OUGD104 - Photography (08.12.09)

Who knew switches would actually be interesting and look pretty cool... In this weeks Visual Language I was teamed up with Rob and we had to document 100 switches around the College. We took 2 different approaches to collecting our photos. One being a documentary and easily comparable style, and the other showing the switches in their environments. Each work really well I feel and am really happy with these results.

- Switches and their environments

- Documenting switches

Healthcare for the homeless

Is homelessness a problem in Leeds?
Primary research

• 60.7% of people questioned believed homelessness was a problem in their city of residence
• Most people have a negative feeling when they see a homeless person (guilty, sorry, sad).
• Over 80% of people would walk on by a homeless person.
• People are more likely to give money than food to the homeless.
• Common assumptions are then people become homeless due to alcohol/drug abuse and family/relationship breakdowns.

Secondary research

• Life expectancy of homeless people is 42 (half the national average).
• Nearly half the rough sleepers in Leeds are in their 20's or under.
• In March '06 there was only 1 rough sleeper acknowledged in Leeds, however we see many more on the streets and even the Leeds Homless Strategy states "It is recognised that the counts can only provide snapshot information and measure changes over time, and will not capture everyone in the city who may be sleeping rough."
  
• Leeds Homeless Strategy 2006-2010 aim to maximise opportunities to prevent homelessness.

My group of Gemma, Sai, Meryem, Nick and Will discovered that homelessness was a problem in Leeds and initially intended to educate and inform the general public on how they could help without necessarily donating money.

OUGD102 Photography

OUGD102 100 Photographs

OUGD104 - Colour Theory (17.11.09)

Again we were looking into colour theory. This time instead of objects, we were just looking into flat colour and experimenting with sheets of card.

In this first image the yellow is fighting most with the blue. This is because they are both primary colours and are fighting for attention. The yellow on orange seems to have the least impact, due to the only small amount of difference between the colours.

We looked at how adding different colours can calm down the "noise" created by 2 strong colours. Here a red and blue square (1st) are fighting for attention. But when we add a neutral white (2nd) they seem to create less friction and become calmer. When a black is added (3rd) the colours become even easier to look at and much more comfortable on the eye.

When symbols are added, it can help to communicate a message if we use the appropriate colours also. Some colours on others just wouldnt work for some symbols. Whereas with others we already have associations. Yellow on black can mean warning. Here I think the bold black arrow on yellow background works well. Also I find it easier to read the orange arrow on a green background, rather than green on orange.

OUGD101 No News Is Good News (Mailshot)

This has been the best brief yet. I had to create a mailshot that reinforces my message from the previous posters. My resolution had to fit inside the size of an envelope (11.5cm x 16cm) and again we could only use 2 colours plus stock. The mailshot had to be easy enough to reproduce as I would have to create 10 editions for the final submission. I also had to think about an appropriate mailing list for the 10 editions, one version would have to be sent to college which will determine if the stock used was suitable for a mailshot.

We created some open and closed questions as well as found out some facts and opinions on our chosen message. The open questions seemed like they would engage the audience a bit more and lead onto more interest. I had to think about the what, why, how and who as well and write my own brief from this.

WHAT? The sea covers approximately 71% of the earths surface, yet we have surveyed less than 1% of the ocean floors.

WHY? To make people aware and become more interested. Hopefully this will give the subject more credability.

HOW? Through something that pulls/folds/pops out to reveal so much more... linking to the "what?".

WHO? Aimed at schools (teachers) to maybe teach their class about it so kids can do something about it in the future, promote interest.

I thought about different ways in which my audience could interact with my mailshot to make it more interesting. I looked into something which pops out of the envelope to make the people jump but I didn't think this would really fit with what I was trying to say. As my "what?" includes facts and figures, I wondered if I could do something to represent the 71% and the 1%.

I liked the idea of pulling a line of information out of the envelope and it demonstrating 100% of the ocean... with a small 1% of it that we actually know about. I felt that a horizontal feel was better for my subject matter as then I could show more sea floor. I tried to stick with the same style and design I used in my final posters to continue the theme.

I thought about the process of making this and it seemed quite simple. It was similar to the net of the original envelope with some sides to make it thicker so it could hold the inner line of "sea". I originally experimented with tracing paper and soon realised this wouldn't be appropriate as I could only use one stock and tracing paper would easily rip in the post and would also be transparent. I tested my idea on card and it seemed to work just aswell.

Designing was quite simple once I had decided upon the net as I already had a starting point (my posters) and from my research I had background information and knew which stock I would use. I had also been down to the digital print room and discovered that I would have to make some adjustments, such as shortening the inner line of "sea" due to cost and was that I was unable to print double sided on my selected stock.

I decided to use an open ended question to create more interest. "How much do we know about the ocean floor?" Doesn't really communicate that much but when teamed with the inner "sea" I thought it would create quite a powerful statement.

When I showed my ideas in a group crit, the feedback I received was pretty positive (much better than the poster!). A few suggestions were made, one of which about the information inside the envelope. I had thought about putting some text informing what we can do about the fact we know so little about the ocean floors. I had done some extra research and found out some interesting facts, such as it took over 70 years to find Titanic. In the crit, someone suggested that my target audience may not relate to this fact as it is not in a childs lifetime. I began to think more about what kids would find interesting. For my final design I used 3 facts and 2 statements. My facts were about dinosaurs, Titanic and the sunken city of Pavlopetri. All of these facts related to my subject.

I created my design in Illustrator to create the same feeling as my poster and for them to be consistent. I also used the same colours. Above are the files I used, when I printed them I got rid of the fold lines. I used the font Gill Sans Ultra Bold for the main headings. I felt that this worked really well with the style of illustration and doesn't argue with the message or is too overpowering. I wanted the text and image to work alongside each other and feel each needs the other in this mailshot which I am fine with, I don't think it would have worked with just text or just image. For the informative text I used Gill Sans to keep the theme and same font family.

The images below show how I produced the final resolution. I didn't encounter any problems whilst producing my 10 mailshots so I was very pleased! I just had to cut out the inner and outer nets and stick together.

Here is my mailshot in action...

OUGD104 - Colour Theory (10.11.09)

In this second colour theory lesson we learnt in more detail about the way different colour affect each other. I found it quite surprising how they interact with each other. We started by creating a huge colour wheel, they continued to look at how different colours, such as complimentary colours, interacted with each other.

Colour Wheel

I was in the red group and we set out all our red objects in relation to the other groups around us (violet and orange). We had quite a small selection of red objects as it was hard to find much variation, but it worked alright when it bled into the orange and violet groups.

Red and Green

Red and green are complimentary colours. When on their complimentary colours, they look more vivid and the greens look greener and reds look redder. I think the green tree definately looks darker when against the red rather than when on its own green background.

Pink and Blue

Pink and blue are not complimentary colours, unlike red and green but I wondered what effect they would have on different colours. I tested them with red and green objects. The red objects look more pink on the pink background and seem to take on a violet tinge when on a blue background. The green object looks darker on the blue background and much more vibrant and bright on the pink background.

Warm Tones -

These colours are comfortable together. They are all close in the colour wheel red, orange and yellow. They are warm colours, blues are classed as colder colours in temperature terms. The red object looks more vibrant on the orange background and lighter on the yellow. However, it dies stand out better on the yellow as there is more change in the hue.

Black and White

Black and white are not colours and have no chromatic value. However, they still affect the way we read colours. I think the red object stands out better on the black background and shouts more. The green object also seems clearer on the black background, but look fresh on the white.