First-Drafts

Today our first-drafts of our posters were due. Everyone thought mine appeared to be to symmetrical, and they are right honestly. It is something I need to work on, I have something in mind but I am going to play around with the idea on this hand-constructed poster before I move to the InDesign one.

Today we talked more in class about color. All of these terms are still all fairly new to me. I have heard them all before but I never took the time to find out what they mean. Hopefully I will learn something new and be able to apply it to this project we're working on.

Dieter Rams: ten principles for good design

In this reading he lists his ten principles for what makes good design and they are as follows: Good design is innovative- The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself

Good design makes a product useful-A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional, but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.

Good design is aesthetic- The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products we use every day affect our person and our well-being. But only well-executed objects can be beautiful.

 Good design makes a product understandable- It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product talk. At best, it is self-explanatory.

Good design is unobtrusive-Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression.

 Good design is honest-It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.

 Good design is long-lasting- It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society.

Good design is thorough down to the last detail-Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the user.

Good design is environmentally-friendly-Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimizes physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product

Good design is as little design as possible-Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials.

Back to purity, back to simplicity.

Although I may not know what good design is quite yet, I know I will be able to use his principles to guide myself in creating good design.

Color Assignment

I thought these two displayed contrasting chroma fairly well, both displaying light and dark values with some grayed a little. The Pepsi logo everyone recognizes but it isn't that exciting. However the Ghost Recon logo catches the eye right away with the use of light in the upper right of the image.

These two I thought give an idea of what contrasting hue is, self explanatory, both images have vibrant colors that just don't work well together.

These two in my opinion display harmonious hue, both images have colors next to each other on the color wheel and they are nice to look at. Which kind of goes hand in hand when looking at flowers.

These two i my opinion show harmonious chroma, each color helps bring out the other. Especially in the movie poster, the bluish night sky accents the Strawberry in the middle.

These two show contrasting value, self explanatory again I believe. The pillow clearly has different values of blue on it, yet somehow it works. The image with the circles in some ways accomplishes the same thing.

These last two images I feel show harmonious value with their use of dark values for both shirt designs.

Don Norman video

In the video Don Norman talks about his new life, beauty. He mentions the Phillipe Starck juicer that he bought, even though he doesn’t use to to make juice because he bought the gold plated version. Although that does not matter to him because the design itself is what makes him happy. His whole talk is based on the principle of good design. If a design is good, then people will be drawn to it. He also mentions a Ping-Pong table that displays water and fish and when the ball hits the table it causes ripples so the fish swim away. He says, “Is this a good way to play Ping-Pong? No, but it is fun” I would agree with him.

There are a lot of products out there that interest us. Do we need them? Not really, but we want them. Take for instance the Apple Magic Mouse or the HMDX portable speaker that I recently bought. I did not need them but I bought them anyway because I liked the way they looked and what they did. I bought them because I wanted to…and because I had the money.