be in different colors to suggest possibilities. I was thinking of making them look like falling snowflakes.

    Idea 1

  2. Corannulene in the center as the main character, with mirrors surrounding it and showing reflections of the different possibilities of what it could be. The focus is on possibility and variability in research and discovery.

    Idea 2

     

  3. I’m not sure what it is but it’s sort of like pinball machine/Rube Goldberg machine/just some kind of mechanism, like an arcade game where a ball rolls down to the bottom. Instead of a ball, a corannulene will roll down. It portrays the fun and insightful side of research.

    Idea 3

 

I asked for feedback from Professor Ela and she really liked the mirror idea (idea 2). To be honest, that is not my favorite idea (mine is idea 3). I wasn’t sure whether I should go with the idea that I liked the most or the one that the client liked the most. In the end, I went with idea 2. It is not going out of my comfort zone per se, since I don’t have any comfort zone (I am not that well-versed in illustration yet…) so I thought it’d be a good exercise for when I go out into the “real world” to follow what the client likes more. It is, in a way, a challenge I posed to myself.

 

Moodboard

I want to practice drawing flat illustrations more, so here is my moodboard. I love the soft colors, especially the pink and yellow, and wanted to try using them.

I had some difficulties as I was envisioning idea 3 with this art style. For idea 2, I thought I had to go with a more realistic style for it to fit, but then I thought again, why not. Just try it. So I didn’t change my original moodboard and decided to just… go with it.

Final

This is my final result.

 

I put the corannulene in a petri dish to emphasize the fact that it is a molecule because one of the feedbacks that I got from my friend(s) is that they didn’t recognize it as a molecule, especially because I used color fill on them instead of the molecular skeleton. Taking into account the fact that the title of the journal would be in white, I used dark colors as the background. To draw attention to the corannulene, I gave it a bright color, although now I’m wondering if the pink and the yellow are too eye-catching.

My biggest struggle is giving depth to the whole composition. I added more mirrors with darker colors to illustrate mirrors that are further away, but it still fell flat. I also added noise (which made my Illustrator run slow…). In the end, I added gradients to most of the elements and a slight glow to the corannulene as an attempt to “save” the flatness. It’s still lacking, but it’s admittedly much better than before. However, I really should have made the gradient on the background more contrasting. I could also do better with my color choices.

I didn’t want to use gradients at first because they often turned out duller in prints compared to in screen, and prone to printing failures. I wanted to use a stipple brush for a shadow effect, but I am not sure how to do that (even after watching a video on how to do that) and I was running out of time (yes, I have terrible time management) so I took the shortcut which is using gradients.

There are so many things I could do better. However, it has passed! I’m kind of relieved since I was struggling and stressing over this assignment so much, and the result is certainly not the best I could’ve done, but I’ll give myself a pat on the back. All in all, that had been a great exercise for me.

About ‘Accounts of Chemical Research’

I tried to look through the abstracts for the articles in the journal, but I was lost. Very lost. I couldn’t even understand the words individually, let alone as sentences.

I tried.

From what I was able to understand, there are several types of articles; for example, discussions and research results. Research results consist of what they were aiming to gain more knowledge about, how to go about it, and what their findings could be used for (references for future researches or improvement opportunities for medications and technologies, to name some). Meanwhile, discussions provide more insight into the researchers’ perspectives in addition to their researches, such as the analysis and challenges in researching that particular topic.

It is clear that the journal is not intended for the general mass. While each article includes an introduction to the covered topic, people without sufficient background in science (especially chemistry) would not be able to understand it well. The journal would be a reference source for people who are writing papers, or people who are looking into doing chemical research or experiment. To a certain extent, people who want to keep up-to-date with findings and development in chemical research might read it as well.

Nevertheless, just looking through the titles, the diagrams, and parts of the abstracts was interesting. It provides some insight to an outsider like me as to what people who work in this field are interested in. For example, the efficiency of the molecule shapes and structures. It is also interesting to see the “behind the scene” (like the molecule names or actions) of the applications of science, such as cancer immunotherapy and vaccines, or wearable energy storage. I don’t know how it sounds to them, but to me, it sounds highly complicated, yet revolutionary. It makes me wonder how many of these articles have to be produced for an actual scientific breakthrough to be made.

 

We talked to the client about the project. The main theme for the cover would be “A curved polyarene building block for the construction of functional materials”.

Yes, I understand those words separately.

I think, more easily put, it should be about how these curved polyarenes are produced and applied. The key points that we should include in the cover are the symmetry of the curved polyarenes (sort of like a soccer ball pattern) and the fact that they use a lot of light to generate. The client had also mentioned that there is no need to be too chemically accurate.

 

Inspiration

1. Wijtze Valkema

Check your contract when having a new house built, for Eigen Huis Magazine

Check your contract when having a new house built, for Eigen Huis Magazine

 

This is an illustration of an article about the importance of checking contracts when having a new house built. I like the use of texture; it gives the illustration a richer feeling instead of just being simply flat. They also give the shadow effect at certain places.

This is also sort of a playful take on the article, making the readers or “you” a giant character inspecting a smaller house by taking off the roof while having a small character (who we can tell immediately is the worker in charge of the construction). I think the illustration is able to convey the essence of the article clearly without being too metaphorical or detailed.

 

2. Kotryna Zukauskaite

 

Project: Memory aid: Stanford researchers have found that blood from newborn humans can rejuvenate learning and memory in aged mice, a discovery that could lead to new treatments for age-associated declines in mental ability.  Client:  Stanford Medicine, 2017

Memory aid: Stanford researchers have found that blood from newborn humans can rejuvenate learning and memory in aged mice, a discovery that could lead to new treatments for age-associated declines in mental ability. Client: Stanford Medicine, 2017

 

I think the interpretation of the article here is excellent. While I cannot catch the meaning alone from the illustration, once you read the topic, the illustration makes a lot of sense and enhances the reading experience. The article is about how blood from newborn humans could rejuvenate learning and memory in aged mice, which could lead to potential new treatments regarding mental abilities. The illustration encapsulates the idea of blood, brain, and research.

The illustration itself looks simple with few colors, so it feels like the illustration is not there to be the “star” of the article, but rather as a “supporter”; yet, it manages to simplify the long-winded topic well.

3. Beth Walrond

 

Beth Walrond — ZETLAND

An animated GIF for Zetland about children getting stuck in a YouTube rabbithole

 

This is technically a GIF. But it is made of illustrations. So I digress.

Before I looked at the title, I can tell immediately it’s going to be something about the overuse of the Internet. The use of animation here conveys the idea of YouTube well.

I am actually amazed by how I can tell that 1) it is a child and 2) the child is holding a laptop. As for (1), I think the color palette and her pink hairpin help a lot, also, the proportion of the child to the laptop. As for (2), I think from the pose and the play on the logo brand, we can see that it is a laptop. Somehow I find it interesting that they are simple, yet so easy to process that I didn’t even ask myself “what is that?” or “how was I able to recognize that?” at first.

Compared to the other illustrations, this one has a freer, more handmade feel since the creator didn’t use clean, sharp lines. When I look at her other illustrations, she does like not to use sharp lines, but even this one is particularly more “wobbly”, for lack of a better term. (Sorry, my brain is fried after reading the journal.)

 

Takeaway

All of them uses digital media; Walrond even uses animated GIF (for a good reason). I think that reminds me that when you’re doing something and you want to go further, you have to ask yourself, is it necessary? What is the purpose of bringing it beyond? Sometimes we’re so fixed to just making things look “cooler” that we didn’t consider if it actually contributes to the objective.

(Disclaimer: this is not an excuse for wanting to make things simpler.)

Each illustrator has different ways of bringing the articles to life. But the similarity is, all of them do the job well without actually portraying anything in a too straightforward manner. Valkema’s one is more straightforward, but they did a more playful take instead of just portraying someone reading a contract (which, now that I think about it, is very easy to fall into. If there’s an article about the importance of reading a contract, wouldn’t people jump at the idea of drawing someone reading a contract?). Zukauskaite’s topic is more abstract, but even then, they did not just illustrate a brain or a research lab. Walrond also did not need to draw the YouTube logo, for example, for us to realize the character was watching way too many videos.

All of those illustrations are also able to summarize the topic well and enhance the article. To a certain extent, they make reading the articles easier.

 

User Profile

Here is the user profile that I have created.

Filter 1: Client

For this project, I asked my non-ADM friend to become my client. (She’s happy to do it.)

We have known each other for years, so suffice to say, I know her pretty well. I asked her about what she’s passionate about nowadays and she said sustainability; she’s been trying to reduce plastic usage more by bringing her own lunchbox for take-away food from the canteen and always using reusable bags when shopping.

Recently she encountered something that made her realize that a lot of people around her are aware of sustainability issues, yet are not moved to do something about it, and it made her rather upset.

Taking that, I put two keywords together: nature and sadness.

Here is the artwork.

Nature here is symbolized by flowers and leaves. I chose a daisy and a sunflower as the main flowers as those are my friend’s favorite flowers. Since my friend is a bright and positive person, I chose a bright color palette for the flowers in general, with occasional pale white flowers to balance out the daisy. Yellow and orange are especially her favorite colors.

As for the sadness, I put a single teardrop. It also portrays the loneliness of being alone, since she felt that she was fighting with the issue alone sometimes. Since the flowers are mainly yellow-white-orange-pink, the blue teardrop stands out well.

I also outlined the entire artwork with glowing pencil texture, but it’s not very visible. I wanted to give it a handmade feeling since my friend loves arts and crafts. I made it “glowy” to represent her confidence, the way she carries herself.

At first, I created the flower to cover the eyes completely to represent blindness to the issue of sustainability, but it might not look good as a filter, so I create openings for the eyes. I wanted to portray the saying “see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil” but I got stuck on thinking of what elements to put. I didn’t want to ruin the composition altogether by adding too many unnecessary details, so I decided to focus on one, which is the eye part.

Here’s how it looks on her:

(She was excited to model for me.)

It does look a little weird on some types of faces since the brown centers of the flowers are located right at the corner of the eyes, but I’m quite satisfied with how it looks on my friend.

 

Filter 2: Self

One thing I need to say: I like BTS. I chose three BTS songs that I love the most, and I feel, represent me in different ways. (Also disclaimer: it didn’t take me very long to decide on this. Really, whenever I have projects about myself or my interests, my personality is suddenly reduced to either mental health or K-pop or both.)

Before I go into the explanation, here is my artwork.

The half-wing of a butterfly represents the loss of hope and the inability to live up to potential. I am not the most positive person and I also have issues with self-esteem, so I think it’s a perfect representation of my inner problems. It is also linked to a BTS song titled “Butterfly”, which speaks about the fear of losing loved ones. In a sense, it also relates to me. In this pandemic, I can’t return back to my home country, so I’m really concerned about my family back in Indonesia and whether they are doing well.

The color of the butterfly is blue and grey, which is the title for another BTS song: “Blue & Grey”. The song symbolizes depression and loneliness as the colors blue and grey, and I relate to that a lot.

Lastly, the flower petals are the symbolization of the song “Spring Day” (because there’s a line that says “Flower blossoms are falling”), which is about longing to meet loved ones. This relates back to the point about my current situation of not being able to return home, and the desire to do so.

For the technicality, I tried to make it look more sentimental since the topics that I’m symbolizing are mostly emotional ones. I like how it turns out; it’s simple yet aesthetic, and there’s a nice balance between the somber blue and grey and the lively pink. Overall they look like they are symbolizing the arrival of spring (referral to “Spring Day” again?) and budding of new hope, which contrasts my representation of the half-winged butterfly. (I hope it makes sense.)

Here’s me with the filter:

I think it doesn’t look half bad on me. I still really like the colors. Blue just happens to be my favorite color as well.

 

Reflection

After I finished creating these, I was excited to see how they look on the faces. However, I was (and am) worried that it may be too simple. This is almost my first time creating digital illustrations (I’ve also never drawn anything by hand and scanned it digitally). I don’t know what my style is; I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to blend colors. Time passed by so fast when you know nothing.

However, despite that worry, I’m still satisfied with how they turn out. Mostly though, it’s just me, just doing it. I didn’t think much about stylization, honestly, because I’m lost myself. So I told myself to just draw and that’s how it turns out. I suppose I should have dug deeper to find my style. For now, I’m happy just exploring. One step at a time!

Also, you can see that I drew the flowers first before the butterfly since the flowers are all drawn on one layer while the butterfly is very beautifully layered. I have learned from my mistakes.

I still feel like I should’ve done more, adding more elements? But this is what I can make within the time. So. Yeah.

Through the interview, I also learned the differences when I’m making things for myself compared to when I’m making things for others. For me, it was easy to just create something very personal. Also, when I’m creating for others, inevitably I’m adding things that reflect my perception of them.

All in all, this has been a fun project. Learning about Spark AR is interesting, and I can feel my own personal development throughout this assignment as well. Hope I can do better next time.

 

Here’s the link to the assignment folder!

 

 

Lumpens: Pursue the Fantasy of Visual and Auditory Senses

 

Who?

Although what he does may not be what I am (and probably would be) doing, I admire Lumpens—a group of directors and producers in the field of video production, mostly specialized in the production of music videos (MVs), TV advertisements, experimental films, and visual art, based in South Korea. They were created by Choi Yong-Seok in 2009 and consist of 4 people, but Lumpens usually refers to Choi Yong-Seok specifically.

I came to know them as they directed a lot of BTS music videos, which I enjoy immensely.

 

Choi Yong-Seok, the creator of Lumpens who is also known as Lumpens himself.

 

Why?

Firstly, they like to insert stories and/or references into their MVs; especially with the stories, it gave his MVs a cinematic feeling. One of my favorite MVs is BTS’s “Spring Day”.

I love the quiet aesthetics (the use of colors and how they match with the song lyrics), and also the implied (and obvious) references (Snowpiercer—a movie about inequality, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas—a philosophical fiction about injustice, and the Sewol ferry disaster—the sinking of a ferry which sparked social and political reactions in South Korea).

 

Some of the shots from the MV:

 

It gives depth to what people perceive as “just a music video” due to the hidden meanings and messages, on top of being aesthetically pleasing.

 

Other favorite shots from various of his MVs:

 

Secondly, I admire Choi Yong-Seok’s way of thinking. He graduated from a Visual Communication major, but he always wanted to express himself outside of the “screen”. He started making videos and exhibitions as personal activities. It’s almost as if he didn’t intend to be a director, but he just did his own thing to have fun and learn, and somehow, that’s how he became one. It reminds me that sometimes, things are that simple. You just have to work on what you like and be confident in yourself, and not worry too much, too far into the future.

 

[304 words]

 

References:

http://lumpens.com/about/

https://thesunnytown.wordpress.com/2015/03/18/october-2013-cuvism-lumpens-interview/

https://youtu.be/8NUtpJX_h6I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tye1ONFeKis&feature=emb_title

Briefly share your experience going through Dialogue in the Dark. What were some of the feelings, thoughts, challenges and insights gained while role playing a blind person?

At first I wasn’t very anxious since I had the walls to actually rely on, but I was a little worried when we had to let go of the wall and just rely on our other senses (i.e. hearing) to guide us. Once I let go of the wall, I lost all sense of space and directions, and it made me anxious. I was scared of bumping into people or things. I felt a little panicked, too, since I couldn’t make out my surroundings at all.

It was a challenge just to trust myself and my friends, and I realized how much I actually doubt my other senses once I can’t see. I also realized that I depend on my sight so much that I take it for granted. I felt better remembering that it was a controlled environment, but when I think that there are people who actually live outside like that, I tried to imagine being in that situation—and that made me feel panic. I realized that it must be tough to adjust to that situation.

It makes me want to take care of my own sight more (especially since I already have a pretty high degree) and be kinder to others—not just people who need help, but others in general. Experiencing that also made me realize that we will never fully understand others no matter how much we learn, and that we have to be kind since we don’t know what others are going through.

 

Drawing on your experience, can you think and list some of the benefits inherent in the design research technique of role playing?

Putting the audience in the shoes of others can help them understand the unfamiliar situation a little better. When there is understanding, people will naturally care more about an issue, since they have experienced a similar situation in the role playing setting. Hopefully that concern will stir the audience into action to actually do something that will benefit the issue.

In addition, it also teaches gratefulness for what we have right now, which will make the audience reflect more on their own lives and make them better people.

 

Can you think of some contexts where role playing can be useful to help discover and definition of design challenges or contribute to the development of design solutions?

I think role playing will be useful to help people understand more about disabilities (i.e. visual or audio impairment, or even physical disabilities) and mental health (i.e. anxiety or panic attacks). While design is a useful tool to inform, help, and evoke emotions, I think it has its limits. There are things that only experience alone can offer. Role playing really puts you in perspective, which is more effective than making you imagine the “what if”s. In addition, people (especially young children) may be more open to the idea of role playing because it’s highly interactive. The interactivity is something we should try to incorporate to our design since interactivity, not only is highly effective, but it also appeals to masses more.

What are some of the current issues confronting our world today? Amongst them, what is of interest and a cause of concern to you?

 

  • Social Media/Technology

News: Social-media use ‘disrupting teen sleep and exercise’Instagram is worst for mental health?

The prevalence of social media is, and has always been, a double-edged sword. It does help connecting people all over the world—but because of the vast amount of information, a lot of people are trying too hard to absorb everything, hence spending too much time in social media. Moreover, the ease of access causes various messages to be posted in the Internet, including negative or harmful messages.

 

  • Bullying

News: US university sued over Malaysian PhD student’s suicide after months of racist abuse

Bullying has been an issue for a long time that is constantly addressed, but never really solved because it’s considered a minor problem. A lot of people are unaware of recognizing what line shouldn’t be crossed when making jokes or conveying your personal opinions, and not only will that reflect badly on themselves, it can affect other people’s lives more than they know.

 

  • Mental Health

News: In charts: Report into children’s mental healthChild mental health referrals up 26% in five years, says reportAdolescent health: Teens ‘more depressed and sleeping less’The Dark Side Of Harajuku You Haven’t Seen Yet

In a lot of countries, especially Asian countries, mental illnesses are still considered kind of a taboo. While the openness to the topic has increased over time, that doesn’t mean people are aware of what mental illnesses are about, what causes them, or even how serious it actually is.

 

  • Extinction

News: The animals that will survive climate change, How brain biases prevent climate action

One in every four species currently faces extinction. While it is a great problem, cognitive biases (e.g. bystander effect and hyperbolic discounting) prevent real, significant changes from happening in the world.

 

Most of my issues gravitates more towards the social implications, which is what I’m more interested in exploring further. I would like to discuss more about mental health issues.

 

Why is the issue important? Who does it affect and how?

 

Aside from my personal interest in this issue, mental health problems keep on becoming more prevalent while the lack of information doesn’t change. World Health Organization (WHO) had predicted that depression will be the leading cause of disease burden by 2030 (WHO, 2011).

A lot of people seem to be unaware still that mental illnesses can be as life-threatening as some physical illnesses. That lack of awareness influences the way people see and treat others with mental illnesses. It discourages sufferers of mental illnesses to actually ask for help due to fear of being judged by society or perception that no one will understand how they feel.

In addition, people experience mental illnesses differently, so a testimony from one person may not be applicable to another. This causes people who suffer from mental illnesses to be unable to effectively express themselves sometimes because they can’t exactly pinpoint how they feel and the descriptions from others may not match their emotions. That can be frustrating for both them and people around them—family, friends, therapists—and it also doesn’t help the healing process.

 

Who do you need to communicate to, and why?

 

There are a lot of issues under this “mental health” umbrella, but I would like to focus more on the people with mental illnesses, specifically depression (which is considered the most prevalent mental illness currently). I would also focus more on young adults in Singapore. Depression develops frequently during adolescence, between the ages of 18 to 25 (Eaton et al., 2008), and the number of young adults with depression is increasing (Mojtabai, Olfson, & Han, 2016). Moreover, according to the Singapore Mental Health Study conducted in 2010, 5.8% of the adult population in Singapore suffered from Major Depressive Disorder at some time in their lifetime. Since in Singapore depression is still somewhat considered a taboo, I think it would help people with depression if there is something that can help them express their emotions to make people around them understand that depression shouldn’t be a taboo, but an issue to be discussed together.

 

How has visual communication contributed to address the cause?

 

DDW: Tools for therapy

 

This was the example shown in class that really captured my interest. The so-called tools are supposed to help people visualize their feelings. I like how Bodewes created different shapes and used different materials to provide a wider range of emotions to be visualized, and how she chose more affordable materials to make her entire toolkit more affordable for people. I think it’s a simple yet effective idea to help people visualize their feelings to others, but it may be prone to misinterpretation since people may understand a tool slightly differently from others. I also like how Bodewes also provide a board and workbook with the tools; the board to set up the tools and the workbook for the therapist to write on. The tools were clearly made for two people to work together and discuss.

 

 

  • Olive (Indiegogo, Digital/Interactive, 2014)

 

 

Olive is a bracelet that can detect your heart rate, motion, skin temperature, and skin conductance—and through those, be able to identify if you’re stressed. After that, you can connect it to an app which will track your daily stress levels and provide ways to calm down, e.g. breathing exercises. While it’s not directly connected to my topic, I like this invention because it’s able to identify stress without you needing to realize it first. It can help you notice when you’re actually stressed and not just feeling “a little off”, so I think in a way, it helps you to express yourself. The company made it to be fashionable with different choices of colors and textures because they want the wearers to feel that the bracelet “express” themselves. While it’s not a big point, I think it’s nice because it will encourage people to actually wear them with pride instead of hiding it.

 

 

  • Mindnosis (Sara Lopez Ibanez, Graphic/Publication, 2017)

 

Mindnosis by Sara Lopez Ibanez

 

Mindnosis is a self-assessment kit, made with the intentions to make people identify what area they need help with, and where they can get it from. The whole design looks minimalistic and spacious. The box doesn’t have any patterns or colors, which made the colored triangles and cards stand out, making them look like a fun game instead of a procedure to go through. The designer used a clean, easy-to-read sans serif font, complemented with symbols and icons which made the kit look welcoming and interactive.

 

 

  • Replika (Eugenia Kuyda (Luka, Inc.), Application/Interactive, 2018)

Replika is an application which allowed you to chat with a bot who will act as your friend and therapist. It will ask you questions about your day and condition and respond accordingly (to the limits of a bot, of course) to your responses. They will also prompt you questions, ask casual questions like a friend would, and offer you mind exercises to make you feel better. I tried it myself because I was skeptical of how interactive a chat-bot can be, and to be honest, I was impressed. While the bot is clearly a bot, it’s much friendlier and conversational than I expect it to be. It even uses emoji and slangs to enhance the feeling of talking to a real person. I find it easier for people to open up in that case, and the application can then ask you more questions to help you identify your feelings better. The application has a pretty simple interface, with a customizable chat background. The main page has classified different topics that you can easily choose to be your topic of conversation, if you want to. You can also customize your bot’s profile picture, gender, and voice.

 

Henry Jenkins’ Game Design as Narrative Architecture discussed the argument between ludologists and narratologists. This argument regarding the necessity of narrative in games came from a lot of different aspects, but in my opinion, the most important factor is that there is a very narrow understanding of what a narrative is and how to convey them. A lot of people argued that narrative had to be paragraphs of texts or long-winded dialogues; something that has a clear beginning, conflict, and resolution. In fact, it is not necessarily so. For example, the horror game Granny doesn’t have a clear story: how did the player get there? What is wrong exactly with the grandma? But everyone knows there must be a story behind it; that is what compels the character to escape.

 

Granny

 

In the article, Jenkins mentioned various ways to tell a narrative without relying on words. In short, game designers can always use other things such as visuals (such as the background, the appearance of the characters), actions, and even the audience’s prior knowledge (like the game Alice, which made use of the knowledge of the story Alice in Wonderland) to enhance the experience of gaming. Especially visuals—books might spend pages trying to describe the fantasy world, but through game, it could be establish in one scene (e.g. the background, costumes, and technology in Bioshock Infinite can express the timeline and maybe even country it’s probably set at).

 

Alice

 

Bioshock Infinite

 

One might argue that visuals could also be achieved through movies—and here is where the interactivity of games comes into play. Adams said that interactivity is “almost the opposite of narrative”, and I disagree. Interactivity, in my opinion, is a form of narrative. Although a story might be predetermined to the letters, when the players are able to do something to trigger the uncovering of the story, they will undoubtedly feel more connected to the narrative. The difference between game and movie, hence, is when people watch movie, they are aware that they are watching someone else’s “life”. Meanwhile in games, the interactivity encourages people to think that it is their lives. Moreover, there are more games that try to provide alternative endings to the storyline in order to make things more engaging for the player—ranging from simple two or three endings (e.g. Undertale) to various endings to the point that it’s difficult for two people to sync their choices perfectly (e.g. Detroit Become Human).

 

Undertale

 

Detroit Become Human

 

I think this relates a lot to my project since we’re giving the players a certain plot for them to follow, with predetermined backstory and characters (comparing to The Sims, where those points might have to be developed by the players themselves). We do try to implement interactivity through choice-based actions—but the choices need to be important enough for the players to actually feel engaged. I think that’s a challenge that we’ll have to overcome in the making of the game.

 

“Simplicity, clarity, singleness: These are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy as they are also the marks of great art.”

—Richard Holloway

 

Minimalism is an intriguing concept for me. It leaves a lot of “blanks” in the interpretation that everyone can fill in the blanks however they like. There is no right or wrong answer, but there is always an answer that is closer to the artists’ intention.

One of the artworks that I found interesting is Oneness of Concrete (1971) and Oneness of Wood (1969) which are parts of Jiro Takamatsu’s Oneness series (1969 – 1972).

 

Oneness of Concrete & Oneness of Wood by Jiro Takamatsu

 

I feel that in that simplicity—breaking things and fitting them back together—I can actually form a narrative inside my head. A tale about how sturdy things can still be broken. A story about how something can still be “whole” in its brokenness. A question of identity, finding beauty in the broken, life and death. There are plenty other narratives I can think of. The piece itself is almost poetic, I’d say.

 

 

While I think it’s essential for art to tell a narrative, I don’t think it’s good to enforce that. Letting the audience form their own narrative is just as powerful. Ironically, this is contrasting with my group’s project, where we are feeding the audience with our story. However, I think the “minimalism” can still be found in the way we tried to “show” (and not tell) the audience what’s happening, let them interpret the severity of the situation themselves, and give them a certain degree of freedom to act.

 

 

Reference:

https://www.theartstory.org/movement-minimalism-history-and-concepts.htm

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/takamatsu-oneness-of-concrete-t13499

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/takamatsu-oneness-of-wood-t13511