Lizzie Wa Design

To do this week:

• Design development
  • Colours
  • Fonts
  • Drawings
• Idea development
  • How my structure might work
  • Designs 
• What i need to design
• Testing 
• Essay development 

Essay draft

I worked up my storyline into a draft of my essay that is not fully finished but i think a good starting point from which to draw from. Once my outcome is more fully defined i think that the end of the essay will be easier to write. 

Design development 

I started looking at colours, shapes and fonts that could inspire the look and feel of my outcome. From this visual research i made a couple of moodboards to help me explore the visual look that could work for me. 

This first moodboard shows the overall look and feel that i am drawn to for this project. It is colourful, bright and uses alot of shapes and simple facial features.

I then focused this a bit to explore potential branding directions to take my project in and how my idea and direction could be represented as a visual identity.

I think typography could play a really interesting role within my visual identity for this project and will be important in making it feel fun and playful, while also attractive to adults. With this in mind I explored what kind of typography

How the face of my installation will look is something else that will be very important to consider. This final moodboard looks at potential ways of displaying and representing a face that feel playful and open to interpretation. I am really drawn to the overlapping colourful layers of wood used in many of these.

Instillation

To help move my outcome idea forwards, I started to think about what it is that I will need to make and how I will get to the point I need to be at. 

What I need to create and how i will get there:

• Visual identity – come up with a few ideas for how it will look and feel 
• Instillation – a few drawings/ designs of what it will consist of. 
• Design what it is- how it looks and works 
• Mockup of the installation – model it somehow? 
• Branding style for:
  • Advertising – posters etc. 
  • Booklet/ leaflet to go with it – in same visual style explaining the installation and its reason for being
  • Possibly also some other stuff to sell alongside it like bags etc.

Faces 

I started thinking about how the face in my installation would look and also how it might move and work. I have been on the lookout for faces in everyday objects, houses etc. even more than usual recently. This being something that I have always been interested in and found to be a fun and playful activity. I have started documenting the faces i see more and more to help with inspiration around the different ways we see faces even when they are made up of a strange array of objects. 

[face images in things]

I created some very quick and simple sketches to explore some potential ideas of how my face installation could look, which also helped me to visualise how it might work. 

How it might work:

Bottom section mouth- spins round to reveal different mouth shapes

Possibly same with hair/hat 

The could be controlled by two wheels, either side of the face that need to be turned at the same time to rotate the smile. I need to look into how that would work and a way to ensure both wheels need to be moved to 

Eyes could move where they are looking – both eyes need to be moved together. On some kind of rotating ball joint behind the face.

I then started to explore the look of the faces more. I drew lots of faces and separate features to see what worked well and what didn’t.

I also cut up shapes in coloured paper and moved them around to see what faces I could make out of them. I found that with the same combination of shapes I could make a range of very different faces that all showed different expressions. This could be a potential way of making my outcome work, giving the user free expression to create whatever face they wanted using a given selection of shapes. This is a good way to allow free and imaginative play to take place, but with a clear set of restrictions. 

The issues that could be faced with this however is that people could make other things that don’t look like faces, and it could be unclear that the idea is to make a face, or difficult for some putting them off the activity completely. As my research has shown the importance of helping adults to play by making it clear what they have to do and making the task approachable, I need to ensure the activity is very easily understandable. 

To set more boundaries and keep the face looking like a face at all times I think only allowing people to change the face rather than build their own will work better for my audience and reasoning. 

With this in mind i started trying out some face ideas, that are based on shapes but more fully faces. 

I bought these ideas into illustrator to play around with colours and how the features could be moved about to create different expressions. I picked bright and playful looking colours that inject a splash of energy into the face. Where the colours are placed on the face makes a big difference to how the face look and the emotions it produces in me as a viewer. I played around with different combinations to see which of the colour combinations had the best feel.

Lego Play

I also found some lego and decided to play with that to help loosen up my creativity and help me get into a playful mindset. I used the lego to create some things freely at first, and then began to try and make a simple lego face. 

Further development

From these early ideas i refined the face design further to create a similar kind of face, but one that was a bit more pleasing to look at. I then digitalised this to see how it would look done cleanly. I like the look of this face an the shapes and colours used, but I am not sure how it would work to rearrange the features and have enough freedom for people to play with it.

Reflection

I feel as if I am starting to find a good direction for how i want my outcome to feel and some ideas for the visual identity that will go along with it. The actual look of the face however, I think is quite a long way off. I need to balance ensuring it is easy to change and move, with a face that is friendly and aesthetically pleasing. I also need to ensure it can show a range of emotions .