Learning Activity – Applying for Jobs – Week 30

Publish a résumé and covering email as if you were applying to work at a real company.

I am not finished with my resume. I still want to draw a vector portrait of my self in Ai and add icons to the «Contact» section and «Special Skills» section. I will do it when I’m done with MA08.

 

 

Learning Activity – Come Up With a Strategy – Week 28

1.  Set up a meeting with a business owner and ask him/her what he/she would want from a website. Also ask him/her what the business strategy is and how the website would fit into it. Then write a detailed document about this.

Charlotte Celius Bjørvik is a fine art artist from Norway. She creates beautiful watercolor paintings, detailed graphite drawings of animals and people, fashion illustrations and surrealistic ink drawings. She needs a website that shows her work in a portfolio, describes her and her work, has a option to buy artwork and is connected to her social media accounts. She also wants to have the opportunity to upload work her self.

1. Charlotte wishes the design to be in light color shades, preferably white. This will match her artwork better and emphasizes the colors in the paintings. She wants a clean design with a lot of free space.
2. Her portfolio needs to be divided into categories because of the various artwork. She doesn’t want small thumbnail sizes, but a scroll down page for every category with a three images per row and the name of the artwork beneath.
3. She wants a separate page with bio, her artistic visions and a list of her exhibitions. Almost like a resume.
4. A row with social media button in the header so they always are at the same place and accessible on every page.

 

 

2.  Use the information from this document and create a website architecture.

 

Website architecture

 

Webdesign for screens over 1024px 

 

Design for mobile screens

 

 

3.  Now let’s focus on the web design strategy. Your document should justify all the major decisions you make – from the domain registration, hosting, design and target audience through to what you decide in terms of programming.

She is one of ten thousand of artists that tries her best to be visible in social media. Its a brutal and extremely competitive market that is based on the ability to self promote and being accessible. Its common for every artists, hobby based and professionals, to have their own website and a online store. Its my job to design a website that makes her look professional and more desirable then the other artists. The domain will be her name because that is what her followers know her by. I have chosen one.com as hosting service because they have fair price, backup and enough space to store all her images included in the price. They also provide hacking security and other useful extras for a fair additional price. I have talked with her about the importance of including her website address in everything she does. It should be in the bio of her social media accounts, it should be included in her emails and it should be included in the text of everything she posts in social media. I also recommended her to print up business cards with the website address in focus.

I will set up the design in WordPress and design it as a WordPress theme because that gives her the ability to manage her own site and it’s easier to design as a responsive site. The biggest amount of her followers uses a phone sized screen and therefore it has to be adjustable.

The color palette will be very light, white with light shades of min green. It gives the feeling of air, early morning breeze and freedom. Its a color palette that don’t interfere with the artwork and is pleasant to look at for most people.

The header will be of a larger size and thats where she will display her proudest artwork. The header will serve as a teaser for the portfolio, so the image will change for every page. The main background will be in the whitest shade. The header will have next color, the lighter grey. Links and menu will be in green colors as well as titles and names of the artwork.

Learning Activity – Creating A Brief – Week 27

I want you to take on a client. I then need you to have a meeting with your client and create a very detailed brief. This brief should contain all the information that will be needed to achieve the client’s requirements.

 

Client brief

Luxdesign

The client is Luxdesign, a two-person company based in Drammen. They provide emergency lights and leading lights to other companies. The products are designed and produced by Luxdesign.

▪ What is the client’s service/product?

Luxdesign design and produce emergency lights and leading lights. They sell them to other companies which install them at public places and buildings.

 

▪ What are their requirements?

Their current website is out of date, both design and content. They want to keep the sites functions as they are, but it has to be made easier to get the information and easier to update. As the site’s main purpose is to provide information to current costumers it’s crucial to update the content and come up with a more use friendly website. Their target group is handymen from 30-60 years old and entrepreneurs in the same age group. Internet and website browsing isn’t necessary their greatest skill.

 

▪ What is the website’s goal?

The client wants to attract new customers but the main goal is to provide information. They use the website to show what kind of products they offer in addition to pdf’s with installment instructions and pdf’s with all the technical aspects of the different products.

 

▪ How are you going to achieve this goal?

I will use the current design as a basic foundation, but I will simplify the design drastically. I will change the navigation by creating logical submenus and remove a lot of unnecessary menu items. I will remove old products and update with new content.

The design will be simple and effective. The goal is for the visitor to use less then 3 seconds to navigate their way to the information they came for. To achieve that I will stick to the traditional website construction and remove unnecessary design.

▪ Build the website architecture 

Current website

Quick Photoshop Mockup

▪ What is the design style that will be required?

There isn’t a specific style. They wish to keep their current «look». It’s a bit 90’s-ish now so they want their business style to be more up to date. It will still be as clean and simple, and they want to keep the blue color palette.

 

▪ What are your suggestions for marketing the site?

As they doesn’t want their website to «sell» products and attract new business, I suggest that the website is at the least search engine friendly. If they have the budget for it I would suggest to pay in order to get on top of the search engine lists. They would benefit greatly if the website came up as a top search when someone search for emergency lights and similar.

These two are men at 50 and 60 years old. They are not interested in handling social media and blogs. What they need is a tailored fit package with Google’s business solutions and maybe a pre designed ad with a paid placement on Facebook or Instagram. They need a solution handled by a marketer which they just can pay for without having to anything else. As I understand they have enough customers as it is and really just want a website they can use as an information tool.

Learning Activity – Creating an Animation in After Effects – Week 25

1.  Work through the sunrise example step-by-step. 

2.  Now you need to come up with a unique animation concept of your own. Create a storyboard for this concept. 

3.  The next step is to create the file and folder structure. Please take a screenshot of your folder structure and hand it in along with your project. 

 

 

4.  Create your animation in After Effects. 

I didn’t follow the storyboard as neatly as I should because I decided that I wanted to play with adjustment layers instead. Anywhos, here’s my version. I could had added much more effects to this but I couldn’t spend more time on the assignment. I still have a lot more to do with the mandatory assignment.

Learning Activity – Applying Basic Animation Principles – Week 24

Create a character. This character can be a letter, a person, an animal or any type of illustration, use your imagination. This character will play the main role in your animation. Take this character and draw it in five different exaggerated poses. In each of these poses the character has to express some kind of emotion (like love, anger, dislike, distaste, happiness and so on). Keep the animation principles in mind when you draw your character.

This is my blob character:

Learning Activity – Visualize Your Ideas – Week 23

I would like you to create a mood board and storyboard using a word and its meaning as the concept.  For example, you could use the word “prop”. You could then use the “r” to prop up the “p” that keeps falling over. That’s just to give you an idea, be creative and use a word and concept of your own.

I chose the word speed and this is the moodboard I created for the word.

Learning Activity – Playing With Ideas – Week 22

If the idea is at the heart of everything, then I would like you to think of a movie that you love. Then look at its current title sequence and come up with a new one.  Sketch up the rough idea in the form of a storyboard. Your storyboard needs to be at 30 frames and should be for at least 1minute of motion design

I chose to make a new title sequence for «The Jungle Book». I went a bit overboard with the coloring and spent a bit to much time with this assignment, but I just had to much fun.

Learning Activity – Shooting in Low-Light Conditions – week 21

1. Describe the steps that you will take to ensure that you take a high quality photograph in low light conditions. Refer to exposure, lenses, tripods, colour temperature, flash and ISO.

It depends a bit of how dark the conditions are, but if it’s at night I would check out the location during daylight to plan my shots and to make sure it’s safe for me to be there by night. Maybe there’s slippery rocks that I have to look out for or places I could fall from.

There’s three important things to plan for to achieve a high quality picture in every situation and that is aperture, shutter speed and ISO.

• Tripod: Firstly I would bring with me a tripod. When there’s low light conditions I have to use a slower/longer shutter speed. Therefore my camera have to be steady during the shot and thats why I want to use a tripod.

• Shutter speed: I want more light into the camera to take a more detailed shot and that’s why I want a slower shutter speed. A consequense of a longer shutter speed is a bigger chance of overexposer light sources. For instance streetlights in a dark street. To fix this I can underexpose by using ISO sensitivity.

• Whitebalance: Another issue that often occurs in night shots is the yellow color temperature. Because of the long shutter speed a lot of light comes in and leaves a yellow light. To avoid that I would use the right whitebalance setting and also make sure that I shoot in RAW format so I can correct the color in post production.

• Aperture: Another thing to consider is aperture. Do I want depth in the shot? A high aperture value (f16-f22) brings in less light because of the smaller opening. A small aperture value (f1,8-f5,6) brings in more light because of a larger opening. With a larger opening the object will come more in focus and blurs away both background and foreground. With a smaller opening everything will be in focus. In other words a larger opening does make it easier to take a shot in low light conditions and is prefered. If I need a total control of aperture I would set my camera at A (aperture priority) This will affect the shutter speed because it will be automated.

• Flash: Many are tempted to use flash to light up the object in the darkness, but this creates harsh shadows, wrong colors and often leaves the background in darkness. I would play around with shutter speed and ISO settings to get the right amount of light to bring out the details I want in my picture.

• ISO: The ISO setting will need to be higher then in daylight conditions if you want details. Thats because a higher ISO makes the camera more sensitive to light. Theres always a battle because the higher ISO values the more noise it will bring to the shot.  I would’nt go higher the ISO 800 without a better lens. But with a higher ISO value I can use a faster shutter speed and higher aperture value.

• Lenses: A good choice would be to use a faster lense because that means that I can use a faster shutter speed and therefore avoid a fewer problems along the way. Also a wide angle lense is a good choice because it has a much shorter focal lenght then an regular lense. A short focal lenght means that the light gathers faster and that makes it easier in low light conditions. With a wide angle lense I can shorten the shutter speed and get sharp focused shots without using a to high ISO value.

In the end this all boils down to creative choices made depending of what kind of shot I want to take.

2. Take four low-light photographs:

One should be a sharp photograph that focuses on a static object, like a building or a statue.

 

The second photograph should showcase moving objects, like cars or running water: This is taken of a waterfall that is lit up by really blue light. You can see the contrast of the piece of wood in the upper right corner.

 

The second photograph should showcase moving objects, like cars or running water.

 

 

For the third photograph, take a moody portrait of a friend and use high ISO settings to your advantage.

Learning Activity – Mastering the Art of Product Photography – Week 20

Make your own DIY light tent. Take product photographs of the following objects:

• Something fluffy, like a stuffed animal
• Something shiny, like a knife and fork
• Something hard, like a book or a mug
• A liquid, like a glass of wine

Draw a diagram of your lighting scenario for each of the above photographs and submit it along with the photographs. Edit your photographs with the software of your choice. Write an accompanying paragraph for each of your photographs and explain what you did during the editing process.

Edited in Bridge Camera Raw:

• Temperature: -4
• Color: +8
• Exposure: +0,65
• Highlight: +25
  • White: +7

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited in Bridge Camera Raw:

• Temperature: -6
• Color: +8
• Exposure: +0,30
• Contrast: +11
• Highlight: +25
  • Shadows: +15

 

 

 

 

 

Edited in Bridge Camera Raw:

• Temperature: -4
• Color: +8
• Exposure: +0,60
• Contrast: -2
• White: +13

 

 

 

 

 

Edited in Bridge Camera Raw:

• Temperature: -8
• Color: -7
• Exposure: +0,65
• Highlight: +25
  • White: +23

 

Learning Activity – Applying Philosophy to Design- Week 19

Design a book cover for a thriller book called “The Fall of Imagination” by Sam Wan. This book does not exist and is open to your interpretation as to the subject matter.

• It must be designed by clearly drawing inspiration from a previous design style.
• The size of the cover must be A5 and it should include a front, spine and back.
• The cover must contain a vector illustration that forms the basis of the design.
• The cover must contain the title and the name of the author.

 

deloppgave_bokomslag