Introduction - Seminar #1

Seminar - 30/09/2016

There was a question in this seminar that interested me. 'What are your expectations for this year?', this interested me because I haven't really thought about it but now that I am, I want to come away with at least 2:1 this year, that is my target but not only that, I want to find a decent placement place that will help me with the design industry and help me become a better designer.

The seminar moved onto 'research', what is research? Well, it's a study or investigation of sources in order to collect facts and create new conclusions.We were given key words like what, why and how to help us with our research and by answering those questions when researching, it will give it a purpose.
- What - the theme like what is the subject. What do I want to create and investigate? What is my purpose?
- Why - Context so Why am I researching this subject? How does it relate to my subject?
- How? - Approach so how will I approach what I just researched and define what is important and relevant. What tools, media or method will I use?
- What - What is my conclusion? What have I found? What did I learn?

I like how from these four words, many questions can be thought of and how it can direct you to a certain path. I learned to think as many questions as I can and by doing that, it will help me and make my subject become clear.


Task

We were given a task. We were given a subject matter and from that, we had to answer some questions relating to that subject.

http://www.aljazeera.com/pressoffice/2014/11/hear-human-story-20141135433755976.html

- What is the theme/subject of the project? (What?) - Humanity. How people's voices should be heard who are often ignored and neglected by mainstream media.

- How does it relate to the client's needs and aims? (Why?) - It's how we take things for granted so it captures the stories of real people so it shows people the struggles of different people around the world.

- How did the designers approach the assignment? (How?) - By capturing stories of real people so things like what happened to them and what they are doing about it.

- What was the final result and achievement? (What?) - To display it to the world and give people a voice.


For the next part, I will choose a subject of my own and think of questions to answer so I can investigate the subject.

I decided to choose a subject that relates to my project so that it will help me question my project and find a path that I could go to that is most suitable for me.

Subject - Sociomaterial - This was one of the key words I was given for this project.

What

- What is the theme/subject? - Sociomaterial
- What does it mean? - It is how people interact with technology, how technology affects us in different ways and the idea of not imagining a society/world without technology.
- What do I want to investigate? - I want to know what I can do with this word, how it relates to technology, how we interact and the effects of it on us.

Why

- Why do I want to investigate this word? - I want to investigate this subject because it relates to my project.
- Why are you choosing this subject? - It's a new word for me so I am fascinated to find the different stories and facts behind it to give me a clear idea of how it will help me.

How

- How will I approach it? - I will look at books relating to it, I will look at articles, I will look at websites etc.

What

What will my conclusion be? - I want to have a clear idea of what sociomaterial is and how I can combine it with my ideas. I know once I find out, it will help me decide what ideas I will develop and refine.


This seminar got me thinking of the different questions I got to ask myself when researching, at the moment, I'm kind of stuck when it comes to thinking of questions but I know once I keep doing it, I will get the hang of it and I will think of more and useful questions.

Typesetting and Presentation

Process and Production - 28/09/2016

Aidan Nolan - Week 1


In this process and production, I looked at typesetting to build and sharpen my typography skills. Typography is an area that I need help with so I think this process and production will help me with my typography skills like which typeface to use and why.

What is typesetting?
- Typesetting is the arrangement of text, individual letter and symbols to visually display in an appealing way.

We started off looking at the different definitions and terms in typography to get an idea of what they are if I ever come across them.

There are 4 basic groups that typography can be placed into...

In this part, I learned the difference between 'Serif' and 'San Serif'. The difference is that 'Serif' letters has little strokes at the end of each letter but for 'San Serif', it doesn't, the end stops.

This is just a glossary of some type terminology...

The next step is where I thought helped me the most because it's something I could use when I'm using text in design and what each thing does to the text. 

This is called Kerning. It's the process of changing the space between each individual letter within a word, as seen below. This was a little task that I took part in, I altered the space of the letters in InDesign. This would be useful if I wanted to move just one letter away from a word. 

This is called Tracking. This process is similar to 'Kerning' but instead of just altering one letter each time, you can alter the whole word at the same time, as seen below.

This is called Leading. This process refers to the distance between the baselines of the type or line of text, as seen below. This could be useful if I had to write alot of text in a specific amount of space, I could use this technique to shrink the distance so I can fit more or I could increase the distance to make it easier to read for the viewer. 

In this part, cropping could be used to make a typeface look good. I experimented with this idea and created some samples just to see if I could improve the look of it. Some worked and others didn't, I felt like this technique only works with certain letters that has lots going on for them.

Task 1

In this task, I was given a word on the right and I had to choose a suitable typeface to go with that word, I was given three choices that were placed on the left. I feel like this task was useful because when I chose a typeface, I had to give a good reason why I chose it and why it was suitable instead of choosing one because it looks good. This is something I need to learn.

I think I did fairly good on this task because I chose the most suitable one for most of them and I actually had a reason for each choice I made.

For this one, I chose 'Helvetica Bold' because it's bold so it's right at your face to represent that it is important and it has that authority feel to it which I feel the other two lack.

I chose 'Futura Bold' because companies like Nike have used this so it's familiar when it comes to sport and this one feels more sporty than the other two.

For this one, I was undecided between 'Chalkduster' because it reminds me of the chalk and blackboard in school and 'Albertus' because it's serious like school.

I chose 'Avenir Light' because the typeface is clean, simple and modern which suits luxury because it relates to the look of luxury.

I went for the most obvious one which is 'Rosewood' because it reminds me of the old western and cowboys who hanged around in saloons.

I chose 'Learning Curve' because when I think of craft, I think of knitting etc and the typeface looks like a needle and string was used to make it which relates to what I was thinking.

I chose 'Gotham' because it was the most obvious one, it's clean, simple and very minimal.

For this one, I chose 'Six Caps' because when I think of Manhattan, everything is tall and big just like the typeface.

For the last one, I chose 'Farray' because the typeface has a feel of space to it like it's used by aliens which is what some people think of when they think of the universe.

Task 2

For this task, I was given words and for those words, I had to manipulate them into something that was relevant to that word e.g run could be changed to ruuuun, because the word looks like it is running.

I liked this task because I had to be creative about each word. Some were more difficult than others but once you get the hang of it, it becomes easier.

Brief One - Cybernetic Self

27/09/2016 - Lecture

Today I was given my first brief of the year called 'Cybernetic Self'. I was also given three key words/themes to consider and explore which could be useful to help me with this project.

The words are...

- Autopoiesis - It means a system that is able to reproduce and maintain itself e.g body cells. If we are talking about this brief, it's a way for us to 'self make' and create our identity. What defines us? How technology defines who we are.

- Sociomaterial - It is how people interact with technology, how technology affects us in different ways and the idea of not imagining a society/world without technology.

- Network Self - This is basically my self presentation and identity formed by the network. How we represent ourselves online and through the different social medias out there. We can create different identities that are different to who we are in real life.


Straight off, this brief is basically a way for me to consider self presentation and social connection in the digital age so how technology has defined who I am, how people interact and what it did to my self identity. This project is an interesting one because technology is a big part of my life but I haven't really considered how it affected me, I am intrigued in how it has.

To start off this project, I wrote down a plan of how I will set out my project with the remaining time I have. This will help me keep my project updated.

Week 1 - Idea generation - This part I will generate as much ideas as I can with the help of research, at this point, my ideas don't have to be perfect, just as long as I have some.

Week 2 - Formalise/develop ideas - This is where I pick my best ideas and start to develop them further to help me get an idea of what I want to do.

Week 3 - Begin composing - This is just a development from week 2. This is where I experiment with various techniques, see what works and doesn't work.

Week 4 - Refine/Finalise - This is the part where I have to make some key decisions on my work, see what works and go with that. This is crucial because it is the end so my final piece has to be perfect.

I thought of some key words that I think could help me kickstart my project like identity, self portrait, future, interaction and emotion. I think they are useful because they relate to this project, for example, identity is a good one because we are two completely different people when we are online and when we are in reality, I feel like when we are online, we are more confident and our ego is bigger because we are behind a screen and we can create our own and new identity online, this could relate to emotion and interaction so I have found a way to connect my key words together.

My first step is to simply research. I will look at how people interact online, how technology has affected people and effects it has on us when it comes to behaviour. I feel like this is a good starting point.