Week 2.1

Week 2.1

7^th March

Visual cues, drawing exercise and collage

Coming into week two, I had settled on an activity that I felt inspired me and showed a different perspective of Wellington. I had managed to visit two of my chosen activities sites and started to collect primary and secondary research.

Primary research: photographs, sketches, word lists, observations and brainstorms.

Secondary research: photographs, illustrations, graphic design, layouts and typography.

The lecture on visual cues was very helpful as it made me look at my activities and locations in a different way. It gave me a better sense of how best to portray my activities in a way that my audience would understand.

The drawing exercise for me was quite a challenge, as I am not confident when it comes to putting pen to paper. After we had completed the exercise and I took a step back from the drawings, I could see that the quick movements conveyed a different concept and information to the slower more accurate movements. The change of media also helped to portray a different mood and feeling. From this drawing exercise I was able to gain a better understanding of how pattern and texture can change and manipulate a design.

Last of all we started to generate collages. Designing these created another layer of understanding for me regarding my activities, and I started to experiment with combining different visual cues together which helped to give my collages greater depth and meaning. After creating our collages we pinned them up on the wall, allowing us as a class to discuss which ones were successfully communicating the activity. 

Week 1.2

Week 1.2

3^rd March

The design process and Matrix

The design process for every designer is different, and no design process is straightforward.  To help understand the design process we have five headings to consider.

Understand:

• Understand the brief.
• Conduct research.
• Primary research – Original materials: Photographs, ask, experience, collect, observe, taste, and touch.
• Secondary research – examination of existing materials: books, magazines, articles, blogs and websites.
• Quantitative and quality.

Define - Synthesising identifying patterns and trends.

Ideate – forming a wide range of ideas: quantity is key

Make – Designing tangible visual forms: Prototype, Craft, Mock-up, Sketch, Code, Render, Print, Build and refine.

Critique – Contribution to class discussions, presentations and displaying your own work.

It was good to get an understanding of the design process and where we should be directing our energy at each stage.

Today in our tutorials it was a good chance to share the ideas we had generated about our activities. The critiques from my group and the comparison to others ideas allowed me to see that the activities I had chosen were too vague and did not stand out. I knew after this tutorial that I had a good starting point but I needed to dig deeper and find an activity that inspired me, and showed a unique and different perspective of Wellington.

Week 1.1

Week 1.1

29^th Feb

Brief and idea generating

Our first lecture introduced us to the brief. Our objective for this paper is to design a brochure that promotes Wellington either in sport and recreation, food and drink or arts and culture to travellers and residents. To help us gain a clear understanding of the brief we started off by analysing previous students interpretation of the brief by viewing their brochure and stamp designs. We also looked at full-page advertisements that Wellington City Council and Massey University had created to promote Wellington’s success stories, creative outlook and diversity. Looking through the examples of previous students finished work and the advertisements gave me a really good idea of the potential outcome of my brochure.

In the tutorial we started to brainstorm possible activities that we were interested in. I started thinking about things that were unique to Wellington or made it an attractive place to visit. My initial thoughts were based on a tourist’s perspective of Wellington and what they may be interested in seeing. We were then encouraged for homework to fill out a matrix for at least three different activities.