Saturday, February 21, 2009
Interpreting Design: Learning How to See
What I would like to come from this project is a series of photographs that illustrate your vision of symmetrical balance, asymmetrical balance, color balance (added by me), dominance, repetition, scale change, orientation, rhythm or movement, and pattern. Use color, subject matter, angle, perspective, light - what ever you can, to pull out the pattern or scale change or dominance or repetition in the scene. I posted a few of my own photos below to give you some guidance.
Asymmetrical balance
Repetition
Something else I would like people to try is to maybe look "inside" a photograph for several other compositions. Through cropping, perspective, color, or lack there of, you may be able to pull out a treasure chest of hidden gems. I "mined" the photograph below to design a collage, or photographic quilt from images I saw within the same piece. People may also want to try this process in developing their collage in assignment 4b on page 151.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Identity and Branding: Laying down the Foundation
Take Starbucks branding and marketing program as an example of an identity and branding program done right. The name and logo are essentially meaningless in themselves, but they are punchy and memorable enough that they can effectively represent “the Starbucks experience”—which actually comprises more tangible things such as the store design, employee attitude and dress, the coffee, etc.—in an abbreviated form. People associate this vague symbol to their own personal experience with coffee and the "Starbucks' culture".
Starbucks could have easily come up with a name like “Super Duper Flavorful Coffee Company” with the standard cup or bean logo, but I don't believe all that would have made them the success that the company is today. An eagle, named “majestic soaring bird”, will not capture the beauty of such a creature any more than when you remember your personal experience of seeing one soar overhead. Later, when you see an emblem or photo of an eagle, you "feel" your experience once again and want more. We have essentially branded with image of the eagle.
The point: Be aware that the path to identity or branding success is not always the most obvious route to persue as a designer. Particularly these days, with the emphasis on social networking, branding becomes the tribal emblem to a particular sub-culture of public consumption. People want to socialize and belong. They will search out a following of like-minded, same-consuming culture-buddies in order to have a sense of belonging. Or they will choose to drop out. Even if they choose to drop out, the branding has been sucessful by associating or marking the flag, or symbol, of the "enemy" for them. A focus of your job as a graphic designer is often to lay down the foundation for marketing efforts that will address that social networking need.
A Little Side Note on the Starbucks Story:
Starbucks was founded in Seattle, Washington, in 1971 as a local coffee bean roaster and retailer called Starbucks Coffee, Tea and Spices. Howard Schultz joined the company in 1982 and was inspired on a trip to Italy to develop a similar espresso bar and coffeehouse culture in the United States. To advance the concept, he founded the company Il Giornale three years later. In 1987, Schultz purchased Starbucks, merged it with Il Giornale, and renamed the company Starbucks Corporation. The logo on the left is that of the Il Giornale company. As you can see, the Il Giornale logo is somewhat similar to Starbucks logo i.e being circular and having a band. |
| The original logo, as seen on the left, the Starbucks siren was topless and had a fully-visible double fish tail. The original logo has raised some controvery because of the bare chest, but the logo continues to appear on some of the products like the Starbucks Anniversary Blend 1 lb coffee bags. Both the original logos seem to be perfect on wooden crates. |
In the second version, her chest was covered by her flowing hair, but her navel was still visible, and the fish tail was cropped slightly. The logo also inherited the stars from the Il Giornale logo. |
In the current version, her navel and chest are not visible at all, and only vestiges remain of the fish tails. |
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Intuition
- Albert Einstein
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Class Officially Begins
Today class officially begins today
By now I should have received all enrollment confirmations from students that are in my class. After today I will not be using the UASonline enrollment system to send announcements and will only be sending out announcements to those students that have followed the confirmation instructions. If you have not sent an email confirming your enrollment, to me, at jrfehringer@uas.alaska.edu , you will not receive important announcements regarding class assignments, projects, meeting times and lesson resources. It is your responsibility to keep accurate and timely communication ongoing between you and the instructor.
New Students
If you are new to the class it is your responsibility to read through the announcement archive at https://uascentral.uas.alaska.edu/online and get caught up with the rest of the class. If you have any questions about what is expected of you, after you read the class syllabus and timeline, email me immediately.
Elluminate Live
Due to the update to Blackboard, UAF is having difficulties getting Elluminate live up and running correctly. For this reason, we will use the UAS Elluminate system instead. Login and test your connection to the system at
https://uascentral.uas.alaska.edu/online
Once you are logged in, select your class and navigate to the Communication Tools in the left column and click on Web Meeting. If you haven’t already downloaded the Elluminate software, you will be prompted to do so and taken through the steps.
Tip: Before you come to the online meeting it might be wise to restart your computer and clear off your desktop. Occasionally I will switch control to a student so they can demonstrate a process, which means that student’s desktop will be visible to all other participants. There may be information on your computer within sight that you do not want anyone to have visual access to.
For those of you using the Photoshop CS3 key server software from UAS: Before signing on to the meeting, start your VPN client and THEN start Photoshop CS3. You cannot do this in reverse order and will only delay your participation.
If you have a separate monitor (this is NOT a requirement), this will be a good way to follow along with any demonstration and try the process in conjunction to watching through Elluminate. Due to some of Elluminate’s limitations, it is often difficult to simultaneously view the demonstration and try the process yourself. Your software will often block your view to the demonstration on a single monitor system. When time permits, I will give folks time to try a process before moving on.
Blackboard and Blogger
I will be using both Blackboard at http://classes.uaf.edu/ and Blogger at http://cios-108.blogspot.com/ as the central hubs for our class. The information needed to participate in the class instruction will be posted on both sites in order to eliminate difficulties that sometimes arrive in gaining access to one or the other. You are responsible to check in with both sites for your class, frequently during the week, to stay current. I have set up an RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed for the class blogger site in order to streamline the process in notification when there is an update. You can link this feed to some of your favorite newsreaders and be kept up to day with a subscription to all Posts and Comment updates, if you like.
If you have not set your personal blog-folio up yet, do that very soon. I expect them to be up and operating with the URL link sent to me before our meeting on January 22nd. Do not wait until the last minute. Blog-folio URLs that are submitted late will have points deducted from their total set-up score.
That’s it for now. I look forward to our meeting next Thursday.