cantstopusingphotoshop:

Mapping Project -

Part 1, Reasearch.

Our second project for the semester was a mapping assignment. We had to select from 6 areas of design - Branding, Interactive media, Image making,  Publication design, Art direction, and Service design. After attending workshops and lectures to explore each of those areas, I decided that I found Branding the most interesting of the 6 subjects.

So for this project, I decided to start exploring how countries are branded; and what makes for a good country brand. I also researched into the general area of place branding; and looked at small counties, cities and metropolitan cities.

I researched brands of several countries by exploring their marketing strategies, websites, publications, logo, and conducting polls about people’s perceptions. I made my own categories for them -

1) Emotional brand (counties like France, Malaysia etc. which are based on culture and feelings)

2) Commercial brand (countries like Switzerland, Japan etc. which are branded on economy and trade) and

3) Tourism brand (countries like Peru, Brazil etc. which offer adventure and/or relaxing opportunities).

cantstopusingphotoshop:

Our first project of the new semester!

After coming back from the Christmas holidays we were eased (!) into our course by our tutors with the brief for a” 2 Day 1 Week Group project “. Each group had a specific question related to the design field, and we had to come up with an engaging presentation for it in the next couple of days. The questions ranged from investigations about design in the past, the current design debates and the future of graphic design as well as the designers.

Hampered by a VCT essay injury, our group trotted along to research on the question, “How has the past shaped graphic design today?”. Our initial idea was to show a timeline with all the important events that have shaped the design industry as we see it today. Along with a lot of books and internet articles, we found this really good visual presentation of the timeline done by the students of University of Minnesota.

History being a bit of a dry subject, we decided to add a bit of interactive element to our presentation as our audience was supposed to be composed of our fellow peers, and too much information on display would’ve just ended up boring them (and us!). We therefore came up with a game where you had to look at design examples from the past and guess which era they belonged to.

Design is dominated by trends and the current trend is the 2012 olympics. So we decided to take a look at how the olympic logos have evolved throughout history and ask our audience to guess which era they belonged to. While playing the game we asked them to consider the changing style in graphic design, branding aspect of the designs and the effect that technological developments has had on it.

The comments we got on our project were positive, the most common ones stating that the exhibits were extremely engaging and entertaining. We did get some very helpful constructive criticism from our tutors; especially regarding our presentation preparation and team planning, and I am hoping we will do much better in the future in that department.

I have also put up some photos of the other exhibits in the room which tried to answer questions like “why do we need a design process?”, “what are the leading current design debates?” etc. This was our first exhibition/presentation, and despite the very tight time constraints I enjoyed it.

(via ohyeahfriendsyeah)

cantstopusingphotoshop:

My photos from the Design Museum’s This is Design exhibition.