Week 08 - Origination

Class Format

Todays class was concerned with Chapter 6, 'Emotion'. The class then shared prototypes of the various projects we have been working collaboratively.

 

Group Exercise

Reading Quiz

Answer the following questions as succinctly as possible in your own words
10 mins: Cut & paste into your blog and start answers / 10 mins: Open discussion

1. When Maeda uses the “Feel, and feel for” principle, he is drawing on peoples connection to a very personal experience: feelings. List 3 ways that would make use of this principle to visitors of your exhibition.
   - Design objects or images which illicit an emotional response.
   - Juxtapose the positioning of objects or images to illicit an emotional response.
   - Create an environment (lighting, sound, smell) to illicit an emotional response
2. What is animism? Why do you think the “Tamagocchi” craze of the ‘90s became such a craze? How can you apply this to your exhibition?
   - '...the belief that natural objects, natural phenomena, and the universe itself possess souls.' (reference). Meada extends this to all objects. The electronic devices gave people an emotional response or emotional investment. 
3. Name 2 products that you have purchased that gave you that feeling of “Aichaku”. What feelings did those products evoke? Was it the feeling that sold the product to you?
   - My computer gave me a feeling of achievement and possibility. Hope sold it.
   - My wedding rings affirmed my love for my wife. Love sold them.
4. How do the references to emotion relate to the simplicity/complexity relationship discussed in Law 5 - Differences?
   - Emotion increases complexity while tempering the perceived coldness of simplicity.

 

Research

Video

I will be using this research space to give you bits of the interview I recently had with Nick Bland, local Author Illustrator. Beginning with a brief career biography. Nick has 14 books published through Scholastic Australia. He has had four of his titles interpreted as interactive ebooks for mobile platforms via Wheelbarrow, of which he is a co-founder. He has won several awards, the most notable and recent being the Children's Book Council of Australia - Early Childhood Book of the Year 2012 (link). He is also just a good bloke.

This is a very brief excerpt from our conversation. I recorded almost 40 minutes of audio and I have used about 39 seconds here. The program used here is iPhoto, a program that I begrudgingly find myself returning to occasionally. Loading a theme and photos, editing them and exporting it all in twenty minutes is just too tempting. The audio was treated separately with rudimentary trimming in Quicktime player.
Also on the technical side uploading to blogger directly always results in a tiny chunk of video, as it seems to automatically down sample it and it looks rubbish. To get it to play here at the correct size, the simplest solution I found was to upload the video to Youtube and insert the iframe for that in the code here. There may be a solution in the blogger dashboard well buried.

 

Images

To the right is a detail of one of the images from the video (click to enlarge). It is a preliminary sketch of a character for the book he is currently working. From here separate sketches move into photoshop where correct scale is determined and colours are initially mapped. I could really identify with Nick's creative process, especially the outdoor office. Which is where he was working when I dropped in...

Yet another appearance of the insidious Myatt Media logo, it is still in its under coat stage here.
Finally to the left an image of Nick found here. Overall Nick and I had had a great chat, probably made easier because we are both Wagait Beach locals. A quick final note about the video above in that it will remain here for about the next six weeks. After showing it to an interested party it was decided ...

 

Reflection

Creating an emotional response in the viewer is an important consideration for a designer. I would say that it is unavoidable and that the conscious consideration of emotion is simply intelligent design (that was an unfortunate turn of phrase, although perhaps designers do have god like qualities at times!).