Week Two Reflection

Observe, Collect, Record.

We began this first assessment with looking into Visual Literacy with a slideshow of examples. Visual Literacy is a tool that we can explore through the use of intense colour, emotive typography, scale, innovative figures and images. It is what designers use to convey a message to an audience.
The image bellow was included in the slideshow and we are able to recognise the reference to animals at first glance, even without the context of the logo in the top right corner. With closer inspection, we can reveal that the animal is, in fact, a human hand. A good point made in the discussion during class was that this could be a metaphorical reference to the animals’ lives ‘being in our hands’. It’s through visual concepts that we are able to think of this message, even without the quote provided.

With this new found understanding of the power of visual literacy, I was then challenged to start exploring this for my first assessment.
For the assessment, I gathered a few sound images of basic streamline letterforms such as letters ‘T’, ‘H’ and ‘I’. Though I dove deeper into the challenge later during the day at my workplace. Here I changed my perspective through the camera lens to perceive hidden letters in everyday life through innovative techniques such as cropping, tilting the camera to different angles and zooming in on objects. Before I tried this, I struggled a lot to find more complex letterforms such as ‘M’ or ‘S’ (shown down bellow). However, by simply altering my photographic perspective this changed for the better. I even found myself more invested in finding letters in places I normally wouldn’t expect.
I will continue using the techniques mentioned to complete the rest of my alphabet.

Transfer, Select, Refine.

During this weeks tutorial I had uploaded my images of hidden letterforms onto Adobe Photoshop.
I started editing all of my images into black and white copies or vibrant coloured copies. For the coloured copies, I mainly experimented with the adjustment panel with the brightness and contrast settings. These helped enhance the boldest colours within the image, overall making it more lively.

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Above is an example of how I used the cropping tool to identify the letterform easier. It also demonstrates how the exaggerated brightness, contrast and saturation settings enhanced the image.

For the black and white copies, I mainly depended on the ‘black and white effect’ and the threshold tool. This tool assisted me with creating outlines and also transformed the jpg into a black and white geometric image. Through this simple step, the letterform ‘e’ is now highly recognisable, down bellow.

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Down below I have listed all of the other tools that I had used;

• The Cropping Tool – A simple tool that helped make the editing process a lot more efficient. It eliminated a lot of the background that was filled with unwanted noise.
• Lasso Tool – I used this tool to trace the outlines of the hidden letterform in the picture. Once traced I would then ‘invert’ the tracing so that it would highlight the background which I would then fill in with white. With the background noise eliminated, the main letterform would be complemented with white space.
• The History Panel – this personally was the best tool that I learned to use because I had made a lot of mistakes whilst experimenting. It was amazing to know that I could simply go back to an images original state. Admittedly, this was my most used tool that I used today!

I found that using these tools for the first time was a bit tricky, but after repetitive practice, I was able to get used to them. I know that I will be heavily relying on them for the rest of my assessment.

I was able to broaden my knowledge of what we had learnt in this tutorial more in-depth within the lecture, which discussed the theme of Compositions.

We covered elements that are considered in all design compositions. I had created a diagram to help myself understand more clearly how all of these elements work aside or with each other.

In general, this all can seem overwhelming to me. Nonetheless, I began to brainstorm what my poster could reflect for this first assessment. Due to all of my letterforms, so far, being found at a gym, I have started to brainstorm poster themes surrounding action, strength and street style. To communicate these themes I could use dark tones and bold use of contrast to convey a sense of seriousness and strength.

The Threshold tool is definitely helped my transform my letters and I’ll be using this tool a lot more for the rest of my Alphabet. I starting to create a ‘Threshold’ proof sheet alongside my black and white and coloured proof sheet cause I believe it is just as visually strong and will demonstrate more of a distorted, street-like version of my alphabet.

I’m aiming to continue taking images to complete my alphabet for next weeks tutorial.