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Today’s Class

• Compare the Completed Experience Planner
• Discuss Assessment 1
• Homework for Assessment 1
• Feedback

Compare the Completed Experience Planner

Attached is our experience planner, that we completed in class based on the CentreLink experience: Experience Planner- filled in partly after class 04.

Just to clarify, the idea with this experience planner is to have a more detailed look at the actual experience of a customer or user. This will give you the ability to focus on fixing negative experiences and planning for a positive experience with a product or service.

Discuss Assessment 1

Assessment 1 requires of you to plan an interactive PDF for an event of your choice. Assessment 1 will not require for you to create this interactive PDF, you will just plan for it.

Interactive PDFs and apps are good ways to promote events. We will focus on the creation of an interactive PDF in this class. Events can be promoted with style in this format. It allows for the promotion of the event and sponsors. Links to websites, addresses, phone numbers, embedded videos, there are a lot of options to include hypermedia elements in a PDF.

Example of interactive PDFs: Adobe Magazine, Font Magazine, Know-It-All Guidebook to King West, Vektoria Magazine, Blanket Magazine Revolution Art Magazine, Revolution Art Issue 40,

Ideas for Events

In class we discussed ideas for events:

• Parties
• Film Festivals (MIFF, French Film Festival, German Film Festival, Italian Film Festival, …)
• Food Festivals (Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, Festivale, Tasting Australia, Great Barrier Feast, …)
• Music Festivals (Stereosonic, Summadayze, Big Day Out, Soundwave, …)
• Sport Events (Skateboard Event, Football World Cup 2014 in Brazil, Olympics, Melbourne Cup, …)
• Health Events
• Holiday Resorts (for tourists)
• Fashion Week
• Cultural Festival (Phil Fest)

Ideas for the Style, Look and Feel

To set yourself apart from the rest it is important to create work that is visually inspiring and in a style that appeals to the right target audience, but that is also within the spirit of time or contemporary. Be careful not to create the same old and to do something that you were inspired to by a software tutorial. The result would be most likely boring.

Look at contemporary design ideas and influences. Start your search in my links: Links to Inspire You (at the right side of this blog) include links to sites such as:

• Dzine Blog
• Mashable
• Computer Arts Magazine
• Digital Arts Online
• Communication Arts
• Design Envy

Each of these sites is filled with great inspirational designs! Use their Search tabs to access their databases.

Other ways to find inspirational designs and contemporary graphics

Look for the works of contemporary graphic artists and designers:

Jamie McKelvie

Jamie has a comic artist and illustrator. His works are interesting plays on figure/ground relationship (or positive and negative space).

If you look at the illustration below, her body is very abstract and basically just made up of a number of diagonal lines. Her shoulder and upper body are shown in shape, but towards the lower end of the shirt the lines are just left unfinished. I find this an interesting treatment and the illustration appeals.

The star in the top right is a cutout of the the diagonal lines, which are already very dynamic. The title has been highly stylised. The texture has an aged, scratched finish and the arrangement of the type is very interesting, it looks like display type used in a shop front.

Illustration: Jamie McKelvie – Suburban Glamour Comic Series

Illustration: Jamie McKelvie – Art Brut Record – Found at McKelvie’s Flickr account (click image)

Children’s Book Illustrations

There are many different styles of children’s book illustrations. One thing they all have in common is their target audience: children. That is what makes them so unique and often you can sense a desire in the illustrator to add a lot of story telling qualities and depth to the characters.

The interesting thing about children’s books as a source of inspiration is that you can search by designer or era.

You might be surprised that iconic graphic designer Saul Bass illustrated a children’s book. ‘Henri’s Walk to Paris’ was published in 1962 and if you look at the pages you will recognise the style of Bass. I strongly believe that children should be exposed to good graphic design ideas. I don’t mean the theory, but the children’s book should be inspiring. Below are some pages from ‘Henri’s Walk to Paris’.

From ‘Henri’s Walk to Paris’ 1962 – children’s book by Saul Bass Found at: Brainpickings.org

From ‘Henri’s Walk to Paris’ 1962 – children’s book by Saul Bass Found at: Brainpickings.org

The Street Art of Jef Aerosol

A Beautiful Piece by Aerosol found on his Facebook

Look at GUI Design Trends:

There is a clear move towards touch interfaces, due to tablets and other mobile trends. This can be seen in the Windows 8 Metro interface and latest trends in the Xbox 360 interface.

Google Search for Contemporary Graphics:

Google Search for Retro Futurism:

Search for specific events – example Stereosonic

Search for specific technique: Photomontage

Artform that became extremely popular in the early 20th Century. Particularly popular in German Expressionism and Dadaism. Click the images for links to the original images or sites:

Photomontage: Amir Ebrahim Photography

Massive Attack – The Essential Mix

Homework for Assessment 1

Please complete the tasks below for next class:

1. Pick an Event
2. Find 10+ images for a style/feel that you like for the interactive PDF
3. Write down events + locations for the event (relevant to your event)
   • eg: Skateboard Week
     • events
     • shops
     • cafes
     • parks
     • map

Feedback

Please leave your feedback in form of a comment. Your feedback and suggestions will help me to make this blog more user friendly. Thanks!