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. 

Week 5 Exercise

      This is the Billabong surf company logo, which is a company that I would love to work for and hopefully help design logos and other graphic designs. I think this logo is a great example of design and follows a good structure of balance and abstraction. It has a nice horizontal feel to it, resembling the ocean, as we can see the sets of waves. It also has a great positive and negative affect by using black and white for the same image. If it was black where the white was, then it would just be all black. Its very organized and balanced which is why I think people respond positively to it and can relate to the waves because thats the actual way the face in real life. It even has a nice shadow effect on the edge and also makes it feel like the poser is flowing with the waves, which helps its overall meaning and adds to the balance and perception of the ocean. Its a nice, level logo with good positive and negative contrast, and I think its a good example of graphic design. 

     This is the shoe/skate company called DC shoes. I think this is an alright logo, but ultimately, I don't think its very good. It is balanced, but not very abstract in any way, and it really shows the literal meaning of the company DC. I mean when I even type the two letters, it just looks like them blown up, so I fail to see the creativity put into the logo. It doesn't really show any positive or negative effect except that its pretty transparent, with black lining in the shape of the letters. Also there is a random star in the C, which I also don't know the meaning for, so it just seems random and pointless. One thing this has is balance. It is very level and clear to me because it is standing in its normal, upright position that my brain can easily focus with. It follows a very strict horizontal and vertical axis, which for this image, I think could be bad in a sense that it is too perfect.  

Week 4 Exercise

Line, People, People in a Line, Newspapers, Transparent, Bold, Unemployment, Help Wanted

     The picture above depicts what people see as unemployment. We see a single file line of general people, men and women, in all transparent black facing left. It actually is a loop of people because I can see the same shapes of people every two or three persons. Behind them are newspapers in a sort of collage with the headlines reading, "employment," "Help Wanted," "busy." The color of the newspapers are a faded yellowish color, maybe signifying old papers that have been read through many times. At the top of the picture there is the bold word in black, all caps, "UNEMPLOYMENT" over a white transparent background. This just shows the overall meaning of the picture and what it is trying to represent. 

Blog Exercise Week 3

     This is the Billabong surf company logo. There are many other surf companies out there whether small or big that have their own logo and design. This is just one of the biggest ones, similar to Quicksilver, Rip Curl, West, and many more. I chose this one because it covers all three leves of design. Representationally, this shows what a real wave in the ocean basically looks like but is not exactly a photograph. For it to be a perfect representation, it would have to be an actual photograph with attention to detail and this is not, although we do see what most people recognize as a shape of a wave. 
      Thus, because it is not a representation of a wave, it leans more toward symbolism and abstraction. The waves have been completely stripped of all extreme details and reduced to the bare minimum of what people recognize as a wave. Once they did this, they multiplied and reproduced it all over their clothes, surfboards, backbacks, etc. and many people can recognize it as the billabong logo. It retains the main aspect of a wave without showing a mass amount of detail hence making it a symbol. 
     Also it is abstract as well because of the design around the waves. We can see some sort of have rounded squares surrounding the two waves inside. Abstraction usually refers to a much deeper meaning than what meets the eye. Who ever designed this was inspired by the ocean to make a logo based on what they saw, and simplified it to a look that meant something to the designer specifically making it much more abstract than people would normally think.