it's december now: studio

studio:
project 2: dido
In groups of 3, we created fictional businesses and then were each assigned an aspect of design to be responsible for in the creation of this business. My group created Dido. Our mission statement is: "our company uses state of the art technology that provides our urban retail shoppers with a more efficient and stress free way to shop by tailoring the perfect fit and offering style advice." Dido is our flagship store in NYC, and it has scanning technology that scans each customer and records their measurements onto a card. The customer can then use the scanning technology to digitally try on clothes and see how they look on them, the way others would. Then when they choose to purchase an item, a unique pattern is made for them based on their measurements, and the clothing is individually made, so as to give each customer the perfect fit. The technology also offers style advice for things such as colors, styles, or accessories that may look good on a person based on their body shape, skin tone, or other factors. The items bought are made and shipped to the customer within two days. The customer keeps their scanning card and can use it again in the store, or at home on the Dido website to order more custom fit clothing without having to come back to NYC. We spent almost 2 months researching and refining our company.
I was in charge of branding design for Dido. First I chose the color scheme we would all use in our designs. I also created the logo. Then I created the environmental design, both outside and inside (we used the SAS building on campus as the location of dido). And then I designed the scanning cards to be used with the scanning booth. Throughout doing all this, I also created a photographic brand. The photographs of all the models were from a photo shoot I did. The image brand is very geometric which hints to the aspect of custom pattern making and fabric. Our audience is 20-something urban women.




Back of store:

Front of store:

Inside of store:


There are 12 different versions of the scanning card for the customer to choose from, hinting back at our notion of customization and individualization. The measurements and purchase information is stored in the RFID tag.


The final product has rounded edges as seen here. It is the same size as a credit card so it can easily be carried in a wallet.

For the final product, we turned in a 50 page 11x17 book containing all of our research, answers to questions, company audit, and final designs in paper and digital form. This is the table of contents from our book. This book and its design is reminiscent of a book a real design studio would pitch to a company.

CSS With Mr. Peterson

To learn some CSS in Typography class, we were to edit the HTML in our existing blogs and experiment. I started out by just playing around with colors, and I stuck with this gray/blue/white/purple color scheme. Then I played around with font stacks; my sans serif stack leads with Helvetica (because I assume most computers have it, and I don't like to think of different users seeing different fonts), and my serif stack leads off with Rockwell (which I suppose a lot of PCs wouldn't have).
The first goal I had was to add an image of me in place of the blog title box. So I deleted all the box lines (header wrappers). Then I added my image in "edit header" under the layout section. I then decided that I wanted to make my blog title in Archer Italics, but I couldn't it to work, and also most people (besides designers) probably don't have Archer on their computers. So I pulled my image into photoshop and typed the blog title on it and saved it as a JPEG. Then pasted that into the header, and now everyone can see Archer Italic! The only downside is, I had to replace the actual blog title to "." because it was layering the blog title on top of the image, so I'm not sure if that really works.
My next goal was to make the blog archive fixed to the right side of the screen so it would follow you when you scrolled, and you could go to another month without having to scroll all the way back up the page. To do this, I made the "outer wrapper" a fixed position, and messed around with the percentages of top, bottom, right, and left, before I had it where I wanted it. I also deleted the picture from my profile because I didn't like the way it looked. I also shortened my About Me section, to be more simplistic.
The next thing I wanted to do was make the Blogger navigation bar at the top disappear. I did this by finding the secret hidden nav-bar HTML, and then pasting a transparency HTML code before it, and set the transparency to 0. I thought this looked nice, but I then realized I need that nav-bar to get to my account to make new posts, edit, etc. So I took the transparency up to 10, making it just barely visible.
I also made the links in the blog archive turn white when your cursor rolls over them, and the title of each blog entry turns black when you roll over it.
The last change I made was to make the background image an image of wood. At first I had just a medium gray background, but I wanted to add an image. So I searched my hard drive for suitable images and found this wood image I had downloaded at some point in my life. I thought the color pallet suited the blog very well, and it brightened up the screen from the gray I had before. It also kind of makes it feel like a design studio!

Totoro!

I cleaned up a pencil drawing of Totoro I did this summer to give to my sister for her birthday.

Computers Are Microwaves

Typography
Project 1B:
After we completed our typeface design, we had to choose another students typeface and design something using their typeface. I chose Meghan Obrien's, called Spooked.

I thought Meghan's typeface was just dying to be hand drawn, and I came up with the idea of technology vs. hand made, making the point that there are some aspects to hand drawn designs that just cant be reproduced with a computer. So I found this wonderful quote and went with it! I hand drew the type (tracing over a printed out version, so I could get the proportions perfect since Meghan had spent so long designing them). I decided to go with a underwater theme because Meghan's typeface was so organic, and also I just love deep sea creatures. Around the quote I hand drew deep sea creatures and then scanned my drawing into the computer and placed a scanned in image of ocean water I found in an old book from the library behind the drawing. After printing out the design, I thinly traced each letter in black ink to give it another hand drawn effect, and to make the letters pop.




And here are just a couple "glam shots" of my typeface.

First-ies of Junior Year

Typography
Project 1: Display Face
For our first typography project, I had to revisit my typeface I designed last semester and revise it to make it better, and then transfer it into Typetool, which makes the typeface an actual font you can type with. I revised my typeface a lot. I can't believe some of the things I didnt do when designing it the first time around, it is now ten times better. I was also lucky I had designed a typeface based off the square because it made transferring it into Typetool a lot easier. My side bearings for all the letters were the same, which saved me hours of work.

This is my work document in Illustrator. It has all the variations of letters I did, as well as the letters put together to form words to make sure they work together well.

And this is my final typeface, including numbers and 12 additional characters. It is named Valor because originally the face was based on my self-defense class, which is why the design is so bold, and sturdy. Valor is the characteristic of being able to face danger without fear, which is what my self-defense class (and this typeface) is all about.
...and maybe a little about darth vader.


Studio
Project 1: Experience of Search
I was assigned to a group, and we were assigned the experience of searching. We then had to individually choose an experience we had with searching for something and design something to reflect that experience. For weeks I had been hearing about health care reform, and wanted to have an opinion on it because it seemed very important, but was just uninformed. So I chose the search for an opinion on health care reform. And I went through that process, researching and documenting everything. In the end, I came up with this concept map to show my experience.
I would post the PDF so you could read it, but blogspot doesnt read PDFs. It has a lot of good information on it though. My main focus was separating facts from myths. Hopefully reform will start to happen soon!


Imaging
Project 1:
We are currently learning Flash, so I don't really have anything to post for Imaging right now.