For future reference: 'stealing' information from Facebook is quite difficult, accordions hate you - period, there's always a neater method to redo everything for the thousandth time and you'll probably get yelled at for not making a contact form later.
Social Media + Footer added, Icons will hover colour
The Brief is simply 'Voyage' which means it's easily the least specific project I've ever been given, after much careful prodding it seems like my idea to follow a band around and chronical their musical journey like some kind of deranged squire actually works quite nicely. My idea is sort of a Life+Times meets From the basement with the mandatory inclusion of a legitimate band site for them to use in the long run.
[15:02] Dan: Just got a brochure here for Volkswagen (client) It's SUCH shit. Someone actually got paid a shit ton to make this, which annoys me. "The Sky's the limit in the new Golf Cabriolet" (sky with a capital s). "What greater source of Inspiration than the colour of the Sky?" (wrong capitals again)
[15:04] Sam: Hmm
[15:04] Dan: "Add Atmosphere to the Dramatic Sky with your favourite Music"
[15:04] Sam: I can understand capitalisation for the 'Inspirtation' and 'Atmosphere'; to subtly emphasise it, but the caps for Sky is lost on me.
[15:04] Dan: what the actual fuck are they on about?
[15:04] Jon: It's designer stuff Dan, it's important. They're Special
[15:05] Sam: I kinda wrote a post about what that's about a while ago though
[15:05] Dan: I thought maybe it was part of an acronym and they'd capitalised for emphasis, but apparently not
[15:07] Sam: Basically even though it seems like a harmless leaflet somebody has advised somebody else that subconsciously your mind will begin to associate the words they've capitalised with the thing it's promoting.
[15:08] Dan: ...the sky
[15:08] Dan: They're trying to sell a car by saying it's as cool as the sky
[15:08] Sam: Well, like I said, that one's a little lost on me. But the fact you're here telling me about it means it's achieved something at least
[15:08] Dan: The whole brochure is sky themed. Sorry "Sky" themed.
[15:08] Sam: :D
[15:09] Dan: well, I'm only talking about it cos I hated it. Fact is: it's actually a decent car, they don't need that emotive shit.
[15:09] Jon: No Dan, you "Hated" it
[15:09] Dan: oh sorry, my Bad
[15:10] Sam: Yeh I'm not saying I disagree or anything, but it's stuff the powers that be gave me lectures on last year. Same reason this website uses a fixed width and such, it's not really showing any more information that way or anything, but your brain is supposed to like it.
[15:10] Dan: true, there's a difference between good design and dodgy wording though...
[15:11] Sam: True, but next time you look up at the "Sky", try not to think about it. Because if you do the "They" have already "Won", no? *puts on a tinfoil hat*
[15:11] Dan: I just looked out the window- it's grey, miserable as sin and drizzly, I don't want that car!
[15:11] Sam: HAHAHA
[15:12] Dan: This campaign might have worked in California, but not in England :D
The key point to this whole thing is 'Not in England' - It goes back to the points about target audience, it's not about what works for you but what works for them and why.
Gonna start throwing some essay work up as I'm happy with it, here's my network diagram hopefully giving me a better mindset about where I am in the industry right now and giving me areas to improve on. (More successful contacts please!)
Now to follow up all those emails nobody wants to reply to asking research questions...
Bit more of the colour theory stuff this time asking if logos would still work if we messed about with them. Funnily enough it seems certain logos like the Volcom one work in pretty much any colour (They produce shirts with it in yellow and purple if I remember correctly) and other logos just transcend the importance of colour entirely by being so memorable (Facebook you handsome devil you.)
Immediately focussing the attention of the user by engaging them with a musical intro and strong visuals, EM studios aims to impress with a powerful first impression. Work is organised by a few rough categories shown in a looping gallery which allows the user to view full sized images at a click. The more conventionally displayed clients list is displayed in its own category allowing potential customers to see an index of achievement. Despite all the fancy show reel styling and moving graphics: as of writing everything on the website performs well and is very simple to use. The website is created by EM studios to establish their corporate identity and makes heavy usage of Flash to stylize its display. An unfortunate by-product of this may be that it won't display correctly on some devices such as more inherently locked down tablets.
Tom the French's website instantly engages the user by greeting them verbally and visually with its odd display style for what otherwise could of been a boring vertical list. Each project has a list entry which takes the user to a gallery of the finished result mixed in with the occasional cool sketch, all the while casually listing the design brief and web links down the side. Tom sells himself immediately with a dynamic display of quotes presumably from happier clients stating things like Tom's designs are "A different way of thinking." These quotes like most things on the website can also be clicked through by the user. Further establishing himself via his profile page Tom boasts 10 years of taking risks for ideas and gives a brief self description. Like EM Studios website Tom the French uses flash to create an interesting view which obviously means it holds potential to suffer the same negative points on certain display devices.
The site works similarly to burying a time capsule of the last few years and uses a low text interface instead relying on thumbnails to allow the website to stimulate the users interest and hide the wealth of information and quotes behind each. Returning users would have something to look forward to after each important news story or anniversary of an interesting event, for example a recent homage to Steve Jobs life with the recent news of his passing. While Life+Times is more of a subtle publicity machine for Jay-Z it's interesting to note that most of the links to profitable sections of his career such as merchandise and tour tickets are listed only at the bottom of the page.
The website uses HTML5 to do all of its display techniques such as the rolling thumbnail reel, the mouse over effects and the content/comment display pages, while it could have easily been accomplished in Flash along with a few other technologies Area17, the creators, chose to do everything with just one presumably increasing speed and reliability somewhat.
Obligatory item of holiday work that I forgot to post:
Few logo designs for a rally driving team I socialise with, the brief was very specific but I feel like I surpassed expectations for a concept so simple, those beermat drawings sure came in handy.
Just spent 6 hours straight working on visual essay stuff, previews for those interested. No stealy my practitioners! Yeah I guess I'm gonna take a shower and get out of my pajamas before the whole end of the world thing happens. RAPPPTUREEEEEEEEEEE... whatever, enjoy.
p.s. apologies for random lines in these screen-shots, me and Photoshop had an argument and now he wont talk to me and he's taken all my vectors out drinking.
In this post I'll attempt to consolidate a quick and dirty film finisher with rationales, the film and any notes on my personal role in its creation.
For our film project we were given the script "Herds" written by our very own lecturer, Jools.
Most of the project files for this have been submitted but for this our group had to complete all of the following prior to any actual filming taking place:
Risk Assessment
Lectures on safety
Health and Safety/BECTU
Brief 'Recce' of possible locations
Location Release forms
It was during this none-filming period which I took the time to look into the camcorders which we could borrow and after discussing my findings with the group eventually we chose to shoot the whole thing using a Panasonic AG-HPX171E. Thats somewhere between a small studio camera and a handy-cam for most normal people providing a lot of features of the first, but the convenient of the latter. The first issue I ran into here was no manual was provided and personally having little-no experience using anything similar I definitely had to go hunting around for one once that was taken care of and a few tutorials watched later I was ready to fulfill my role as camera man.
Rewrites:
As previously shown we landed the script "Herds" but we decided to take it down a more sinister path with some underlying thriller tones. This elevated our strange but friendly man turn from sandwich stealer to near body-snatching status, replacing the role of the other character and throwing him out of his own home - all taking place right within an identifiable comfort zone. The makings of a solid classic in my opinion.
Complications:
We ran into a lot of these when factoring into account a randomly a lotted group the main two of which were outside work schedules and lazy damn actors. As many people as we managed to cast for our weird flaky roles it seemed none of them were pretending the flakiness, and therefore didn't really bother to show up. If I'd been hitting the film pathway next year I would of been annoyed but instead between the group we just picked out those who didn't have an active production role, loaded a few extra responsibilities on the others and started shooting.
** One of this for 3d work coming very soon when I can find a good way to upload supporting sketches.
I went with some pretty straight forward sans-serif fonts to convey a modern look and keep in with the punchy bright coloured feel while purposefully contrasting with the deliberately negative tagline/logo the whole thing is supposed to seem very clean cut official yet creative.
Logo - (Mayberry)
For the logo font I had to resort to using an image to allow a nonestandard font to be useable on computers without it's installation. To keep it crystal clear it's a decent size, anti-aliased and saved as a high-quality PNG while through some kind of witchcraft keeping a filesize of just a few kilobytes. Instead of redoing the image multiple times per section of website instead I just use different css placement options to allow the same image to be reused throughout, further reducing loadtimes.
Content - (Lucida Grande)
The main content font had to be something that is in common usage across different platforms (PC/Mac etc) so that each article can remain small to keep the website down. On the plus side apparently HTML5/CSS3 allows us to use some nifty server side font guff, but that's way outside of the scope of this first project, somewhere down the road and off into the english channel.
As with the classic design rule which was once again mentioned today, I do not currently intend on using many/any more fonts as 2-3 is that user sweet spot we all like to see.
On Thursday I was asked about what my favourite website was. Pretty broad question to which I could offer no answer. It plunged me into some deep thought about design and its flow and eventually I've emerged with an answer of sorts, or perhaps just more questions.
Still with me? Good.
Ok so, a wise man once said it's hard to make something out of nothing. We appropriate that phrase to a lot of different things, maybe it's just a cool from-scratch none composition piece, or maybe it's pushing the boundaries of the scripting language you're using to greater heights but there's one thing we never really think to say.
It's harder to make nothing out of something.
Let that sink in for a second and think back to layouts 101 for an example of what I mean. Golden ratios? The problem of choice? All these things discussed right the way up to Jool's final lecture (for now) hint at one thing: the key to good modern design isn't obvious complexity, but nuances and subtlety. We've come so far now we know what the brain likes before it's even drafted - from fonts, colours, spacing... Everything is contrived, formed, researched and remade to influence us on a subconscious level into liking it. Opinions are purposely tipped bias in favor of the works creator; and all by giving us as little as a soft blue and a serif font.
...and that is how you 'make nothing out of something.'
2 hours of continuous crashing and refusing to reopen files later, a much simplified version of the table I was working on has come into existance! Huzzah!
Many of classic horror's disturbing creatures share common characteristics like pale skin, dark, sunken eyes, elongated faces, sharp teeth, and the like. These images inspire horror and revulsion in many, and with good reason. The characteristics shared by these faces are imprinted in the human mind.
Many things frighten humans instinctively. The fear is natural, and does not need to be reinforced in order to terrify. The fears are species-wide, stemming from dark times in the past when lightning could mean the burning of your tree home, thunder could be the approaching gallops of a stampede, predators could hide in darkness, and heights could make poor footing lethal.
The question is this...
What could have happened in the past long before history began that could effect the entire human race so evenly as to give the entire species a deep, instinctual, and lasting fear of pale beings with dark, sunken eyes, razor sharp teeth, and elongated faces?
The film makes extensive use of concepts like cause/effect as a method to drive the purposefully disorientating plot forwards, most scenes are brief shorts which throw the viewer into the next; keeping the story moving.
With memories of early (failed) virtual reality consoles still not faded from memory, the film was somewhat topical relating to an eventual future for the way interaction may become for different media (games, films etc). Arguably though most of the films impact was lost when the viewer began to grasp the jolting reality check concept, which just left the poor writing, cheesy diologue and disturbing sexual undertones - the more disgusting parts of the film are well known to David Cronenberg's style.
Depending on personal interpretation the ending can be regarded to be open ended and intentionally leaves even the most avid fan questions to think about, supposedly establishing a philosophical end feel.
For all intents and purposes Inception would of been a far better example of most positive aspects in eXistenZ, and I throw no roses to a film simply for its age...
