Visible Signs and Two Symbols in One

These were good readings to kick off the next phase of the project, which I'm thinking that will be to pair our icons with a sign. I found the Two Symbols in One to be more inspirational since the images that went along with that article were really good examples. It really showed that if you take 2 things and list out all the possible symbols for them, and then combine those symbols, you have a whole new meaning to it. Along with that, it won't be predictable and it makes it interesting. In Visible Signs, Crow defines text and image having 2 possible functions, anchorage and relay. Anchorage directs the beholder through a number of possible readings of an image or a "floating chain of signifiers". Relay is much less common, it advances the reading of the images by supplying meanings which are not to be found in the images themselves. Both these readings helped define what we are doing in the next phase. It simply comes down to icons + image/text/other icons = powerful message.

Patterns

This reading from The New Basics helped me think about pattern making. Reading this before diving into pattern making helped a lot. I learned that patterns can be made in various ways. I can repeat, rotate, color, etc. with my icons to make interesting patterns. Patterns don't even necessarily need to be "repeated". The last example in the reading showed a tiled version of a random pattern. At first glance, it seems chaotic but then you realize it is a repeated tile (and plus they put a light white box around the part that is repeated). Nearly all patterns come from three basic forms: isolated (dots), linear (stripes), and criss-crossing/interaction of the two (grids). "Interesting pattern designs often result from a mix of regular and irregular forces as well as abstract and recognizable imagery." Since we are just starting to make patterns, this was a good reading to kick it off with.

Final Book Covers

Final book covers!

Or at least some photos I took of them. At first, I was really excited and then that excitement quickly died down and I wasn't enjoying it much. I think majority of it was that I knew it wouldn't turn out the way I want it to because of the guidelines set. Like, I would've like to use full colors and not just my color palette of my icons. But in general, they are something I am proud of. The biggest challenge for me was coming up with concepts. I think that's my weakest point in many projects. I get stuck on one idea and it doesn't take me any where. I learned that I just need a lot (A LOT) of time to think about it. For the final concept, I spent like 3 days just thinking and thinking about it. The bad thing is, there's never enough time to think or do anything so it just turns out to be not what I expect. I sorta kinda like the having to find images not on the internet. It really got me to look through tons of books and magazines. Sometimes I couldn't find exactly what I wanted so I had to make some sacrifices. For example, my coffee cups for the relationship book, I wanted a typical round coffee cup but I couldn't find any in the magazines I had so I gave in to a less typical shape. Um...learning how to use duotone/tritone was interesting. I figured that it takes A LOT of adjusting to get the "perfect" color balance. Craft wise, my craft sucks. The mock up book with the foam core wasn't hard to make or anything, it's just the cutting that got to me. I somehow can't cut everything the same size and i always cut it at an angle even though I hold my knife straight. So I don't know what's up. Just something I could improve on. Like I said, I still like how it turned out. :D

Final Magazine Layout

Final info graphs:

So these are my final 2. We left the Central Park out. You can find my linear process throughout the blog. I updated every time we had something due so you should be able to see progression. I started off with paper prototypes that had only one or two icons on each and as I progressed, the Central Park timeline came to have four icons? They each represented something that happened during the parks development. My marriage stats falls under the numerical comparison category as well as my diamonds, but that one also includes location. My Central Park timeline would've fit under the time based category. As for type and color, I stuck with my 3 color and integrated it with the text. On the diamonds, I chose to color each diamond depending on where it was found.

I really enjoyed this part of the project. At first I was really scientific because that's just the way I am and I think very structurally so to incorporate design in there was challenging, especially when applying text. I think it's there? Hopefully it is there. But that's something I need to improve on.

Final magazine spreads:

Yup. I quite like it. My spreads are open (as in not cramped) since its for a wedding magazine and those tend to be pretty open. At first I had cheesy images (which you can maybe see from previous posts) and then I changed them into more classy, general images. Definitely better. Magazine layout was fun. I think I enjoy it because it's structured like I tend to be. At first it was hard to break away from columns and place images or other text at a random place but I got used to it. I liked how the 2 classes interweave because it made me think of how its going to work together and to see our info graphs put into use is cool. Yup yup. :D

Diagrams Round 4

These were for Wednesday.

I needed to fix mainly the type and change out my icons for the stats. But otherwise it was on track I think.