process b

i created a simpler calendar that includes numbers. What i did was i put the months on the top so that the viewer would know what they are reading, but the first thing i did was divide the months in to weeks, beacuse in the tennis season is divided by weeks and i used that to my advantage so this i the first sketch i did.basically its divided in to weeks and by place. and so i blacked the week where the tournaments which take place, on the y axes i have the longitudes of the countries . As you can see there are white spaces and that is where i got confused and i ran into a wall.
one problem i encountered was when doing the weeks, there are some months with 4 weeks another with 3 weeks so when creating the calender i would get spaces.

process and thinking

 For the calender,  I was thinking of doing the calendar like cards. 

Each card would resemble what the person have to eat in that day.  Like for example, It would be classified by cards.  4 cards and each card would represent each week of the diet month. 

For example, the first card would be in the shape of an apple, the second card would be in the shape of another Healthy food, and so on. 

But then, i remembered that we are not allowed to use any representative or  outlined  shapes.

So I thought again about doing something that could represent my idea and has a system in it.

I thought  of doing a calendar that is continuos, easy to understand and carry. 

still thinkiiiinnng !! ...

Process 1.1/b

Those are some of my first notes and sketches from my sketch book.

- notes I took in the print class-

-it says here in the notes-

-Each year the Arabic calendar changes-Normal ones doesn't change accept for Feb.

-Holidays-is different in every country...

-Concept-use it to create the form.

-Sunday is the first day of the week in doha it used to be Sat..In other countries its starts on Mon. so depends on the country we are doing our calendar for..

-System- create a system that allow people to minimize everything.. into shapes & form.

*dates

*months

*year

Things to consider (weekends,Holidays,birthdays...)

Depends on the contents and culture

 

 -Who's this calendar for?

 -Who's my audience?

create keys and symbols instead of numbers!

 

 -How to set up a system?

 -Semantic meanings

Theory-experiment

explore-

practical work-

communicate-

time limitation-

System-(things we have to work on)

*color

*audience specific

*grids

*list of events

*layout

*typography

*size/format

-look at our own calendar and analyze it.

Questions to keep in mind:-

-what we are researching for?

-investigate on using symbols and forms?

process 1.1/b

From left to right are the sketches I did during the second week of the semester.The first sketch on the left was the first and here I wanted to use different geometric shapes for each days like the first day has 1 triangle,second day has 2,third day has 3 ..and all what children has to do is count them to learn the days ...However the dark triangle bellow shows the month like 1 triangle is for Jan...etc

After talking to pronpapha and my classmates they told me that this calendar is not easy to get

 especially for audience and that I have to simplify it more....

I went home and worked on my calendar considering their comments and i came up with the second sketch(the one next to it).. and as you see it shows how I simplified it and instead of using 31 symbols I narrowed it down to 4 basic symbols each one represent a week of the month like week 1,2,3,4,5 and all what children has to do is to count the angles to learn the week... 

But it was still confusing and complicated so i pushed it further and came up with the last sketch on the right ... In this sketch I got inspired by children toys -specifically Lego- and i used it to design the calendar..The icon on the bottom right represent the month and here one panel is colored that means that this calendar represent Jan...however the circles represent the days like one circle for all the sundays in this month and another circle is for all the mondays and so on...

I thought that this calendar was still too complicated so I worked more on it and thats how I got to the other sketches in process c and comp. sketches.

 

dero-P1.1 Process/b

When I got the right average for boys and girls height from birth till 5 years old, I figured out that boys starts from 51 cm and at the age of 5 they are 110 cm, and for girls 50 cm, and at the age of 5 they are 108, which shows the difference between girls and boys and that my scale will be different for each one of them.

Pornprapha told that it looks like a ruler, but it doesn't' represent it as a calendar, she told me to put some details to look like a calender, dates and create a system to it.

P1.1 Process/b

During my process, I was thinking of the place before the audience and the functionality, which wasn't a good way to start. 

I first started thinking of designing a calendar that can be used in a restaurant. After my discussion with Pornprapha. She told me that I need to focus on the audience, not the place. 

I started writing a list of who would use a calendar.

- seniors

- students

- professors/teachers

- businessmen

- celebrities

- designers

- parents

- wedding planners

- secretaries 

- receptionists 

- shop owners

Having the idea of a restaurant in my head. I started thinking of who would need a calendar in a restaurant. Restaurant manager would need a calendar as a reminder of special events happening. Months to organize months, special meals, etc. It can be kept inside a staff room. It can be exposed to customers, an aware of upcoming holidays or meal specials.

P1.1 Process/b

2 main constant information: date

     month

- How to retrieve the month?

ex. one circle can represent January, two circles can represent february etc. 

- Break it down to how many months has 31 days and 30 days

- Create variation to replace information

ex. a square can represent 31 days, a rectangle can represent 30 days

- Encoding/Decoding

- Semantics & syntactics

   Don't take the representation too far

- Hierarchy

   System

   Structure 

- Audience

  Function for the audience

- Figure out the functionality

Mario, P1.1 Process/b

I have been thinking about other ways to do my calendar and I came up with a system that is based on days rather than months. My calendar will have 31 pages (one for each day of the month) and on each page it will have 12 balloon-shaped circles representing each month. So if you have a friend whose birthday is on January 1st, you will write the name on the space next to the number 1 balloon on the first page, which represents the first day of each month. With this system, the users can easily keep track of their friends’ birthdays by just looking at the day and matching it with the month on each page.

I chose the color red because for me it represents a “birthday mood” and each month is encapsulated in a balloon, which is representative of birthdays as well. The gradient helps the user navigate through each month easily.

I think that with this system I have solved my main concerns about the calendar:

- Ease of use
- Enough space to write down the names
- Compact size

evolution of the calendar

In the beginning, there was a circle.
It began to divide and increase in size.
Soon, we discovered a multi-cellular organism...








i started by mapping the actual sizes of the fetus from information in a growth chart. i then tried to make them relate together in a setting that looks organic and unified. I made the layers more transparent to give the idea that they all come together to make a whole. i found that containing all the circles in the largest circle was the best because it condensed all the information and was more visually more pleasing.

now i have to add the information...I hope it won't be too confusing adding the rest of the variables!

Fatma J, P1.1 Process/b

Monday

January 26th 09

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

---------------------------------

The class was 30 min late for the critique 

because  we are were fighting  for the printers 

Anyways

Points from the Critique:

 it does not really show but this is how i take notes, too bad for others.

in the notes, i wrote my concern about the over all form

which was "shall i have the form as a year? won't that be too much for

prisoners if they see the whole year "it will be depressing somehow

Or should I make it month by month: won't that contain many pages to flip?

Peter said if it was in reality, as in real-life problem, i will be searching prisoners and how they proceed information and that i should take this as an excursive to make my and have my own judgment for good reason 

one of the suggestion was to take out the days that are not included in each month

because they are not needed and they don't serve any purpose. And i did that and it looks fresh and clean. in this Horizontal form (months table) i couldn't attach months together: it looked awkward. 

what i did is to Rotate the tables -90 degrees (270) and then Reflected Vertically 90 degrees. to have the (tables) start Vertically instead of Horizontally. So, i can attached them

and this is an example:

   

those are continues four months and now i'll attach the whole remaining months to see how it will look like?

will it look good to have the whole months in the same space/paper so prisoners can see how many months are remaining in this year!

P1.1 Process/b

What have I learned?

1-Analyze information

2-System:
-Structure
-Relations of elements
-Usability

3-Critique:
- Critical thinking
- Different layers of info (HEIRACHY)
-Abstracting information (form)
-Consistency (creating pattern Repetition)
-Analyze a system

GOOD SYSTEM = SYSTEM THAT WORKS

P1.1 Process/b

A little post that shows my questions before I move into the next step

Who’s going to use my calendar?
• Graphic design students
How would they use it? Why would they need it?
• It would make it easy for them to keep track of particular events throughout the spring semester
How big is it?
• Something big enough to be noticed and to never get lost
how flexible is?
• Very handy and mark-able
Where would it be placed? Carried? Hanged?
• Could be placed on their desks, hanged behind on the wall behind it, or carried in their bags

P1.1 Process/b, Maryam

In class critique: Monday-19.01.08

This was my first solution of the grid of how to manage the minutes per day in a calendar.

In Monday's class, I learned that, the size is problematic (80cmx100cm). It is not practical even if my intention was to make it for office use. What if the office had no space in its walls? I got also comments on how much paper I would waste. If each day has one (80cmx100cm) then I need 356 sheets of paper to make that huge calendar. My solution was to use recycled paper? but what if it wasn't available in the printing press? what if it was too expensive? can there be any other solutions?

Starting again:

-What is time? sequence, events, series, a pathway, lines (straight, curved, ups and down)

-Am I making a calendar or a planner? well, I think it's a mixture of both, because it's about navigating time, days and events, yet, it's also about planning ahead each minute of the day (concept recall: an easy way for precise people to plan ahead and navigate time and events at the same time)

Missions and upcoming research:

look at busy people's planners? what are they planning? how do they navigate time? color coding?

Problems and challenges that are facing me now:

Size, Space and Format- can I make it more practical, can I include all information without wasting too much paper? make it more practical? easy to navigate? easy to handle? clear? space for notes?

Can I make it look more interesting visually?

What is more important in my calendar according to my concept: It's all about the minutes, so minutes is the priority.

Process 1.2

After reading the course objectives, the outcomes, and discussing my Process idea with Pornprapha, I realized that It won’t work since It doesn’t have a system. There is no right or wrong. The word Process is defined as follows: A series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end. So, in other words a process doesn’t necessarily act in terms of a system because the beginning, length and subdivisions of the year aren’t fixed. I decided to take further steps back and see where I went off track, right back to my graphic design calendar considering the following: - Constants Vs. Variables
- Meaningful Vs. meaningless
- 9 categories:
1. Weekends
2. Add/Drop
3. Events/ conferences
4. Exams
5. Beginnings of classes
6. Withdrawal
7. Orientation
8. Vacations/ holidays
9. Normal Insignificant days that might not appear on my calendarGraphic design calendar. Academic. Spring semester. Experience. Weeks.

P1.1 Process/b

Research














I started research looking at different calender's, and the concept behind them. I found one calender that i found interesting and kind of similar to this project that we are doing.Its obvious that they had certain limitation of not using numbers, only pictures. Just looking at it and the colors used makes it clear which season it is. Having the important day's of the week highlighted with a different color shows how the system is applied in the calender.

First Idea ( click the picture to enlarge)

The only reason i didn't use this idea is because there is a lot of different religion events from different cultures, and there is no point of creating an icon that that would represent an even in an abstract way because it would be hard for someone from a different culture to understand it. as you can see on the left that i chose some religions with there icons.
Second Idea
A fashion calender, its going to show the 2009 fashion styles and events for each season.
The audience are going to be fashion designers and whom ever is interested in fashion.
Each season is going to be defined my the color that's been assigned to it by the fashion industry for 2009. I was thinking of of using different fabric material for each season, for example i will use cotton for summer and and maybe use jeans fabric for the calender cover ..because you can wear it in any season and it doesn't go out of style.

- i had the idea of making a booklet fabric that comes with different stripes. Each stripe represents a month, buttons are going to be placed to define the month. so whenever a month starts they get to unbutton a stripe, and that's how it interactively work.

* but obviously this idea wouldn't work because i somehow i forgot about the limitations and how we are not aloud to use representatives, and that's what i did, i thought of using buttons. so I'm crossing out this idea and try to think of something new; but i'm not changing the idea of the fashion calender i will just build this idea and develop it and see where i go.