Assignment (7) "The Forgotten Fly" [2]

The above shown are our rough draft for the storybook. As the story goes:
A long long time ago, there was nothing.
God created the universe in 6 days.
On the 6th and last day, at the last possible moment… God created fly.
But before God could explain why, the 7th day arrived.
On the 7th day, God rested and forgot about fly
Fly lay forgotten until one day...
An angel walked past and kicked fly.
Fly fell over the edge of a cloud towards earth.
Panicking, fly desperately flapped its wings and thus learnt how to fly.
Because God forgot fly, it was not blessed with any special abilities.
Up till now, fly still flies around, surviving on leftovers.
So remember to cover up your food, or fly will come flying for it.

Colours, margins, texts & even cover page are more or less decided, but the remarks we got from the tutorial session were that the storyline was weak and ought to be further improved, albeit it contained an educational message (hygenic habits). So, we need to work on the storyline, especially the concluding parts...

Assignment (7) - "The Forgotten Fly" [1]

This is the very first draft which my groupmate, Pin Xiu & I, came up with. The ideas are really still at a very rough stage whereby we started thinking the drawings to match our storyline... As a result, we came up with 12 pictures to illustrate our storyline, but we have yet to decide upon the actual layout (such as the fonts, margins, color schemes...) Nonetheless, we had decided to create a relative simple and could be easily comprehend story for young children. So the pictures ought to be relatively straight-forward and the texts were also intended to be short and contained not-too-difficult words.

Assignment 6(b) - Analysing Website Design

Five school websites are given for us to comment upon in this assignment. Actually I seldom visit school's website, except for NUS (because I need to obtain necessary information from it and have no choice not to) so I am rather taken aback when I visited the various websites, which were assigned to us. Compared to most commerical websites, most of the school's website that I visited really appeared to be boring and unattractive, aesthetically. I guess the school's website are usually only visited by their own existing students, so there isn't much efforts paid to design & decorate the webpages. I tried Harvard's website and it looked 'bad' as well, though I guess no one will bother if he gets a chance to enter the school. Sometimes, by merely following the design theories and principles is not going to produce a good result. In fact, it can be plain boring. I always prefer designs that redefine the design theories & principles as it might give audience some surprise.

Going back on this assignment 6(b), here are some reasons why I, personally, find Lee University's website having the worst design:

· Visually imbalanced as there is only a big colored picture closer to the left side and a smaller

plain color image closer to the right.
· Unity as most of the words is in black or grey.
· Words are in close proximity (at the top) and sharing similar shades of grey, so it fails to

emphasize and contrast the name of the university.
· Other details and address of the school are all cluttered at the bottom of the webpage and

again, they are all presented in very similar color and font, so it severely lacked of contrast.
· Fairly poor continuity as the various elements does not seem to lead the reader to anywhere.
· The overall feel of the website is rather dull and boring perhaps because of the color of the

texts, which gives me a lifeless feel.
· Lack of ‘breathing space’ as the text is almost at the very end of the webpage as it would

lead the reader’s eyes off the edge.
· Reader might not have realized that he or she could click at the picture to get more

information on the school, thus poor ‘affordability.’
· Rather ‘busy’ and lacked of focus point to catch audience’s attention.

Assignment (6) - Poster Analysis

The poster on the left ("Breakfast at Tiffany's") is a good poster while the one on the right is a bad design poster.

The GOOD poster consists of the following points:

- Figure has more details than the background
- Simple and clear background
- Organized and simplified

- Harmony (visual balance)
- Controlling attention
- Scanning pattern (holding the audience within the frame)
- Easily draw the audience attention to the important points (name of leading actress & title of

the film)

- Contrast in the copy: name of the actress (Audrey Hepburn) and title of the movie

(Breakfast at Tiffany’s)
- Proximity as the figure of Audrey Hepburn (foreground) is bigger than the couple and the

buildings (background)
- Gestalt principle of Contrast (good contrast between background and the figure)

On the other hand, the BAD poster is...

- Lack of visual harmony as the poster is very cluttered (too many elements -> difficult for

audience to focus their attention)

- Elements in close proximity with each other

- No contrast between the graphics and the text

- No clear separation of figure, snowflakes and text

- Low intensity, dull colors used (varying degrees of white and grey)
- Fail to capture the attention of the audience
- Absence of closure (no path to follow, no direction, does not seem to continue)

Hence, I and my other groupmate (Pin Xiu) felt that the one on left is GOOD poster design whereas the right one is BAD design.

HP Notebook design - "hope" interior edited

I've made changes to the interior design of the "Hope" theme- the background is changed to black and the strips are red while the keyboard is yellow. These 3 colors are also used on its extorior, so as to make the overall design consistant. The strips are only red and not a mixture bcos when I tried to mix both, i.e. one yellow one red, it looks "messy" hence I stick to red strips only while keyboard is painted bright yellow instead...

Assignment (5) - Notebook Design on HOPE & LOST

The top 2 designs (ext. & int.) are for the theme on "Hope" while the bottom 2 (int. & ext.) are for the theme on "lost". On the "hope" design, I chose bright and attention-grabbing colors- red & yellow- and contrast them on a black background. To me, it signified a hope appearing in the dark, which is similar to the idea of a light flashing through the dark. However, I failed to link the interior design to the exterior one because different background & foreground colours are used (comments from the tutorial). So I guess I would need to change the background of the interior to black and the line, from orange to red and yellow, to show consistancy. Furthermore, I also neglect the ratio of the color portion, it should be 6:4 instead.... Hopefully this problem could be remediate by having more lines... By the way, the orangy strips on the interior actually symbolise 'lines of hope'!

As for the "lost" theme, I employ an overall greyish tone on both the int. & ext. To me, the feeling of "lost" is greyish and the random lines running across the design are also of different tones of grey. A single brownish line suggests a single pathetic soul, which is lost in the alien world. The brown line stands out in the tones grey because it has been isolated :( The interior is of similar design, as the ext. one, only that I make it slightly less 'messy' and complicated. I always prefer a 'cleaner' interior design because I feel that it would be hard to concentrate on typing if the keyboard is too messy...

Assignment (4) - Poster "Prevent Oxidation"

My poster for assignment 4 was done! Yeah! I chose this theme on "prevent...Oxidation" because it's happening around me.... I heard my mother talking about the anti-oxidantion facial cream that she's just bought... my part-time job promoting tea constantly require me to spread the wonder property of anti-oxidants withing tea.... so on and so on.... So I conclude that oxidation is something many people, of course it's mainly those in richer countries, begin to talk about, or even fear of... Hence I decided to use fear (the wrinkled apple) to catch people attention to this poster, and also included some reasons why people should prevent oxidation... I tried employing some of the poster design techiques that were taught during the lecture, such as Contrast, visual balance, etc... Hopeful the audiences (my tutorial group) could get my message on Preventing Oxidation....

Assignment 3 ~ U see what I see (1)

Hope my 9 pictures shown above are at least self-explanatory enough, which doesn't require much of my explanation. Anyway, here's my short-&-simple story... " One evening, Jane went to a Chinese tea house for her dinner. The waiter politely greeted her and led Jane to her table. Jane was rather hungry and took no effort to order food from the waiter. The food was quickly served and Jane did enjoy her scrumptious dinner. After filling up her stomach, it was time for Jane to foot the bill. She went to the counter and was about to pay up. However, she realised that her wallet was actually empty! The waiter turned angry at Jane for not being able to pay up for her food. Hence, Jane had to wash up the dishes... "

Assignment 2(a)- Abstraction

For this assignment (2), we are required to present at least 5 levels of abstractions and turn the final image into a symbol, which should also be rather "abstract." I've chosen a stand-fan but not everyone could recognise the final image to be a stand-fan and someone even thought it to be like a radioactive symbol, on a stand... After looking at the image on radioactive symbol, over the internet, it does really resemble one... (-_-)" I guess I've to come out with another image to represent the blades of the fan... Or perhaps the coloring of the design has made it even more resemble the radioactive symbols... On a second, it even resembles a windmill to me... hahaha....! Guess gotta further improve on the final symbol again...

Tutorial comments - 6 Sept

The comments on the design on the Love theme were still satisfactory, at least my idea on using bright colors seem to work... hahaha! However, I guess I've to improve alot on my drawing skill because most of them thought my "banana" looked pretty weird.... (-_-)" Also, the "strawberry" was not able to show clearly that it's the letter "A" so I've to think hard on other fruit to replace it...

Likewise, the colouring of the "snakes" in the Hate theme had received approval! =) Again, the "snake head" did not really resemble what it's supposed to be and someone even thought that it's a monster!!! :~( So, will try hard in next attempts.... Good Luck to Eva*

My Name's Eva & I Hate Snake - (3)

The final design on the "hate" theme was done on photoshop, as shown in the pic above. I tried to create a as-malicious-as-possible looking "snake head" for my letter "E" to show how much I hate it... For instance, it has evil eye and malignant fangs, which would very likely to tell an observer that Eva hates the object. Likewise, the last snake has colourful and strikingly-patterned skin to suggest that it's posionous...

My name's Eva & I love fruits -(3).

The above is my final design done on the photoshop. Using pc to draw and colour are much more tedious than to do it using pencil on stretchbook... Compared to the previous desing, I try improving one the colour as best as I could although I really have to admit that I barely passed my Art & craft in primary school. Anyway, my aim is to use toning and shading to make the "fruits" look more realistic and delicious-looking...

My name's Eva & I hate snake - (2).

From the comments on the tutorial, I realised that a hatred feeling needed to be felt from the fonts so that by looking at the design alone, an observer would be able to know the theme- My Name's Eva & I Hate Snake. Perhaps snake was slightly easier, as compared to other objects, in showing dislike for it because we seldom portray snake as something cute or adorable... Fortunately, in the left pic, the "snake head" looked rather venomness and the last snake was killed by an arrow (actually to represent "A") and it would well suggest that Eva hate the object... Again due to my very-poor drawing skill, some people could not tell what I'm trying to express in my right pic, which was actually a snake falling into a net (for letters "v" & "a").

My name's Eva & I love fruits - (2)

I guess coloring contributes alot to the impression of the design. For something to show my likes, it is better to have it brightly or even "cheerfully" coloured. Of course fruits are mostly naturally of bright colours, such as yellow for bananas & red for strawberries... A "fork" was used in the design on the left to sort of symbolise me liking fruits and want to eat them... However, the "cherry" on the right picture seems a little weird perhaps because of the proportion... perhaps it's my severely-lack-of-talent drawing that's causing it to look so weird... =(

My Name's Eva & I Hate Snake - (1)

The above 4 thumbnails were for the theme on "My name's Eva and I hate snake." To corporate "snake" into my name was not as diffcult as the one on "fruit" as it was much easier to twist and toss around... I chose to develope on the top right and bottom left one because they could show my hatred towards snake much better than the other two...

My Name's EVA & I Love Fruits - (1)

I've created 4 thumbnails for the theme on "My name's Eva and I love fruits." I tried using different variety of fruits to make up my name. It was not too easy initally because I had to think of how to make those "fruits" to make up my name, especially for the letter "a." Eventually, I had to resort to turning or rotating the different kinda fruits around to make them resemble the charactors of my name, Eva. Out of the 4 thumbnails, I had decided to use the top left one and the bottom right one because I thought that these two could reflect my name better.

testing testing 123

just testing onli...