Layout3

Layout2

Layout1

So as I mentioned.. i'm taking inspiration from a feature my friend had in a men's style mag:

Personality vs Lifestyle

Per.son.al.i.ty

1) the viual aspect of one's character as it impresses others.

2) a person as an embodiment of a collection of qualities.

3) Psychology.

a. the sum total of the physical, mental, emotional, and social characteristics of an individual. 

b. the organized pattern of behavioral characteristics of the individual.

4) the quality of being a person; existence as a self-conscious human being; personal identity.

5) the essential character of a person.

6) something apprehended as reflective of or analogous to a distinctive human personality, as the atmosphere of a place or thing.

7) a famous, notable, or prominent person; celebrity.

8) application of reference to a particular person or particular person, often in disparagement or hostility.

9) a disparaging or offensive statement referring to a particular person.

Life.style

The habits, attitudes, tastes, moral standards, economic level, etc., that together constitute the mode of living of an individual or group.

But it makes you think....

* Do we change our personalities or our lifestyles?

* Which is easier to change?

* Considering that they are closely linked, if we changed our personality... wouldn't our lifestyle change too?

A personality is who we are... and a lifestyle is what we do.

We can better our life by changing our lifestyle.. to create a better personality.

Research and Concept

Here are some images I found of catalogues:

               

For my layout, I had an idea... to do something VERY different.

Everyone would be using the photos that we all took, and no offense to them.. they are VERY good. However... I want to use the idea from a feature my friend had in the magazine 'Men's World' in 2007. Luckily I remembered him sending me this scan, when I was thinking what to do for my catalogue. And it inspired me to do something very similar.

Look out for my layout design ^_^*

Deadlines and Notes

Deadlines for Print II Project:

Feb 28th - Report catalog on blog

Mar 4th - Post your sketches on blog

Mar 9th - 3 different layout sketches

Mar 11th - Layout/System

Mar 16th - Layout/System

Mar 18th - Pre-final catalog

NOTES:

Introduction - Stereotype visual (introduce each lifestyle)

Age

Gender

Culture

Audience - Content and Concept

* Think about the system ~ who is your catalogue for. A catalogue should have a system that hold everything together.

* Educate your audience throughout your catalogue.

THE IDEA OF A CATALOGUE IS FOR FUNCTION AND INFORMATION

Image - Visual Primary and is a primary tool in the catalogue

Text - Information and its a secondary tool in the catalogue.

SYSTEM

* System Catalogue/Chapter/Colour

* Page Number

* Folio

* Caption

* Audio

* Graphic Elements

Image styel - Art Direction of the photo/image treatment

Type-text-concept/audience. Use Bold and Regular type weight. Don't use a lot of typefaces.

*Size format depends on the concept.

LIMITATIONS:

1) Don't use Black and White for images.

2) Use only high resolution images ~ 8x8cm

3) Don't treat type or illustration better than images

4) Don't use Myriad/Helvetica/Microsoft Pro at ALL.

Title - Lifestyles.

Part 1 of the project done...

So.. we had to go round all weekend, taking 100 photographs. Took quite a while, but it was pretty fun. The photographing part, not the cutting ^_^*

But we put them all up (forgot to take a pic!)

Then what Pornprapha told us to do is analyse our work, like think about other variations. For example.... my tattoo category, tattoos could be so normal to some people, but to others it could be so abnormal. Maybe some would rather draw on their hand with pen rather than something as permanent as a tattoo.

So i'll be considering that.

This is what I have to think about:

- Detail

- Observation

- Personalities

- Changes/Developments

Goals:

- Diversity

- Analyse

- Organise

With diversity:

- I have to go back and look at the category

(What is normal and what is not. The contrasts)

- Cultural ethic

- Form/Purpose/Visual

- Give your work a voice 

(What is cliché?)

We were given partners to kinda remind and keep each other in line. I got Mario. So that'll be kool, we both work quite similar, so it'll be good for me.

We then put into groups and in our groups... I think we ended up having over an hour to create a system. My group was myself, Angie and Sara.

We decided to make a system on the most to the least necessary accessories. 

If you see the combined blog, you will see the order of which we placed the photographs. And you will see images I took of the final product ^_^*

NEW PROJECT!

We were introduced to our new project today.

We'll have 4-5 weeks to complete it. And its a....

CATALOGUE!

Which is pretty kool, cause I love doing magazine spreads and grids and all ^_^*

We have to identify which audience we'll be making the catalogue for.

These are some criteria for the first part of the project, pictures that we take have to be:

- 300 DPI

- TIFF/JPG

- CMYK

- 8x8cm

We have to go round and take 10 pictures for each 10 categories.

The manditory ones we have to do are:

- Clothing

- Furniture

- Car

- Phone

- Food

Then my 5 are:

- Tattoos

- Piercing

- Necklaces

- Eyes

- Flashings

Info on this project is that we have take into consideration our time management:

- We have to leave 1 week for Production or Printing time

- The project is about lifestyles, so we have to think about the way and method of everyday living.

However... even though this project is about lifestyles and stereotypes, we can't think about that yet. We just have to wait and see what happens

Final Calendar

So... it was quite a bit of process finishing off my calendar.

I honestly was very happy with my project, but Pornprapha and Levi said they wanted me to redo ALL of it.. cause of 6 SIMPLE lines I placed on the calendar so I would be able to know where to fold the paper.

It took a while to reason with the idea of poking ALL those holes again. but I did it. And I was honestly proud of myself.. I really felt I pushed myself with this project and I honestly worked very hard.

Packaging wise, I needed a protective case for my foldable calendar (accordion fold)... so I tried to make one out of the plastic material from a bin bag and lining it with hard yet bendable card. However, it didn't work very well and looked quite tacky! So I used Levi's idea about finding a packaging for it. I edited it quite a bit to fit the calendar perfectly as well as keeping it looking neat and tidy. 

Selecting the actual packaging was tricky, as I had to consider about the technicalities of how a blind person would be able to pull the calendar our and put it back,

Don't have images.... but will soon when I get it back!!! ^_^*

combining our categories and homework

Our group:
Sara Q
maria
me

We had a few ideas about how to combine our categories:
- human to manufactured
-distance from the body
-basic to additional
we decided to go with the last idea i.e. which was to map our images from most basic to most unnecessary.

This is the order in which we placed them:
Body - Eyes
Food - Bread
Beverages
Fruits & Vegetables
Ice Cream
Clothing - Underwear
Bottoms
Tops
Shoes
Shoe soles
Furniture - Floors
Lighting
Seating
Tables
Door handles
Mugs
Cars - Back of cars
Car accessories
Drag Racing Cars
Phones - Mobile phones
Mobile screens
Sides of phones
Accessories - Belts
Rings
Scarfs
Necklaces
Piercings
Tattoos

The way in which we navigated our viewer was with string. Since we mapped out this system with levels of accessories:
Primary
Secondary
Tertiary
We used 3 gradients of blue (neutral) string... (well until the middle gradient ran out)

The following are pictures of the final product.








homework: what is the difference between lifestyle and personality? are there any overlaps? Are they related to each other? upload all photos onto flickr group...one by one. print 21 copies of my thumbnails 5 lifestyles...create categories by using every one's photos. number of images per lifestyle is optional. map it in a linear way. am i going to use stereotypes or not?
give the lifestyle a name

Maria, P1.1 Process/a

Well... its been a LONG process... of a LOT of research and a lot of experimentations.

I can't even begin to count how many times I started over to try to create something different.

so, lets take you on a little journey through the process of my work then....

First started off with a big scale calendar, quite a t

ypical one really, but this one has a tab system and on the right foldable tabs to mark whether you have plans during the morning or night.

Above is the first calendar I made, embossing the dots myself

. 

The second part was designed with the intension in mind that Blind or partially blind people most commonly use a horizontal format to read.

So then I came up with this:

this was more compact, being about 9x4|... continuing with the the tab system, and now using my colour area to help partially blind people navigate the weekend quickly.

But then... changed my format again... to make my calendar 

EVEN more compact and functional, I made the dimensions  45x3" so it is then foldable to be placed in my clients pocket.

now.. to be pushed... EVEN further... so.. now that my calendar is about navigation, and to not have 12 pages, i'll do research on maps; so that I can make a bigger foldable calendar.

So ya... thats all ^_^*

Maria, P1.1 Research

Hey,

Alright, been doing LOADS of thinking on this, and I KNOWWWW there are soo many things to consider and research about. So here is a short list of just a FEW things i'm currently looking into:

* GRIDS!

- The idea that a blind or partially blind person doesn't seen any, so in a way the grids would have to be invisible. So... has to be organized, but when printed... should not be there.

* HOW DO THEY READ?

- Now we all know of course they read through Braille.. but what I'm talking about it the technicalities of it actually. Whether they are more horizontally or vertically dependent/dominated.

According to my research, I've found that "One reads braille sequentially and horizontally from left to right... there is no vertical component..." Even though this was commented on musical notation, from what it seems I have searched, blind or partially blind people are horizontally dependent when reading.

* DO TEXTURES THROW THEM OFF?

- One of my plans in my calendar was to use textures, however... I still have to make sure the Braille is readable. So I have to make sure there is not a lot of action going on, on the page to make it difficult for the client to read the braille.

* IS BRAILLE ADAPTABLE TO DIFFERENT LANGUAGES?

- The answer to that is yes, "when Braille is adapted to languages which do not use the Latin alphabet, the blocks (braille blocks, bar of six dots) are generally assigned to the new alphabet according to how it is transliterated into the Latin alphabet, and the alphabetic order of the national script (and therefore the natural order of Latin Braille) is disregarded. Such is the case with Russian, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chinese. In Greek, for example, gamma is written as Latin g, despite the fact that it has the alphabetic position of c; Hebrew bet, the second letter of the alphabet and cognate with the Latin letter b, is sometimes pronounced 'b' and sometimes 'v', and is written b or v accordingly; Russian ts is written as c, which is the usual letter for "ts" in those Slavic languages that use the Latin alphabet; and Arabic f is written as f, despite being historically p, and occurring in that part of the Arabic alphabet (between historic o and q). Esperanto letters with circumflexes, c, g, h, j and s are written as those letters without circumflexes with a filled sixth dot."

* Colour?

- One thing I recently found was about how blind or partially blind people recognize colour.

"Some people with visual impairment are able to see some colours although others do not see any. It is important to learn about colours even if you cannot see them. It is important for them to learn what colours look nice together, what colours do not match, and about stripes, plaids and other patterns... It may be helpful for them to also understand that the sky is mostly blue and the grass is mostly green, and the colours of the ocean and the colour of the leaves in fall. Their imagination will help them paint pictures in their mind".

This is why I want to give my client the ability to experience some of the sensations we get to. Let them see and feel the seasons.

Hence... continues my research...

We'll see if I can pull it off

Maria, P1.1 Process

Week 1 done!!

Ok...so spent AGES yesterday doing my Braille Calendar. And a LONG list of ups and downs (mainly downs)

Looking for the right material to use for my calendar (card)... so rushed out and bought 5 LARGE sheets from a close-by library.

Once I finished designing ALL my pages (13 of them), I realized the card is far to thick for me to be able to see the dots when I hold the paper up in the light. So, I spent even longer designing a page that I will print on the opposite side of the page, so I would know where to poke to emboss the braille dots. 

So FINALLY finishing all that, came time to print, only to find my paper was TOO thick to be printed on, and it would continuously get jammed in the printer. So... all that extra time spent designing the inverted opposite side, went to waste.

So ended up just printing on regular A3 paper.

Heading out home, I started by accurately cutting each page, then once all that was done. Moving to the tedious parts...

In my new design I have tabs, where the blind/partially blind client can mark if they have something to do in the morning or night. So cutting each tab so it can be folded up.

Finishing up doing 730 cuts for the tabs

Came the part that took me over 5 STRAIGHT hours....

The embossing.

What I did, was placed the cutting mat on my lap so its standing, leaning against the table, where the light from my laptop helped me to see through the paper to the other side. Holding the paper securely to the mat, I used my tablet pen, which has a blunt tip. And used it to poke the paper, so with the help of the mat, didn't let the paper to rip or break, only be indented.

So... continuously doing the tiny dots, were tiring... and painful (blisters and all), but it was WELL worth it! I'm SOOOO happy how it turned out!

The bigger dots I have for the front cover was done with the tip of the C battery (pinky-size fat round battery).

Now... to do...

* Add another layer, so that even partially blind people, who can slightly see, can OBVIOUSLY find a date quickly.. possibly the grid being split in 2's or 5's.

* Consider different dimensions for the calender, possibly a pocket calendar.

* Analyze how braille is read, more horizontally or vertically dominant

* And a more constructive way to produce the flaps.

Maria, P1.1 Research

So...

My Visual Calendar is based on the concept of Braille, which is a "method that is widely used b blind people to read and write".

Of course with doing something like this, there is a LOT of research to do! For example, here are a few questions I asked myself to really give me an understanding on the needs of my client:

* How can they know colour?

* How can they tell the time?

* Do they have an existing calendar?

* If so, what needs to be improved?

* Do they need a calendar to place their reminders of events or appointments on certain days?

* Keeping in mind, that there needs to be a record of International Holidays. (Basing on Qatar both Islamic and Christian holidays).

So.. first where I looked was about if a blind person CAN actually differentiate colour?

Firstly, there are many degrees of blindness; those who are born blind and those who have developed blindness later in life through an accident or disease.

- Born Blind people, thought never seen colour, can tell if it is Morning or Night, basically through light sensitivity. Though since

 they have never seen colour before, they wouldn't be

 able to tell someone what colour they can actually see.

- Those who developed blindness or vision impurities, have seen colour in their earlier life. Thus can differentiate what sort of colour they see, as they could possibly still see some colour.

** So to conclude, what i need to do, is rather on focusing on colour selection, I would need to focus on gradient and colour intensity. To show a clear difference in colours: Such as a solid brown colour (having a strong Black quality) would be clearly darker than a pastel yellow (which contains stronger white qualities).**

Thinking more into this issue, for those who are blind, of course they wouldn't really notice the colour, however those who are partially blind would still use this calendar, hence colour would be a good aspect. One of my ideas is to us the colour to represent the season, so in a way, it allows the blind person to also learn, what colours are associated with that specific season, and in their own way, may they (partially blind person) be able to see that certain colour or a fully blind person would be able to sense a gradient.

Moving to the next question:

"How do blind or partially blind people tell time?"

- There are Braille watches that have a tactile surface. By touching the face of the watch, time can be identified. Another popular alternative is the "talking" watch or clock, which announces the time when passed.

One more aspect of the calendar I will include is textures, as a blind person is largely dependent on the sense of touch, a texture can give them an experience they wouldn't be able to see. Either using the texture to show the different seasons (i.e. rough texture for summer where its hot, whilst a smooth texture for the coolness of winter) or different events they want to mark on their calendar.

Last note... whilst making this calender, there are various ways in which I could show the Braille dots, of course the first thing comes to mind would be embossing. Though due to the short time period, I'll either emboss the dots myself (with a pen... yes... it will be tiring) or i will just cut out the dots.