Advanced Typography Task 2

20.9.2023 - 25.10.2023 / Week 4 - Week 9
Michael Chan Henn Loong / 0363611
Advanced Typography / BA of Design (HONS) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
Task 2 

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LECTURES

Refer to Task 1

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INSTRUCTIONS

Task 2A: Key Artwork

In Task 2A we are asked to use our first name or pseudonym to explore and compose as many permutations and combinations of our name in the form of a wordmark/lettering. 

1. Ideation and Sketches

Fig 1.0 Inspirations from Pinterest

Key artwork ideas / Styles that I'm interested in and fond of

- Top left: Futuristic and Cool.

- Bottom middle: Looks fun to play with and is nicer and easier to manipulate with. Won't be hard to fit with different types of themes too.

-Top Right: Looks cool too and looks rock and looks more electronic. 

Fig 1.1 Ideations and sketches, Week 4 (20.9.2023)

So with the ideas I got from Pinterest I continued with my ideations and sketches and I used Chan my sir name to sketch out the ideas I have. Most of them represents the characteristics of the inspirations that I've found on Pinterest. The one with the fat or blobby characteristics is my personal favorite. But I still felt that something is missing like the designs aren't nice enough.

2. Digitalisation

Fig 2.0 Digitalisation, Week 4 (20.9.2023)

So after I felt that emptiness in my design I went to Pinterest again and I found this font idea it looks pretty clean, very creative and unique. I like the Celtic or Runic that might be the reference for this type like the curved crossbar for the A and so I used it for my task 2. After showing to Mr. Vinod I was told that it looks almost the same to one of the existing fonts out there ( White Retro Alphabets Vector Set BY Wan )  so I was told to change my design but the idea of this font can still be used. Mr. Vinod also mentioned that the MICHAEL CHAN is too long so I should shorten it down to CHAN or MICHAEL but MICHAEL is too overly used so I decided to use M-CHAN or MCHL.

Fig 2.1 Digitalisation, Week 5 (27.9.2023)

So these are the changes I've made the one on the top is the original font the one at second is another idea that I came up with which also represents me which is animals, because I like animals a lot so I tried making the alphabets into parts of animals but apparently it didn't work but it's fun knowing that from the original font it can transform into something like that. Below the second one are the other attempts I've tried during the class. 

Fig 2.2 Second Attempt on Key Artwork design, Week 5 (27.9.2023)

After the class with Mr. Vinod I gave it a thought on should I continue on the Fig 2.1 or should I get back to the fat or blobby idea that I'm interested in Fig 1.1. Initially I went back to the original idea and I tried to make some changes to the sketches I've done and as a result I got Fig 2.4. The reason I went back and proceeded with this choice is that I wanted to make something futuristic and fun rather then making something clean and tidy with the Fig2.0.

Fig 2.3 Workflow of Key Artform, Week 5 (27.9.2023)

Fig 2.4 Final Key Artwork - Black & White, Week 5 (27.9.2023)

Fig 2.5 Final Key Artwork - PDF, Week 5 (27.9.2023)

This key artwork is created to be used as a represent of me. So I made it fat and blobby to show that I'm fat too and with those characteristics the words looks fun and exciting too, which also reflects how I want my life to be, as I'm not really a fan of calm steady and unchanged lifestyle I want something fun and exciting throughout my life, and I personally thinks that this font is pretty adaptive and that's also a wish for myself I hope that I can adapt to anything or any events rapidly.

Task 2B: Type Exploration & Application

Process:

Fig 3.0 Color exploration 1, Week 6 (04.10.2023)

Fig 3.1 Color exploration 1, Week 6 (04.10.2023)

So firstly I went and did some color exploration and wanna see what kind of combination suits my brand. Firstly I was thinkin of making something cyber ? or some kind of futuristic vibe color palette but soon I notice that it doesn't really suits the collateral that I wanna work with so I went with some darker colors like gold and grey and since I'm behind the progress so I did most of the decisions in rush and sometimes I just didn't give enough thoughts on the ideas.

Fig 3.2 Failed Collateral exploration, Week 6 (04.10.2023)

Fig 3.3 Failed Collateral exploration, Week 6 (04.10.2023)

So after deciding the color palette I went straight and created my collaterals which is ticket, name card and tote bag. Well since everything is did in rush, of course these ideas have tons of problems during the class when I asked for the feedback so I took sometime reworking on the colors and gave another thoughts on what collateral do I really want to work on.

Fig 3.4 Color exploration 2, Week 7 (11.10.2023)

Fig 3.5 Final color palette , Week 7 (11.10.2023)

After one week of thoughts I decided that I will be using the color palette in Fig 3.5 and I will be making different collaterals from the previous attempts this time I will be making T-shirts skateboards and tote bag.

1. Collaterals

Fig 4.0 Failed attempts collateral, Week 6 (04.10.2023)

These are the first attempt of collaterals that I did on week 6 and the feedback for it is pretty bad. I used some elements or maybe I should say graphics that are not extracted from my key artwork, and also the placements and design of the name card is disastrous. so I needed to redo the whole thing again.

Fig 4.1 Reworked collateral, Week 8 (18.10.2023)

These are the reworked collateral I changed the ticket and name card to skateboard and T-shirt because lately I've started to skate and I'm kind of into urban things lately so I just thought of why not I just make one set of items that can be used for skating. 

Fig 4.1 T-shirt, Week 8 (18.10.2023)

the initial idea I thought of is to extract the dollar sign and maybe duplicate it to make a pattern so it wouldn't look like I just slapped my key artwork onto the collateral.

Fig 4.1 Tote-Bag, Week 8 (18.10.2023)

I used this 3 words for the tote bag because these are actually my characteristics ? or should I say my personality and I felt like it's fun to just add in something random and just do what I felt like doing to represent the design itself.

Fig 4.1 Skateboard, Week 8 (18.10.2023)

As for the skateboard it's actually a little hard to deal with due to the colors I've tried making different combinations but most of it doesn't really works. So I just kind of made it into a watermelon kind of vibe as I felt hot whenever I skate and this is how it came to this result.

2. Key-Artwork animation

Fig 4.2 Animation Gradient process in Adobe After Effects, Week 9 (25.10.2023)

Fig 4.2 Animation Logo process in Adobe After Effects, Week 9 (25.10.2023)

Fig 4.2 Animation Logo process in Adobe After Effects, Week 9 (25.10.2023)

I created a gradient using the four colors I have in my color palette because I felt like if I don't add anything for the background it would look too boring and because of the easiness of my animation for the logo I felt like adding in something would be better.

Fig 4.3 Final Animation - GIF, Week 9 (25.10.2023)

INSTAGRAM

Fig 4.4 Instagram - Final Layout, Week 9 (25.10.2023)

So for my Instagram page I made it in a more casual, chill and random way.

Final Submission:

Fig 5.0 Key Artwork B&W, Week 9 (25.10.2023)

Fig 5.1 Key Artwork Light color, Week 9 (25.10.2023)

Fig 5.2 Key Artwork Primary color, Week 9 (25.10.2023)

Fig 5.3 Final animation - GIF, Week 9 (25.10.2023)

Fig 5.4 Color Palette, Week 9 (25.10.2023)

Color palette:

3399FF, 99FFCC, FF3300, FFFFFF

Fig 5.5 Collateral 1(T-shirt), Week 9 (25.10.2023)

Fig 5.6 Collateral 2(Tote bag), Week 9 (25.10.2023)

Fig 5.7 Collateral 3(Skateboard), Week 9 (25.10.2023)

IG Handle:

m_s_chan_official

Fig 5.8 Final Instagram Page, Week 9 (25.10.2023)

Fig 5.9 Final Task 2B - PDF, Week 10 (1.11.2023)

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FEEDBACK

Week 8

Independent Week

Week 7

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Week 6

General Feedback

-Make sure to submit the honor competition

-Brand needs to be readable, adding gradient might decrease the readability

-Don't slab your wordmark into your collateral, try to expand it as much as possible

-Think out of the analyzing the Pentagram and learn from it

-The color used should be strong, so that it's legible

-Try avoiding light colors 

Specific Feedback

-Strokes are not good enough

-If the color doesn't stand out in the white background, it's not going to work in other color backgrounds

-Make the strokes either soft or make it thicker, make it consistence

-Collateral doesn't work

-Rethink about the color palette again, make the composition more contrasting

Week 5 

General Feedback

-Make sure there is a meaning to the design

-Readability is crucial too. 

Specific Feedback

-The design looks almost the same to an existing font out there so changes are demanded.

-Can try and follow the concept of the font and change the design

-Michael Chan is too long can shorten it to M-Chan or Michael or Chan.

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REFLECTION

Experience:

In this task I suffered quite a bit, because it was quite hectic with the other modules and the details and time needed for this task. Mostly it's my problem as I used more time compared to the others due to the likeliness of the first font I did so I needed to redo my font again for Task 2A after I'm done with Task 2A everyone have already started with task 2B so it took me quite awhile to get back on the track and some of the works are loose and not detailed enough. I personally doesn't really enjoy the color scheme. I've came up with quite a few that I'm interested with but when I look at it I noticed that my friends have already used it, so I need to look for something else.

Observation:

When doing the animations for the branding and the collaterals I notice that how important is the expansion of the key artwork, I struggled a lot in this task as most of my works are rushed out and so when doing the animation I felt quite helpless as I felt that it's pretty bad I had some ideas in my mind but I couldn't put it to work due to my inexperience and lack of time. But still due to this task I learned something and will be useful for my future tasks.

Findings:

This task actually made me learn that sometimes some ideas might be something that you've seen before so sometimes the ideas we have can be similar to some existing designs or products so maybe we need to explore more and expand our own ideas so that its more unique.

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FURTHER READING

Fig 6.0 Proceedings of the 14th international Conference on the Foundation of Digital Games

In this article I knew that numerous studies have already demonstrated the potential of games as a helpful tool for energizing tiring or challenging jobs. But as the discipline of serious game creation is still relatively young, these kinds of experiences can still be challenging to understand and uninspiring. In this study, they've investigated on how to enhance player experience in the popular citizen science game Foldit by utilizing learning and incentive frameworks. They created six interface and mechanical modifications to the Foldit instructional levels utilizing Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) and Self Determination Theory (SDT) in an effort to boost engagement and retention. We put these functionalities to the test on brand-new Foldit users and gathered behavioral and prior experience data. This research makes three significant contributions: A player's expertise, whether from prior domain knowledge or prior gaming experience, increases their engagement.  The user interface, specifically the level selection screen, significantly impacts how players progress through the game. They also document the process of operationalizing CLT and SDT as new game features, a unique methodology not used in game design previously.