Design Professional practise: 2009

Thursday, 3 December 2009

Work I've done

Hi Guys,

Please find attached the work I did on the posters, I did 3 different poster but included two versions of the second as I can't decide wich one to choose as yet. I was also thinking of doing a cast of a mushroom and sticking it on to poster 3 and possibly another one to give it a 3d effect which i think will give it an extra edge. I also did photoshoped another pic so that i could use it in a third poster so have a look at that as well.

As usual all opinions and feedback are welcome. Hope lots of work is getting done and we have plenty to view tomorrow.

Lynda

Wednesday, 25 November 2009

Poster idea

Also heres a poster idea I had. Opinions would be appreciated.

So far

Hey guys,

Sorry I missed the meeting today. Hope you got my text. Anyway hers what I've done so far. They're not veryrealisticlooking at the moment but you should get the idea i'm following. Found some great pics at http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=37298 and have been using some of those for modification. Have a look and let me know what you think. :) Also can some one let me know what was discussed today.

Thursday, 12 November 2009

woops one last thing

One last thing I forgot to include. We discussed the layout of how the undergarden. Basically, the platform would be the walkway dividing the shelters / house which would be the station halls and the actual gardens which would be where the train normally passed filled with soil. Its a bit hard to explain. Martin had a very nice illustration depicting it very well so if possible, marting could you scan it and email it to us all so that people could get a better idea of what I'm talking about lol.

Ok that's really it now :)

Bya

Thursday meeting

Update to today's meeting. Here's what we discussed:

We looked over some research done by Martin, which highlighted a game designed to make fun out of the cold war, advertising a really bad event as something positive thus highlighting the kind of ignorance and gloss over attitude that some people have. We also looked at an example of a survival pack done for zombies.

We discussed how we're going to present the Undergarden concept and two general themes came up:
- do it in the style of the we discussed before i.e. design it as a terrible situation to live it but present it as if you're trying to sell it to someone in a cheesy kind of gloss over way. So for example, showing the undergarden with someone sleeping on the hard ground with very little food and looking quite sickly but with a voice over saying the Undergarden a better way to live.

- do it straight out negative with everything designed to make it look really terrible and depicting people struggling to survive. Make the tone of it and the message quite serious.

Most people agreed to do it the first way as it would make the whole concept more interesting. Therefore we discussed developing the idea in this way.

We decided to include the following in the presentation:
-a digital ad ( which will be the basis of our presentation)
- posters
- starter pack which will include maps, 'oyster seed card', hand book, packet of seeds among other items.

If anyone can think of anything else that should be done please feel free to say.

We discussed to kind of background the undergarden will be set in and a general idea of the story line. This is what we decided:
- the time frame would be around 2030; a couple years after climate change has already occurred and people have started adapting. The surface would be around 50 degrees Celsius ( which is what most scientist predict for areas that will become hotter) and London would become something of a barren wasteland. The infrastructure and buildings will still be there but abandoned and falling to disrepair. All currency has fallen apart and people now trade in seeds as it is rare and needed to survive.

- the story line would therefore show the city as described above with possible weather update /forecast in order to set the stage. This will then fade out into grey and the undergarden logo will be shown. The ad will then go on to show pics of the undergarden ( photoshoped pics of existing abandoned tube stations and illustrations) and people living there. The voice over will be saying something to the effect, why struggle above ground the undergarden is your best option for surviving the climate change. It will then go on to describe features of the undergarden including the starter pack and the objects within it.

The starter pack itself ( the actual bag/ box) would be designed as something eco-friendly and related to general atmosphere and theme of the undergarden.

We also discussed the concept of electricity as this was brought up by Bill before. It was decided that as this is underground, water would come from an underground water basin like those you tap into form a well. Therefore we could possibly use hydroelectricity i.e a wheel spinning by water power to generate electricity in order to generate electricity. That way the solution is a green one and is not harming the environment anymore.

It was also suggested at the end after the advert has finished that we put a statement saying something to the effect of our future doesn't look very bright if we continue they way we do. Do your part to stop climate change now. However this was not agreed upon.

The work was therefore divided this way:

Digital ad - Martin ( focus on the illustrations and images) and Arthur ( focus on the story line and putting it together in after effects)

Harry - design logo, undergarden map, 'oyster seed card' and starter kit hand book
Hanna- design the starter pack and conceptualize more items to put in it.
Lynda - to work on posters
Tom - help work on posters
Marcela - work with Hanna on the starter pack and items to go in it ( to be honest we didn't discuss this but this is my suggestion, if anyone has a better one please feel free to say)

Everyone will also work on general images of what the undergarden could look like that could be incorporated into various pieces. A colour scheme was decided in order to ensure every one's work is consistent with each others. The colours chosen were: green, blue (in limited amounts), white and grey. Harry will send he logo by this weekend in order to give an idea of the shades etc.

Right that's about it. As always everyone please feel free to make comments and suggestions.

Cheers Lynda

Tuesday, 10 November 2009

Mondays class

For those who missed last class, here's a brief recap:

The class was given 45 minutes in which to prepare their topic for presentation. In this time Marianne spoke to us in which we discussed our problem and the comments Bill made to us last week. She basically then said that our original concept was a good one and that she really liked it despite Bill's comments against it. She also said that the project doesn't have to be quite as experimental as we thought it had to be and can be done simply as a presentation within the class room setting. She therefore suggested we aim to do it within the class room setting and gave suggestions as to how to make it more interactive such as the use of pop-out posters and interactive projections as suggested by Arthur.

The group therefore decided to stick with the Undergarden idea and recreate the concept in the classroom for the presentation. During our time presenting Annabelle suggested we develop an emergency kit to hand out containing the 'basics' you would need for living underground as well as consider how you convey/recreate the feeling of living underground to the class such as the darkness, being cold etc. Bill after much debate suggested we provide an introductory scene/explanation in which explain why we would have moved underground to live and based this around research on climate change (so for eg we could say because climate change predicts temperature to rise in certain areas, we develop this based on concept that London's surface has heated up so much that is unbearable to live on and thus Britain has retreated underground).

It was also emphasised to the class in general that we have test runs of whatever it is we're doing before the day of the presentations. Also that during lecture times everyone should bring work with them to work within that time period so no one should be leaving before the class is done.

Among ourselves we also decided that our message should be something like:
Creating a glimpse into the future depicting a dreadful and uncomfortable future so that it motivates us to act now to prevent this happening and preserve our way of life.
Of course this needs to be tidied up and made to sound more catchy and a slogan around this needs to be developed to put on posters etc.

A suggestion was also made to hand out packets of seeds designed like oyster cards.

We also decided to meet on Thursday at 12:00pm in order to discuss what we would like to include the presentation, what kind of layout we should follow, how interactive are we going to make it etc. We therefore decided that by the end of this meeting we should know exactly what we're doing and have assigned individual work to everyone.

I therefore would really like to appeal to everyone to come to this meeting and participate so that we can effectively get things done. I personally do not feel comfortable assigning work to someone who isn't present at the meeting especially if they haven't turned up to numerous meetings. So please all make a special effort to attend.

As usual I would appreciate any comments and feedback.

Cheers
Lynda

Monday, 2 November 2009

today

For those who missed:

Today I called both London Ungerground and London Transport Museum and although they use to rent out Aldwych station they no longer do due to Health and Safety reasons. Nor do they do so for any other station. So unless someone else has any contacts or we seek in illegally, the disused tube station is out.

Therefore those of us that turned up today discussed in what way we can slightly modify the idea in order to move forward. We came up with 4 possiblilities:

- use an abandoned building instead
-use different phone boxes acorss london
-go the opposite way and create an environment you can see and hold in your hands.
- a gorilla type campaign where we sneak in quickly do something and run out.

However we then had a talk with Bill and this is what he said:
- our idea is a great INITIAL concept but needs to be further refined.
- we need to figure out exactly the MESSAGE we're trying to convey and develop the idea around that so that we have one CENTRALIZED point.
- we need to start really pulling the project together fast as we are far behind the point we should be at this point in time.
-the message that we convey should be backed by research.

So it was sugeested that we come up with some ideas as to what this message would be and develop possible slogans keeping our theme in mind so that we can modify the idea around the slogan.

We also decided to meet on Thursday at 12:00pm to discuss these slogans and develop the project from there. We will meet on the 6th floor as usual. Once again please make every effort to attend as we are yet to have a meeting with every group member.

Again if I missed anything please feel free to say.

Saturday, 31 October 2009

My research thus far

OK so I've been doing some research into the abadon tube ownerships and heres what I've found out so far.

Its very impropable that we'll get access to an abadoned tube station. As you may have guessed most of these stations are owned by the government and while the London Transport museum used to do regular tours of various stations they no longer do so due to many health and saftey regulations. The information I've found seems to state that they still do a tour of the Aldwych station which is also the station I think they used for filming but they don't do it very frequently and when it is being held tickets are very rare as there is always a high demand for them.

I will keep looking into this and also try to contact the Transport musem to get further information but till then I suggest we start looking at the contingency plan of simply building a model. Also if anyone has any further information regarding access, maybe someone who knows someone who knows someone, please feel free to say - we'd all be very greatful.

I was also thiking maybe if we can't get a tube station maybe we could ge an abandoned building instead or possibly just creating a this kind of space on sidewalk somewhere or in a carpark? What do you guys think? We'll have to change the concept a bit but it still falls under the same general idea/theme. This is something I'll also look into if its ok with the group.

Hows everyone else going with their research? Any luck?

For those not present at our last meeting heres what happened:

We discussed some further research done and also chose some particular themes we liked which were self suifficent, domestic and perosnal.

Further to this we did a brain storming excercise in order to come up with ideas around these three themes. From this we were able to come up with workable idea.

So heres the idea:

The Undergarden: If possible find an abandoned tube station and redcorate and transform it into a happier green environment. In a sense make a new green world within in this derelect space. One idea was to convert it to an overgrown cave environment and another was to turn it into a camp area with different plants being grown. The idea behind this is to simply get people thinking. If climate change happens will we have to reroute our lives to living in underground caves as we did in the past? And also is this a viable solution today to turn abandoned disused places into more productive green areas?

With the space converted we would then turn it into an event or exhibiton of sort and invite people to come down and see what we've done and get their reactions to it etc. A suggested way to attract people to this event was to give out flyers etc but also to cover the old underground sign with green and change undeerground to undergarden.

It was also suggested that we put out a donation box at this event to help cover any cost.

As a contingency plan if we weren't able to get access to a disused tube station - to build a small model represtnting the basic idea.

Therefore assignment of rearch to be done were as follows:

Lynda - research who owns these tube stations and how to get access to them
Martin - research what plants can grow underground with out light
Harry - reserch the locations of such tubes
Tom - research different green environments and any such decors also including anything that may have ben done in the undergorund already.
Marcela - research any other information that may be useful.

We also decided to meet at 1pm on Monday before the class in order to further sort out our information and ideas.

Again if I missed out anything or got something wrong please feel free to say :)

Friday, 30 October 2009

Green nightclub

Heres an interesting concept:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1027362/Britains-eco-nightclub-powered-pounding-feet-opens-doors.html

Wednesday, 28 October 2009

Next meeting

Meeting on Friday 30th October 2009 at 2pm on the 6th floor.

Please everyone try to make it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/green-living-blog/2009/oct/28/live-without-money

Tom

Monday, 26 October 2009

My ideas - the visuals

Ok heres a rough visual of the ideas I had:

1) the wanted poster (don't know why it scanned in as blue).

And this is a really shit drawing of the poster in relation to the 3d scene to accompany it.

This is the other idea I had. Again just a draft but you get the general idea.

Wednesday, 21 October 2009

Last class

For the benefit of those who were not in class on Monday heres what happened:

- We got a lecture on why clients need designers and who are clients.
- We got shown a video of Newsnight in which they had a debate about climate change. It can be found on BBC iplayer. We were told to note the passion in which they were arguing their points.

-We were told we need to show evidence of a solid ideas as to what we will be doing in week 5.

Annabel spoke to us and old us to consider:
- Whats in it for me? ( the point of view of the person we're trying to convince
- Consider what would make you change your mind and start acting
- Consider a positive message rather than a negative one

A sugeestion was then made to interview people on the street to find out what would make them change their habits towards climate change.

In the group meeting we discussed various peoples ideas:
Tom's idea - Time quickly elasping room experience.
Martin's idea - Noah ark for the rich, not everyone can get on
Marcela's idea - Memorial statue in Hyde Park with names of victims of climate change
Lynda's idea- Making trees look sad with an advert for stop the earth abuse.
It was agreed that all members would post illustrations etc on the blog to further demonstrate their idea.

The idea from last week where someone is shown as ignorant to climate change as it is happening around them in a household scenario should also be looked at again and the idea of ignorance played with.

Other ideas suggested to be played with were that of the consumer market and domestic personal lifestyle.

The group decided to meet next week at 2pm despite there being no class due to reading week in order to discuss new ideas and choose one solid idea. The group also decided to meet on Tuesday at 2pm in order to interview people. Arthur is reponsible for bring a camera to record.

Thats basically it. If I left out anything or got anything wrong please feel free to say so :)

Cheers
Lynda

Saturday, 17 October 2009

Idea block

Lots of great stuff here Lynda!
But I find it really hard the come up with something unique... I feel like everything has been done before! Its quite depressive actually...

We have some cool ideas from last time though.
-the cardboard game
-the domestic scenario
i´m sure we had some more...

I hope you guys have some crazy ideas...

Martin