#PracticeofGraphicCommunication

[gracebirch]

17.01.18

Ideas...

I started playing around with the Be branding for this centre and trying to come up with a wall design for the lobby. I just really couldn't find inspiration, and am really struggling with what to do. It’s really shaken me as I felt really steady and solid throughout this project and it seems that just towards the end the wheels have come off and I’m stuck! I’m hoping that an idea comes to me, because this isn't good enough for a final piece! 

[gracebirch]

Environmental Graphics

I have been inspired by environmental graphics recently, something that I believe could be great for the centre that I am designing, they add colour, fun and warmth, while also sometimes providing vital information through way finding. This is just a selection of a few that I have been looking at, further information is in my sketchbook, but I have really been inspired by this collection of environmental graphics.

[gracebirch]

CMYK

CMYK works differently to RGB as instead of using 'additive' colour, it uses subtractive colours (i.e. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key). Key is another name for black.

The main difference is that when you combine all the colours of the RGB colour mode  in varying amounts, you end up with the colour white. With the CMYK colour mode, all of the colours are subtractive and therefore, the more colours you add together, the darker the colours are going to be.

E.g. if you add magenta and yellow together (or technically, subtract yellow from magenta), you end up with bright red. If you were to subtract yellow and cyan, you would end up with green.

The reason the CMYK process works is that as you add colours together, light is absorbed or removed. For example, if you add cyan, magenta and yellow together, you end up with a dark brown colour. It's only when you add the 'key' colour that the full amount of colour is removed from the image.

[gracebirch]

Scandi Design: Light

As light is a massive part of Scandi design and also a massive factor in treating depression, especially SAD, I have been looking into various ways that are used in Scandi design to bring light into homes/buildings. I really like the first few, the idea of using natural materials like wood and stone to create cover for an area but then using slits and holes in the material to bring in beautifully patterned light. Could be used as an outdoor area with the holes open, or could use glass in the gaps to create a beautiful corridor/walkway between buildings/rooms. I think what I am learning from Scandi design is to use as many windows as possible (obviously in a tasteful/aesthetic way) in order to maximise natural light and therefore cut down on the need for artificial lighting for as much of the day as possible.

[gracebirch]

Living Your Life as a Colour: Blue

We were set the task of living our life as a colour, I chose blue because I find it to be a soothing, calming colour (and also because I have a lovely new blue coat!). I started the day off in my blue fleecy (and slightly embarrassing) pyjamas, and watched some Blue Planet II while getting ready, which is both blue and calming, perfect! 

I noticed that after I picked blue as a colour I don’t have any t-shirts which are just plain blue so had to settle for some blue jeans, a blue and white striped shirt and my new blue coat. Though I believe the aesthetics of this day are less important and it’s more about adapting your life to be a colour. 

I tried to implement this calm attitude into my life, not getting stressed when trying to organise my flat into jobs for Christmas dinner for example! Also later when I was trying to get an Uber which I watched go in circles for a good 20 minutes of the map, I didn't get stressed and cancel it, I just listened to my calming Spotify playlist and just chilled in the lobby of my building! 

I kept up my chilled, blue personality into the evening and left the movie choices up to the others and just went with what they picked! 

I feel like my ‘Living my Day as a Colour��� was beneficial for me as it kept reminding me to stay calm, and although I am not an aggressive or particularly stressed person verbally, I do find myself getting incredibly frustrated in my head a lot and this forced me to stay calm and not get all het up mentally!

Overall I feel that my day as a colour was a success, although I didn’t eat blue food (apart from blueberries, what blue food is there?!), I listened to calming music, wore blue and stayed zen all day, I even ended my day with a bit of yoga!

[gracebirch]

Elefriends Video

Elefriends is an app run by the charity Mind which aims to connect people who are suffering from mental illness, allowing them to share experiences, advice and tips. It allows users to share with each other and in turn hopefully feel less alone in their mental illness

https://vimeo.com/mindcharity 

Lots more videos in the same style about Elefriends, how to use it and what its purpose is. 

[gracebirch]

Interesting article on the pitfalls and also positives of mental health apps, and their overall efficacy as an effective mental health treatment or triage

[gracebirch]

Agency Job Roles: Dalton Maag

One of our first mini tasks was to research job roles in the creative industry, it was really interesting to find out how a creative agency is run.

It seems that some of the most successful agencies have a split between design and operations, with dedicated account and operations managers, in order to allow the designers to simply design without having to manage their schedules and taxes etc. 

An example of an agency that works this way is Dalton Maag, I recently went to the Type Talk that they did, and it was really interesting to find out how their agency ran, and the fact that they had two distinct teams allowed it to run incredibly smoothly. 

Though it should be noted that Dalton Maag is a well established, high performing agency and therefore can easily justify a whole department of personnel who are non-design, many smaller agencies simply cannot afford that luxury and in that case the designers are left to organise the business side of the agency as well as the design side. 

[gracebirch]

RGB

RGB stands for Red, Green and Blue. The RGB colour mode uses these base colours to form every other colour, this is possible because red, green and blue are additive colours. This means that the RGB colour mode creates other colours by combining different amounts of red, green and blue.

E.g. if you wanted to create yellow, you would simply combine green and red. If you wanted to create a light blue colour, you would add green and blue. Of course, it's a little more complicated than this and printers know exactly how to combine these colours in varying amounts to ensure that you end up with the exact colour you want. 

Computer monitors and TVs also run using the RGB colour mode.

[gracebirch]

Architectural Drawing

As I’m designing a building for my project, I will have to represent this in some way, and so I have been looking to architectural drawings for inspiration on how to capture it. Pinterest is a great resource for this and I have been collecting examples of styles to work from and practice my skills in order to be able to fully capture this building and be able to show what I want it to.

[gracebirch]

Quick sketch of a lobby idea: then playing around with the hue and saturation sliders in Procreate on the iPad Pro to look at different colour combination options, just a quick idea. Will definitely be looking back into patterns and potential ideas for murals/ wall art for the centre.

[gracebirch]

Some early (very rough!) sketches I did quickly in the Notes app on my iPad of the first ideas I have had in regard to floorplan, design of this mental health treatment centre. Will definitely be built upon in the coming days but this was my first idea of the rooms the centre will need and their layout.

[gracebirch]

Really interesting list of mental health apps and the features that they offer- I have made a list of features that seem to be recurring/interesting:

- Turning completing daily tasks into a game- taking medication, getting dressed, develop healthy coping skills, follow self-care routines - Exercises for breathing, calming, meditation - Resisting urge to self harm though DBT: distract, comfort, express, release - Track habits and factors that influence their mood, stats and calendars to identify habits and patterns - Relaxing, calming games to distract you - Establishing healthy habits- lifestyle, nutrition, sleep, exercise - Goal tracking - Questions to answer each day to see how your answers changes over your illness - Videos by professionals, thought diary, safety plans - Alerting contacts, location sharing etc - Peer support community - LifeBox of photos reminding you of reasons to stay alive 

- Games to create music that reflects your mood- Cove

[gracebirch]

Look up competing apps and what they offer- what are their shortcomings? Could you combine all these apps and what they do into one well functioning multi-use app?

[gracebirch]

[gracebirch]

Sensory Walk

For this mini task we were asked to walk for 10 minutes and then listen to a small segment of Virtual Light by William Gibson. It is a short descriptive piece, while listening we had to absorb the environment around us, noticing things we wouldn’t normally see. I found the audio piece incredibly calming to listen to, it almost put me in a bit of a trance, I zoned out completely, just listening to the tones and lilts of his voice. While standing in the street I noticed a variety of things...

What I Saw... 

- People rushing

- People shopping

- Children running around

- Swarms of people in the Apple store 

- Trams moving up and down the street, gliding over the rails

- Shops

- Cafés 

- Fast food places

- Homeless people 

What I Heard...

- Children laughing

- Parents shouting 

- Ding of tram bells

- Motorbike engines

- Someone shouting into a microphone further down the street

- Music of people dancing down towards Tesco

- Wind whistling through the trees

- Two people arguing near the bank

What I Smelt...

- Occasional waft of food smell from McDonald’s 

- Cigarette smoke from people who passed me 

What I Felt...

- Calm

- Observant 

- Relaxed

- Curious, my brain always makes up stories for people I see in the street: who they are, what they do, do they have a family, are they loved?

I found this task really interesting and it definitely has taught me to be more observant of my surroundings and I did find myself looking around a lot more when I’m in town and noticing different sights and smells