As I have to incorporate photography into my final design I came up with the idea of recreating my social network designs with paper. The main problem I would find with this would be finding the correct colours for each design. Below are some photos of diferent shops I visited in hopes of find the nearest possible colours that I needed.

These are the colours I finally bought. The hope behind this is that the paper will reinforce the home-made, friendly look that I want.

Below are photos of the the Instagram design made from paper. The design has the home-made, friendly look that I wanted to incorporate into my design. The only downside to this style is that the target audience may have changed to a younger audience.

This concept is based around the loss in value of photographs since social networks have been introduced. 200 million photos are uploaded daily to facebook alone; that’s roughly 6 billion every month. I wanted to poke fun at this slightly and create a few designs that are based around some of the most popular social networks that you can upload photos to. I have chosen the 4 below as examples, but may consider twitter, snapchat and flickr as well, although some arn’t particularly photo orientated. 

The idea behind these designs is that the audience can use them as full frames, or use smaller photos which fit onto the frame filler to look as though it is on the selected social network.

 As you can see below I can not decide which A5 design works best, as both behancce and pinterest arn’t very well known in the UK. These designs are aimed to “engage a buyer” as it states in the brief. Social Networks are popular in today’s culture and these designs will interest most teenage audiences and even an older audience. The colour schemes in these designs are taken straight from the websites. I didn’t want to make them too much like the social networks, gradient and texture-wise, as I want the designs to still work as a set. The flat style is consistent and links them together.

 If possible I would like to remove the coloured borders from the design and actually use the designs in the apropriate coloured frames.

Behance

Facebook

Lanscape Facebook

Instagram

Instagram in use

Pinterest

Below is the design board  that I brought to the crit for this concept, with the brief explanation above on it.

Below is a photo of my feedback sheet from the crit yesterday. The feedback is mostly positive towards my concepts so far, and some ideas were given to me to improve upon my designs.

I created a tally chart on the side of my feedback sheet for people to fill in. Below are the results.

 In general the feedback is quite positive towards my current designs. Feedback shows they are quite engaging and that I have chosen the correct social networks to base my designs around. Many people agreed that websites like Behance and Twitter are either not well known enough or don't fit with the photographic theme. Portrait was a more popular orientation than landscape as it is how the websites layouts are.

Other feedback suggested ways for me to incorporate photography into my designs. I could the actual design with paper cutouts. This would give the design a 3d, friendly, handmade look to it. This would fit in with my concept as it is based around social networks I want the designs to look as friendly and appealing as possible.

Feedback shows that the target audience is early teens to mid-twennties and that this concept was perfect to target this audience as many people around that age don't buy photo frames.

I plan to experiment with ideas more. I plan to add subtle textures to my designs with photoshop as it is required to use photoshop in the brief. I may also consider creating each design with cut out paper.

As frame research, I looked at the frames that can be found in TK Max. The target audience can range from anyone, but the target audience isn't looking to buy an expensive photo frame. There are a range of photo frames that appeal to different age ranges and which would appeal to people with diferent likes and dislikes. The majority of the frames are made by a company called six trees, which when I googled, I found that they have a have a catalogue of frames aimed at diferent audiences, and it is interesting how the frame filler changes appropriately between design yet still belong to the same  company.

The white and cream coloured frames are aimed at people looking for a frame that is traditional frame. The fillers are quite subtle in colour too, using mainly white as the backgrounds to not draw attention away from the frame. These frames usually have a design with a flower of some sort with the six trees logo layer out very generically and plain. most of the frame fillers aimed at an older audience these same traits; using a shade of the colour used on the frame with a very plain, calm layout.

some of the frames aimed at people looking for a modern style frame (frame larger than the picture) usually have fillers with a colour that clashes with the frame.

 below are some screenshots from the Six Trees website.

 The reflective frames above are aimed at an older audience, maybe families. The use of black and white suggests that the photos that are they want people to put in these frames should be reminiscing.

The also have some wackier photos aimed at teenagers. The frame filler is aimed at this target audience, but I don't think it should be in black and white. It does re-enforce the frame colours, but it makes the designs seem slightly dull. I think the use f colour would create a more upbeat design for this use.

the frame fillers that I don't think work are below. The frames are bright and shouldn't have black and white photo of a flower in them. The target audience form these frames is young and won't be as interested in the frames because of this. They should sac have fillers with a calmer shade of the colour of the frame to show that it is aimed at a younger audience, but doesn't need to use clashing colours to  interest a child audience.

My initial ideas were based around making the design as engaging as possible to a specific market. This is one of the key goals that is set in the brief as seen below.

Below is my first brainstorm for this project.

My ideas so far are:

1. Create the images with light drawing and write the letters with a torch. The concept behind this is expressing to the audience how cameras work; Explain that cameras detect detect light that is reflected off of an object and turns that into an image, just as our eyes do. The light drawings in the frame, would have to be quite simplistic drawings of things that people typically take photos of (pets, flowers, cityscape). I think the simplistic look would appeal to a wide audience range if done correctly. I have experimented with this technique before. Some examples of my previous experimentations with light drawing are below.

2. Create a set of designs that are based around different social networks, giving the designs a similar look to them. This concept would be poking fun at the fact that the value of a photo has been deteriorated over time as we have entered a era of digital technology. People take thousands of photos and upload them all to Facebook. Half the time they won't even look at them again. These designs would be trying to get the audience to take notice of this lack of appreciation for photos and actually print off photos to put up in a frame.

3. Take photos of a peoples faces up close e.g. half their face, just their eye, forehead and eyes, just mouth. These designs would be informing the audience to take notice of the composition of the photos they take. The designs would have a slogan like "crop carefully".

4. Have photos of stereotypical places to take family photos and have a dotted outline of people who would be sat there. This implies that the audience should put a person in the frame. The slogan for this design would be "Put a family in your frame". These designs would be aimed at adults within a family

5. Have photos of things that are scaled in comparison to the photoframe. eg. The A3 photo frame would have a cityscape photo and the A5 photo frame would have photo of a flower. The frames would have the dimensions of the frame and a photographic technique written around the object in frame. The technique will actually be used in the photo in the frame.

As research I went into leeds to have a look for some examples of photo frame examples. Here are a few I found in Wilko. Research showed that Wilko's advertising campaigns aim to express "value for money" throughout. what I found when looking at all of Wilko's own products, the branding was very generic and plain. The font used in the Wilko's logo is very close to helvetica, which is known for its generic but modern feel. The "o" is more circular in the Wilko logo making it seem friendlier.

Comparison of Helvetica and Wilko logo.

The generic/modern/friendly theme runs throughout all their branding. Below are a few examples of how it is used on their photo frames:

Again they have used circles as they are a non-intimidating shape (no point corners). The creme colour scheme runs though out their photo frames, with the secondary colour of the circles being a mixture of the creme and the colour of the frame itself. The colour scheme is quite harmonic as there aren't any clashing colours, and fits with the friendly branding.

The layout of these photo frames fits the Fibbunacci Spiral as you can see below:

I plan to incorporate the Fibbunacci spiral or the rule of thirds into my design as it has a lot to do with composition of photographs. The dimensions of the frame are in the centre or the circle and meets the end of the spiral. This is done well as the dimensions are a very important piece of information and the invisible spiral draws your eye towards it.

Above the colour scheme of the circle design has changed to a brown to suite the light brown, wooden frame. most of these designs haste some short bullet points to describe the frames in quite an eloquent way.

Overall these designs fit the Wilko brand and are appealing the wide audience range that Wilko is aimed at.

Focus

There are 3 factors that effect whether an image is in focus or not. These are auto-focus points within the frame and the aperture.

Auto Focus: This must be switched on by the AF/MF button o the lens.

Focus Points: The focus points with in the frame can be set manually or left on automatic. You will see these re lights within the viewfinder that flash and make beeping sounds when part of an image is in focus.

Aperature: Having a wide aperture (e.g. f4.0) gives a shallow depth of field. A narrow depth of field (e.g. f22) gives a large depth of field.

Bellow I have used a photo of my jeans as an example of a shallow depth of field:

 Movement

How much movement blur we can achieve within our image depends on the shutter speed we set on the camera.

A slow shutter speed will exaggerate movement within your shot and cause light trials. It also picks up the shakes of the camera. Below is an example of a slow shutter speed being used to capture the movement of a car, when everything else is relatively crisp.

A fast shutter speed will freeze movement. Below is an example of this. The car below was going the same speed as the one above.

Exposure

How light or how dark an image is depends on 3 factors: The shutter speed, the aperture, and the exposure compensation.

Shutter speed: A slow shutter speed lets in more light than a fast shutter speed.

Aperture: A wide aperture (e.g. ff4.0) lets in more light than a narrow aperture (e.g. f22).

Exposure compensation: How mud extra or less overall light we give to an image to make it brighter or darker.

The photo below was taken outside on a bright day.  The shutter speed was very fast shutter speed stopped too much light coming into the photo, and I had a slightly wide aperture to have a bit of depth of field.

Quality

The quality of the image depends on two main factors. The ISO and the file type.

ISO: 100 ISO is least sensitive to light but the best quality, whereas 1600 ISO is the most sensitive to light but the least quality (noisy).

File type: The file type describes how much colour information and resolution the final image has.

Colour: The final colour of the image depends on two variables: The white balance and the picture style.

White balance: This adds a warming (amber) or cooling (blue) colour filter to the image in order to balance out the whites with diferent light sources. This can cause problems when shooting in diferent environments. a cool (blue) filter will make the photo look too blue and cold, as seen below.

Picture style: This defines what colour biases our images will have, whether they are saturated, black and white, sepia etc.

Below are my final designs for the Message and Delivery brief. I wanted to screen print them as traditionally printed posters have a lot more impact than digitally printed designs, unfortunately I have not had my screen printing induction yet, so was not allowed. Instead I plan to print on a grainy paper to give a more traditional, propaganda style.

The design below questions the audience, forcing them to think about their opinion on the subject. The question is quite ambiguous so as to intrigue the audience to find out more. My type-only design has more information to explain the other posters. This means the designs with less information will have more impact when seen again.

I made the fact in the centre of this design red on a black background to give it a sinister look, with the connotation of blood. In the final crit, it was suggested that I should replace the opening question with the one above, as repetition can have a lot more impact. 

I chose to make the image only design below landscape as it fitted better with the heart rate line illustration. The concept behind the design is that technology is interfering with the heart rate, and ultimately, killing the person. This design fits with my other designs as it gives off very serious connotations; mainly death, something which most people are scared of.

The layout of my designs fit with the rule of thirds in diferent ways. The colour scheme of my posters was based around the commonly used colours of robots in films, such as terminator and a space odyssey. For example, the robot bellow (hal 9000) from a space odyssey, turns evil during the duration of the film. the red "eye" of the robot is very iconic and evokes a feeling of evil. Black also gives the robot a sinister undertone. Feedback shows that this works well with my designs and emphasises the serious tone of voice.

If I were allowed to develop this project further into an actual campaign I would look into diferent dimensions. Below are a few examples of how my designs could be applied if the dimensions were more flexible:

Below are a few quick mock-ups I created for the interim crit to show others the direction I wanted to head in.

Using mind maps and lists, I decided that the tone of voice of my posters were to question and inform the audience. The aim of my posters were to make the audience think about if robots should be used in surgery and sway them towards being against it. My posters aim to make these robots look evil through the use of statistics, colours and illustration.

Bellow are some sketches of some poster ideas which focus around the fact that using these robots, makes the surgeon feel less serious about what they are doing, and may seem like they are playing a game with the controls they are using. I have drawn an old arcade machine that depicts a surgeon game with the words "game over" written on the screen. The tagline "You're life shouldn't be a game" implies that "game over" means people have died. The message isn't completely clear on this poster alone, but may be easy to interpret within a series of posters.

The drawing on the right, shows on of the robots from the article (Da Vinci C) with the tagline "Hello, i'll be your doctor". The aim of this one is to scare the audience slightly. Many are scared of being spoken to something with no emotions, or having a robot look after them.

Another of my sketches runs along with the "you're life is not a game" concept, which depicts a surgery tool tray with scapulas and surgery equipment on it, along with a game controller. This poster would intrigue the audience as it is quite ambiguous.

Another of my concepts is to create an info graphic styled poster, that has no information. This, along with a tag line, will emphasise that there are no statistics to prove that surgery using the Da Vinci C is any better than traditional surgery.

I then began to look into what I could do for my type only image. below are a few that I created that all have diferent tones of voices.

The design below is meant to be as high impact as possible. The aim is to scare the audience and intrigue them to try and find out more. I have used red and black as they are colours commonly associated with evil robots. for example: Terminator, hal 3000 etc.

The design below uses the title from the original article. It is high impact and makes the audience think. The design unfortunately gives no information against robotic surgery.

The design below uses the same red, black and white colour scheme and directly asks the audience who they would trust their life with. Certain words are in red to be emphasised. I added a heart rate line to the bottom of the poster to add more seriousness to the question. The heart rate deadlines, implying that whatever it was monitoring has died. This communicates to the audience that they shouldn't trust a robot with their life.

I brought all of these designs to the interim crit to get feedback to see which direction I should head in. The feedback was written on post-it notes which you can see below.

Feedback showed that:

1. Some designs seemed too aggressive (especially ones that have exclamation marks).
2. The design that meant ions a 3 year old driving could be seen as offensive.
3. The heart rate monitor concept is strong and effective.
4. Simple and strong designs in general
5. I should consider using another font
6. Certain designs have too much information on them.
7. Blank info graphic would not be high impact.
8. Use of the colour red, expresses evil very well
9. Directly questioning the audience is very effective and interesting.
10. Tone of voice should be serious.
11. Consider differently layouts. Possibly landscape for heart rate design.
12. Some designs are over-dramatic.

I plan to take all this feedback in consideration and refine my designs for the final crit on friday.