Visual Techniques

Spode Christmas Tree Scalloped Edge Dish 

Symmetry

Balance

Predictability

Unity

Regularity

Singularity

Franciscan China Indian Summer Christmas Plate

Asymmetry

Irregularity

Fragmentation

Activeness

Flatness

Episodicity

I chose these plates for their surface design. Surface designers are given the shape of a plate that is to be designed on. They know that the plate is going to be sold during a particular season or holiday. They use techniques to produce a design that is going to fit with that particular time of year. We interpret that these plates are for Christmas and fall, primarily because of the colors and symbols used. Other visual techniques also add to the feel of the plates as well.

The Christmas plate incorporates symmetry and balance in what I find to be a boring design. It is very predictable for the season it is made for. The theme is very singular. This plate could not be used for any other time of year other than Christmas, otherwise it would look out of place. The Indian Summer plate uses asymmetry, producing an attractive design. The dead leaves are fragmented on one side of the plate, making them look like they are falling and collecting in one spot. The leaves are illustrated with a flatness making them look unrealistic. It would be more acceptable to use all year round than it would the Christmas plate, but it would work much better in Autumn or Fall.

References:

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http://www.iaaf-treasures.com/index.php/cPath/79?osCsid=50ebb0de06c43d5f94ea6362ff02e1ea

http://www.replacements.com/webquote/FN_INS.htm

Contrast

I chose product design and surface design for the contrast assignment. The first two example are what I think utilize contrast successfully. The third does not.

Owl Mugs

These Owl Mugs sold by VivaTerra display a few different concepts of contrast. There is tonal contrast in the owl’s feathers. The white and grey tonal value creates a visually appealing mug. This also makes them a little more noticeable from across the room. The owl figures also display contrast in scale. An actual owl would be much larger than these, unless they were baby owls. This small size, whether seen as baby owls, or just scaled down adult owls, give the product an adorable appeal. The juxtaposition of these owls is also important. Mugs are usually a typical size and shape. Seeing these in a kitchen setting makes them stick out among the usual items.

Book Shelf

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This Spoonya Industrial Bookshelf also displays a number of contrast concepts.  There is color contrast between the books and the dark foam inserts. This creates a somewhat visually appealing bookshelf, turning it into a geometric painting. The juxtaposition of the books also adds to the design uniqueness. Placing the books perpendicular to one another in a shelf this unique might be appealing to some people.

Birch Tree Pattern

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This textile is a designed after the bark on a birch tree. The contrast elements it employs don’t work particularly well, at least in my opinion. The contrast in color and tone are supposed to appear realistic. The similarity in color is a good match to that of real birch bark. The dark tones do not provide enough contrast though. The design feels flat with little depth. The juxtaposition of this fabric does not do it for me either. Taking the pattern of a birch tree out of nature and putting it in a domestic or unnatural setting isn’t appealing. The fabric might be good for a camouflage of some kind.

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Owl Mugs:

http://www.vivaterra.com/owl-mugs.html

Book Shelf:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/85568120/spoonya-industrial-bookshelf-wall

Birch pattern:

http://seastrands.wordpress.com/2007/04/02/on-ugly-fabrics/

Movement & Motion

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I chose option 2 for the motion blog.

The first example of navigation I chose is cell phone user interface. In particular the iPhone interface. Designing an interface for a Smartphone with smooth transitions and an unambiguous layout must be very challenging. Of course the basic layout and interactive features are just updated now, but the first design must have been time consuming, challenging and fun.

For the design to be successful, it had to be user friendly. When you start to navigate a iPhone, you must first unlock it. The locked screen is simple. The time is displayed with the phones background visible. The words slide to unlock are written at the bottom of the screen. The words light up from left to right in the direction you are supposed to slide. Also, the button you slide has an arrow pointing in the direction you need to slide it. This implied motion helps the user understand what they have to do to get the device unlocked. This is a unique way of overcoming the challenge of showing the user how to access their phone.

Once inside the phone, the user can easily find their way around. The designers have overcome the challenge of navigation through touch. The phones apps are laid out on the home screen. Moving you finger from left to right switches between the different pages of apps. Similar apps can be placed into folders and named accordingly. The folder is in the shape of a square. The apps are visible inside the square (tiny pictures of the different apps side by side). To go into a folder, the user simply has to touch it. The contents are then enlarged so the user can easily touch on them to access the app.

Finding a way to allow the user to delete or move the apps must have been a challenge for the designers. How would you know that the apps are ready to be deleted? Should there be a delete button? This problem was solved in a unique way. To change the location of any folder, or to delete an app, the user must hold down on any selected folder or app. After one second, all the folder and apps begin to shake. This unique motion only happens in this setting and it notifies the user they have transitioned from into the editing mode. The apps can be discarded or moved around in basically any way.

(Folders here are in edit mode)

The phone has a finder option that allows the user to locate anything within the phone. This is useful when the phone is cluttered with apps and information. Keywords are typed into the finder field and anything with that word pops up.

Starting from scratch must have been challenging for the design team. Integrating aesthetics with easy and proper function on a new technology must have been time consuming. Researching what works and what doesn’t work must have been time consuming as well. Prototyping a groundbreaking concept like a Smartphone would have been a fun and challenging experience.

The second example of navigation I chose is Adobe software programs. Illustrator for example, has a lot of tools the user can choose form. Finding these tool can very challenging as well. The programmers have done a decent job of laying everything out, which makes the user experience smooth.

When you open a blank document, you are immediately shown your document setup options. You can get started setting up various specs of the document like size, bleeds, margins, etc. Clicking OK moves you directly to the workspace. 

 

The bar on the top shows you all that you are in illustrator, and lays out the options you have for editing. The tools are also laid out on the left, and additional tool pallets are located on the right. You can move these around freely to position them just how you want them. The options on the top bar expand to reveal even more editing options. It is fairly easy to locate tools within the software. If you can’t find something, you can type what you are looking for in the search field located in the top right section of the software.

The layout for Adobe software is similar from program to program. Keeping this similarity makes it easy to learn programs. A challenge the programmers must have faced is categorizing all the options and tools you have for editing. The drop down menus can get overwhelming. By creating drop down menus that are categorized, the programmer have made the adobe suite relatively user friendly. It is likely that more tools will be added to future programs. Efficiently categorizing the tools could become a problem for the adobe team.

Dimension/Depth/Space/Scale

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Practically every product designer uses Computer Aided Design or CAD software in the development process. It helps visualize the product in a 3d virtual environment. The product can be altered and prototypes can be made, but the software enables the team to view the object or structure from different angles so changes can be made before prototypes are constructed. This coffee cup shows how you can see different angles with CAD software. 

CAD offers advantages when designing architecture as well. These models show how buildings and floor plans can be designed and altered in a 3D environment. 

The three examples show how software can help in the design process. They also show how important depth and size perception is when designing products and architecture.

The coffee cup provides a representation of the object in a virtual environment. There aren’t any cues that show how large it is in relation to anything else, but a coffee cup is a common object, so its relative size is understood. Shading and the overlap of the front and back walls of the cup provide the depth.

The models of the house and floor plan have more depth perception cues than the cup. Linear perspective is used and can be seen in both examples. The scenes get smaller towards the back than they do towards the front. Overlap can be seen in the trees as well as shading (the tree furthest away is partially covered by another tree, and it is shaded darker than the others). The floor plan uses overlap, as well as relative size. The cubicles towards the back get smaller than the ones in the front. Also, the walls of the cubicles in the front partially cover the walls of the cubicles in the back.

References:

Architecture from outside:

http://solidsmack.com/design/solidworks-architecture-design-aec/

Floor Plan:

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/richardsblog/page/3/

Cup:

http://guardianmetalworks.com/tag/solidworks/

How Tone is Operating

 

How Tone is Operating: There are a couple examples of tone use in these Braun watches. For watch #1- Black is used for the numbers, notches, writing and the band. The light grey face of the watch sticks out from the dark black of the band. The black notches, writing, and numbers stand out against the grey face, making them readable. The second watch uses tone in a similar way, only the face is black, and the notches are white. The numbers are very difficult to read since they are a close tone to the black face. The contrast between the face and the symbols are what make them readable, or in the case of the second watch, unreadable.

How tone is interacting: Tone is interacting with line and shape elements in both of these watches. The lines of the watches interact with tone most importantly. The lines that mark the time are a contrasting tone when compared to the face. Also, the seconds, minute and hour hands are lines, and are also a contrasting tone. These lines (hands) are essential in the function of an analog watch. It is important to make these easily visible, and to make to noticeably different to the background.

How Color is Operating: Color is another design element of both these watches, just on a much smaller scale than tone. Both watches use two different colors to call attention to certain parts, yellow and red. These hues are basic and easily noticed. The second hand is yellow, and the date has a red arrow to the left of it. The second watch uses color in a much more subtle way. The seconds’ hand is a dark orange color. There is luminosity contrast at work in both examples. The first watch has more contrast than the second watch, making the colors stick out a little more.

How Color is Interacting: The color in both of these watches is again primarily interacting with the basic element of line. The yellow and orange color appears on the second hand in both the watches. These hands are lines. The color makes them noticeable, but the skinniness of the line (which is the second hand, and the smallest one) makes it less noticeable. Two angled lines that make an arrow form the red colored shape next to the date. The red color makes the lines stick out. The luminosity contrast it creates makes I more noticeable than if it where similar to the grey face.

Visual Elements of Surface Design

I chose surface design as the design field for this assignment. I'm gong to discuss the process of designing a pattern that could be used textiles or backgrounds or whatever it would look good on. 

The process begins with a series of lines. Lines are one of the most basic visual elements. The picture below has a few lines that are darker than the other lines and shapes. This is to show that they exist. These lines are the basics of this pattern. They are very similar to one another. The main difference is the direction they face. When more lines are added in purposeful directions, they begin to form the next basic visual element, shape.

 

The picture below shows all of the lines you saw above, with the addition of many more, and with complete opacity. The end points of the lines touch and overlap in places. This process creates certain shapes. With the same couple of lines, a pattern can be formed. The repetition of basic shapes (triangles and squares) creates a design that is suitable for surface design. This design could be applied to surfaces now, or it could be improved by adding a more complex basic visual element, color.

 

The image below is the same pattern we saw earlier, just with the addition of color. The black lines have been replaced with white lines. All of the triangles and most of the squares have been filled in with blue. Certain Squares have been filled in salmon color. Color can be a very powerful tool. It can change the entire feel of the design very quickly. Whether or not you are designing for textiles, web, industrial, etc, you should understand the power color has.

 

Visual Thinking

Visual Thinking

The first puzzle I chose was Counting Triangles by Henry E. Dudeney. It was similar to the square counting puzzle we did in class. The star with a pentagon around it has a bunch of different triangles within it. We had to locate as many triangles as we could. I came up with 25, and my friend came up with 25 as well. We used similar techniques of pattern seeking when searching for triangles. We both began counting the obvious triangles, and counted each one in a circular motion. We noted that there are sets of different sized triangles. Each set had five triangles that were exactly the same. We didn’t find three of the sets. The total amount of triangles in the pentagon star equals 35.

The second puzzle we did was 15 Pentagons by Richard Candy. This puzzle has 15 pentagons (A-O). Each pentagon is separated into five different triangles. Each triangle is colored a different color, each color appearing in a section. There are seven pairs; meaning 14 of the pentagons have a twin. There is one that has a unique pattern. We had to find that unique pentagon. We had to study each pentagon and look for patterns. I used a matching technique. I looked at pentagon A, and matched it to its twin. This was basically a process of elimination. My friend began categorizing each pentagon based on individual traits. By the end, we both had figured out which one didn’t have a twin.

 

 Answer Keys