I enjoyed working on this project, I really did. I wish I could go back and do some things that I wasnt able to do. I was pretty strapped for time this entire term. Juggling full-time at work and school/school work. It was pretty tough. Ideas that were generated too late to execute or things that were out of reach because of my time constraints. I am not unhappy with the results. I think it was a good thing to reach out and involve the audience more than usual. It gives the project credibility and authenticity.
3/20ths of our grade!?
Here is the product, what I have to show tomorrow for the 15% presentation. I didnt include the audience research in the presentation, but I will bring it along for all to see. I did a co-designing kind of thing with some people and put out some idears. Some good feedback is always appreciated on these presentations. Even now, for the tweaks and all the little stuff.
Also… How do you upload all the pictures, so they scroll through themselves? You can hit play and pause on it and look through thumbnails.
Some progress…
I don’t know how many of you work, but I’ll tell you what… 30 hours a weekend doesn’t allow a desirable amount of time to work on projects. I am not worried about not getting things done, it just sucks sometimes haha.
However, here is some of the work that I have been working on this weekend. Mostly exploring logo ideas and different variations. I worked out a the final board shapes and couple rough board designs.
I have also been thinking about my audience participation throughout the project. What really intrigues me is having the audience as a co-designer. Since I have the final shapes of the board, I’ve thought about typing up a short paragraph explaining the project and what it is about to go along with a blank outline of the boards. This will allow the participant to have general basis of knowledge about the project and a blank canvas on which they can work a design on. The designs that they come up with can then be implemented into my project.
Conveying emotion through design
This by far was the most interesting, at least most engaging, reading so far. It deals with problems that every designers feels and try to work through. It expresses a lot of what I am thinking of whenever I am trying to design something meaningful or something I really want to connect with the audience on.
One of the first things that he mentions that caught my attention was, “I think one of the reasons for all this fluff is that we as designers don’t really believe in much. We are not much into politics or religion and don’t have much of a stand on any important issues. I guess when our conscience is so wishy-washy, so is our design.” I don’t necessarily feel that description fits me to a T, but it is pretty damn close haha. I also feel like that is part of the problem sometimes. When my heart is really not into it, I just feel I am designing a project not for me but because I need to.
He explains a few projects over the course of his life that have truly resonated with him. Then tries to put together a list of what each of these pieces has/or needs to connect with the audience on an emotional level.
1) New perspective: They have to have the ability to make me see things in a new way.
2) Trigger memories: Somehow they remind me of an experience, maybe of my childhood.
3) Passion & Guts: They show passion and commitment.
4) Surprise: There is an element of unexpectedness.
5) Virtuosity: There is virtuosity of craft or technique-or simply just the astonishment that somebody can be so good at something.
6) Beauty: And then there is beauty or whatever I see as beauty.
Perhaps this pertains to only him, but I feel that it could maybe be used as a good guide for someone looking to better his/her outcomes. You can ask yourself if it contains these elements, if not, what can you do to make your project better.
Someone that I feel has all these qualities, at least for me, is Alex Pardee. He is not a designer, but an artist. His pieces are just too awesome and I can look at each one and connect it with the list that Sagmeister has written for himself.
Moodboards
These are some moodboards regarding the first couple aspect of my thesis project
A compilation of images and board shapes that I find intriguing. This would be the sort of style that I am going for regarding graphics or imagery on the board designs.
A few logos that resemble the style that I want to emulate.
Conceptual Ideas/Sketches for Oct.19
I didn’t catch all of them, but I did get the name that I decided on for my company. The name chosen is CENOTAPH. Cenotaph: a monument built to honor people whose remains are interred elsewhere or whose remains cannot be recovered. I was looking around at lyrics and song titles for inspiration and came across this. In ancient Egypt it is a tomb that contains no remains.
Seeing how I feel that skateboarding has sort of shifted its way towards a more hip hop style, I felt that cenotaph was a suitable name. It is supposed to a revival brand or a brand paying homage to the style and scene that went along with skateboarding when it first gained a lot of notoriety.
These are a couple logo ideas I sketched out. Drawing inspiration from thrash bands and metal bands of the same era.
Along with the normal skateboard shape (extremely similar nose and tail that are both curved upwards), I wanted to explore other board shapes and designs. A few are a retro shape or and the fish shape is more of a cruiser. I feel like it would bring an extra element into the mix.
Probin’ Culture
What is a Cultural Probe?
It is a unique, interactive and personal way to engage and interact with your audience.
Here is a disposable camera with a re-designed package. The Back contains a list of specific items to photograph.
In the case study the probes were sent out as “gifts” to an elderly community which was the target audience. It was meant to create a connection and/or response between the designers and themselves. There were postcards, maps, disposable cameras in all the packages that had tasks to go along with them. The audience would complete the tasks and send in the results over the following weeks. Information gathered through the process is entirely more personal and reflective of the participants.
Woohoo for Co-Designing!
Co-Designing is really interesting to me, and this reading put into perspective what co-designing is all about. Simplified, the study was about the cultural differences between two groups and some of the failed attempts at design. The differences create a gap in knowledge that cannot always be filled.
What was done to fill this gap was bring in the audience to help design. The campaign was about preventing AIDS in Africa. Kenyans were brought in to design a poster/pamphlet series that resonated with the audience. Audience being the Kenyans. The American designers acted as facilitators and were there to help throughout the process.
The process had two significant consequences: it fostered more effective communication with the intended audience, and more accurately reflected the audience’s self-identity. Having the Kenyans design their own campaign, it harnessed a more effective result. They were more effective in knowing the cultural codes, symbolism, narrative strategies and other means of visual rhetoric.
I wanted to implement something like this into my project. This reading really justifies why it is so important to interact and know your audience. It harbors better outcomes and it greatly effective.
Project: Thesis - Name: Undecided
OVERVIEW
What do I want to do with my thesis project? I wanted to do something that I could fully dedicate myself to and actually be wanting to do it, have a project I am really enthused about. I want to brand my own skate company. My own literal skateboard company. I want the projects outcome to be something fresh to community, or bring something back that it has been lacking. Not that I don’t like where it is going (well some of it I don’t like), but bring it a breath of fresh air. I want people to get excited about a brand they can relate to, or help them express their personality through what they do and the product that they use. Interviewing and having them help throughout the process would really add to the uniqueness and authenticity of the product.
AUDIENCE
My audience consists of skateboarders, friends, skate shops around town, as well as BMX riders. BMX is a different community, but the 2 sports go hand in hand. Each is progressing with one another and feeds off of the other. I want to incorporate the audience by receiving feedback of what they would want in a brand. What gets them excited and why they buy certain products.
DELIVERABLES
Maybe not all, but also maybe not limited to: Logo, board designs/shapes, shirts, stickers, website perhaps, magazine ads.
BACKGROUND INFO
These are some font ideas for logo style:
http://jordanmunson.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/thrash_metal_holocaust_by_redalakchjpg.jpeg
http://i361.photobucket.com/albums/oo55/johnnycorner420/bands-12.jpg
As well as some branding books I have here are some links regarding branding:
http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/brand_identity/
http://www.logoorange.com/branding-corporate-identity.php
http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/
http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol102/brand.htm
http://www.davidairey.com/what-are-the-top-aspects-of-successful-branding/
http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Art-of-Successful-Branding&id=13806
METHODOLOGY
As all other beginning ideas go, I’ll start with sketches regarding the logo and look and feel of what I want to the product to look like. I’d like to begin with the logo and move on to board designs. Its a toss up whether I should do board designs or start on ads/website. Stickers and shirts may be the last thing to focus on. I dont really know what is supposed to go here b/c I can’t find the Sharpening one’s axe reading…
SCHEDULE
10/12: Objective, Audience & Deliverables document complete
10/14: More research regarding brand, logo name and Ideas
10/19: Logo and board designs, rough ideas/sketches
10/21: Finalize logo, more concepts of boards
10/26: Boards designs, begin on magazine ads
10/28: Work Day, No class
11/2: 5% - Show logo(s), close-to-finished board designs, zine ad beginnings
11/4: 1-on-1’s (mid-term grades)
11/9: Ads and website layout. I want to create a layout of what a site would look like.
11/11: Veterans Day, No class
11/16: Ads are complete, working to finish web layout
11/18: 10% - Logo, board designs, ads, web layout
11/23: Shirts and sticker concepts, finalize web.
11/25: Thanksgiving, PSU Closed
11/30: 15% - Everything, mostly completed. Feedback for tweaking and finalizing.
12/2: Work day, No class
12/7: PROJECT DUE 10 AM
There is more to Punk than Sid Vicious and the Blitzkrieg Bop.
Type in punk rock on Google Images and this is one of the first images that pops up.
HA!
Most of society has no inkling of what Punk Rock is, or what it has done. There is more to it than the “I want to spike my hair up, wear wrist bands and rebel from my parents teenager” attitude, which most people don’t see past. It is a subculture that branched off of 70’s rock, has influenced the mainstream and scornfully rejected the political idealism.
In the 70’s the rock scene had become so tame that acts like Billy Joel and Simon & Garfunkel were being called rock’n’roll. Punk formed through the want of expressing yourself through music, having the DIY attitude and none of the talent of Jimi Hendrix and the like. A single by The Stimulators called, “Loud Fast Rules” is basically the punk rock catchphrase. 3 chords and you have a song.
The word “punk” was originally used by Shakespeare to describe a prostitute. Before the scene erupted it mean a male gangster, hustler or ruffian. The lowest of the low. Early critics would use it to describe crude music or garage rock, which garage rock stemmed from. The magazine Punk pretty much stapled it as the genre.
You can argue that it started with the Sex Pistols or The Ramones, but who cares. It emerged and we’re stuck with it. Subgenres eventually formed creating a vast expanse of different styles. Anarcho, crust, pop, garage, glam, hardcore, new wave, skate, pyschobilly, Oi!, etc.
I am a punk. The genre has influenced me greatly growing up, and still does to this day. I find some of the styles a little eccentric (below), and i don’t feel you need to dye your hair pink and green then cut a 2 foot tall trihawk and charge it everyday to make a statement. I understand flying your colors (I have a leather jacket and battle vest), but just listen to the music and support it’s ideologies. Its not what you look like that makes you a punk and thats what I think a lot of people misunderstand. I listen to some raw shit, been to crust shows and support the music. Thats what its about.
How long do you think it takes them to get ready? haha. I find it funny that punk branched off to be its own thing, have its own style, yada yada. To be the outcasts, the kids that wouldn’t conform, rebelling against society! But…
Brandy from SLC Punk says it the best: “Wouldn’t it be more of an act of rebellion if you didn’t spend so much time buying blue hair dye and going out to get punky clothes? It seems so petty. You want to be an individual, right? You look like you’re wearing a uniform. You look like a punk. That’s not rebellion…that’s fashion. Rebellion happens in the mind. You can’t create it…you just are that way.”
