Project 1
An Introduction (1/17)
Today in class we looked at different walking toys. There were various styles by various makers, and each toy was an individual in the sense of its purpose and what its form and movement was trying to invoke. I originally assumed that all walking toys operated the same way. That they had the same sound and moved in the same sort of motion, but as we explored each of these toys one-by-one, I began to see their individuality. Some toys moved quickly while other slowly, some were much quieter than others, and some even sparked. Some toys invoked images of animals, others different times, while others still were less concerned with what image they invoked and more concerned with serving a purpose of creating joy or surprise.
Originally, I viewed communications design as having a more static interaction with the “user” than other forms of design. Prototypical communications design is often seen as a designer creates something like a poster or website, and then the user interacts with it once the designer is finished with it, perhaps even on a one-off basis, when the message is effectively communicated. Since this was my impression going into communications design, I was initially confused by why we looked at toys to begin our semester. Something like that struck me as more the concern of a product designer. However, after our class discussion, I understand a bit more. That communications design isn’t just strictly 2D work, that it extends beyond posters and websites, and that connection between the user and the designer was something we had to consider just as much as anyone else studying a different type of design.
I’m certain that I still don’t have the full picture, but I look forward to future exploration and the opportunity to push myself and take risks, especially in the three-week exercises. I’m exciting about this semester and want to see where it takes me.
Preliminary Research (1/19–1/21)
In class today we worked on organizing our information into different categories, and I realized that I was coming up short in a few areas after my preliminary look through information on Yoshio Hayakawa. I was able to figure out that he’s considered one of the fathers of Japanese graphic design, and that he was influenced a lot by WWII, but in terms of his education and early life, I was coming up dry. I emailed Jill at the library to see what information she could help me find, and once she gets back to me I’ll be able to see where that leads.
In the meantime, I’ve been keeping a Google doc of all of my Internet source links so I can refer back to them. I’ve been putting bite-sized bits of information onto Post-it notes on the wall of categories we as a class created in order to make more sense of everything I’ve found. Right now, I’m just trying to amass information, and later I’ll sort through it. I also want to print out some visuals of Hayakawa’s work to hang up and study a bit more, just to get a better feel for his style. I want the way I organize and design my information for this project to be somewhat reflective of the way he designed. He seems to really like prints, and block coloring. Below is an example of something I found:
Getting More in Depth (1/23)
Today, after emailing her over the weekend, I went to see Jill at Hunt Library to see if I could find more print sources on Hayakawa. She had done a bit more digging for me beyond the course catalog, and we went around the arts and design section of the library in their different sections of Japanese design. While most of the sources only had a page or two on Hayakawa, I found one called The Graphic Spirit of Japan which had a decent amount about both him and his contemporaries, and checked it out. For all the other books that had a page or two of information, Jill photocopied them for me, I wrote down the citation information, and brought that with me to studio too.
Later in the night I started reading through the pages in the book on Hayakawa, and I learned a bit more information than when I started. First, I was able to find out about two of his contemporaries, Yusaku Kamekura and Hiroshi Ohchi, and I’m hoping that by looking a bit into them I’ll be able to find out more information about Hayakawa. Additionally, Juan gave me the great idea of looking not just into Hayakawa’s life as a designer, but as an illustrator, as that was his background, and this book gave me some information in that vein as well. I learned about how many illustrators, advertisers, and designers at Hayakawa’s time were rejecting traditional Japanese art styles for fear of a more Western approach, but Hayakawa did the opposite. He adapted those Japanese art styles in a more modern way in his work. However, he also claimed to be more influenced by Picasso than any Japanese artist.
I also learned about how Hayakawa was the founder of many Japanese design institutions, like the Japanese Advertising Artists Club (JAAC) and one of Japan’s first design Expos. I hope that by looking into these institutions as well, I’ll find out more information about Hayakawa. Ideally, I’d love to get some kind of quotation or primary source from him.
Organizing Information and Finding Gaps (1/26–1/30)
In class on Thursday we looked at sections from last year’s book Visual Memories in order to learn about organizing information in different ways. While there’s the typical chronological approach, it’s also possible to organize by category and subcategory, or put categories and asides within a chronological setup. We got into pairs and analyzed on set of three spreads, and then discussed what we noticed.
With this in mind, we spent the weekend trying to organize our own information in Post-It notes on a large sheet of butcher paper. This exercise taught me a few things that I needed to know.
Because I was having so much trouble finding concrete information on Hayakawa, I decided to organize my future writing based on category. I split the information up into three trends that I saw most in the information I was gaining about Hayakawa: the (positive and negative) Western influence on his life, his affect on Japan, and his personal ideals and values. By forcing myself to put concrete details onto Post-It notes, I realized that despite having general information about each of these categories, I was fairly sure I still had some glaring gaps. My next step is to write through my information in a prose/narrative style and see where I start to stumble so I can have more directed research.
Struggling with My Mood Board (2/2)
For Thursday’s class, we were tasked with making a mood board about our designer. I focused on different elements of what would later become my composition (fonts, palettes, etc.) to make up my mood board, but the composition itself was very lacking and not indicative of my designer at all. The elements of color spoke to me, and especially the fonts, as thick lines and brushstroke-like qualities that reminded me of Hayakawa’s pieces, but that was overshadowed by the poor composition.
[image to be added later]
While the individual pieces were in character, the overall mood board felt disjoined and inharmonious, which is not what I wanted. It didn’t get critiqued in class, and I took that as an opportunity to improve it before next class, thinking harder about who my designer was.
Recomposing My Mood Board and Considering Hayakawa’s Style (2/4–2/6)
When I went back to redo my mood board, I thought about what were some of the core elements of Hayakawa’s work. One thing I noticed was what I’d tried to pick up on before with the fonts: the thick lines and heavy brushstrokes. However, what I also noticed when going back into his work, was a large use of block color that I hadn’t thought about before. Many of Hayakawa’s pieces are sectioned, and the bright, saturated, and varying colors are brought together like puzzle pieces to make a larger image. I decided to embrace this idea in my mood board.
When recomposing my mood board, I ditched some technical elements that I had before (like the fonts) and worked off of feeling. I used construction paper as both as vignettes and compositional elements to bring more color into the mood board, much like Hayakawa did in some of his pieces. I tried to vary the shapes as well, giving them some structure while still being loosely cut enough to have an organic element. Finally, I kept the color palettes I made to show Hayakawa’s range of color. Overall, I find it to be a good improvement, and it really helped me think more about Hayakawa out of the context of his life and more in the context of his work, which I think will be beneficial for when I start writing about him.
Writing the Biography (2/10–2/13)
For the next few days, I used the information I consolidated to write my biography about Hayakawa. Because I couldn’t find a lot of information about him, I also included some of my perspective and analysis of his art style and his work to increase the word count. This is my finalized biography.
First Drafts of Spreads and Wireframes (2/16–2/21)
To start, I worked in parallel on my print spreads and digital wireframes. For the digital wireframes, I drew some mock-ups in my sketchbook of both the desktop and mobile layouts. Admittedly, I was a bit confused as to what they should look like, so I tried my best to piece together my thoughts and at least make them tangible on paper.
As for the print spreads, I decided to jump right in and work on making my grids. I knew I wanted to vary my layout a bit, so I made a two column grid on my first and third spread, and a three column grid on my second spread. At this point, I was just experimenting with grid systems. I knew that I didn’t have a lot of content, so I tried to fill in the space with other elements, like quotes and graphic elements. For my initial graphic elements, I chose both full images of Hayakawa’s work, and details from his watercolors. The details were used in a more abstract way to create a more dynamic layout and add in variation to my spreads.
After the critique, we decided to do print spreads without images so emphasis could be placed on getting the text right. I largely just modified my original spreads to have grey boxes instead of images, because I didn’t get a lot of feedback on my initial spreads and wasn’t sure how to proceed.
Over the weekend, I started making and revising my first digital wireframes in Illustrator. Again, with these, I wasn’t sure how to proceed. My initial wireframes were very geometric and stagnant, which I didn’t like, because I felt like that didn’t reflect Hayakawa’s work at all. However, I knew I needed some critique and advisement to move forward. For my mobile wireframes, I focused on keeping the same palette/feeling of the desktop wireframes,
but because of that they suffered from the same problem as the desktop wireframes as being too geometric and not having much life.
My critique for both was that I needed to loosen up the layouts. Stacie and Andrew recommended that I go with a uniform six column grid for all three spreads so I could vary two and three columns at will, and helped me think about differentiating my main body text from my introductory and concluding text. They also encouraged me to tone down the rigidity in my desktop wireframes.
Revising Spreads and Wireframes (2/23–2/28)
Over the weekend I added the images back into my print piece and tried to work on my desktop wireframes. I knew that I needed to update the mobile ones too, but I really wanted to nail down my desktop wireframes and translate them to mobile instead of designing both independently.
With my six column grid I felt like I had both more uniformity across my spreads, and more freedom to experiment. I cleaned up the setting of my text, but I still felt like there was a rigidity in all of my pieces that didn’t feel right. I tried to fix up my desktop wireframes by making the navbar not a straight line, but it felt like a cosmetic fix over a larger problem.
For Tuesday’s crit, the main feedback I got was that I needed to nail down my grid so I could be freer with how I laid things out. I also got the impression that for the desktop wireframes, I needed to go back to the drawing board. Before Thursday’s crit, I really tightened up my six column grid, and that gave me the opportunity to play around with how I laid out my text and images, particularly on the second spread. I was able to break things up much more, and therefore create a more dynamic layout that better reflected Hayakawa’s work. However, I still felt like I could push this further. The layout was getting better, but I wanted to include other things, like graphic elements, to really bring the whole thing together.
I also did some experimenting with the desktop, starting fresh and trying something completely different. In the end, I had mixed feelings on it. It was certainly less rigid than my previous mockups, but it didn’t feel like a webpage, and it still suffered from having a large amount of whitespace.
Finishing Up the Print Spreads (3/1–3/9)
The critique I got from Stacie on Tuesday was very helpful. It confirmed to me that I had the basics of the layout down, and now it was time to really push my work. She suggested that I make some watercolor textures myself, and then use them to help break up some of the whitespace in my work.
I painted some red watercolor textures myself, scanned them, turned them into transparencies, and used them as details to break up the whitespace in the spreads. This made a huge improvement, and after a few minor adjustments, I decided I was done with the print piece for the final crit. The final spreads are up on my portfolio website here.
