Climbing Rubbings

Well I just ended the course for summer and suddenly felt like drawing something.
As i am just getting started in rock climbing so i thought i would use that as the focus.

So here are a few quick rubbings of my friends and me climbing a while back.

Nothing ground breaking but its nice to keep the old pen on the paper.

Evaluation OUGD104

1. What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them? Generally my design practice has improved in all aspects, as i would expect.  But when approaching a brief i don't become confused and not know where to start.  I think i have probably found that i go about a brief with a stimulated approach. I like to think about my audience, tone of voice and context before getting any ideas down.   I have become much more productive with my time; when i get a new brief now i can see how long it will take to do at this stage of my design practice.  For example at the beginning of What is a Line i did not really have any goals, i would just do a bit of work here and there.  But now i can see what my objectives are for a week and then go about doing them.  In the last 2 weeks of the brief i have had a pan of when i was gong to do my work and what was going to be done.  So i suppose my time management has got better too. The visual language sessions with Lorenzo were enjoyable. I think my drawing of icons and symbols has improved a lot.  It was a fairly new way of drawing to me but i have tried it before.  I am much better at refining the drawings down to the minimum of what needs to be drawn to convey the message or meaning.  This also applies to the crafting sessions at the beginning of the module.  Because our constraints were to limited concerning colour, type, image and time i found that i took shortcuts in my head to simplify the meaning to the bare essentials.   Very happy with my progress this module all round.
2. What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design development process? I have developed a stimulated approach to research which seems to be working for me at the moment.  I don't just straight onto the computers and start looking at images and finding out facts and figures.  Instead i like to think about my possible audience, context and tone of voice before generating any visuals.  This way i can begin to clarify where my project will go.  I find that if i just onto a computer straight away my ideas become scattered and inconsistent. After that stage however my visual thinking has become more natural.  I used to write down all my ideas and leave the drawings till the end.  But now i naturally begin by drawing out a few thumbnails and evaluating them.  In the other module OUGD103 i noticed this when working with a partner.   Also i have found that i used to research for too long. I have realised that it is not necessary. I can come to a good point of researching and designing where my idea works and in functional without having to go any further. Taking it onto the next stage of development by making some proofs is the next step to refining the idea to head for the final resolution.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
My work is more focused, and has a clearer sense of audience, context and tone of voice.  That is what i have been really trying to improve on.  I have also been able to apply this to my final outcomes. They are more suitable than before and i think i have been able to make the right decisions concerning context. I am finding a few areas of design which i really like, sch as data visualisation which was my what is a line outcome and also iconography.  I like the hand draw images of icons and symbols especially.  Using tone and shading to represent depth and perspective. I will capitalise on these next term by re-using the skills i have developed this module. Hopefully this will hone my design practice and a personal style heading into he 2nd year.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?
I don't document my work on my blog as well as i should.  I did last term but this term i have struggled to get into it.  The blog is, for me, one of those things that if you get going on it, it becomes addictive and fun.  I will get it going next module and over the Easter holiday. Although my visualisation of ideas and rapid development of ideas has improved, i still think it needs to progress more.  I need to think more about thumb-nailing layout ideas and text and image together.  Rather than simply creating a visual and then putting it on the page after just a few variables of layout. I would like to say time management is a weakness, but compared to last term it is so much better, and i would not say it is a weakness any more. My constant evaluation would be more consistent. I tend to let my crit feedback build up over a few weeks then type it all up into my blog. I need to go away from the crits thinking about my feedback, then type it up with my new ideas and responses.
5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these? Constant Blogging - A move evaluated approach to my work, it will help me clarify my ideas as i go along and help me engage with the current brief. Thumb-nailing Ideas - Visualising my ideas will help positive development of ideas.  It will also increase the speed it takes for me to get to the next stage of design process, to be taken onto proofs. Document my Time management and Crit feedback - At the moment i have pieces of paper floating about from crits, proposals and time management sheets.  I need to get these into an A4 folder and keep them together. Losing them would be bad, as i would have nothing to look back on. Documentation of Primary and Secondary Research - Like my crit , and time management, i have paper floating around in my room and my draw and folders from primary and secondary research.  I need to start putting this with their respective briefs in A4 or A3 folders.  Look at more books and designers - I don't look at a lot of design to inspire my work, i only refer to it when i get stuck with my own ideas. I think by looking at some other work and blogging it i can identify what i like about design and therefore how i want my work to look and progress into next year.
6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’) 5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance					x
Punctuality					x
Motivation				x
Commitment				x
Quantity of work produced				x
Quality of work produced				x
Contribution to the group				x

What is Line - THE FINAL

Finally, the final.

I chose to go with the black background because it makes the lines stand out much more. It also makes the data more visible and the key easier to read.

I also asked a few of my friends after showing them the previous draft in white and they all said black was much more interesting to look at. The contrast is what makes it so eye catching.

I have printed this out on A2 Satin paper. ideally i wanted it to be Glossy but the college had none left! I know Glossy can look tacky sometimes, but i think this would have been a piece which it suited. The precision of the lines and the small type are in keeping with the idea of perfection and clarity and glossy paper achieves minimum bleed. But satin will do i suppose..

What is a Line - Data is in

While taking the photographs in the City Centre i realised my project didn't really have much context. So after taking photographs in the City i walked up to Hyde Park and did exactly the same thing but pointed the camera at a nice calm section of a field with a few pople running by and sitting at benches. The comparison between a City environment and a natural environment gave my work some perspective. It was now simply a look at what to expect to see in a City compared to a Park. Very simple, but thats where i ended up. I like way it is very uncomplicated in a sence of being conceptual, yet the actual final outcome completly over complicates the simplicity of the sebject.

However after going out and taking the photos, then analysing them by counting up the numbers of people, cars, buildings, dogs, birds, trees, bollards, clocks etc.. in the frames i did not have much time left to actually create the final outcome. Wonderful time management there...

So i turned to Data Flow again for some quick inspiration. I simply looked through the whole book and picked out a few of my favorites and ones which were most relevant to my data. I had a pretty clear idea in my head of what it would look like, so i began mapping it out on photoshop. "Why not illustrator??" i hear you shout. Well i am not confident at all with it, and i and very much at home with photoshop, and considering the time left it may have prooved fatal to my design if things had gone wrong.

So here it is.. a few stages of development and variables.

What is a Line - This Project Needs Rules!

Yes rules! We have been asked to write out 3 rules which our projects must obey. This is not a bad thing, of course, it just sounds bad; like a brief within a brief. But really it will be quite helpful i imagine. It will give me a chance to stop my ideas wandering off towards the end of the brief, a chance to nail down some really focused problems like type, layout, colour, stock ..etc.

My 3 rules will be;

1. Line must be used to represent or indicate data.
2. Text must be small so as not to interfere with the idea of the 'visualising data.' (in relation to size visuals however).
3. Key must be included to explain where the visuals may become confusing.

What is a Line - epiphany!

Well i say epiphany, it wasn't really my idea...again. Fred to the rescue...

I was stumbling over several design sheets wondering how i could make all this information about the flight-paths of aeroplanes interesting when Fred peered over my shoulder and simply said "why look at the sky? If you look up there all you will see is planes, why not point it at the world, that's much more interesting"... or something to that effect, and gosh darn he was right.

Pointing the camera at the world opens up hundreds of possibilities; after all a lot more goes on on the ground than in the sky. He said why not just document everything you see. I combined this with what i was previously doing with recording data within a frame and i was on to my next stage of development.

However i could not simply just sit about with a camera taking photographs of the same spot and random times. So i set up a system which would mean i got consistent and fair results. I decided i would take down information over 6 different time lengths;

1. 5 mins
2. 2 mins
3. 1 min
4. 30 secs
5. 10 secs
6. 1 sec

I would take a photograph every 10 seconds for 1. 2. 3. and every 5 secs for 4. 5. 6.

All i had to do then was decide where i would take photos from. I decided i would have it somewhere in the city centre as there would be a lot of variety of things happening. So i needed to find somewhere that wasn't so busy it would be impossible for me to record all the data but somewhere with enough happening to get the impression there was a lot going on. So i had another few words to add to my project. I was now

'recording data within a frame, at a specific location and over a specific period of time, representing the data with line.'

What is Line - the data and a few experiments

I thought about how i could represent the data i had collected. The problem was i had so much data, such as time, duration, altitude, direction, movement across the frame; all to be represented on what i hoped would be a single final graph/diagram/map.

I came up with these small ideas.

I didn't want to use CAD to begin with because i felt i could focus on how i was going to actually figure out how to represent all this data better in my head while not having to faff around with computers and the little problems you run into which halt you in your tracks.

After pretty much sorting out a few possible visuals i looked elsewhere to see if i could find some inspiration.
I sat down with a pen and paper (and Mr William Asken) and we began having a verbal brainstorm. To be honest he was having most of the ideas AN IDEA MACHINE!! But as most people have figured out it is a lot harder to have great ideas for your own work than to have great ideas for other work.

Here is the progression of the things i looked at...

Flight paths in control towers at airports. Thought the thin line point was nice. Also the bright green against the black.

This is quite interesting and relevant really. Flight paths mapped out over a specific section of New Zealand. Not to sure about the way the outline has been done though. This wasn't intend as a piece of art or design, but without the outline it could be mistaken for Pollock perhaps. Not that his work doesn't involve talent of course...

Def Con the warfare game. The arced lines represent missiles being fired at countries. Pretty cool. But it is really visual i think.