Process manual idea

This is still a working idea. My hubby made a 9x9 wood box for me to play with... There are 2 different types of lids to choose from... I also might have the option of getting a plexi-glass cube... Cheerios will be inside the box and there will be tags and envelopes tie-ing together each project. There will be fold outs illustrating the edits I went through and the lessons learned  at each step.

Calendar Process cont.

Matrix and grid designs:

Sketches and designs based off the photos:

I would say that I put the most amount of thought into these designs based off the photos. I did a LOT of research which is shown in a previous post. These were the most fun and frustrating for me I think because I had ideas of what I wanted them to be and it took a while to get them to a visual that I was happy with... so I was very critical at each edit and impatient that it would take me so long to get the white space working with my ideas.

Here are the ideas that I came up with for the Calendar Logo. I basically traced the letters with century gothic type faces and inserted elements from my photos into one, and played with designs based on the white spaces and verticals in the letter. I actually came up with my favorite one in illustrator for one of my Calendar designs.

Here are my final series and a Color drawing of my favorite series:

Here are most of the schemes I went through:

Final Designs:

Calendar part 2

First drafts at taking it to the computer

These are 2 concepts that are designed for concept #2 around the elements in the photos. I don't feel like these are any where near what the end product will be but I do feel like they are a great start!

Calendar Process

 

RESEARCH

What is a Calender?

      Any of various systems of reckoning time in which the beginning, length, and divisions of a year are defined. A table showing the months, weeks, and days in at least one specific year. A schedule of events.

A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. A date is the designation of a single, specific day within such a system. Periods in a calendar (such as years and months) are usually, though not necessarily, synchronized with the cycle of the sun or the moon. Many civilizations and societies have devised a calendar, usually derived from other calendars on which they model their systems, suited to their particular needs.

A calendar is also a physical device (often paper). This is the most common usage of the word. Other similar types of calendars can include computerized systems, which can be set to remind the user of upcoming events and appointments.
A calendar can also mean a list of planned events, such as a court calendar.
The English word calendar is derived from the Latin word kalendae, which was the Latin name of the first day of every month.

Other calendar types
*Arithmetic and astronomical calendars
*Complete and incomplete calendars

*Solar 

*Fiscal calendars

A fiscal calendar generally means the accounting year of a government or a business. It is used for budgeting, keeping accounts and taxation. It is a set of 12 months that may start at any date in a year.

Three Principal Calendars

GREGORIAN		JEWISH			ISLAMIC
Months	Number of Days	Months		Number of Days	Months	Number of Days
January	31	Tishri	(Sep-Oct)	30	Muharram	29 or 30
February	28 or 29	Heshvan	(Oct-Nov)	29 or 30	Safar	29 or 30
March	31	Kislev	(Nov-Dec)	29 or 30	Rabi I	29 or 30
April	30	Tevet	(Dec-Jan)	30	Rabi II	29 or 30
May	31	Shevat	(Jan-Feb)	30	Jumada I	29 or 30
June	30	Adar	(Feb-Mar)	29 or 30	Jumada II	29 or 30
July	31	Adar Sheni	(leap year only)	29	Rajab	29 or 30
August	31	Nisan	(Mar-Apr)	30	Shaban	29 or 30
September	30	Iyar	(Apr-May)	29	Ramadan	29 or 30
October	31	Sivan	(May-Jun)	30	Shawwal	29 or 30
November	30	Tammuz	(Jun-Jul)	29	Dhul-Qadah	29 or 30
December	31	Av	(Jul-Aug)	30	Dhul-Hijjah	29 or 30
		Elul	(Aug-Sep)	29

Calendar noun An organized list, as of procedures, activities, or events: agenda, docket, lineup, order of the day (often used in plural), program, schedule, timetable. 

Uses for a Calendar:
The primary practical use of a calendar is to identify days: to be informed about and/or to agree on a future event and to record an event that has happened.
Calendars are also used to help people manage their personal schedules, time and activities, particularly when individuals have numerous work, school, and family commitments. People frequently use multiple systems, and may keep both a business and family calendar to help prevent them from overcommitting their time.
Calendars are also used as part of a complete timekeeping system: date and time of day together specify a moment in time. In the modern world, written calendars are no longer an essential part of such systems, as the advent of accurate clocks has made it possible to record time independently of astronomical events.

Physical calendars
A calendar is also a physical device (often paper) (for example, a desktop calendar or a wall calendar). In a paper calendar one or two sheets can show a single day, a week, a month, or a year
In the USA Sunday is considered the first day of the week and so appears on the far left and Saturday the last day of the week appearing on the far right. In Britain the weekend may appear at the end of the week so the first day is Monday and the last day is Sunday. The US calendar display is also used in Britain.
Calendar formats
It is common to display the Gregorian calendar in separate monthly grids of seven columns (from Monday to Sunday, or Sunday to Saturday depending on which day is considered to start the week - this varies according to country) and five to six rows (or rarely, four rows when the month of February contains 28 days beginning on the first day of the week), with the day of the month numbered in each cell, beginning with 1.

Calendar HISTORY

The history of calendars spans several thousand years. In many early civilizations, calendar systems were developed.

Sumer

The ancient Sumerian calendar divided a year into 12 lunar months of 29 or 30 days. There were no weeks in the Sumerian calendar.^[3] Holy days and time off from work were usually celebrated on the first, seventh and fifteenth of each month. In addition to these holy days, there were also feast days which varied from city to city. A day was divided into twelve hours, six daylight hours, each lasting one-sixth of the day, and six nighttime hours, each lasting one-sixth of the night. This meant the length of hours varied from season to season, daylight hours being shorter in the winter and longer in the summer and vice versa.

Maya

Of all the ancient calendar systems, the Maya and other Mesoamerican systems are the most complex. The Mayan calendar had 2 years, the 260-day Sacred Round, or tzolkin, and the 365-day Vague Year, or haab.

The Vague Year of 365 days is similar to our modern calendar, consisting of 18 months of 20 days each, with an unlucky five day period at the end. The Vague Year had to do primarily with the seasons and agriculture, and was based on the solar cycle.

Greece

The ancient Athenian calendar was a lunisolar calendar with 354 day years, consisting of twelve months of alternating length of 29 or 30 days. To keep the calendar in line with the solar year of 365.25 days, an extra, intercalary month was added in every other year.

The table of Greek Olympiads, following the four-year cycles between the Olympic Games

Roman calendar

Roman dates were calculated "from the founding of the city" of Rome. This was assumed to be 750 BC, although calculations by Marcus Terentius Varro in the 1st century BC determined 753 BC to be the founding date.  An alternative system had become more common even by Varro's time, whereby the Romans referred to the names of the consuls rather than the date of the year. References to the year of consulship were used in both conversation and official records. The Romans had an eight day week, with the market-day falling every eight days.

MIDDLE AGES

Anno Domini 

Viking calendar

Christian Europe - The medieval Christian view of God creating the universe, "by number, weight and measure." For chronological purposes, the flaw of the Annon Domini system was that dates have to be reckoned backwards or forwards according as they are BC or AD.

Timekeeping devices -For thousands of years, devices have been used to measure and keep track of time.

·         shadow clocks

·         Water clocks

·         Sundials

·         Candle clocks

·         Incense clocks

·         Clocks with gears

·         Astronmical

INSPIRATIONAL IMAGES

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These are Designs based on GRID with lots of SIDE BARS :) I used a matrix to experiment with how many unique variations I could come up with. Reflecting back on these, my side bar thoughts led me to my concepts for the next sketches of layouts based on elements from the 8 photos in my series. These have been very helpful to me to establish or see a foundation of design layout. Its a base/starting point. I don’t see my final comp being so boxy but this is a step that I feel is necessary to the process. This process will help me move forward and I may even need to revisit these sketches in my next crit or next design problem.

I laid a roll of tracing paper over pre made grids to do these sketches. They are more helpful and readable in person but have translated into a wrinkly gray mess, even with photo shop help ... I thought the roll would be easier to manage but I am thinking I might need to rethink it for next time.

Grayscale

Problem Statement: Cut out type from a magazines as 3/4" squares. No pictures or color in square and create a 7 step gray scale from white to black where ea. edge of ea. square must be the same value. With the 3/4" x 3/4" squares you will also make a type composition with big letters/medium/small and gray scales.

My Process: Collected a variety of styles of magazines. I flipped through pages and collected large sized areas of interesting black and white text or all styles until I had a big pile of a lot of choices. I then went back through that pile and cropped out 3/4" x 3/4" squares of text and had many to play with to create the grayscale. In art I feel like I am pretty good at seeing the gray scale so this task was fun for me. I feel like it was a fun abstract task to create a clear scale from white to black. I looked for connecting weights and lines in the negative spaces to put them in an order. I really feel like my resulting gray scales create movement and the have a 3 dimensional bend when you look at it from further away. Here are my top 2 of each

Articles...

What makes us look?

•   Effective design 1- attracts viewer’s attention 2-holds attention long enough to deliver message.
•  Looking is an interactive or relational experience for viewer. Viewing context is important.
• GD is a dialogue between viewer and design (it’s a visual system)
• Viewing response have 3 sources; 1-humans physical body (eyes/hardware) 2-cultural influence 3-viewers experiences
• Eyes: Certain sensations are caused by ways the eye/brain system processes inputs. Color vibration, shimmering patterns, optical illusions. Designers use these to get viewer attention
• Humans attracted to faces, infants…larger heads
• Face perception: Sensitivity to gaze of others, we seek eye contact
• Processing visual info: Brains great intermediate net input/output contributes to memory, association, language and imagination. There is processing between the input/output. Human brain asks questions as the process… What could that be? Is this like anything I have experienced before? Should I call someone? Etc.
• Culture helps us process appropriately …and we are able to communicate with others coherently.
• WHY do we look? We are constantly scanning the environment and selecting certain stimuli to respond to.
• How do we as designers grab a viewers eye? Purposeful vision…search or surf.
• Search-seeking particular img. Familiarity pops out and there is recognition. Searchers don’t want ot be distracted.
• Surfers: Let eyes meander . Rapid eye movements with occasional stops. Attracted to features that promise the most visual info about the subject; angles, sharp curves, edges, contrast…. Classic atten. grabbers are aimed at surfers… viewing context is important also. Make it stand out from what’s around it.
• Our eye easily distinguishes contrast (fig ground)
• Come closer…distance affects how you see the img.
• Imgs. that dissolve/resolve: step back from the images to see them better. Different view points
• Fill in the blanks: When visual info is missing our mind tends to fill it in. Elicits audience participation by forcing the viewer to mentally complete an img. Ie subjective contours.
• Color: perception of one color is heavily influenced by the colors that are around it along with lighting. Simultaneous contrast, vibrations, transparency… Interaction of color.
• Optical Mixture is an effect we use that causes colors to lose their identities… they blend rather than separate as hues. (Impressionist art!) Come closer and you see the individual dots that look very different when viewer is further away.
• Motion: Natural attention grabber… illusion in GD or reference to motion. Blurred edges… abstract expressionist painters use hand drawn imgs or words in GD evoke powerful kinesthetic resonance in viewer.
• Depth: Lead the viewer to fill in a third dimension to make them feel a part of the imgry. Size contrast… dull v clear. Type on top of an img creates depth
• WHAT does it mean?? Once viewer is captured content will keep the viewer or not.
• Play with neg meaning: fear, ansiety, abnormality are atten grabbers but offending can be disturbing.
• Sex and nudity: culturally specific. 

I thought it was interesting to see this analyzed and there being two different types of viewers… the searchers and the surfers. I like the emphasis on making your design stand out against its competition… thinking outside the box so it pops out in its context.  Seeing  how the eye and brain work to follow patterns or recognize elements and the use of design principals to attract and keep attention. All of this information is helpful to a designer to try and understand that there are different types of viewers and we want to try and reach them with our design choices. This reading makes me think of what I am learning in my history class about how advertisers used propaganda during WWI and WWII to manipulate the masses to sway them into thinking a certain way about the wars. This is true today as well in advertising any product. There has been a heavy study of viewers, they are put into categories with different demographics. People are definitely manipulated everyday into thinking the need products and even manipulated in how they should vote! These manipulations are often aided by strong designs  
 
I liked this list that I found on Adams blog... I LOVE any list that will help keep me on task or help me generate ideas! The more tools the better!

8 Items That You Can Use As an Editing Tool

- drawings
- physical recreations through crafting with paper, clay, etc.
- verbal critiques
- mind mapping
- defining the problem through basic ideas and comparing with art element relations
- thesaurus to find antonyms/synonyms
- camera to find different points of view
- music to see how it can combine to contrast or harmonize with the composition and bring emotional attachments.

 

Time Management Article

·         Why you need to be organized to be creative?

·         We as designers can easily get sidetracked with email and clerical tasks to stay on top of communications and networking. There are lots of distractions before we actually will get to the design part of a job.

·         The article talks about the Urgent / Important chart which would help organize a priority LIST :) of tasks.

·         The questions at the end of the article will help me reflect on what tasks have gotten done for the day.  Helps me see that I can get more creative by taking out the meaningless distractions from my routine. Getting in touch with what is my most creative time will definitely help me see when I am easily able to focus. Fining out what works best for me so that I can be at my most creative. This includes managing interruptions that disrupt my concentration.  

      The questions at the end of the article are great because they force me to step back and reflect about myself. They are basically ways that I can organize myself and bring the best out of me. Asking the questions and responding to them will help retrain my brain and how I work effectively. The chart is a great organizational tool. Not sure as a mom how I would be able to turn off all the connections to the outside world is realistic or not but I do see the point it makes. I just think instead of turning it off that I need to learn how to deal with it and incorporate distractions without getting frustrated or off track.

"The key principle is to create a ‘buffer’ between the information and demands that are coming at you, and your response. That way you can get out of reactive mode, avoid the Sisyphus effect and spend more time on the kind of work that really inspires you."

 AIGA Design processes

·         Why do you design?  A designer can wear many different hats just like we learned in GPHD intro with Mario and also in production with Laura… Graphic designers have to adapt to the job that they are working on… How we approach a project and the role we take on.

Process Process Process is KEY!

The Model LISTS!!!

1. Define the Problem.. articulate it and give it boundaries, multiple view points.

2. Envisioning the Desired End State.. Prototype/predict the result.

3. Define the Approach by which victory can be achieved.. Use maps.

4. Support and action.. use communication to help them see why they should go along with the journey.

5. Seeking insight to inform the prototyping of the solution.. research, definitions, imgs, history.

6. Prototyping Potential Solutions … physically

7. Delineating the tough choices .. Designers make the tough choices..what to include?

8. Work as a team - Facilitate choices to be made and connect everyones views

9 Choose best solution and activate.. Commit to the best choice for a solution.

10. Make your solution known.. Marketing

11. Sell the solution..  make sure the process of buying and selling is helped by the design and that people know what they are buying and what it is worth.

12.  Learn from it all .. Never stop learning, striving or improving. And learn from the mistakes, enjoy successes 

I am all about organized lists that would make my job easier and my stress less! The tips in the list are very helpful and would be for any designer. They are simple and easy to follow. Great advice for any design job we will get in the future.

Designer's Guide to Creativity Article

With tips and exercises about how to warm up your imagination I can get better at idea generation. It can be nurtured/trained and by paying more attention to my surrounding I can come up with more variations and better ideas. PROCESS!! Keeps us on track and it helps to get an umbrella of ideas rather than just one big idea. There is not just one solution. Ask the right questions. Metaphors can become powerful solutions for visual problems.

Kerning and Shape Type Game

I love games! They are a de-stressor for me. I was getting quite competitive with these! Super fun plus at the same time we are learning!