Category: Design for Real Life

Following the feedback I have from the formative assessment point I have been making changes to the project to enhance the final outcome. One of the first points of feedback I have acted on was the idea of colour and how potential by adding more shades of blue to the campaign could bring to light a different tone of voice. I wanted to bring more tone of voice to the campaign because Aphasia doesn’t just affect one type of individual it can happen to anyone who has suffered a stroke. I decided to experiment with different tones of blue but also started to think about other colours. In the end I found that blue worked well in the first instances and continues to work well with the range of tones, adding more variety of colour could cause more confusion.

The feedback also spoke about developing a calming style app animation. At the start of this project I thought about this idea of meditation and breathing as a device to get people to understand the extra time they need to allow when communicating with people who have Aphasia. It was suggested that I explore this using the comma as a visual, these animations could be idents on social media or adverts on TV to try and create more awareness and get people to be paitent waiting – highlighting they need to have patience when speaking to someone who has Aphasia.

Printed Developments

As I had now started to add in new tones of voice through changing the colour I wanted to develop the printed outcomes for the campaign which was mainly information and typographic posters. I am now just keeping the comma rather than introducing the hyphen to the mix as this could confuse the overall message of the campaign that I am trying to get people to slow down and listen – which the comma represents. Below are three examples of how I have developed the posters which could sit anywhere in a shop or doctors just to try and raise awareness of what it’s about. I have also developed the information design posters which also only use the comma as a visual vessel for the information.

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Social Media Idents

In terms of developing the social media side of the campaign I have focused on creating idents which will cause distribution to social media and tv channels. By doing this I wanted to grab the attention of the target audience. The current animation I have in the project is focused on educating and is longer containing more information. The idents that I have created are 30 seconds long and aim to get people to listen. The idents relate back to an earlier idea that I was working with which is using a calming style app animation which focusing on breathing to get people to think about how easy it is to slow down and really listen. These idents could be placed across all social media channels create awareness and disturbing feeds forcing people to interact with the campaign.

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Interactive Elements

As part of the development of this project I have also create more touchpoint for the target audience to interact with. In my feedback it was suggested to me that I make more interactive elements to the campaign. To start off with I thought that using instagram stories could be a good way to get the audience to interact. Through this elements of the instagram platform you are able to create quizzes and get people to ask questions in order to create that interaction easy. I have mockup some instagram story templates that could be used. This includes a series of stories which could be added into the highlight section of the page to act as quick guide on how to communicate with someone who suffers from Aphasia.

All of these developed have made the project stronger and improved the campaign overall. I have enjoyed working on these developments as I feel that I have been able to change the way in which the target audience is reached and given the campaign a change in tone of voice without changing the entire concept of the campaign with is about slowing down and listening hence the use of the comma.

Over the past five weeks I have developed and refined these outcomes as part of the over arching campaign that I have been developing for the project.

Preparing for the Presentation

I designed the slides in InDesign before exporting them as JPEG files to be placed into the presentation which we were creating on google slides. I limited myself to 8 slides so that I wasn’t overwhelming the client with a lot of work. For me this worked really well as it meant that I wasn’t going to get flustered by having too much work to show them.

In order to prepare for the presentation Meg, Daisy and myself met with Shannon, Ellie and Siwan (Behind Closed Doors) where we did a small practice run through of our presentation. This was really useful for me as I was going to be the one sharing the presentation so I would need to roughly known when to move on with the presentation for the rest of the group. Rather than preparing a script I used reminders on posted notes in order to prompt what I was going to say. Being able to do a quick run through with another group helped me to get more feedback on my project but also practice my presentation skills.

Final Presentation

For the presentation we originally used google slides in order for everyone in the team to have access to the presentation. However, after running into some technical difficulties I had to down the slides document as a PDF and embed the videos through that. This was a difficult part before the presentation because it was stressing that it wasn’t gong to work however, in the end the presentation worked.

I was really happy with how the pitch went I thought I was able to remain professional and not let my nerves get the best of me. This was a new experience for me presenting over teams as we have previously done presentations within the studio space. I thought that I presented well talking to the group without stumbling over my words too much. I thought that I got my point across to the client group and tutors well. Also, being the one who set up the teams meeting and shared the powerpoint was something new for me but it showed me how I’ve developed my professional skills. I have to also say that I am really proud of everyone within my team, this has been an exciting project and under the current circumstances I felt that we’ve worked to the best of our abilities, calling as a team the best we could. I’ve enjoyed this project and hopefully they client too enjoyed my work.

As part of this submission we were asked to create a design document that showed our outcomes and why we had chosen to create what we’ve created. There would also be a section of this document which would be similar to a brand guidelines document talking about colour and typography.

I used a 12 column grid on my document as I find it better to design with as your able to divide into 3rd and quarters easily. I have tried to keep the design of the document simple and easy to navigate with clear headings of the sections and defined page numbers on the bottom. I have also used the same typeface and colour scheme that the campaign uses in order to be consistent. This is a document could be given to the client or anyone who wanted to know more about the project and how it was developed or how it could be implemented.

Furthermore, I have tried to include my visual language into the design of the document, using punctuation marks on some of the pages that otherwise wouldn’t have had an imagery on it. All my outcomes were mockup to show them in-situ in order to give the tutors a sense of what the physical outcomes would look like. Normally I would have printed the items off and photographed them however in the current circumstances I wasn’t able to do this.

This was the final mentor meeting that we would have with Kat the project is coming to the end on Friday. We spoke to Kat about our presentation on Friday and how best to approach and what she thought that would be good to include within the client pitch. She suggested maybe showing a small amount of development to talk the client on the journey that we have been on throughout this project. She thought that it would be good through the client has seen the development throughout it would tell the story of why you’ve chose what you’ve chosen. Another suggestion Kat made was about using a key line from our research which explains the reason why we’ve gone with the concept that we have developed. She thought this could work well and was something to be explored. She also said for us to take our time and say everything we have to say don’t be rushed by anything make sure I take the time to explain myself and my outcomes and concept. Kat said not to rush through the slides quickly give them decent amount of time to viewed by people and

We also spoke about the design document and how making it like a set of brand guidelines might be really useful. Showing the client and tutors how they would use the brand/campaign moving forward. It’s a useful habit to get into as it important when working professionally on any project to give the client something they can work with in case they decide to take a project in-house.

Over the past two weeks I have really found the sessions with Kat insightful and useful and I feel that I have built up another relationship with someone who’s already working within the industry. She was really helpful when it came to design questions and ideas and I think that having her as a mentor has given me more confidence in my work and in my process as a designer.

Animation

The final developments I made to the animation were minor. I dropped the weight of the typography do to a medium and used a semibold weight and the bright blue to highlight the key words within the animation. I felt that this would draw attention to the key words while also making the type easier to read and navigate. I also added the ampersand symbol in to connect parts of the animation where the voice over wasn’t. This visually works with the visual language that I have created for the campaign. Furthermore, I also added in lines as to where the words would be if the voice over was typed onto screen during the animation. This way people might be able to understand what the commas are implying rather than just floating on the screen.

I also took the video into premiere pro where using the De-noise effect I was able to reduce the static in the background in order to have a better sound quality. By doing this I felt that it has given my animation a professional outlook rather than simply being recorded on an iPhone.

Posters

I took the posters into Indesign to be developed further, using a grid to ensure that everything was aligned and balanced. I used a 12 column grid on the A3 poster, which helped me to use the grid effectively. To ensure that the poster was balanced I have placed the logos in the bottom right hand corner as this seemed to give the imagery space to breathe while balancing out the poster.

I decided that the information posters would include a small paragraph of information while the typographic posters would only have the logos of the campaign and stroke hub Wales. I felt that this worked better visually but still allowed the target audience to find out where this information had come from and what the campaign was about.

Social Media

For the social media content for the purpose of displaying the project I developed the content for instagram however they could all be adapted and used across different social media platforms. I used a 1080x1080px board to create the social media posts. All of the social media posts had the two logos in the bottom right hand corner of the posts in order to be consistent with the poster series that I have designed as part of the project.

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I used the meeting today to show how my animation has developed and get thoughts and feedback from the client group. Since this was the last meeting before the final presentation on Friday I thought getting feedback on the element that I was trying to develop further was important.

Overall, they seemed happy with the animation and thought that the simplicity of the comma works really well. They liked the open space around the comma and words as they felt that it gave them time to think and that is what I am aiming to get people to do from this animation is think about Aphasia and what Aphasia is. They did say that the message of what people can do to help could be pushed further. I agree with this however, for further scope for the project I think that it would be best that there is a series of animations that tell the audience what they need to do so that they aren’t over whelmed with information for just one video.

Carys suggested maybe I could look at the typography further in relation to playing around with weight and colour. Using the bright blue to highlight key words and phrases and making them in a bolder weight but not changing the point size. This is something that I will take forward and work on as I feel that it will add to the final outcome. Also, they suggested that I drop the audio into Premiere Pro to get rid of the background noise. I haven’t used Premiere pro in a project before however, I think that doing this will help get a stronger overall finish to the audio.

Animation

Following on from my discussion with David I decided that I would develop idea of using the comma to visualise elements that the voice over of the animation is talking about. I animated to comma to replace the large amount of type that was in the original animation that I developed. I also used colour to separate certain comma and make it more visual, for example the 1 in 3 the 1 is highlighted with the bright blue of the colour palette. I have used the opacity setting to animate the commas to show the essence of slowing down which is a key part of the message in the campaign.

Furthermore, as David mentioned trying have the commas flashing up after the words in the voice over to show a similarity between the posters and the animation. Instead of them flashing up quickly and disappearing which might be confusing, I decided to keep them on the screen and have them slowly fade out in the pause after the sentence is finished. I think this works well and continues to communicate the essence of the campaign.

Poster Series

Following on from the feedback I received I thought I would experiment with different punctuation marks to see what works well. I explored the idea of em dashes, parentheses, full stops and question marks. Overall I thought that the em dashes worked the best as they mean taking a pause in language. I also felt that the full stop and parentheses visually didn’t work within the content that I wanted them too. Once I experimented with using the em dash within the poster designs. I used the em dash in a similar way that I used the comma within the typographic poster design. I thought that this worked well and provided a new visual element to the campaign.

I also worked on developing the information design further, as David said it need refining. I thought about how the various in what the comma represents in terms of numerical value. In this case I developed the blue commas to represent 400 while the white commas represent 10,000 people. I decided to use the colour to distinguish between the two values. This could be developed further through the use of em dashes which I have started to explore however, I didn’t think it worked within the series of posters that I was developing for this project.

Social Media

I decided to develop the social media campaign further as this is an important touchpoint for my target audience. As I mentioned before I felt that social media post would reflect that information that was in the posters. I decided to develop the social media posts by firstly producing a series of posts that could be used in the lead up to the launch of the campaign. When I spoke to David he said that he could see this working in the lead up to campaign being launched. I’ve the posts very simple like the posters so that information is clear and direct.

I found this tutorial with David really helpful as it showed me where I could push my project more and be more ambitious in my outcomes. This is something that I really want to try and do in my third year. Overall he seemed pleased with my work, David liked the contrasting colours within my palette and through that the mark I had created was really mature and sophisticated.

He liked my information design that I had created but said it could be explored further. It needs to be developed further in terms of attributing meaning to things, for example my two posters use commas. The one group of comma shows each comma representing 10,000 people while the other the commas represent 1 person and one comma being a different colour to showcase being isolated. I need to think about this system in more depth in order to develop something clearer and defined.

David also suggested maybe looking at other punctation such as em dashes which show a pause as well. This would just allow for some variation in the visuals being used but also for the typographical poster series to have some variation amongst it. I think that this could work well with the em dash, but other punctuation marks might need to be explored further in relation to their meaning within language. I also need to watch my layouts as some things are too close to the edge and spelling can sometimes be incorrect.

When I showed my animation the voice over which I had produced didn’t play through. However, David felt that there was too much text within the animation and there is more to be explored with the use of punctuation marks. David suggested I could try having a comma flash up after very word that the voice over says. Making more use of the visual language rather than just having a lot of type all the time. Also, David suggested looking into showing bad and good communication through the poster design, using commas and not using commas. This could be interesting to explore as an idea moving forward.

The next stage in the development for the animation was to add a voice over which played alongside the animation, I recorded this using my iPhone. The voice over simply reiterated the words that where on the screen. I also animated the text using an offset keyframe which started at -100 and then finished at 100. This allowed the effect as through each character was slowly being spoken. I thought that this reiterated the key message within the campaign which is trying to get people to slow down when communicating with someone who has Aphasia.

I also started to develop the poster further. I decided that I was going to do a typographic series and a poster series which was more focused around information design. For the typographical series I used a comma after every word in order to showcase how we need to be patient when speaking to people. For another visual element I have added the outline of a comma to further highlight the visual language that I am using.

For the information design posters I’ve used the comma to visualise some of the stats that I felt were key for the public to know in order to understand what Aphasia is. I’ve used commas on the first poster to symbolise 10,000 people in total there are 35 commas on the poster. I’ve also use the blue to highlight the 1 in 3 on the second poster while the third poster shows how people can feel isolated by having the blue commas surround the white one. This is the basis for the information design element of this project which is a key part of the project