Author: mirabrodyblog

This course has taken me through some rigorous multimedia tasks. I’ve grappled with the intricacies of web design and video editing in ways that I never have before.

Group Project

Working with the Office of Spiritual Life here on campus was a really great experience. While there were a few bumps in the road of communication between our group and the client, but I was very pleased with the overall outcome of the project. We were tasked with updating the Office of Spiritual Life webpage that is linked to multiple different information sources about Daniel Chapel, grief counseling, and student-run religious organizations. As a graphic designer, myself, I was very proud of the fresh and modern visual identity that we provided for the Office of Spiritual Life. I decided to craft that identity around this logo that I created.

Because the Office of Spiritual Life’s website was the home of so much information, I wanted to make sure that if anyone outside of the Furman community found any given piece of information on the site previously, that they could easily access that information again. We decided to keep the organization of the website the same, while polishing up the look and feel of the website. One of the most drastic changes for this site can be seen on the student organizations page where we updated the list of student-run organizations and made it easy for users to contact the respective leaders of each organization. In terms of things that I would improve for this project, I would have taken more time to go over the raw interview footage with our client before we started editing to ensure that the client was going to get exactly what they wanted.

Individual Project

I, personally, had a lot of fun with this project. It gave me an opportunity to highlight one of my favorite graphic design projects (rebranding Visit Copenhagen) while also using my writing chops to craft a multimedia piece that really reflects all facets of my creative style. Writing about the design thinking process was a really great way for me to reflect on what I learned both in this course, and in my Copenhagen design course and how they impact my own personal creative process. I really loved utilizing the bright and bold color palette from my brand identity and translating it into web design. I think my favorite part of my Real Talk: Design Thinking website is the portion of the page where the sluts that are used throughout the branding project look as if they are almost scrolling along with the reader as they scroll through the story.

The one thing I would change if I had the time, would be to really tweak and play with different orientations of the body text of the story. I had trouble deciding how to shift the text from side to side so that the reader’s eye follows the suggested “z” pattern, while also making sure that the large portions of body text appeared consistent and cohesive throughout the whole piece. Overall, I am thrilled with how this individual project turned out and would gladly show it to any future employers.

Now that the body copy of my story is edited and well organized, it is time to focus on the details of my Wix site that will really elevate the aesthetic of my overall project. Seeing as though my story is centered around my own graphic designs, it is crucial that the design of my Wix site mirror the design elements found in my branding of Visit Copenhagen.

Beyond the Template

Wix has hundreds of great templates to choose from, but don’t be afraid to use those templates as a jumping off point for your website design. The templates lay some sharp-looking groundwork, but it is up to you to really tweak your site and make it your own. I had previously only ever utilized Wix to create straight forward sites for business or academic use, so getting to learn and play around with the more dynamic and interesting graphic elements that Wix has to offer was really fun. This YouTube video offers a step-by-step tutorial of how to incorporate motion graphics into your website. This clip was really helpful for my particular project when I was looking to use motion graphics in place of more animated gifs of my graphic designs.

Words in Motion

This article  from awwwards.com was extremely helpful in laying out all of the design elements that take a website to the next level. One of the first tips is to consider the power of contrast. While this typically means using contrasting typefaces or type sizes for the copy text and the heading text, this can also extend to include using motion graphics in your headings. The bulk of your writing that has to remain still and legible can be easily contrasted by a header text that moves in a subtle motion.

Designing in Layers

As a graphic designer, I am very familiar with the notion of creating designs in multiple layers. The Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop software not only utilizes layers as an organizational tool, but as a pivotal design tool. Adding subtle design elements on individual layers creates a truly dynamic and dimensional end result as opposed to visiting a website with merely a white background with black text on top. The Youtube video referenced above really made me open my mind to using layers in my website design much like I do with my own graphic designs. During my time creating a visual identity for Visit Copenhagen, I really played with layering my illustrative elements with my textual elements. One of my favorite examples of the dimensions that layering brings to a design is the event poster that I designed for the Copenhagen SlutWalk.

Taking this existing model of layering the translucent illustration of the “slut” over bold black text was a great jumping off point for the design of my website. I knew that I could layer less opaque graphic elements over bold parts of my body copy in order to create that dimensional, layered effect that I wanted to capture.

While platforms like Wix and WordPress provide you with excellent web design templates, don’t be afraid to make your own adjusts to those templates to really elevate your design to the next level.

 

 

Crafting a narrative that features your own multimedia creations can be tough. After you put in all of that TLC to create these multimedia masterpieces, how could anyone possibly decide what elements will stay and what will go? As much as you love and care for them all, you know that they all can’t receive a rose tonight.

How will this support my narrative?

This is the question I keep referring back to as I am working on the multimedia elements of the story. While all of my initial ideas were fun and creative on their own,

they didn’t all make sense to include in my story. One exercise that I did when I felt conflicted about which elements to include in my project was watching local news stories on YouTube. All B-roll or visual elements that were included were there to reinforce the information pertaining to the news story. If I looked at any of my multimedia elements like a mockup of the business cards I created and it didn’t directly correlate with a part of my narrative, I didn’t include it. Below is one of my favorite multimedia elements. She got the first rose, obviously. 

This next gif is getting a rose this week. We had chemistry for sure, but I’m still not sure if she’ll get to meet my family.

Keep the user engaged

Overall, I feel that I have taken the time to learn how to create elements that I previously didn’t know how to create. I pushed myself out of my creative comfort zone to make multimedia elements that both attract and engage the user. I also felt that while I was reading my own written narrative for this project, I quickly felt myself losing focus in the story. It was at these points that I felt the need to include interactive multimedia elements that would keep the user truly engaged in the story.  For instance, Instead of simply writing out the design advice from my professors, I used Thinglink to create interactive photos of them that revealed the helpful advice they offered to me about the Design thinking process. While Thinglink is a great resource, I feel that I still have more to learn about the program. I fully intend to take more time to discover how I can use this resource more in my project to keep the user engaged in unique and innovative ways.

Don’t Overthink It

I was initially a little panicked when I looked at my collection of multimedia elements and saw at least 20 still photos and 1 eye-catching gif. I kept thinking that I had to create some crazy motion graphics or maybe even a video in order to really capture my user’s attention. However, after reading through this editorial fashion story from Refinery 29, I was very relieved. This story featured great still photos that were implemented in captivating ways. layering still photos on-top of one another either alongside or underneath key portions of body text made the story come to life. This story is a really great example of simple multimedia elements complimenting a narrative perfectly.

Letting go is hard to do

I have to detach myself from the fact that I worked hard to create all of these multimedia elements because if it were up to me, I would feature all fo them. Ultimately, I must evaluate them objectively and how well each of them really lend to the larger narrative that I am trying to craft. These so-called “creative rose ceremonies” are hard, but at least they make for a great multimedia story, and even greater TV.

 

 

 

When I first started this project, I had a vague idea of where I wanted the concept to go but was having trouble committing to certain multimedia details. After submitting my initial project outline, it was clear that my concept was very reliant on my more comedic writing style. However, it wasn’t yet portrayed in my proposals. This project initially seemed like more of a challenge in terms of executing advanced multimedia elements (an animated compilation of my logo sketches to show the design process). My logo design evolved from the image on the left to the image on the right.

But I quickly realized that there are endless instructional resources that helped me learn to animate the logos, and the real work was going to be writing the copy. I’m striving for the body copy to genuinely sound like a colloquial take on design thinking and my design process for my Visit Copenhagen branding project.

Having Empathy For Your Reader

The text titled Design Is Storytelling by Ellen Lupton has been extremely helpful, as the chapter on co-creation lead me to really think about how empathy will impact my project. How will I create a feeling of empathy that will impact the reader? I have a unique upper hand in this situation in that I have been through the same experience of my target audience. Just over a year ago I was an inexperienced designer with the passion and drive to create things. However, I didn’t know where to begin. Should I sketch ideas? What if I can’t draw, should I just skip the sketching part? How do you even begin choosing a typeface for a project? All of the questions that I know plagued my mind before facing an intensive design project are the same questions I strive to answer in my own project. The question that I keep going back to in my head while writing this piece is “what would you have wanted to hear/ read before you went to Copenhagen?”

Using Design Thinking to Write About Design Thinking

While this project is instructional/ educational at its core, I definitely didn’t want it to end up feeling like an abridged version of some design textbook. I needed to keep in mind that I am first and foremost crafting a narrative that leaves the reader with helpful tips about applying design thinking to their creative processes. The chapter of “Design is Storytelling” titled “Narrative Arc” was also a great resource by driving home the idea that every narrative has rising action, conflict, conflict resolution, and falling action. I initially thought that trying to make my story adhere to this arc structure would be difficult, but the the design thinking process inherently mimics a very similar structure. While the design process is not a strictly linear one (see image below), the jagged line of the story comes from design challenges (aka conflicts) like the first rendition of my logo not working when scaled down for use on a small business card.

Organized Narrative, Happy Author

While I was initially expecting the multimedia elements of my project to be the most challenging thing to execute, making sure that the written copy follows a narrative arc and actually tells a story has become the most challenging. Now that I have a clear sense of where the narrative is going, the multimedia elements appear to accent my points nicely instead of interrupting a clunky, instructional body copy. I am now much happier with my proposal that includes a developed narrative arc and I’m eager to start the production phase of this project.