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!

 

 

For my final brochure, I decided to use gate fold design – but it’s not completely gate fold since the first page are pretty much overlapping. It’s kind of styled like normal trifold, but the first and second page are not covering each other completely. (Honestly, I don’t know what this is called.)

Here is my final design:

Physical copy

Front view when opened

Inside view when opened

Fully closed

I folded it wrongly at first. Since it’s glossy, it’s very obvious. (I’m sorry.)

 

Digital

outside view when opened

inside view when opened

 

For the front page, I’m sure I want to use a design similar to my poster from project 2 (see here) and put the details on the back page. I wasn’t sure about what to put on the second page at first since there won’t be much space. I thought of putting the details (the dates, etc) there, but there wasn’t enough space to make it look like those details are important, so I put them at the back. After trying out, I decided to put the names of the artists there, sort of like an “opening”.

I chose red and dark blue as the main eye-catchers, since they stand out the most when put with the yellow background.

As for the inside page, I put elements there at first. However, they don’t help to lead the eyes, and make the overall look more messy since it looks as if the elements were just thrown in without purpose. It also somewhat makes the texts harder to read. I was worried that just yellow with the polka-dotted background would be too plain, but since the page is packed with texts, it doesn’t look empty.

how it looks with elements

 

I added some geometrical shapes behind the photos of the artists to instill the elements that I incorporate in my front page. At first I wanted to make the photos circle, but I realize that my “title” design is quite angular despite having circles because the main elements in the design are the angular line and the trapezium lookalike. After trying out both design, I decided that squares are better, also because there are already circles (the polka-dots) in the background.

I also slanted the photos and the texts to add the “fun” element and make the whole look not as rigid, but I do think it does look slightly messy.

One big problem that I had was the texts; since I had to reach up to ~150 words, the texts are very chunky and space-consuming. I wanted to stick with overall A4 size, so I hope the texts didn’t turn out too small.

 

Afterthoughts?

I have made a brochure before (for my part-time job), but since it was a professional brochure, the layout was much more rigid and easier to arrange. Moreover, I just had to stick with the NTU-approved colors and font, so there was not much “trying out” to do. When I was making this, I really felt the need to be creative, to be fun, to be quirky. I was trying to find a really complicated, unique fold design at first. I felt pressured by the title “anthem” that I created myself.

But then, in the end, I decided to forget all about it and just focus on creating a brochure first. I feel that above anything, a brochure has to cater to the needs of the audience – in this sense, to inform them about the featured artists of SDW, while still incorporating the whole theme / slogan of the event. That doesn’t necessarily mean I have to be “oh-so-different” – I just have to stick with what I have to do, and not try to do too much at once.

For the brochure, I looked up for different design folds.

Since my theme is anthem, I wanted to do something about “opening up” to reveal the contents.

I had three design ideas:

1.Stack square fold

how it works

inside view

outside view

 

I like this one at first since the idea of revealing was fun; one word will be revealed at a time. However, I realize it makes the very front interface (when not opened at all) confusing and even boring since there will only be the word “an” in it. I also had troubles incorporating the elements to the shape of the brochure.

2.Vertical gate fold

how it works

outside view

inside view

 

I feel that this one is very clear-cut and clean. However, I am not making use of the back interface at all, which makes it look incredibly plain.

 

I asked for Michael’s feedback, and he said that both my design and visuals could afford to be stronger, and should be able to lead the eyes. For those brochures, I relied more on the layout rather than the visuals to lead the eyes. However, I’m so stuck with the arrangements for those brochures since I already had a vision for them from the beginning. I tried taking the elements out and putting them back in again separately, but I didn’t make any significant difference (especially the stack square fold). So in the end, I decided to try and start fresh with a completely new design fold.

3.Horizontal gate fold

I already had the idea of using the normal gate fold from the beginning, but I was worried it would be too plain. But then I realized that if a brochure’s design is too complicated, it might confuse the readers instead, and that layout and visuals matter as much as the design fold.

In the end, I went with the horizontal gate fold design since I feel that the possibilities for this design are more “open” compared to the other two.

More about the design will be talked about in my final project post.

I decided to go with the slogan “An Anthem of Design”. Following my research and development post, I mentioned that the draft I made was not reflecting the spirit of anthem that I wanted, so I created a second draft.

I found inspiration for this from Pinterest, especially the color scheme. (I’m bad with colors.) Here is the image that I used for inspiration:

However, turns out that the pale grey background was muting the energy of the poster. I really liked the pale color since it makes the bright shapes stand out, but I do agree that everything does not seem as exciting as it potentially can be. I changed it to white afterwards.

Based on the feedback, I then tried just changing the background with any color that I think are “exciting”: I used green, orange, blue, etc. But eventually I settled with the color yellow, since it looks the most playful in my opinion. Here is my final design:

At first I wanted to use red as a “guide” for people to read the parts, but apparently the dark blue catches more attention, so in the end I changed the color font to dark blue and refrain from using that color for the other shapes, except for the one shape that I want to use as a line guide. Since the slogan is kind of special, I used red for it. I also didn’t use red for any other shapes.

I also change the orientation of the shapes to create some kind of contrast. I took out all the shapes from the canvas and realized, I used so many shapes, it’s confusing even for me. So I cut down the number of shapes to make it less messy and to create more focus. I also cut down the colors that I used. After that, I just play around, putting the shapes one by one.

I took away the squares at the side too. At first I wanted to show that although it’s something fun and very free-spirited, there is still some kind of pattern or order to it. But then it does look like it’s framing the whole shape, restricting the canvas somewhat, so I took it out and enlarged the shapes instead.

 

Afterthoughts?

It wasn’t perfect. In fact, there are still things I can improve on. I was so focused on playing with the shapes and colors that I didn’t experiment much with the font types. But I think my design definitely improved from the beginning, and I actually had fun arranging the layout. I think this project pushes me out of my comfort zone. When I went to consult and showed my first drafts, I realized that I usually play safe with my designs, choosing something with less colors and less “experimental”, especially since I think my sense of colors is not as good. It might not be the best, but I’m satisfied with what I have made.

Naoto Fukasawa designed aluminum stools to be displayed at 2005’s Milan Furniture Fair—however, instead of being displayed on plinths like other new products, the Japanese designer’s stools were “plonked” on the floor, where people were allowed to sit on them. Fukasawa was worried that no one would notice the stools. However, a British designer named Jasper Morrison praised them, and their mutual friend gave a term to describe the stool: “super normal”.

That was the beginning of Super Normal movement.

Both Fukasawa and Morrison defined the Super Normal design as something that is “used on a daily basis to the point that they become invisible” (Fukasawa, 2006), something which use is “instinctive or even subconscious… and we take them completely for granted” (Morrison, 2015). In addition, they also mentioned that Super Normal objects are valued by how you feel about them. Their value did not come from an extremely intricate or well-thought design, but rather from the memories and sense of familiarity that develop over time. Hence, it could be said that naturally, some objects will have more spirit than others, as it highly depends on how and how long people have been using them or interacting with them.

Although functionality is a significant factor, feeling and meaning are more important in Super Normal objects—but the feeling does not come from tiresome expressions. Morrison felt that the design world “has drifted away from normality” and that designers have forgotten the basics of design. They wanted people to realize that simple, basic designs are design too, and that the idea of something new is not always better than something good that has been continued over time.

The characteristics special to this movement are its simplicity, familiarity, and anonymity. Anonymity not only in the sense that the creator is unknown, but also the nuance that the creator was not trying to “design” or “express himself”—similar to yugen (a Japanese design philosophy, where the beauty is subtle) and mingei (another Japanese design, which roughly means “folk art”, where the creators are average people as opposed to known designers, hence making the creators anonymous). Mingei especially resembles Super Normal due to the fact that mingei objects are very simple and normal, as they are made by average people, yet they are still used for centuries—which is the same as the concept of Super Normal, that the value of the object comes from the experience and normality. Super Normal objects are also context-sensitive, as something that is familiar in a setting does not necessarily mean it is familiar in other settings.

The movements that are similar to and/or influence Super Normal movement are Minimalism (1960s – 1970s) and Neo-Conceptualism (1970s – 1980s).

It is especially easy to mistake Super Normal and Minimalism due to the similar concept of simplicity. However, Minimalism is a design movement where the concept is reducing everything to the simplest form, but still with the visual aesthetic in mind. The focus of Minimalism is creating something that is simple, yet still pleasing to the eye. On the contrary, Super Normal does not focus on becoming simple. The focus of Super Normal lies in the concept of familiarity, where an object is “super normal” because we have grown so accustomed to it, that we often do not realize that it is also an object that also possesses design values.

Meanwhile, between Super Normal and Neo-Conceptualism, the similarity lies in the idea that both of them focus on the concept or the meaning behind the creations. However, Super Normal objects still place functionality of high importance, because the value of those objects can be found through constant use and experience over time. Meanwhile, Neo-Conceptualism does not care about functions—it’s all about the concepts the designers want to convey, which are usually something unconventional and unique, as opposed to Super Normal objects which are usually something ordinary and less obvious.

We can see also that Super Normal bears similarity to Droog concept (1980s – now). Just like Super Normal, Droog pointed out the idea of over-production and consumption in the society by emphasizing the value of objects in the memory and associations attached to them—which also shows how powerful inanimate objects can be in evoking emotions and thoughts, transcending the time. Both movements boil down to Dadaism, which basically defies logic, reason, and aestheticism of the capitalistic society. It also shows that objects can have spirit that evokes feelings and gives meaning—which contrasts the Bauhaus movement (1920s – 1930s), where objects are more valued through their industrial-like practicality—almost scientific even.

An example of a Super Normal object, taken from the Super Normal exhibition by Fukasawa and Morrison: a uni-tray.

 

Uni-tray (Riki Watanabe & Sato Shoji, 1976)

 

At one glance, one can easily tell that it is a tray—its shape and simple design are familiar to you. It gives off the super normal radiance—something that you see in your house, or other people’s, every day. However, do you know what tray it is? Is it an accessories tray, or a pen tray, or a coin tray? It is strange that you feel familiar seeing the object while it is your first time seeing it, and you are even unable to accurately pinpoint its use. However, just like “love at first sight”, you can immediately tell that “it is the one” without actually having to experience interacting with it before. The familiarity does not come from sight, but from phenomena. Moreover, the idea that it is a “universal” tray (because you don’t know what specific type of tray it is) allows people to “misuse” it intentionally as the tray is familiar to different uses, depending on who is using it.

In hindsight, I would like to say that super normal is not necessarily a design movement—it’s more of a concept, an idea that Fukasawa and Morrison are trying to convey to public—that we often overlook things around us and take them for granted. In this globalized world, we start to forget where the actual value of things lies—is it in its price, its function, its creator, or simply in how it makes us feel?

You may not think much about it, but one day you might come back into your house and realize that your favorite mug is not there—and although it’s just a cheap Daiso mug, you would feel a sense of loss that you yourself could not explain why.

The theme for my project is the spring that comes after winter – the starting of hope, an early spring.

Winter is something that is associated with death, with coldness. On the contrary, spring symbolizes the birth of life and warmth. I want to symbolize hope as something that you can find even in the hardest moments.

My initial idea was to create a snowflake design made of flowers, but after the first presentation, I got the idea of putting the “spring” using the negative space in the snowflakes instead.

The very first design that I did was all connected because I was still thinking of the shape as something that needs to be able to be cut out from a paper. Moreover, the shapes are all either vague or too obvious. So after consultation, I tried to break free from the cut out form, combining the idea of winter and spring. The things that I chose to symbolize spring is sun, fire, water, and plants.

I made two snowflake designs. The first one is made of the shapes of leaf, sun, and fire. I chose yellow and red as the colors, as I want it to be triadic with the blue snowflake color.

The second one is made of the shapes of flower, water, and gingko biloba (a type of tree that grows in Japan and blooms in spring). For the colors, I chose orange and two tones of blue, playing on the complementary colors.

I gave a pale blue color to define the snowflake shapes, but they got lost after printing. The slight difference between the red and orange was also lost, making them look like the same color. The yellow was definitely too bright as well. (This taught me not to print last-minute.)

I arranged them randomly, with three foam circles on top to represent a cloud. I used nylon strings because I want it to be invisible, so it looks more like snowing, but it turned out really messy. I couldn’t really tie them properly. My craftsmanship is… bad. The paper cuts are pretty messy (I didn’t know something like x-acto knife exists before, or even if I spelled that right) and I only glued them with glue stick. I did leave them for hours under heavy books, but I forgot to attach the string so I had to rip them open again.

“I can cut all of these in 30 minutes”

 

*1 hour later* “…well I’m halfway there”

 

My bad.

Craftsmanship aside, I actually like my end design. It’s something I’ve never thought of before, and I felt like I understand more about forms after doing this. Positive-negative space is not as easy as it seems, no matter how cool they seem. I do think that I’m not pushing myself out of my comfort zone enough, that I still could do better – but overall, I’m satisfied. I did kind of lost my purpose halfway and realized that the mobile did not really represent hope; the blue color gave some cold feeling to it. Moreover, some of the edges for the snowflakes are quite harsh. I agree that at first glance it doesn’t convey hope, but I think that if you look at it closer, you can see the hope in it, and that goes with my initial idea.

I was so worried the day before submission because I felt like I haven’t done enough. Well, true, I could have done more, but I’m content with what I have made. Hopefully from now on I can make better and better works.

UPDATE: I took off all the fishing lines and replaced them with strings. Initially I poked the strings through the foam circles using a needle, and it was fine but it started falling apart the day I planned to submit it. I fixed them hastily with masking tape. It doesn’t look as neat, but it actually looks better than the fishing line.

Here’s my final design!