Map development: Printed & Mounted

After researching into material which would work with the map I had designed on Illustrator I decided to print the map onto a semi gloss paper because of its shine and professional looking finish. It also isn't too thick so it will be a lot easier for people to stick the pins in the various places of the map when they are answering their questions. I am also happy with the complete finish of the map and how it looks on the page, the colour scheme works well and the different shades of blue compliment each other and bounce of the white background to create a higher contrast and make my map really pop from the page. I am also happy with the size of the font and how it appears in person, although some of the fonts are small I believe it adds to the fun element of finding the country you want. After I printed the map I bought some foam board. I decided to go with this material because of how great it reacted to the pins being stuck in it as I tested it before buying. The foam holds the pins well and straight creating for a better finish. I mounted the map on the foam board using double sided tape, as I felt using spray mount may damage the map which would be a disaster. Overall I am happy with the outcome of the map piece, now I need to work on developing the type which will go next to this on the wall explaining the rules and also the questions that the consumer will be asked. 

Sara's Infographic

TakePart: Participant Media - Waiting For 'Superman' - Infographic from Jr.canest on Vimeo.

The animation I have gathered above was shown as an example in our last lesson so that we could get a feel for what we would be doing in this particular workshop. The animation demonstrates how information can be conveyed to an audience by using simple techniques and graphic language which looks complex and beautiful. Even though the animation is promoting a more serious matter the way it is displayed makes it look nonchalant and smooth. In our last After effects workshop we were asked to look at other infographics that we found interesting to find out what type and stye of infographics we liked the most. After looking at some infographic styles I fell onto the conclusion that I like simple minimalist looking infographics which looked crisp, smooth and professional. Below are the examples of the infographics I chose to inspire me in this particular workshop. 

Here are the examples of the infographics I have chosen to inspire me. I love the minimalist style which makes the infographics look clean and professional, the colour schemes are very simple and work well together; the use of black and white may be a very straight forward scheme but in my opinion it adds to the design. The fact that there is a clear background makes the infographics stand out a lot more and doesn't take away from the information being displayed. I have also gathered some information and stats which I can use in this style of infographic. 

We were asked to produce some stats and figures that follow a short story or fairy tale. I created 3 documents in all, a title page, stats page and a wipe which would create a transition between the two other scenes. I used stats and figures and also added some info graphical objects such as a small pie chart and a bar chart which I decided I wanted to animate. Once we had made our simple scenes we moved onto After effects where we began to animate our scenes.

The Goldilox statistics from Josh Juhasz on Vimeo.

We use simple techniques and animations to create this piece such as the position tool, rotate tool and so on. We created a main comp which we rendered from and 3 others which were the files we edited. I used typographic styles to display my information as I felt this was the strongest way I could present the information I had. I want to work back into this as I am not completely happy with the timing of each keyframe. Having said that I am happy with the outcome overall and the effect that I have managed to achieve from this workshop.


Animating with numbers in this tutorial has helped me in my collide animation project, I felt more confident animating statistics and facts after this workshop and has allowed me to create a more professional animation in a recent project.

Map development (Detailing)

I detailed the map to the best of my ability by trying different techniques of shading and colour to make the map look interesting and but still successful and not as harsh on the eye. After using the red shading to begin with I decided that this was to harsh and it didn't sit right with everything else. I therefore tried tonal blue shades and this worked a lot better. I added typography and more countries into certain continents to give people a wider choice when they answer the questions given to them; I added little fun pieces of information which brought the whole piece together and made it more fun to look at as well as more fun to make. 

Map concept development/experimentation

Here are the development stages of the map so far, I started by creating the outline of the map before moving into detailing the map a little more. I had 2 concepts for the map to begin with, one of them was to use typography to make people more aware of precise places of countries when they answer their questions. The other one was using flags and colours to decipher which country was which. Eventually I went with the typography idea and used some colour to try and make it look a little more interesting than before. 

Alisons lecture: Donald Judd

Donald Judd

Born: June 1928 

Died: February 1994

"Donald Judd's Untitled, 1989 (Bernstein 89-24) made its debut at Crystal Bridges, and it will undoubtedly raise some questions. What could have prompted the creation of such a startlingly minimal work of art? At 15 feet tall, the sculpture dominates its space, and yet yields little of its secrets. There is no evidence of the hand of the artist, no reference to anything represented, no expressivity to be perceived."

I feel that this work of art is very minimal in every sense. There is no explanation to what the work of art actually is, as consumers the only thing that we get from this piece of art is that it has a sense of incredible depth and colour. Judd calls these pieces of art "Specific objects" rather than sculptures, installations or works of art. They were called specific because the artist carefully occupied it's shape, size and material. They were named as objects because they were "Fabricated" rather than sculptured like a work of art or sculpture would be. 

Nicks 3d type

This is the type I created, I looked at hand drawn typography for inspiration and tried to make 

my type looking fluent and welcoming, I felt that the type could do with a bit more work to

make it more personal to me and more meaningful. Nether the less I took this into todays lesson and

cut it out to create a stencil in which I could put my coffee. 

This is what resulted of the first tests, as you can see the type isn't how I would like it, it's a little too bold and I was going for more a fluent look to my type. This is because of the coffee being not ground entirely, it was very difficult to separate the coffee grains because of there different sizes and shapes but it did however offer a nice texture to my type which I liked. I decided to make the most out of the situation and the coffee I had left to try something else.

I tried a different approach in this idea. I used the coffee as sort of a background and worked into it using a pencil, this again wasn't easy as the grains of coffee would move every time I tried to make a line, Again I liked the effect but I feel it would work a lot better with ground coffee, I can play with the result more and make it more precise and professional. 

Cinema 4D tutorial: Creating a logo from Illustrator

What did we do? In todays workshop we looked at how to set up scenes in Cinema 4D which were imported from an Illustrator 8 file we created earlier. We opened Illustrator and made sure the centre point was in the middle of the page, this ensured that our files could work in Z space. I chose to create a logo using simple geometric shapes.

We made the basic logo in Illustrator, it didn't really matter what it looked like. We used the ruler guides and made them snap to the centre so that the object we were working with would now work in Z space. We used simple shapes and the pathfinder tool to create this logo to create one solid shape. We then saved the file ensuring that it was saved as an Illustrator 8 file and it worked with cinema 4D. 

Before we even opened our file in Cinema 4D we had to ensure that the render settings were correct, this made sure our file imported correctly, we changed the output settings and the save settings and once we had done this we could open our filled begin to work on it. 

We created a border around our page to make sure we didn't go over the edges, this was helpful because we were safe to make things and helped us have a peace of mind when making our logo.

We imported the logo using File > Merge

We used the extrude tool under subdivision surface and played our logo on top of the extrude option in our layers panel, this created this effect and gave us our basic 3D object. On our extrude option we could change the caps and fillet caps to gave the edges a bit more of a lightness and made them not as sharp and basically look more attractive. 

We used the material tool bars to make the colours for our background and floor.

We used a camera and the lighting settings to make the composition look at how we wanted to render the final design. At first I chose this composition because of its simplicity and effectiveness. 

We added the shadows and highlights using the various settings which gave our design a more atmospheric look like it was meant to be there rather than just floating in mid-air. I was happy with the colours and the composition and felt that it was time to render our my artwork.

Inspiration: Installation art

Installations is something that I am very interested in, I want to make something people can interact with and influence. This type of design makes me happy and I always like to see it being used on a big and creative scale. I like the idea of using a physical design as an installation and using a camera to film the process of people influencing the design this would create both final pieces and would look great shown together some how. 

Inspiration: Marc Hagen-Guirey

Marc Hagen-Guirey

Marc Hagan-Guirey is an artist based in London who decided to leave his original post as Head of Design for a Soho based advertising agency to concentrate on a more personal project called Horrorgami. His passion is for anything paper and has been successful is creating advertisements using his own methods of paper. He has also set up his own website”Paper Dandy” in which he puts all of his commercial work. He has made designs for companies such as Samsung and the BBC. Looking at the work on his website has  opened my eyes wider to the possibilities of using paper. The physical and delicate attributes that follow the material is what makes it so beautiful; it can be used for almost anything. I would like to take inspiration from the detailing and sense of presence that his work always seems to offer, the lighting really helps his designs pop and look interesting and in some cases hypnotic. My eyes are drawn to his work and the style of which he creates his paper installations, this is something I would love to pursue in this brief!