(GROUP RESEARCH) Design Studies 2 2018

25th of Apr '18 - 21st of June '18 (Week 5 - Week 13)
Jaslyn Tjhai (0333039)
Design Studies 2
Assignment 2

LECTURES

Week 5
(26th of April 2018)

On the second class of week 5, Ms. Anis gave us a lecture on communication theory where before going right into the lecture, Ms. Anis gave us a recap on last week's lecture regarding low and high context culture.
Low Context Culture is where the information are mainly found in words.
High Context Culture is where the information are mainly found in visuals.
Then Ms. Anis mentioned about the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis which relies heavily on the fact that you have to understand a certain language before understanding a culture itself.
Then we started going in about Communication Theory. Communication in broad sense includes all the procedures which one's mind may affect another. Ms. Anis then told us that for us to be more effective in designing, we have to consider the view of our audience. We were advised to ask people outside design to learn more about what they think and what our target audience may think as well for us to improve our work through their feedback.
Ms. Anis also explained that cultural knowledge provides the basis for interaction.
Four elements of visualization style that vary by culture are:

1. Appeal (motive)
2. Communication Style (ex. direct, indirect, implicit, explicit)
3. Basic Visual Form (ex. entertainment, drama, music)
4. Execution (design form of visual)

After the lecture, Ms. Anis showed us a commercial from Watson that was released during 2017's Hari Raya and gave us a group activity where we were asked to identify the four elements of visualization style and explain what is good and what went wrong from the commercial based on our own perspective.

Week 6
(3rd of May 2018)

On the sixth week of class, Ms. Anis gave us a lecture on Advertisement Power on Consumer. Before that Ms. Anis gave us a recap on last week's lecture where she repeated that understanding culture is the vital process to create an artwork. Then Ms. Anis explained about the power of ads according to John Berger (1972) who stated that

"My life will be richer, more fulfilling once I make the next crucial purchase"

That's what advertisement make people feel in order to persuade and convince consumers to buy a certain product. The power of advertising is how advertisement actually sells us an entire lifestyle instead of just a product. It's purpose is to make "me" marginally dissatisfied with my life. To make "me" feel transformed after purchasing a product. That's how twisted advertisements are. As for advertisement from the Business point of view, marketers tend to do a test print ads before placing them in the media to make sure the ads work by testing the impact to a certain study group.
Advertising Design refers to the visual artworks designed by graphic designers. Ms. Anis then showed us that Business advertisers reach out to these list of things.

1. Product Introduction, to introduce to the customers about a certain product
2. Product Sales Event, to inform the market about limited product sales events
3. Product Differentiation, to show that their product has more benefits, etc.
4. Product Breakthrough, it's almost like an introduction but with a more dramatic breakthrough
5. Institutional Advertising, structured to promote a good image of the company or product

Then Ms. Anis gave us a group activity, where my group was assigned with Product Breakthrough. We were required to look for an ad that uses product breakthrough and analyze the effectiveness of the advertisement.

Week 7
(10th of May 2018)

There was no class on the seventh week, but Ms. Anis gave us an online quiz.

Week 8
(17th of May 2018)

On the eighth week of class, we presented our group activity. Then Ms. Anis gave us a lecture on Culture Ownership, Style, and Identity.
Edward B. Taylor provided that

Culture is complex whole which includes capabilities and habits acquired by a member of that particular community.

Style is the way something is expressed.
Cultural Identity is the identity or feeling of belonging to a group.
Identity is the state of having unique identifying characteristic, identifying oneself.
Ownership is the state of owning something.
Then Ms. Anis also talked about the reason why the ownership of culture nowadays is different because of Globalization.

Week 9
(24th of May 2018)

There was no lecture on the ninth week of class.

PROGRESS

Week 5
(25th of April 2018)

On the first class of week 5, Ms. Anis explained about our next assignment which will be a group assignment. We were asked to choose a festivity in Malaysia and design 5 collaterals for it. For my group we decided to go with Hari Raya Aidilfitri because no one was doing it. As for collaterals, we decided to design money packets, greeting cards + envelope, hamper jar, tote bag, and a calendar. As for our art style, we decided to use Nimura Daisuke's art as our reference because his art style is very minimalistic but modern at the same time, making it look very clean and appealing.

Fig. 1.a. Examples of Nimura Daisuke's art

Week 8
(16th of May 2018)

On the eighth week, we started discussing about how our design are gonna look like where we also delegated tasks to each other. I was tasked to sketch out a few of the illustration to make it easier to illustrate later on. We also presented what we're going to be making to Ms. Anis where Ms. Anis gave us a few feedback. She told us not to do the calendar. 

Week 9
(24th of may 2018)

On the ninth week, we started doing the sketches for the things that needed to be illustrated. We also started to do mock ups on a few of our collaterals.

Fig. 2.a. Sketches of Hari Raya Cookies

Fig. 2.b. Sketches of mosques

Week 10
(30th and 31st of May 2018)

There was no class during week 10 because Ms. Anis wasn't feeling well and there's some things that came up so we were asked to continue our assignment on our own. Our group finished illustrating the cookies and mosque so for this week we're working on the templates for our collaterals. I looked for a few templates to be used as references. 

Fig. 3.a. Illustrated cookies

Fig. 3.b. Illustrated mosque

The lantern on the cookie folder is actually the logo that we decided to use as our icon. Here's a few templates I found online that we decided to use as reference.

Fig. 3.c. Templates

I also helped to put the design for jar stickers together with the measurements based on the template.

Fig. 3.d. Templated stickers for jars

We decided to combine all cookies together in the end so there will only be one sticker to show all the cookies at once instead of having only one cookie in each sticker.

Fig. 3.e. Templated stickers

Since Ms. Anis asked us to change on of our collaterals which is the calendar, we decided to change it to notebook. We're still working on the design for that as well as the tote bag. There will still be a few adjustment here and there.

Week 11
(7th of June 2018)

On the eleventh week, Ms. Anis gave us our last lecture on Trends and Market Research.
Trend is the general direction in which something is developing or changing; a fashion; as well as a topic that is the subject of many posts on social media within a short period of time.
Reasons for trend: selection of subject matters or direction of design will cause an impact in a sense of lasting positive impact.
Ms. Anis also explained about the measurement of impression. There are also a few important trends that we, as designers, should definitely be aware of and they are:

1. Seasonal colors selection
2. Fashion industry
3. Entertainment trends
4. Technology development

Market Reseach is the testing of market to determine the acceptance of a particular product/service. Ms. Anis explained that there's two types of market research but she said she won't go very deep on this topic as we will have it again for the next semester.
Types of market research:

1. Primary Research which is the collection of information by yourself.
   Under primary research there are Quantitative (usually through surveys) and Qualitative (usually through interviews).
2. Secondary Research is the research done by reading or collecting information from researches done by someone else.

Then Ms. Anis explained about the steps to develop a forecast of trends where you will first need to identify facts about past trends/forecast, determine the cause of changes, look at the differences, identify factors that affects future trends, and lastly apply forecasting tools. In the middle of the lecture, we had a small exercise where Ms. Anis wanted us to try identify what's the current trending topics based on the important trends that we should be aware on.

Fig. 4.a. Current trends

Afterwards, we consulted Ms. Anis on our project progression.

Week 12
(13th and 14th June 2018)

No class was conducted this week.

Week 13
(18th June 2018)

On the thirteenth week of class, we had our final quiz for the semester. Then we try to finish all our collaterals design to move on to printing. I designed the notebook collateral where the design was finalized by one of my group member later on.

Fig. 5.a. Notebook design attempt 1

Fig. 5.b. Notebook design attempt 2

Fig. 5.c. Final design on notebook

Fig. 5.d. Final design on notebook

I also started to arrange and place all the elements for tote bag design in the website that my group mate found for us to do our printing.

Fig. 5.e. Front design of tote bag

Fig. 5.f. Back design on totebag

Fig. 5.g. Elements used for tote bag

Week 14
(28th of June 2018)

We printed our collaterals where the tote bad that we ordered also arrived. Below are our collaterals mock ups and out final outcome.

Fig. 6.a. Greeting card mock up

Fig 6.b. Greeting cards design

Fig. 6.c. Sticker mock up 1

Fig. 6.d. Sticker mock up 2

Fig. 6.e. Final sticker design

Fig. 6.f. Final tote bag design

Fig. 6.g. Final money packet design

Fig. 6.h. Final notebook design 1

Fig. 6.i. Final notebook design 2

Fig. 6.j. Final collaterals

Fig. 6.k. Final collaterals

Fig. 6.l. Money packet

Fig. 6.m. Greeting Cards

Fig. 6.n. Greeting cards

Fig. 6.o. Cookie jar with sticker collaterals

Fig. 6.p. Group picture

Below are our group presentation and report.