Legible
- Crisp, clean, bold
- Sans Serif
- High contrast
Less Legible
- Script, curvy, flourished
- “D” looks more like backwards “G”
- Very tight kerning
Illegible
- No counters
- Extremely thick/bolded
- Unclear color choices
- Words cut between lines
When looking at various boxes of Chex Cereal, the first consistency I noticed was the large red “CHEX” on every box - it is obviously the most prominent feature of the series, as it is the brand name. From there, I noticed how each has a section at the top designating it as a whole-grain product. As always, the nutritional information and ingredients are on the sides. Almost all of the fonts are colorful sans serifs, giving it a very clean, sort of “playful” feeling. And obviously, the extra large picture of the actual cereal dominates the package.
With both of these artifacts, color obviously plays a huge role. When removing the color from the iPod Shuffle ad, to start, it simply loses its meaning (it is advertising the various colors offered). From there, though, it becomes sort of static and plain. There was a nice “flow” from one color to the next, in a sort of chromatic “rainbow” pattern, but once black and white, they are just one big clump, all visible at once rather than “read” left to right.
With the Powered By Orange ad on the Tri-Met Max trains, the color orange was the attention grabber. Theres simply 3 words, a large dot and the color orange. Orange brought you to it, and from there the words were read. Without saturation, the ad is lost and no longer eye catching. The white words now barely stand out form the gray background, and almost become hard to read.
For my second prompt, I decided to “go to my favorite coffee shop” and view the signage, menus, etc.
When visiting any Dutch Bros coffee, it’s clear that it is a college-town-centered kind of business. Everything is catered to entice the younger crowd, and keep the environment hip: young, attractive baristas, loud music, cheaper menu selections and energetic people. The typography, I noticed, reflects that 100%. Menus are put in bright, bold and somewhat “playful” fonts. Unlike somewhere like Petes or Starbucks, where things are more dark, clean and “elegent,” Dutch Bros definitely leaves “class” behind. Just in the small menu above, I counted FIVE exclamation points across the board (good luck finding a single one at Petes). Although colorful, the actual Dutch Bros logo seems a bit far off from this mentality, as its sort of plain and just placed next to a windmill. But when considering their name, it fits.
There were also several stickers they give away for free, all of which were either witty, colorful, silly, or all of the above. Again, catering this obvious young, hip college crowd.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYxly14v5do
For my video, I actually chose one of my favorite music videos: Dan Black’s “Symphonies”
In this music video, he references/copies/plays off of many different famous cinematic credit scenes, making each of them correspond with the lyrics of the song. I always thought it was beautifully done, and realized it would be a good fit for this assignment.
There are far too many scenes in here to talk about, but a few that caught my eye are as follows:
The main concept behind my cubes is socioeconomic standing/class, or more specifically my perspective on it, and how it changed. I decided to represent this with cars for a couple of reasons, the first being that cars have always been a huge part of my family life. Growing up with an older brother and dad who were very mechanically inclined, there wasn’t a moment where someone wasn’t working on, racing, or talking about automobiles in my household. The second reason was kind of an offshoot of the first; because of this heightened sense of cars, this was the first thing I would notice that reflected someone’s “class” or economic status.
With regards to each cube, they represent what I viewed myself at in a social standing. Growing up, I basically only saw cars nicer than my family’s, so in the first cube, I represented an obviously distraught/wrecked car, in black and white. In the middle, I showed an actual image of one of my cars, a 1991 Pontiac Grand Prix STE. I emphasized the color in this cube because for once in my life, I was viewing “my place” in this world correctly, more detailed and clear than ever before. For my third cube, I showed a very fancy car, and while I don’t actually have that nice of a car, that is kind of how I view my life day to day now; I see what I have and am extremely thankful for it, making the most of what I have, and being proud of it. I don’t take things for granted anymore.
I tied the three cubes together mainly with the cars fitting together; this all relates to my life as a whole throughout this “moment,” so I wanted them to fit together as a whole to match that idea. I think it worked pretty well.
Here are my final cubes. I reprinted them all to improve my craftwork, and used the color images on the third cube.
And here are the reflection question answers.
What was your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?
I honestly think my biggest challenge of this project was getting the craft up to standards. Assembling the cubes was extremely difficult for me…lining things up, and glueing tabs without getting glue on the printed surfaces was extremely difficult. I eventually got it by taking my time and after a few revisions, but it was still extremely frustrating at times. The final cubes took me several hours to fold and assemble.
What discoveries have you made throughout the project?
I think the main discovery I made throughout the project was that I always wanted to make things more complicated than necessary. With each revision of my cubes, I greatly simplified the overall scheme, and yet I believe they became stronger with each simplification. I brought the cubes from probably 12-15 images to just 3, and although the intricacies of my cubes still make them fairly complicated, I think they have improved greatly.
What have you learned or experienced from working on the 2D narrative project to the 3D Cube project?
As odd as it sounds, before this project, I hadn’t ever really worked on a “series” of works, so making the 3D project relate back to the 2D project was a new experience, yet an exciting one. I really enjoyed my 2D project idea, so being able to literally take that to another dimension was fun. It was quite a challenge to make it all work, but I enjoyed the process immensely.
How has your ideas about graphic design changed since you began the class?
I think the main change in my perspective of graphic design was the “media” it is displayed in. Before this class, I assumed graphic design was entirely on the computer. After the process work in the first two projects, I found that working with my hands was actually quite beneficial (especially with the cubes; trying to mentally figure out how they would fold from the images on the computer was nearly impossible). I especially realized this with the in-class project using old magazines. It was tough to come up with ideas that quickly, but my final “poster” from that day was surprisingly complete and interesting…I would love to photograph that and bring it onto the computer to add type and actually use it someday. Before this class, I would never have considered tangible material for graphic design.
During class last Monday, a lot of suggestion was given to me with regards to adding color to my third cube. I originally had it black and white to be over-all symmetrical, and also to emphasize the color in my center “moment.” I tried adding color back to the third image, though, and I believe it is a lot stronger. my center moment is still emphasized because of the orange/grungy color, however the color in the third cube makes the piece as a whole a little more visually interesting, as well as mesh with my story/moment a lot more. I think that was great advice from you guys, thanks! Here’s how it looks now with the third cube back in color.
Here’s the next rendition. I like the idea behind this set; its simple, yet the cars line up (similar to my triptych), and the word “perspective” not only lines up on top, but is displayed on each cube so they can stand alone. I had a few issues of things lining up, but will edit those further. Also, I want to make the back line up in a meaningful way, along with the bottom.
Here they are separate…
And here they are together.
Here’s what I had for my meeting on Wednesday. I liked the standing idea, but in my meeting, it seemed like it was too complicated. There were too many images, and too many things going on. I got a lot of great advice, and am applying it to my further drafts.
This was my second rendition for my meeting. Simpler, but also rather “cliche”
