DESIGN STUDENT DIARY

Closing the diary

ioanish — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 03:03:18 +0000

Hello all!

A big thank you all for reading over the past few years!

From now on, I will be blogging from my personal blog @ http://ioanishristodoulou.com/blog/

See you there!

Readings Part 4: Making your folio stand out

ioanish — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:40:44 +0000

As we discussed this topic in class, it was almost unanimously agreed upon that the most critical aspect for you folio/showreel/website is to create an experience for the person viewing it. It is not just a collection of work that you randomly put together in a clipboard but a well thought out artistic narrative that should also allow the viewer to gauge an understanding of your personality through it.

The fist example is a commercial for a cheese company, successfully taking a different approach in engaging their audience.

Singaporean Jonathan Yuen’s portfolio website is a classy affair, providing the user with a distinct style and experience.

A very clever user experience to highlight the issues surrounding deaf children can be found here. It uses deliberate subtle techniques to push their point across. I recommend playing the Do Re Mi game.

I also wanted to point out the lighting effects of the 2008 tour of Nine Inch Nails. You don’t have to be a fan of their music (I’m not) to appreciate how engaging and unique this show experience would have been.

Readings Part 3: Bad Designs/Silly Decisions

ioanish — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 06:28:09 +0000

It’s always fun looking at bad design choices. We had the chance in class to bring in some examples. These were my highlights:

Pretty much all the multimedia designers (including myself) had a similar example, which was any website that decided to follow no hierarchy system whatsoever.

…thoughtless advertising placement…

Self explanatory…

Harley Davidson decided one day to expand their product range to include perfume! Unsurprisingly, no one bought it, alienating their existing fan base while not acquiring any new fans either.

My personal favourite of the day was a campaign by PepsiMax to advertise that they only have 1 calorie in their drink. So why not show the calorie as a suicidal figure that can’t live with himself. Confused? Check out the ad below. Funnily enough, it looks like a great piece of lowbrow art. No traditional Pepsi branding anywhere!

Readings Part 2

ioanish — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:41:19 +0000

Our question this week was:

What is one of the most vital aspects of visual communication.

One of the students showed us the installation ” _Visible” by IF interactive arguing that we need to embrace new media/technologies to push us forward and to better engage with our audience.

Two different ways to attack the AIDS problem. The student argues that the less aggressive campaign has worked better according to statistics. Similarly, the anti-cigarette campaign below takes a less graphic approach and tries to pull to a different heart string: your potency in the bedroom.

Interestingly, another student added a powerful anti-smoking ad to the discussion, suggesting that the graphic nature of this add works in that it is impossible to ignore.

Some life insurance ads showing two different ways to tackle the same type of company, in different countries. The first three are for a life insurance add in Thailand featuring a cockroach as the main character and the second is for an Australian Health Insurance commercial in the 80′s.

Some great examples of graphic design tacking environmental and social issues.

“In this family of BMW advertisements the target audience has been researched and the message is clearly directed at the 30 to 50 year old guy who wants it all and all three ads, even when isolated, tell them they can simply have it all.” (Quoted from students posting)

A hilarious example of the Mac vs PC ads that were circulating in the 1990′s!!! How things have changed.

Similarly, smoking advertising are pretty much non existant due to its social downfall along with the legalities of such advertising in today’s world. Either way, it is both comical and unbelievable when seeing how they were advertised in the past.

Communicating Practice: Readings Part 1

ioanish — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 06:37:53 +0000

For our summer unit we had to do some web threads in response to that weeks readings and relating it back to your own design ideologies. There were some fantastic examples shown over the three weeks and I will be posting them in 6 parts as there were 6 web postings in total, with the first question being:

“How does the article relate to your own design ideas?”

An interesting example showing how print add for the same company has changed its values over the years for a Korean casino.

Mies Van Der Rohe’s frightfully accurate renderings of buildings of the future, illustrated at the turn of the 20th century.