Digital Media – Zak Atkin

The second task we are faced with this semester is to do a 7 minute pitch for an app that could potentially be carried through to level 3. Our starting point is to pick a catagory of our choice from the european youth award and research possible avenues that could build from an idea to a working product with the catagory in mind.

However there are two areas that interest me at the moment;

Smart Learning: education | e-skills | open science This category is about finding new, creative approaches to education and learning. Many high schools and universities report tremendous drop-out rates and a social education-gap remains reality in most countries. Smart Learning innovations may, for example, provide free-access training courses, foster ICT competence, create scientific understanding, support international knowledge exchange, or open up new capacities for scientific research. This also includes tools that boosting learners’ motivation to study, platforms for open-access education and other solutions for making scientific progress beneficial to all.

Connecting Cultures: arts | games | diversity This category is for all the unusual, crazy, digital projects that manifest a creative approach to contemporary culture. United in diversity has to be more than just a motto! Projects submitted to Connecting Cultures may combine programming, artistic and musical skills, find ways to preserve customs and traditions, or create awareness for mutual understanding and intercultural communication. The category also comprises infotainment apps, valuable games, interactive exhibitions, performances, animations, e-music and digital art – everything is possible!

The first area that interests me is “Smart Learning” this is based around eductaion, though it seems almost impractical to persue a method of providing free degree-level courses and create a sylabus that can be made widely avaliable there are a few ideas that spring to mind straight away, one idea that I had early on was to design an app that would have links to various tutorials. I based this idea on our current class enviroment, For example working with after effects there are times where I personally forget everything I just learned, sometimes within minutes of being taught how to do an effect or create something new. The main thing that I would try to impliment is a video archive with tutorials ranging from beginner to advanced classes. The downside of this idea is why create something like this when sites such as youtube and vimeo exist with a wide range of tutorials avaliable already?

The second idea that came from “Smart learning” was the idea of an network soley used for colaboration and networking. Essentially this would take the form of a forum and have projects that peple have made publically available to everyone on a global scale, for example someone from the UK, say an ‘Indie’ film maker needing a soundtrack composed, someone connected to the same forum in another part of the world say in mainland Europe or further such as Australlia etc shows an interest via an private message that could be linked to their social media accounts. THis could potentially serve three or more goals. First networking, secondly the colaboration of several people, thirdly  this gives the project that could have been far to difficult form one person a global audience with ideas different insights. THe main downside that immediately jumps out are the various language barriers. although translations are getting more accurate there are still occasions where syntax and local dialects can create a totally different meaning, aside from this there are issues regarding timezones and in some cases different laws that should be taken into consideration.

My final idea is to create an app to sign in and out of a work place more educational areas such as schools and universities. The idea itself would rely on users being able to sign into an area or if used in a university would be used to register for attendence purposes. This would record attendence faster than waiting to sign a register and could possibly improve the system already in place but there should be an extra point for motivation. For this I conld try to impliment a rewards system, the downside of course to this is ballancing fees and funding to make the rewards scheme work.

Projection mapping seems quite an interesting way of creating digital art or a even providing a medium to exploit for a similar purpose. The best way I could describe it is “A series of projections that are mapped to specific areas” or at least that is how I’d simplify it. Examples below can help illustrate the various applications for using this medium, however at present it does seem to be a method used more by artists and the various arts contributors.

 

 

 

HERE I NEED TO TALK ABOUT GOOD POINTS AND BAD POINTS

 

HOW COULD I USE THIS IN MY PROJECT?

 

We have also looked at augmented reality very breifly, I guess the best way I can explain it is to put something digital in a physical space. It still doesn’t seem widely availiable in commerical use, but there is the idea that it can be utilized to see what furnature would look like before buying it etc, however there is also other ways that this concept can be used; for example advertising and related media such as holograms from adverts or images on a dvd case. Something that we questioned was the actual real-lie applications of this technology other than seeing a sofa or shelving set built up before buying it. This is where as passing ideas we spoke breifly about how AR could be refined to suit almost any proffession, VR and AR seem to be getting closer in their relation to each other, with the rise of VR headsets such as Oculus or Project Morphius (Sony) the immersion of the user into a digital representation might be the next step.

Google Glass was a concept that would provide AR techniques to the users for everyday use, from this we had a breif talk about how that technology could be used for proffessions that provide complex knowledge of how somehthig works, such as a mechanic or a nurse/surgeon. Both of these proffessions could use this to have a digital layout of a subject, human body, plane electricals etc and this could potentially aid their job buy giving a map of sorts.

However with how amazing I think this technology is, I’m not sure how I could implement this into my work. One passing idea would be to try creating a virtual enviroment through markers with the aid of a headset. However I’m not sure where to even begin with this sort of concept.

Below are what I consider examples of “Good Design” when it comes to logos and branding. The thing these all have in common is that they are relatively two dimentional, similar shape layout and they all use basic colours (usually white and a colour) but this gives versitility to how the logos can be used outside of a paper version on a letterhead or a leaflet.

As mentioned both logos are flat, but they both also have no text to name the brand. Is it required? Well for sake of an argument “No” but that is most likely because we are used to seeing these logos in most areas. Especially in urban areas like large towns and cities, but more widely avaliable is seeing these logos in movies, advertising campaigns (TV and online) and so on.

When looking at these two logos they suggest that the company is well-known, but also modern. The Starbucks coffee logo has some emotion to it too, though the imagry is a little bizarre with the character’s legs(?) being in an odd posistion (sure there is theory or debate about it somewhere) However with the more human qualities to the subject it is possible that it can create a sens of happiness from buying this specific company’s product(s).

The second logo is for Beats headphones, I could say pretty much the same thing as for the starbucks logo however the imagery is different. Personally I think that the logo looks like half of a headphone or even a music note, straight away the connection to what the product is used for is made. Unlike the Starbucks logo the colour used is different (being red instead) therefore potentially giving a different meaning through connotations of colour and so on, in this case I’d argue that the red could symbolize passion rather than the usual danger, simply because someone who is passionate about enjoying music (or sound quality) are likely going to want this product to continue their passion.

Mentioned some logos I consider good, so now for some that are bad.

Below are two more logos by two large companies; IBM and Google (Specifically Google Chrome). First of all the IBM logo, is similar to the two “good” examples with basic colours, two dimentions, etc but personally I think it looks pretty bad, having the characters made up of several pieces makes little sense to me other than to make the viewer look and try to work out what they are looking at. Again it’s a versitile logo but it isn’t visually appealing, somehow looks too complicated.

Secondly there is an older logo (icon?) for Google Chrome. I don’t like this logo at all, sure it looks okay, it conforms to the various colours associated with google, but it is too complicated and the use of creating the illusion of three-dimentional objects in a two-dimentional plain is pretty unappealing. It really does bring the “Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.” quote to logo design. Now the problem with my argument is that compaines have used three-dimentional logos in the past as a trend, company x did it and sold well so company y followed conventions and so on. However with the push into perhaps post-modern design the current trend suggest that customers prefer more basic imagery rather than something complex, times change and so does the overall perspective of the target audience(s).

This week we were tasked with working in a group to create a logo talored to a brief.

The brief seems to be asking for branding to a “New domestic animal behaviour centre” this alone suggests that the company is new and therefore has no history. This could provide an opportunity to create something new, fun but still professional. The company target audience is predominately dog owners, though they mention lower down that they can works with cats it seems that dogs are what the company is after.

The branding:

Needs to be fun, versatile and fun whilst maintaining professionalism.

They are local, but aim to be national. However would prefer not to be tied to a singular location.

The company wishes to be associated with Animal training and behaviour.

The key themes that they wish to be associated with are Respectful, understanding, education and positive.

 

 

I came up with several ideas but they all looked too traditional in some way so I decided to try looking into geometric art. In the end I thought about creating something simple with few shape variations and decided to stick with basic shapes to create something I thought looked new and interesting.

This week we had a breif introduction to Adobe illustrator, having had some experience with it in the past I had originally disliked the program. However the more I use it or at least try to learn how to, the more I appreciate the program, it’s similar to photoshop. The usual go to program when it comes to editing and drawing on a computer but unlike photoshop, illustrator can create vector images that can be scaled potentially infinatly whilst retaining the shape and detail. With this in mind it would be a good idea to spend extra time trying to learn how to use this program more efficiently.