Tag Archives: Process

Project 2: Situating your design in the world — Process

Background:

By observing dog behaviours and then translating it into digital illustrations, my project aims to educate dog owners and lovers about their behaviours. This would definitely prevent unnecessary dog attacks and bites, and also, deepening the bonds between the owner and the dog. Singapore has seen a 32% increase in dog owners from 2006 to 2015. Hence, it is important for us to learn about dog behaviours before getting a dog or approaching one.

Title:

STOP. LOOK. ASSESS.
Understanding our furry friends better through their body behaviours.

Objectives:

  1. To educate the dog lovers/potential dog owners/ current dog owners and the young about dog body behaviours and the correct way to approach a dog, thus preventing dog attacks.
  2. To educate dog owners/potential dog owners to understand their dogs’ behaviours and thus, be able to ideally interact/care for their dogs.
  3. Using information design to make people more aware of the different behaviours of dogs and thus, how to approach and interact with them.

Design outcome:

  • Brochure—Infographics
  • Poster

Both the poster and brochure would be a 2 in 1, hence, saving paper and effectively communicating the message to the audiences. These would likely be situated in places like the dog park, the veterinarian clinic, pet shop or even a pet cafe.

Drafts/sketches:

I wanted to make a 10-panel brochure and when you flip it, it would be the poster behind. These were my initial proposed drafts:

After consultation:

As for the brochure, the dogs don’t have to be confined in a space by itself. I can place it anywhere and make use of the space.

For the poster, there are way too many dogs and they do not bring across what I want to communicate (the dog body language and human interaction). There are way too many words as well in the poster, instead, I should explain the stop, look and access.

 

Project 1: Hello World! — Process

HELLO!

Design Philosophy:

I design in order to inspire change in society and to portray things in a more appealing manner to better communicate with my target audience. As such, they would be able to look at things in a different light or perspective. I also design in order to bring creative solutions to the table. When designing, I treat user experience seriously (e.g. paper quality, print quality) as it is important to maintain a two-way relationship between the designer and the audience.
I have always been fascinated with topics that are associated with science, mainly life sciences. Humans, animals, the environment and how they are all linked and interconnected with one another. I often find myself watching life science documentaries and being captivated. Despite being interested in science; it wasn’t my forte. But by watching all these documentaries about our environment makes me wonder if I could do anything to make the world a better place. Perhaps I can disseminate these important facts and information to educate and create awareness to my target audience. Being a designer now, allows me to bridge the gap between the audience and the environmental issues faced in today’s world. They would then be better informed about these issues and ideally, working towards a positive change. I have the liberty to create illustrations and designs that could address various serious issues in a light-hearted manner. I also tend to add a touch of humour to my projects whenever I can to make the situation merrier.

Keywords:

At first, I wanted to do something fun and exciting. My keywords were change, perspective and humour. So I had the idea of jesters, puzzles and kaleidoscope. 

Below, you can see the mindmaps that I generated from my design philosophy.

The keywords that I generated from my mindmap:

Picking the most unique keyword, jester, I came up with these sketches and ideas about how my portfolio would look like. At first, I really wanted to do playing cards but it did not work out as what I wanted it to be.

Another idea I had was to put my works on the card and explain about them.

What is the point of these playing cards? I couldn’t find a reason why I made it other than just using it and playing it for fun.

Hence I continued trying and these were the new ideas I came up with:

Project 1 Task 3: Colour Exploration

 

For colours, Michael said that I should make the colours brighter instead of it being so dull. Thus I tried to change from the original nude skin colours and went ahead to explore the triadic colour scheme. The triadic colour scheme causes the colours to pop and made it more vibrant which fits my theme even more.

Here are some of the colour explorations from the previous design:

 

ZINE process (Part 3 – final)

Hi all, this will be the last part of my whole zine process.

After consultation, Mimi suggested that it would be best if I just focused on the monster in this zine. So I had to churn out a narrative. In this case, I thought it would be best if my whole narrative was about a monster that causes terror and destruction in the society (Jurong). So this monster would morph into buildings and things which meant that he destroyed the buildings. Furthermore, I went with the colour red and black since it looks more sinister and dark. So here is the original colour scheme that I had in mind.

The feedback I got was to make the red brighter, to make it pop, since that is the essence of the whole zine.

Moreover, I was thinking to make the tentacles on the bridge a little bigger since they look really small compared to the bridge. I wanted to make it look as if the monster overpowers the bridge.


TYPOGRAPHY

Moving on, I made the red brighter, drew my designs and I encountered a problem. It is of course again, the typography.

Firstly, I tried out the capitalised handwritten typography. To me it looks too angry and in your face. It probably looks okay in this spread, but when I tried it on other spreads, it doesn’t look too good. Hence, I changed it.

Next, I tried to write a little bit neater. However, it doesn’t bring out the feels of the ravaging part. I realised when I scribbled the words as a draft, it looks much more genuine. Thus, I went ahead with that.

So here’s the final typography that I went with.

Just like that, I’m done with the designs for this zine. I printed this zine on Munken Lynx paper, 120gsm, that I got from RJ Paper. The contrast of the red and grey on the white background made the designs pop even more.

 


OUTCOME

Enough of typing, I’ll now show you my final outcome!!

(back and front cover when it is flipped open)

 


DESIGNS ON SCREEN

Pages 8,1

Pages 2,3

Page 4

Page 5

Pages 6,7

 


REFLECTION

After rounds and rounds of consultations with Mimi, I finally came to a conclusion of just focusing on this monster for my narrative. It makes the whole theme and whole narrative flow much better and in sync.

One thing I regretted most was my font/typography. I should have made the font smaller. After printing it, I realised the font was really too big and in your face. If I were to make this zine again, I’ll definitely make the font smaller. Also, I should have experimented more on handwritten typography.

Another thing is that I think that I would want to push myself further if there was a next time. I would try again with my initial blue tinted photos with white drawings for my zine. (who knows, I might make one during this holiday)

Overall, in conclusion, this was a really fun and fruitful project. Getting to finally create a zine of my own and feeling accomplished after I submitted it makes me feel like I am a true and real designer. I’m definitely looking forward to see how different my zines will turn out in Y2! 🙂

ZINE process (Part 2)

Hi all, so this will be my second process about my Zine.

DEVELOPMENT

As seen in Part 1, I wanted a blue hue. So I went onto illustrator to try it out. However, as you can see, it is too structured. I felt that hand-drawing it would look even better. So i stopped here and made a new drawing.

So here’s the one that i drew on. But the cons of this is that the tentacles ain’t as clear as the eyes. Also, one of the feedback that I got from Mimi was that since I’m going for a more ‘fun’ theme, I can extend out of the picture/canvas.

So yeahhh, i drew out of the lines and it looks nicer. But the feedback I received from friends are : Do you have to make the picture blue? Cause it doesn’t look like it fits the picture as a whole. So I changed the colour of the whole thing.

I tried black and white. But still doesn’t look as nice.

So finally, I decided to go for colours. Also, the feedback i got for this was to remove the frame around the photo and the extra space at the bottom. And I can change the colour of the building to be blue. (like previous designs)

So here it is. I agree that it looks much more put together compared to the rest. 

 


RANDOM IN PROGRESS WORKS

Here are some random works I came up with while I was forcefully trying to fit in with the blue theme before deciding on the coloured theme. (These are works that I rejected)

Time is precious, use it wisely. But I thought I could add the bear to signify that it is precious and you shouldn’t let others ‘steal’ it??? (I’m sorry if I don’t make sense)

So here’s after I remove the bear.

I was wanting to make this into something like a rib-cage, but somehow I didn’t like it so I scraped the idea.

 


1ST DRAFT FRONT AND BACK COVER

Continuing on, here are my mockups for the front and back cover together with the layouts inside. The title/topic I was going for was “Jurong through my perspective”.

FRONT:

When Mimi saw this, her reaction wasn’t good at all. So of course I had to scrape the idea.

This is too messy and has nothing much to do with my main point. It is just all over and everywhere.

For this one, I couldn’t seem to fit any other elements from my zine layouts except for the tentacle monster. The rest just seems out of place.

BACK:

A collage of the things that I will include in my zine. But just too messy and it looks bad.

 


1ST DRAFT LAYOUT

These are my layouts for my zine.

This is a drawing of a sperm whale getting stuck in between the bridge. (Mimi said this works well)

This architecture at Jurong Central Park is supposed to represent a hen’s nest. However, it feels too forced and cute. So Mimi said it doesn’t work well with the monster that I drew.

Also, this is too forced and doesn’t look good T_T (It’s a last minute thing that i came up with……)

This is also too forced and the actual architecture cannot be seen clearly.

This has the same problem as the hen’s. Too cute.

FEEDBACK:

Instead of thinking so much about this and that, why not just focus on the monster/cthulu/tentacle looking thing since that is my main focus. So I will need a story that revolves around this monster. Hence, all of these were made in vain :’) but it’s okay.

ZINE process (Part 1)

Hi all, sorry for the late uploads. In part 1, I’ll be talking about my research and some of my process/developments.

RESEARCH

So my concept was doing illustrations on photography. These are some of the stuff that I found on pinterest. I thought that these could inspire me to get started.

       

Since I would be doing illustrations, these are some examples of illustrations by various artists.

  

Layout designs inspiration? 🙂

 

    

And here’s a cool children illustration book that Mimi recommended. Sadly, I couldnt get a hold of it since someone else borrowed the book from the library. So here’s a image I found online. It is called “little big books” by Geltalten.


MOCKUPS

Firstly, I went with the blue hue for my photos.

I thought they look really nice. These are some of the edited photos:

Following that, I continued to work on my concept of illustrations on photographs.

This was the first outcome. The feedback I got was that it was nice with the blue hues/tint and stuff, but Mimi would prefer me to focus in terms of architecture and not nature and I could see the disappointment T.T

Then I tried to do something else but this time, in colour:

The lines weren’t as clean in photoshop, so I tried out illustrator to recreate the mailman:

After this consultation, I scrapped the idea of drawing on nature. But I realised that drawing on a living creature is easier than drawing on architecture. However, the difficulty of drawing something on architecture? That is the challenge I will have to overcome.

 

2D Zine – Recce

Hi all!

The place that I got was Jurong West/Jurong East.

For this, I am probably just focusing more on Jurong East instead of both places.

Anyway, these are some snippets when I went to Jurong East to explore. There aren’t many photos/places since it kept raining recently. (Bad luck T_T)

But no worries since I’ll be exploring more of Jurong East this weekend.

Places I’m planning to visit next:

  • Jurong Fishery Port

“Jurong” is probably derived from several meanings in Malay. One of the terms could probably refer to the word for shark, “Jerung“.

(that’s why I’m definitely visiting the fishing port)

 

Places that I MIGHT visit:

  • Chinese Garden/Japanese Garden (under upgrading/renovation)
  • Jurong Hill
  • Jurong Bird Park
  • Pandan reservoir
  • Guan Huat Dragon Kiln
  • Safti

Thanks for reading !