Week 9 Blog Exercise

DOT

This is the logo for the company insomniac, who organizes massive music festivals such as Electric Daisy Carnival, Electric Forest, Beyond Wonderland, and many more. They are a very quick growing company and started in 1993. This logo is fairly recent and I’m going to focus on more of the picture near the word, and how it has dots, four of them growing in size. As stated in Dondis chapter 4, the dot is ‘the simplest visual element that can be used with great complexity of intention’ (Dondis 40). It can hold much deeper meaning than what meats the eye. Because of its round shape, it identifies with many things in nature that are also round, since it is the ‘most common formulation’ out of the rest. In this logo, we have four round dots, each a different color, and each a different size, two more elements of visual communication, making it 3 in total. So we have 3 in 1 here, which is great. I think that these dots for this company symbolize music, especially electronic dance music since that is what mainly plays at these festivals. The music builds up to a climax and then drops. I believe the growing of the dots size show that build in music, but without the drop, to keep you rising up. I am not sure about each color, but it could signify that there are many different genres in the EDM (electronic dance music) category and that they all get along. 

MOVEMENT

This is probably the most recognized logo in the surf community. It is for a company called quiksilver. This logo really focuses on another element from Dondis called Movement. Movement is harder to convey in a still photo, but when done correctly can have a great affect on the viewer. This logo really focuses on the ocean, particularly the wave. Because it is a surf company, the obviously wanted a wave as there logo so surfers would be able to differentiate between other companies that might seem similar. The basic layout for the logo above to me looks a lot like the basic outline of a wave, with what maybe looks like a mountain in the middle, maybe because they also sponsor snowboarding. This might be a static image, but it gives a feel of a crashing wave, moving, or even flowing to the right, which goes well with humans because we natural read from left to right. If flipped horizontally, this logo would look very different and might not be as successful. 

LINE

Finally, we have the RVCA logo, which is another surf company that has grown extremely popular in the past 10 years. Their logo focuses mainly on the line aspect from Dondis. The line can be thought of as a bunch of dots extremely close together moving in a certain direction. Here we see nice solid black lines, with very little detail. The logo is using the line as its design, sort of like a building where they are stripped of anything unnecessary and letting the structure be the design. So it is close to architecture in a way making it much more diverse. These lines are very precise and not vague in anyway. They have distinct direction, hence the boldness. Everything is very strict looking and snap to grid like. Lines are really everywhere in nature, they are just hard to see. I really like this logo and I think it does a great job using the line technique and showcases Dondis’s view well. 

Week 8 Blog Exercise

This is my first puzzle that took me a while to complete. My eyes were focused on the circles a lot more than the white area and once I began drawing I would get confused and lost. Paths began to arise as I drew longer lines, but would eventually hit a dead end. I tried looking for alternate patterns, but the only pattern I kept seeing was the overall garden pattern. I almost feel like I began drawing knots throughout the circles. Overall this one was very difficult and my roommate and I to solve without the solution. 

This one was a little more easy and I completed it within reasonable time. This one dealt more with pattern completion and visual memory. I realized that I would forget which lines I had already drawn over and would get myself stuck into a dead end. I didn’t really think about visualizing it before hand like my roommate, I went more with trial and error. I was more focused on each moment and each line instead of the overall pattern completion. 

We both found this one to be very difficult and it took us both awhile to figure out. We could not have done it without the solution. Her process was once again to sit and think about it, visualize it in her mind, and attempt slowly, while I once again jumped right in. After about 10 mins we each gave up and decided it was too difficult. We kept running into other lines and dead ends, both felt like we were drawing a bunch of knots all over the place. 

My roommate Connie found this one much easier for her. She said she just looked at it for a little bit instead of just drawing lines right away like I did. She visualized the pattern and path before she began to draw her lines. Her very first time she got twelve, which was the correct answer on the solution, and I was surprised. I think that visualizing it before hand in your head might help better than just jumping right into it and guessing which way to go. She completed the pattern before I did. 

Blog Exercise Week 7

http://www.quiksilver.com/home/index.jsp?clickid=topnav_logo_img

      Here I found a poster of a surf competition that was held in newport just a little bit ago. Since I want to work for a surf company, I thought maybe I could eventually design these types of posters for advertisement. When I look at this poster, I am directed to the image in the background that is faded out into a grayish color and is basically the whole poster. For the pre attentive features such as color, motion, shape, and overall spatial layout, I think the designer did a good job on keeping things well organized while making it feel very oceanic to go with the waves. The overall color is blue, with different shades of blue, the brightest part being in the middle top of the picture. I find only one shape in this poster and that is squares. There are many different types of squares and rectangles all converging to overlap each other making my eye path more smooth. The background image creates really nice depth to the poster because it adds a nice horizon that makes it feel as though we are looking out over the ocean. Finally, for motion, I feel lacks slightly. I find that I basically start from the top and go down, where at the bottom we find sponsors and information. 

Week 6 Exercise

http://zedomax.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/collapsible_surf2.jpg

            Because I want to work in the field of surfing mainly, or extreme sports, I found this picture that I think expresses the perfect example of top – down processing. Top – down visual processing is that act of looking at objects and having a goal in mind, and focusing with a lot of attention to detail. Our eyes are moving extremely rapidly, also known as fixations or saccades, over certain spots where we need to focus most. In my picture above, it is a collapsible surfboard that can be put together and taken apart. I thought this image was perfect because the ultimate goal here is to put it together, so our mind is focusing on all the certain parts of the board individually, but also processing it as a whole surfboard to figure our the final result. In other words, we are looking ahead in our mind and seeing the finished surfboard, but actually looking at all the separate pieces in reality. So for example with this picture, I began looking at the fins, then the pole at the bottom left, and also the finished product in the back, and as I am looking at all these different parts, I am visualizing the final product in my mind and all the steps I will have to take to get there.