The meaning of life; Art, Design and Consumer culture.

The meaning of life

Art, Design & Consumer Culture

“Culture is everything we don’t have to do.

We have to eat but we don’t have to have cuisines

like Big Macs or Sushi.

We have to cover ourselves against the weather

but we don’t have to be concerned whether we put on

Levi’s or Yves Saint Laurent.

The ‘have to’ activities are functional and the ‘don’t have to’ stylistic –

The main basis on which we make choices is in terms of stylistic differences” - BRIAN ENO.

Graphic design is the activity that organises visual communication in society.

·      Efficiency of communication.

·      Technology for implementation.

·      Perceptual and behavioural concerns.

·      Advertising affect on beliefs and actions.

·      Cross-disciplinary communication.

·      Active dialogue and communication networks.

Graphic design cannot be understood in isolation, but within a communication system.

- The emphasis should be on the interrelation between the audience and the design, actively participating in the construction of the message, decisions made based on the study of human communication- an awareness of psychology, verbal communication, sociology, computing science, marketing and other disciplines.

All aspects that make up the “new” designer:

Character animation, After Effects.

Character animation from Emma Perrett on Vimeo.

For this weeks process and production session, using Adobe After Effects, we created our own shot character animation. 

The very first thing we needed to do was create our little character using illustrator and to make sure that any sections that we wanted to animate would be on separate layers. Once I was totally satisfied with my character illustration, I imported it into After Effects using the format: illustrator/pdf/eps

Before I started any actual movement with my character, I created anchor points on each layer and selected a "parent" for each path. Meaning that if I was to make the body of my robot move, for example, After Effects would make the legs/arms/head move with it automatically.

Once I sorted this, I just played around with some of the shortcuts for After Effect compositions to make my character move.

A: Anchor points.

P: Position.

S: Scale.

R: Rotation.

T: Opacity.

U: Open up layers with key frames or changes.

I really enjoyed doing this particular process and production session, not only because it was fun, but I felt like, as this was my first practice at a bit of animation, I learned a lot.

Next time I re-visit this kind of character animation, I think I will maybe try and add a couple more characters in there and a bit of music or some form of sound to the background to make it a little more interesting. As a whole, however, I think this worked really well for my first piece of animation.

Inspirational magazine spreads.

After yesterdays workshop using InDesign, I wanted to look at some more magazine layouts that were different to the one that I created but that used the same techniques such as image bleeding and wrapping text around images etc... 

Adobe InDesign tutorial.

Today, our third tutorial workshop was teaching us how to create a simple magazine layout using InDesign.

The aim was to only create one A4 page of a magazine spread, so really it was quite simple. I set up my page with three columns for the text we were given to place into our "articles". I used the Ruler tool to create some guidelines on the page to help me place my headings and the body of text in the correct places with an even space between each column.

When placing the text into InDesign, I learned that if you click and hold down the shift key, InDesign will autofill the body of text into the columns that have previously been laid out. This little trick is mainly used for larger amounts of text or any long publications.

Above, is the image of my final magazine spread. To create more of a professional layout on the page I separated each column of text with a line down the gap. I think this makes the text more legible with a clear understanding of there being three sections of text.

Also, no magazine is right without any imagery. Using the picture of the parrot that I was given, I managed to make the image bleed of the side of the page and make the text behind the parrot wrap around, following the shape of the bird.

The last thing that I did within this studio session was learn how to draw a shape using specific tools in the InDesign pallet and fill the shape with a body of text. As well as filling the shape, I also learned how to make the text trace the path of the outline. I'm not too sure in which scenario I would use this technique, but it was a fun and interesting thing that I can say I now know how to do.

I really enjoyed this weeks workshop and I think that my magazine page spread was quite successful. I think that now I know how to set up an InDesign document, I may try using this software to display my sketchbook in, in one of my projects.

Movie Trailer, After Effects.

film trailor from Emma Perrett on Vimeo.

This is my 10 second movie trailer that I created in one of my Thursday afternoon Process and Production sessions. I created this piece of work using the software, Adobe After Effects. While managing this, I feel that I acquired a lot of new knowledge about this software that I can carry along into any new projects that I want to make a video as an outcome. 

This video, as much as I feel I have learnt a lot from, by creating it, I don't feel that I have finished this as best as I could. Next time, I think I'd like to add some textured effects over the top to create a little more emotion and give it some extra depth.

Inspiring Vector drawings.

Here are four examples of some Illustrator Vector Art that I have found.

I really like these four pieces of work because they hold a lot of detail yet have this beautifully simplistic character to them. Its like each artist has made (what I know from working on my Marilyn Monroe piece) a very time consuming session very worth while by creating a final design which looks effortless, which I think is amazing and very inspirational.

Adobe Illustrator tutorial.

In our second tutorial, or introduction session, we were looking at the Adobe Illustrator software. My personal aim for this week was to try and understand some of the basic tricks of using Illustrator and I had never used it before.

As I was new to Illustrator it took me quite a while to get used to the Pen tool without getting too frustrated by it.

To create my illustration of Marilyn Monroe using the Pen tool, I started by drawing an outline of her face, using a photograph, to create a Vector.

Every time I created a Vector of a different feature, i.e. her face, hair, neck, eyes, lashes, nose, mouth etc... I made sure they were all separate layers.

Once I got all my initial layers there, with all the important detail in place, I wanted to make my Monroe look more realistic, if you like. I think by adding the shadows under her chin and in her hair helped me achieve the more realistic look I was going for and defines the character a lot.

This session was mainly based on creating an understanding on how to create Vectors using the Pen tool. I think that my Monroe face was very successful as it was the first experience I have had using Adobe Illustrator.