OUGD405 first brief thoughts and first day crit

Today we began 405 studio brief one by watching a clip from 2001 of an interactive art installation/concert by Golan Levin. The show was originally hosted at an international electronica festival and worked on the basis of the audience registering their phones previously and taking their seats in the theatre. Phones could then be remotely loaded with specific ringtones and set off, up to 60 at a time, creating a cacophony of digital sound that could play, abstract and unique tunes as intended. When combined with a light show the effects were an extraordinary multi sensory experience, the likes of which had never been seen before on such a scale and in a highly resourceful manner. I found the video very inspiring and can certainly see the abundance of visual potential for the new brief which is essentially to design posters that represent the phenomenon. We were then thrown in at the deep end, as we often are, and set with the task of creating 3 posters by 3 for a silent crit. As I always I struggled with the tight time frame and produced 3 fairly incomplete posters. I feel this was largely because of the lack of research time but nonetheless my outcomes were not without merit and there is certainly an interesting foundation for me to build upon over the next couple of days.

I spent the first half of the day on this cell phone design which was my initial thought on how best to represent a series of 10 random phone numbers. Each number is represented by a stroke width inside a set grid circle giving the poster good order and structure whilst I believe giving an idea of radiance of sound. The abstract forms created were pleasing and I attempted to add a quick original typeface, although this admittedly needs a lot of refining. Future explorations would be with colour, analogue manipulation and possibly even some kind of 3D interpretation in which the circles are raised. On subsequent initial research however, I have discovered that the idea of representing the different notes or numbers with different size and colour circles is an already fairly frequently explored idea, making the need for abstraction and use of none obvious techniques even more important for development. 

This design was inspired by the actual text box on an iPhone and how that could be expanded on and incorporated into a colourful idea that signifies both quantity of numbers and frequency of notes or chord progression. The product is a bit looser conceptually than the first design although still has the potential to be visually powerful. I should have removed the highlight options from the text box although the idea to highlight the text for added impact was a bit of an after thought anyway. The colours also need to be better thought out and hold some relevance, possibly moving through shades of the same hue and the spacing of the dots is quite inconsistent due to being rushed. However there is definitely an explorable concept within this design and I enjoy the interaction between the digital screen shot and simplistic dots. There is also a question of when and who am I designing for as the art installation was performed in 2001 a long time before iPhones so do I make it time specific or not? I think some careful research will help me out.
                                                                           


This design was done very quickly and not completed as part of an attempt to step away from illustrator and cut up some numbers to add an extra dimension to the ideas. The ideas was to have 11 digits like a phone number but reformed with one half of another number. The concept is just playing on the fact that theres an unpredictability and surreal nature to the original art. The typeface is then a carefully selected, rounded san serif that compliments the numbers well. The 2D shadow on the numbers was the start of what was going to be a number or overlaid layers, all in slight variations of hue to simulate the ranging nature of dialtones and results within the project . The concept could definitely be explored further and I think I should continue with the tactile experimentation more. 

In terms of feedback from the silent crit we followed a different format today which created a number of interesting but mainly not so interesting questions about stylistic choices. A lot of the comments understandably circulated around the incomplete nature of the designs and things like how the rest of the text will fit and what it might look like with colour elements are areas that I look to develop. People suggested that as a development I don't use black and white which is a good idea. Another idea was to limit myself to using just type which would be a good development. There was also some confusion about why I highlighted the text in the second poster which was of course a stylistic choice but admittedly it wasn't executed very well. These comments give me a lot to work on, with the first aim to refine and finish these three posters before further development and extra ideas.