Assignment 5 ~ How Things Work (Final Version)

Okay, Assignment 5 "re-done".

The current assignment 5 has a Gestalt's Principle "installed", namely "Proximity". The elements have been rearranged and font size are increased! It should look clearer now. =D

How does this have anything to do with Gestalt's Principle of Proximity? Simple, each ring represents a cluster of object. When the objects cluster together, they are seen as 1 group, thus the proximity principle.

This is the background. Following the design(the ripple like picture above this) that incorporates Gestalt's Principles, I have made it such that the Earth and its ozone layer are part of the ring! It also has a blown up map of Netherlands.

Final Prototype:

This is the final look of my infographics! I tried to map every element that I had since last prototype into the current prototype,  but due to space constrain, 1 or 2 elements were left out. I have also added a title" Meat Out Thursday @ Netherlands" to fit into my ripple concept. As to why is there such a great degree of change is that from the comments in tutorial class, the fonts size are too small, the pictures do not seem integrated and I had to re-shuffle the elements such that they look more organised. The Earth appearing above the map of Netherlands for the previous prototype look out of place, so I modified it to the Earth in Space with a blown up map of Netherlands, thus giving the background a more complete look. At the bottom right corner of the infographics, I placed a tap connected to the Earth, with the idea of sending the message, "The water wasted is from our Earth!" to the audience. It would look very strange  if the tap is not connected to anything and yet, it has water flowing out! All elements that are on the left half or the infographics have a little shadow that I decided to add in the last minute. With the addition of the shadows, I feel that the elements look more integrated, compared to not having a shadow. Lastly, my only regret is that I could not find a better way to integrate the bullet, missile and nuclear missile properly as the bullet looks very very small, and you will really have to squint your eyes to notice the bullet.

Assignment 5 ~ How Things Work

For Assignment 5, we have to conjure an infographic with a theme, fighting climate change. Thus far, all of my assignments have been linked to food. So, by all means, I want this last assignment to be dealing with food as well. Food, food... How is food linked to fighting climate change? Well, I couldn't find any reliable source that gives me a free article when I typed "fighting climate change food" into the search engine. Despite the difficulty, I managed to find an article that fits my bill(luckily my friend suggested to search using the google search engine at nus homepage). I found this 2 links:

Article 1 : http://www.meatthetruth.nl/content/view/126//articles/view/3

Article 2 :http://www.meatthetruth.nl/content/view/126//articles/view/4

Finally! Something that has food and fighting climate change in the articles! With these 2 articles, I decided to merge the main points and use them to create an infograph.

Research photos:

Our main character =D

Erm... I'm not preparing for war btw... there are seriously research photos... research for my infographic...

Different elements of my infographics:

From Article 2, paragraph 8, 2nd sentence: 

"According to the World Watch Institute, the production of just one kilo of red meat uses 100,000 litres of water. "

From Article 1, paragraph 3, 2nd sentence:

"Their conclusions are clear: the livestock sector is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, while all the cars, lorries, ships and planes added together do not account for more than 13% of greenhouse gas emissions."

From Article 1, paragraph 8, 1st sentence:

"When the CO2 bond from grass is subtracted from the CO2 equivalent emissions in dairy farming, then this sector is still responsible for a share of 54% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the agricultural sector. "

From Article 2, paragraph 7:

"If people dared to raise their level of ambition just a little to eat no meat for two days a week, then this would save just as much as if the entire population switched to using a more energy-efficient refrigerator and freezer, an efficient washing machine, an efficient dishwasher, an efficient tumble-dryer, installing double-glazing in all homes, everyone using a high efficiency condensing boiler and the insulation of the facades of all Dutch homes: in total 6.25 megatons. Two meat-free days a week could thus create a saving of 6.4 megatons! If we served a meat-free meal three days a week could realise a saving equivalent to taking 3 million cars off the road. At four days without meat we could reach an equivalent of the electricity use of all households (14 megatons) and for six meat-free days we could attain the equivalent to a completely car-free Netherlands (18 megatons)."

From Article 1, paragraph 6, 3rd sentence:

"These emissions make a massive contribution to the greenhouse effect, particularly because methane is 21 times more potent than CO2 and nitrous oxide at least 310 times stronger."

I kind of equated the 3 gases strength of destruction to a bullet, missile and a nuclear missile.

From Article 1, paragraph 6, 1st sentence: 

  "For each kilo of milk that a cow yields, the animal will also produce an equivalent of 1.4 kg CO2. "

From Article 1, paragraph 6, 4th sentence:

"The Centre for Agriculture and Environment (CLM) has even calculated that a cow produces just as many greenhouse gas emissions annually as a car that drives 70,000 km."

This is a combination of both the drawing of the map of Netherlands and the Earth. It is used as background.

The prototype, a mix and match of the elements above. I can't really think of any Gestalt's Principle that this is relevant to...

Assignment 4 ~ Colour Coaliation (Final Version)

Assignment 4 - Reloaded!

This is the new idea I had for assignment 4, which has something to do with food! Youths nowadays are pretty worried about their weight, and of these worried people, some have turned anorexic while some have turned to fad diets, and the rest, I guess they are worried but maybe not so worried... Just in case you are wondering what fad diets are, fad diets are meals that are thought to be effective for weight loss but not scientifically proven. Furthermore, people adapt to fad diets just because they are rather impatient and want to see results as soon as possible.  

I believe that to effective lose weight, or more importantly fats, having a balanced diet that controls calories intake and a good exercise regime is the most effective and proven method. Losing weight and fats should take time, and should not be rushed. Extreme weight loss might even result in sagging skin, which might even look worse in some people's eyes. Therefore, by maintaining a balanced diet and a exercise regime, I believe losing weight or even fats is only a matter of time.

For this assignment, my target audience are youths who are trying our fad diets to lose weight. The design for the postcard is using the concept of a snake shredding its skin, but changing the snake into a human, it becomes a human shredding his/her fats. 

Research pictures:

My legs... used for the dead skin/fats portion.

My legs again, used for the human legs portion...

My first design. A human who have just shred his fats, standing in front of a plate that has only a tomato. I'm trying to send the message that adopting a fad diet(in this case, eating only tomatoes for their meals) will not allow them to shred their fats just like a snake shred its skin, thus the tag line"Fad diets cannot make humans shred fats like snakes shred skin". "Eat Right" is of a larger font as it is kind of like the summary of this postcard, and I want it to capture the attention of the audience, so it is almost 3 times the size of the tag line. The 'human legs' look-a-like figure that is lying on the ground represents the dead skin/fats that the human(standing posture) shredded. I drew it such that the skin on the outside being lighter than the interior, so as to represent and opening where the human came out from. Initially, I wanted to draw it in such a way like the human is still shredding his skin/fats, so his feet will still be in the layer of skin, but it is rather hard to imagine... the closest way is to take a photo of a person removing his coverall(a type of clothes that mechanics  wear to protect themselves and to store some small tools), but I did not think of that at the point of time when I was doing up the design, thus the skin is on the floor.

Colour coalition:

Final Prototype: Front

This is the final colour scheme that I have decided to adopt. A gradient of red for the human figure to show signs of it being alive and a gradient of gray for the dead skin/fats to show that it is already 'dead'/ detached from the human. I did not change the colour of the tomato and the plate, as if I did, it will look very weird and the audience may not link it to something they know... The words are red, and background is plain white. I purposely chose this colour combination as I felt that with a white background, the words and the illustrations have a larger impact compared to using coloured backgrounds. I want the audience to feel that this is a simple, yet powerful message through the usage of colours.

Final Prototype : Back

This is the back design of the postcard. The square to paste the stamp is replaced with a weighing machine. There's no other design as I wanted to keep it simple, so that it is coherent to the kind of feeling that the front design is trying to create.

Assignment 4 ~ Colour Coaliation

   This assignment is to help us understand more about colour choices. The youth theme I chose is "Having fun". Youths nowadays, especially Singaporean youths, are stuck at home being forced to learn new things on their free days. What happened to the youth where all that the kid thinks about is to have fun? Where are the good 'ol days? That is the reason I wanted to have a design that actually helps to encourage youths to go out to have fun.

The following pictures are photos found on the Internet and they are used for conjuring my postcard design.

Sandwiches:

Can drink:

Basket(really, I'm more interested in the basket):

Trees for Bg:

Youths(Picnic and running around...) :

Here is the colour testing:

And, finally, this is my preferred colour scheme.

The shade of green gives off a vibrant feeling, a feeling of life, which I feel match the theme. Orange also gives of a feeling of life, compared to red(threatening colour) or yellow(too bright).

This is the back design for my postcard. It is a set up of a picnic.