EXPLORATION DESIGN - TASK 2: DESIGN EXPANSION

Luisa Audrey / 0348741 / Bachelor of Design in Creative Media (UI/UX)

Exploration Design

Task 2

Design Expansion

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LECTURE

DESIGN EXPLORATION:

Visual Communication as Persuasive Medium

We live in a visual information culture. At no other time in history has there been such an explosion of visual images? 

And yet we seem to pay little attention to them, we do not always “understand” them, and most of us are largely unaware of the power they have in our lives, in society, and how they function to provide most of our information about the world. (Schroeder 2002)

Everything that can be seen

This definition is wide, all-inclusive including nature - BUT NATURE IS NOT CULTURE - unless there’s meaning and representation attached to it

Everything produced or created by humans that can be seen

This proposes that the visual is everything that can be seen and which is produced or created by humans for the purpose of visual representations that have functions, content, and communicative purposes.

Visualization is just one means by which this process continually occurs.

From society emerges culture, and through culture social groups are constructed and challenged.

Visualization in Society

Visuals can represent the social and cultural beliefs of dominant political and economic groups and society rebels.

By broadcasting a message publicly, there is no need to establish a personal relationship with viewers.

This conveniently allows the visuals to be distributed by using legal and nonlegal methods i.e. through television, newspapers, billboards, online, wall graffiti, public/private property defacing, etc.

Design as Persuasive Visuals

In advertising, culture jamming disrupts the usual unconscious thought process that takes place in most consumers' views to direct the message more effectively.

Activists utilize this tactic to pull on the emotional strings and evoke some type of reaction in behavioral change and political action. 

Four emotions presumably enable a social change that activists often want viewers to feel:

• Shock
• Shame
• Fear
• Anger

By playing with emotions, the advertisements force the viewers to be outside of their comfort zone.

But once the shock is over, the audience is forced to take a second look at the advertisement and by doing so become more adjusted and in return are presented with a different type of view and thus forced to think about the implications presented.

Another way is by employing a metameme. A meta meme is a two-level message that punctures a specific commercial image but does so in a way that challenges some larger aspect of the political culture of corporate domination.

Risk: Creations of stereotypes

Images are not without their surrounding context. They can have multiple messages and connotations, not just for the subject, but also for the viewer. 

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INSTRUCTION

For the design expansion, we were tasked to create anything and improve on the existing artwork that we had made in the first task. The most logical thing to do was animation, at least that's what I thought. However, I just didn't want to do animation. 

I started asking around for suggestions. I got multiple suggestions that I like such as dating app, character design, and Valentine's goods branding. At first, I was really keen on the dating app because I thought it would be interesting. However, after I brought this to Miss Anis, she suggested to me that Valentine's goods would be great, so I followed her.

Here are my ideas and references:

I decided to include flowers at first but I thought people wouldn't want to buy a flower that has a brand name in it. People want complete customization. I removed it and changed it with cookies.

Here is my rationale:

Before I started with the layout design, I had to create the logo first. It took so much time for me to create the logo because I wanted a luxurious and exclusive look. Here are my sketches and references:

At first, I decided to go with the one on the right. That was before I came up with the left and middle logo. I tried to move it to AI and I think it looked quite good. The moon and water were taken from my artwork, the stars were just new decorations.

However, after seeing it for a while, I began to dislike it HAHA. I tried to change the frame into a window-looking frame. 

I guess it is a little bit better, but I still feel like something is lacking. I also realized that the water looks more like an ocean instead of a pond, and people might mistake the moon for the sun. Therefore, I decided to make more. Here is what I made:

I thought this looked pretty good already. It has the lotus, and it has the moon, which pretty much represents my drawing. Until my friend said that the lotus looked like a frog. Welp, now they couldn't unsee it.

Again, I made a new one. I got super tired and just tried to dump every element in my artwork into the logo with the help of this reference:

I think this logo looks very pretty, very simple, yet elegant. So here I added the fish, and this is how it looks like:

Now this, I like this. It has the lotus flower, it has the fish, it has the moon as the circle behind, perfect. But then my friends started giving me opinions on how they liked the first one better, etc. 

Couldn't care less, I decided to look for the brand name. I searched bunches of aesthetic words and found this word called "Gumusservi" which means "moonlight shining the water". If that isn't PERFECT for my artwork, I don't know what else. Until I found out that it is a Turkish word. Kinda weird since my artwork is based on Chinese Valentine's Day. So I started looking for more words and I found "Ephemeral" which means lasting for a very short time, which I think describes my artwork very well since the two couples could only meet once a year under the lunar moon. However, for a Valentine's product? Calling it ephemeral? It's like as if you and your partner wouldn't last long. So I went back to Gumusservi in the end. It was too late anyways, I fell in love with the name already, Without further ado, I just proceeded with Gumusservi.

I decided to use Aelyn Regular as the font. I wanted to improve the logo a little bit but I realized I already had the mascot logo, so I thought it would be too complicated if I improved the letters again.

Here is what it looks like all together:

It looks quite classy and elegant I would say. I don't know HAHA.

Next, I proceed to make the candles. Here are the layouts and mockup for each product:

CANDLE:

CHOCOLATE BOX:

CHOCOLATE BAR:

HAND CREAM:

COOKIES (MACARONS) :

ESSENCE OIL:

NAME CARD:

SHOPPING BAGS:

BROCHURE (PRODUCT SHOWCASE):

This is my final presentation for the whole recap:

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REFLECTION

This task had been quite challenging yet fun to do. I really enjoyed doing the branding and I think the whole product looked like how I pictured it to be. It does give off luxurious, classy, exclusive feelings. The whole reason why I wanted to go with luxurious was to adjust it with my artwork. I tried to look for a concept that best fits my artwork into good branding without making it look patchy and childish. The whole dark theme was quite challenging as well because it might not look like the generic pink Valentine's vibe. However, I think it is justifiable since the artwork element that was put in the layout gives out romantic and dynamic feelings.

Overall, throughout this task, I learned how to improvise from one artwork to another thing. It was not an easy journey but I enjoyed the progression. My friends and Miss Anis have really helped as they were the ones who gave me suggestions and ideas. I would actually love to improvise even more such as doing the website and app for future creations.