DAY 27

Final Project

Thoughts
I'm not very sure if I'm too happy with the final result. I feel as if I am playing "too safe" with my animations and my type I'm not 100% satisfied with what it is doing on the screen. My main goal was to keep interesting compositions and textures so I guess I at least feel like I met that goal. Rendering this video out crashed after effects a million times..

DAY 26

We really didn't do much for this class day. Just discussed where we were and how we felt about our final animation and he asked us if we needed any help. After the small talk on how we were doing we left to work on our video or other classwork that we needed to get done. I feel like everyone is pretty much crunching on their final animation for Animation class to really worry too much about this final for Type since we have all weekend.

After some thought on the music I chose for my final animation, I figured I really wanted to give a liquid-y feel (because I was at a beach) so I looked up some inspiration videos based on that concept. I chose something similar to Gnarls Barkley's Crazy video because I think distorting the imagery I have to confuse the viewer kind of states how I felt about not knowing exactly where I was going to go with this project and how I randomly found myself at this beachy community up the coast.

DAY 25

Today we looked over our completed Helvetica image studies and spoke about what we were planning for our final animations.

Each student picked out a piece that they liked that wasn't their own and spoke about it. They had to discuss why they picked it and what feelings it gave them. What does it smell like? Sound like? Where was it taken? What vibes do you get? Some students were very detailed about what the piece said to them and some didn't really grasp the concept. Dorian used mine as an example and explained how the piece spoke to him and then asked me what it really was about. He got something completely different than what I said, but it was okay, I purposefully wanted the piece to feel lyrical and dark and mysterious.

Next we are to animate our images into a final video. He walked us through some music and poetry and how sometimes things can mean totally different things to people. He let us listen to some poetry as well and asked us what they were talking about. It was very interesting and useful to the final video we are to make, because we're telling a visual poem about the place we visited and we're trying to convey a thought or a feeling to someone who didn't experience what we experienced.

DAY 24

Project
For this assignment we were to select one of our type photos and set the type just using Helvetica. Then we were to create as many interesting compositions as we could using this phrase. Our focus was on composing a space and not filling a space for further explorations. To create a "visual poetry".

Thoughts
This was really fun to do, breaking apart images and overlaying them and just making really interesting compositions using the helvetica letterforms. They didn't need to be legible which was nice so I tried to push the space as much as I could.
I noticed I tried to create a 3d looking space in most of my compositions and only a few of them were very successful.

Critique
Push them further and look at creating interesting negative shapes.

DAY 23

Today's class was just having all of our images and source materials from our adventures over the weekend. We were to split them into three categories: type, elements, and texture to make it easy for us to pick which photos we would like to use in our project.

Unfortunately I did not have a camera handy over the weekend to go out and take photos so I spent the rest of the class taking a trip out to the beach with my dog to gather materials for the next class.

I remember doing a similar project before in our freshman year with Dorian, where I travelled south along the gulf to some small fishing village outside of Arcadia. This time I wanted to go somewhere a little bit closer to home and wound up visiting another beach called Anna Maria.
This place had a nice feel and I liked the hidden textures and the unique signs around the community. I met a few nice people and just enjoyed the time walking around being a photo bug.

DAY 22

Today we turned in our final books for WEDU using grid systems and tying them together with folios.

I wasn't very happy with mine, I thought I could have printed it out on better paper and pushed the design into something more appealing (I re-did it for the client presentation and I like that one a lot better..) but I know I followed the requirements and I did utilize my grid nicely. I even thought it would be fun to use the "RCAD MD" logo from the facebook page to watermark my folio. I wasn't very happy with the way it looked but it's alright.

I purposefully cut down my book size to be a 16:9 because the content is about a tv network and I wanted to correlate with tv aspect ratios.

But overall the class thought it was middle-tier as we split the books out into "student looking" work and "professional looking" work. Which was alright place to be but I'd much rather have been professional looking.

DAY 21

Since we were done exploring grid systems and how to layout in InDesign different types of settings for images and type, we explored ways of setting up a working document for Motion Design students to use for storyboarding. What could we make that could be utilized by everyone and look professional and satisfy the working staff of the department at the same time? It is a very daunting challenge that we have to consider, especially when pleasing everyone is almost impossible.

We took these ideas and implemented them into creating a working design for our WEDU presentation book. Each page needed to correspond to the one before it in some sort of working system. So taking the previous studies of working grids, we were to create one to use in our final book.

DAY 20

Finally we reached the end of exploring grid systems in InDesign. We were instructed to take the previous day's work and fix them up for next class to present.

I don't really know if I had any special thoughts while doing this. I just wanted to refine what was already working for me in the previous critique on my studies.

Critique on these were pretty harsh, Dorian was really upset about a lot of work that we presented as a class. Luckily my stuff was in the "ok I can deal with these" section so I got off a bit easy. There were things barely said about my work because of it, though, so I don't honestly have a lot to write about critique today.

DAY 19

DAY 18

Text & Grid Studies #3

Project
Today we turned in revised versions of our first four studies and then created a whole new grid to work off of. We were to start designing with added elements like photos into our compositions. We were to create 8 pages exploring ways to utilize the grid system with both text and photo.

Thoughts
Since I had already started to structure my grid system with placeholders for images in the previous study (we didn't have to) I already had a decent idea of how I wanted to place my images inside my grid for these studies.

Critique
Margin and folios are VERY important while working with the grid system. Always make sure you establish these first before placing your grid. Keep looking for dominate horizontals and verticals even with these set ups. Be careful about letter spacing and widows and things misaligning on the grid system.

DAY 17

Today we critiqued our compositions with indesign, looking at how we utilized the grid and placed text inside of it. We had to keep in mind not to use too long of a line length and decent sized font for reading. We also needed to remember to avoid widows and other very obvious design errors.

Text and Grid Studies #2

Project
For today's class we were to recreate a whole new grid system to work with. The higher count of the grid system we used, the more design freedom we had. We were only to create a tabloid sized paper with right side facing pages. However we were not LIMITED to just a tabloid, we could change the size of the paper to whatever we thought would work.

Thoughts
Working with a grid wasn't very hard for me. I just think I limited myself with using low numbered columns.

I keep forgetting I can adjust the gutter width and the page size to whatever I want to use.

DAY 16

Project
In class we were introduced into InDesign, creating our own grid system to work with on a 11x17in horizontal format. Exploring the use of grids, gutters, and bleeds with a few different types of provided content.

Thoughts
It was nice to get back into indesign and structure out a system to play by. I think the use of grids are only fun in this program, its like an OCD person's dream of laying out everything exactly the way you want it to be.

Notes
A few points I wanted to remember from class was that you have to consider how the audience is going to interact with your work. If they are going to be holding it/reading it then you need to consider how they are going to experience it (how far away are they going to hold the page for instance helps you decide what font sizes you want to use).
Another good thing to note was that things like to align to the top left corner of a grid, not float in the center.

DAY 15

We watched completed reels during class. I fixed up mine but there are a lot of errors I want to touch up on.

I also completed my book. Phew.

Our weekend homework is to check out InDesign tutorials and get used to InDesign.
I've used InDesign in previous classes (since my first semester) so I am pretty confident in how to use it. I also have designed a full portfolio through the program. I'll watch the videos just to see if I am missing anything or to learn anything new.

DAY 14

We got our study books back today with the chance to resubmit. (Note to self: Remember to keep the original copy with the updated copy and flag with a sticky if we change anything important.) I am pretty much kicking myself because I went through all my studies and wondered if I was supposed to include the study numbers and omitted them in effort to save time on printing things out, turns out he wanted them and this dropped my grade. So I will be resubmitting my book with all the numbers because not having them is just silly.

As for my blog, most of my notes are not on here and this will be corrected.

This was pretty much just a work in class day, so I went through all my studies and started to correct things in my reel that is due on Thursday.

DAY 13

Reel Drafts

Looking through some of these there are several I need to tweek, a lot of the compositions have been fixed before hand. Might introduce a bit of color.

DAY 12

HMA 11




Midterm is here! Explorations are done!


For our work today we were suppose to start structuring all of our paper studies for the final compiled book. We printed each one out with a proof to make sure we were within title-safe and Dorian looked through all of them to give us any constructive feedback before submitting our final versions for a grade.


Correcting these will take a long night because I made a lot of careless mistakes that could just use some tweaking to make stronger compositions.. a lot of refining and toning down type mistakes that I could have fixed earlier.
Guess I need some coffee!

DAY 11

Motion Studies 6
Project Description
Again, we were to take the previous studies and put them into after effects and play around with video and the type compositions. The challenge for this is to keep in mind that the screen becomes more active with the use of video or moving images, so its important to not overload the audience with too many things going on in the screen and give enough time for the audience to decode and digest the typographic messages.

Thoughts
I didn't really want to find video footage for these studies so I tried to animate the images in the previous studies. I had difficulties with a lot of small hiccups trying to animate these still images as well as running out of time from doing too many projects over the weekend.


Critique
Because I had nothing to turn in due to all the issues I ran into while rendering this video footage, I kind of shut down during critique. I remember a lot of the issues involving other studies were due to trying to do too much with video footage and being a little cheesy looking as well as some not really utilizing their compositions very well. 

DAY 10

HMA 9
Project Description
Going into these studies we were supposed to now work with type and image. After so many variations of how to use type we were really just perfecting our skills at making compositions and learning how to use the right type faces for the composition. Now we were supposed to explore 4 studies involving image and 4 studies involving texture.


Thoughts
I was really excited to get back into using imagery with my type studies. I slowly grew confident in creating compositions after so many studies involving type. I now knew basic starting points and how to utilize thirds, hierarchy, as well as creating a dominate vertical and horizontal, and keeping out of the title safe areas if I want the type to be read. Now we are allowed to explore cutting up images and texture to play with type compostions. 


Critique
A lot of the problems with the compositions we spoke about today were us getting too involved with our images and completely ignoring our typography compositions. Its very important that we look at how we're handling our type over what we are doing with our imagery.


A lot of people didn't like some of the things I was doing and then there were stronger piece people responded to. I didn't agree with the class on some of the things but I do think I played it a little safe with my type to fit into the confines of the images I chose.

Joint Venture

I honestly wasn't too interested in digesting this reading material but one thing I remember really sticking out to me while reading through the interview was this little snippet: "It is no more possible to have form without content and content without form. Even the most designerless prose, the justified block of type, is a design instilled with value (in this case, standardization and simulated transparency)."

DAY 9

Motion Studies 5
Project Description
This project was to set in motion our previous HMA7 studies after we corrected the mistakes we had made. Previous motion study rules were applied to the idea of 'expressions' and 'effects' while we played with our compositions in after effects. The one thing we have to keep in mind while doing either of these is if our motion is hindering or helping our compositions while they are on screen.


(I can't find the video footage for this...)


Thoughts
I've never really used expressions before so this project seemed to be a little daunting at first. But once I started to read up on how to manipulate the tags on After Effects I slowly got the hang of it and what they were meant to do. I don't think I used a whole lot of these because I felt as if they would become a little cheesy and get annoying after a while. 
However, I really enjoy doing effects in AE because I know what I'm doing. But these explorations are to explore things we're not comfortable with. 
Maybe I played it too safe, though.


Critique
Not everything on the screen has to move and do cool things.. it is ok to keep things simple and direct the viewer to look at one thing moving on the screen. Try not to overload the composition by doing too much because it can get very confusing. Give your audience time to view and enjoy each thing. Every movement has a meaning behind it, so give it a lot of thought while implementing them into your compositions.

DAY 8

HMA 7
Project Description
This exploration had us look at adding extra elements into our composition to improve legibility and leading the eye of the viewer: using boxes, rules, lines, or points. Our phrase today was  "Designers must function as visual editors to establish and amplify textual meaning." This was an assignment that was closely related to the piece we had to read as well. All the previous rules for compositions are also applied in these studies.


Thoughts
I've never been a huge fan of adding too many extra elements with type so I had a very interesting time trying to create compositions that made sense. I used a lot of inspiration on these studies by looking through my tumblr > design & typography tags just to get some good ideas on what is already being made currently that people enjoy. 


I ended up doing a lot of very simple pieces and one that was pretty abstract and weird.


Critique
There are several technical things you must always keep in mind while designing a piece for on-screen: legibility and title safe are two important ones. Legibility: things become too lost if the type is small and overpowered by bolder/heavier font faces and avoid using too light of a gray.


Also, I need to keep in mind to always print out work to see simple mistakes instead of just judging them on the computer screen..

Type and Deconstruction

DAY 7

Motion Studies 3 & 4
Project Description
Taking our previous exploration with type variations and display faces, we were to create 8 new motion studies exploring z axis and rotation as well as including previous motion study rules (fade and x&y). We weren't really supposed to change our previous compositions other than improving them from our previous critique.

Thoughts
This was a challenge because I introduced cameras into my motion study and it killed my render time. I tried to have fun getting these type studies on the screen in several different interesting ways.. I really didn't want them to be boring to watch by repeating the same techniques.

There are a lot of hiccups and some of it goes by fast.. overall, though, I think they were okay. I really like these motion studies, I just don't really enjoy how long they take to do.


Critique
Don't confuse your audience with having too much on the screen. Make sure your compositions have a nice even pace so you can read what should be read by giving them enough time before doing something else.
An issue with some studies was how long does repeating something on the screen become annoying or fun to watch? Be careful with movements and the way they effect the audience.

DAY 6

HMA 5

Project Description

HMA 5 studies let us mix in display faces with the previous two type faces while building off of previous study rules. We were to find 4-8 different display faces to use per study with the phrase "Display faces are for seeing and type faces are for reading." 

Thoughts

These were a lot of fun, I enjoyed trying to find some type faces that all had their own different character and expression. I explored different font foundries and "best free font" blog sites to find some fonts that I was happy using for my compositions. Though a lot of my compositions will be tweaked by the end of this, I have a long way to go with understanding type. 

Notes

We spent time discussing how fonts create reactions out of people "what exactly makes a font face bad?".. like comic sans being a huge deal with designers but it's an ok font to use with the right context (like a kid's show). Choosing fonts really comes down to preference while designing. There is no right or wrong, it's just what you personally like to work with (or the client). During critique we had the class point out "sins" and "atrocities" of each composition by all the students. Then we all picked a composition by another student we thought we could fix if we were the art director. 

DAY 5

HMA 4

Project Description

Taking studies from HMA 2 and HMA 3, create motion studies of them entering and leaving the screen. Four (2 block, 2 composition) from HMA 2 make up the first half of a simple fade in and fade out. Then four successful compositions from HMA 3 will enter or leave the screen using the x/y axis.

Thoughts

I'm really excited about this project because we are finally using our typography in motion rather than just critically looking it as still images on pages. This is a great way to simply look at typography on screen. It gives us a look at solving questions such as: how long does type need to be actively viewable for it to be readable? At what size do we lose type? What interesting ways can we introduce and exit phrases to engage the viewer?

Critique Notes
Most of the compositions are very small. The second composition in part 2 has lines that are uncomfortably tight. They just need more air and another look at word spacing. Overall this study was well received from the class. (I blame Ed's constant nagging that I became so picky with my motion... I noodled around in motion graphs because I could just hear him in the back of my mind about easing in and out!)

DAY 4

HMA 3
Project Description
Going along the same ideas as the previous studies, we created eight new studies introducing font face variation as another level of complexity with the phrase "Make your decisions decisive and avoid ambiguity". This was just to push our compositions further and explore different variations to Garamond and Frutiger (bold, light, black, regular, condensed, etc) playing with the same rules we were previously given.

Thoughts
In these studies I was suppose to find a good way to solidify my compositions with the help of some sort of structural format (like grids/boxes). So I tried to do that.

I think a lot of the ones I did need refining but over all I liked the process work for these even if it was still kind of simple and limited to the previous studies. I didn't do anything super crazy, though, but I feel more secure about making compositions: defining solid horizons and verticals.

Notes
I don't really remember much from critique.. I might have zoned out a bit. I am pretty sure there were comments made on readability and hierarchy. How we should really keep those in mind while playing with weights and creating our compositions.  Also to avoid trapped areas and stair stepping.


VIDEO
Watched the end part of David Carson TED video. 

DAY 3

HMA2
Project Description
Following along with the first studies, 8 new studies with scale and weight variation to the type along with the phrase "Type blocks or compositions, pick one". These studies were broken up, 4 studies based on setting the phrase in a block format and 4 studies looking at setting the phrase in a composition.

Thoughts
I think I really enjoy creating blocks with text but I have a long way to go to get them to look really clean. A lot of my studies turned out a little too tight and awkward. Going back to fix these I opened them up a lot.

Creating compositions are a bit of a challenge only because I don't have a really good eye for finding dominate horizons and verticals while I am working out the structure.

Notes
Add more space and allow more movement in the compositions.


Video
We watched the first part of a TED video with designer David Carson.

DAY 2

HMA1
Project Description
These were simple placement studies, exploring how to activate a blank canvas with a line of text. We were to do six studies on breaking lines and placement on the phrase "Breaking line + placement studies." using the required type faces and sizes. And is it possible to create a resolved composition with no extra elements?

Thoughts
I wasn't really clear on how far I could push these since I assumed they were meant to be as simple as possible. Looking back I kind of wish I had a bit more fun with just using one size and one font face.

Notes
Every blank canvas as a middle and a third to activate. Do not right justify text. Do not use auto letting.

DAY 1

About Me

This blog belongs to an aspiring designer and animator named Chelsea Bennett. It is to document all my progress in my Type II spring semester class in 2012. I was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. Was home schooled and private schooled most of my life. Spent a few years working at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center for adolescents. I have had this crazy dream to become an animator since I was a child. I currently live right next to Indian Beach in Sarasota with my adopted puppy, Maci. I'm also super crazy addicted to coffee.