APA 6 Referencing Seminar

This seminar was focused on providing myself and the group with information on how to reference correctly for my upcoming 2500 words essay summative. I have never referenced before so this was something very new to myself. The seminar informed me of when and how to reference throughout my essay, giving me the understanding of academic terminology.

Something stressed heavily during the seminar was plagiarism.

Plagiarism: Defining someone else's work as your own.

Accidental Plagiarism: Incorrectly Referenced.

When to reference

Paraphrasing: Putting eternal text in your own words.
Images: Images found from books or the internet.
Statistics: Factual information based from a reference source.
Quotations: Direct information from a source.

In text citations - Shortened versions of references to link to full reference

Example Of An In Text Citation - (Oxford Dictionary, 2016)

Full reference - Contains all references information

Example Of A Full Reference - Oxford (2016). In Oxford DictionaryOxford University Press. Retrieved from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/subculture

During the seminar it was also explained that their was a reference list and a bibliography, previously I thought that they were both the same. However it turned out that a reference list is where you contain all of your references citated in your work and a bibliography is the lists of reading sources which have been looked at but didn't directly reference in the essay. In addition to this we were shown some assets which could make the referencing process easier, such as Mendely and Ref Me.

Types of references

Articles
Websites
Books
Magazines
Journals

Overall I found this seminar session to be quite useful in clarifying many confusing aspects of the reference process. It also gave a much broader understanding of essay terminology, allowing me to understand how and when to references, whilst clarifying the word Paraphrasing as I struggled to understand the difference between this and plagiarism.

Creative Cloud Suite: Illustrator Image Trace

The task for this creative cloud exercise was to produce a image trace photograph with a custom based logo. We was asked to use a sport based photograph for this task, I think that this would work well for a promotional design. I decided to find a quick photograph online for my design, this ended up being a photography of a blonde women running in a city. With this photograph I then image traced at a 6 colour setting, with the result of the colour scheme being below. In addition to this I could ungroup this image trace and delete any areas which I did not particularly like, to perfectly capture of delete any unwanted features within the trace.

Fortunately the design I was left with satisfied the concept that I was looking for. After The completed trace I then had to design a logo to be place on the image. Keeping in mind the activity that the women was doing in the photograph, I decided that my logo would be called Endurance as it symbolized the women's pacing. Using the typeface Helvetica I then added a simplistic curved shape edited with the pen tool, this allowed me to adjust the curvature of the shape to my desire. This shape was on a slight slant, giving the impression of a hill, for when running up a hill you would gain stamina and build up your endurance. I got this idea from the Adidas logo where there logo represents mountains for running.

Here is what the original photograph looked like before the image trace.

Overall I am really happy with the overall design of this image trace and I will make sure that I experiment with this Adobe illustrator feature in the future as it captures a stylised appearance of design, without doing a lot of work to it. This could possibly be a great idea to mock up concepts for designs.

Creative Cloud: Interactive Album Booklet

This Adobe Creative Cloud tutorial was to explore more advanced features of creating an interactive PDF. These extra skills would help us in producing out PDF's if we wanted to include video references in our future research and or development.

We began by reproducing the pervasive percussion album cover using a new blend of tools. A new tool which I found out was to be able to select the exact colour of an image and applying this to text and shapes in the document. This made finding the exact colour of the document very easy. This tool is similar to the Eyedropper tool in photoshop, however in indesign you need to hold the mouse button down and let go when over your chosen colour.

Here is my version of the Pervasive Percussion Album (Below)

After this brief introduction to the session, we then looked at creating a table of contents, which is basically a digital contents of all the pages in the document. The reason why this is an effective tool, is because it saves time on constructing a contents page manually, and can be updated if the documents layout changes. This is also where I found the help tool effective as it guided me to the table of contents, as I was unable to find it.

This part of the session I looked at including video within a interactive PDF. We used a video suppled on unlearn called Swing of change, which was an animated film. Quite simply to have video in indesign you have to simple place it in the document, however to have a fully functional video, with a pause and start button, you are required to mark some options in the media tab. Features in this menu include the ability to have the video play instantly as you go to the specific page the video is on and also create a display window of a particular frame, if the video fame currently is bland. Something which I did find useful however, is that to be able to see videos in the document PDF, it has to be opened in Adobe Acrobat reader.

Overall I gained the ability to add videos into indesign, which in my opinions a very important skill to have when constructing digital media. I also found out that Indesign is much more than a research and publication software, as it can be used to create many sources of media. I am very happy with the PDF I produced and although it's not a publication worthy outcome, I think that the skills acquire fro this session are very important, which I will apply to my future project documents.

Creative Cloud Suite: Cinema 4D Tutorial

This was the final process and production I have left for the remainder of my first year. In this session I experienced using Cinema 4D, a program focusing on a 3D environment, as that this software can be very hard to get the hang of, but can be a exceptionally useful for my skill development as a designer. We began by watching a short showreel, showing myself and the group what we can potentially do with the software, when we practice with it.

We also looked into a website called BEEPLE, where Stephen discussed about a designer who creates a new design everyday and has accumulated over 3000 designs in total.

I started the excise of by looking at preset examples which I downloaded online from unlearn. These assets gave a useful look into what perspective I would have when creating an outcome and understood that everything until the final render looks very wireframe heavy. Stephen then talked about different features and shortcuts.

Key Shortcuts

Number 3 key and mouse rotate the camera

Number 2 key and mouse zoom the camera

Number 1 key and mouse move the camera sideways

E key changes the position of the object selected

R ket rotates the object selected

S key scales the object selected

O key centres camera on selected object

I was set a range of  task's this workshop, in order to learn how to use Cinema 4D.

This image shows myself separating the shape into sections, so that I could transform the shape from its original cube form. My attempt was to make a building from only a couple of assets. This is how far I got before having to move on to the next task.

This task focused on forcing a cube to curve by increasing the strength of bend object, this created a spiral shape. I further developed on this by adding a small sphere within the curve and adding an extruded text with the title Primecore Industries. This was done to form a logo. I really liked the outcome and therefore began adding some lighting to the 3D logo.

After generating my shape from the curve we then looked at using the cloner tool, a tool which enables the ability to clone a shape without the need to produce a set of individual layers. This created a interesting looking pattern, similar to a fan or engine part. I also added some animation to the cloned shape, making it spin for a duration of three seconds.

Lighting is an important feature of Cinema 4D, it helps visualise the 3D space when in render view. Otherwise what could be really detailed 3D work can look rather flat and boring. I was asked to import a illustrator vector within the program so that I could make it 3D, introducing me to the inter program compatibility of the Cinema 4D. However to be able to insert the vector, I had to downgrade the current version of my illustrator save file, when saving my work, this then allowed for the program to accept my file. As I currently didn't have any illustrator files on my computer at that present time I quickly generate a smily face vector.

Unlike extrude, where the vector would be filled completely, I was asked to use the rectangle within the pen tool drop down menu, so that when I applied the sweep object, it created and outline. This in my opinion work out better for my design as it gave the face more depth than if it was extruded. This worked very well with the implication of lighting effects to better make the face stand out.

In addition to lighting I was also shown how to add texture and effects to objects. I decided to add a some transparency to the face to take the form of a glass like texture, also including some tint of colour. This made the face stand out much more from the background.

The final experiment which I did was to understand some basic physics of the Cinema 4D software. To do this I started off with a partical emitter, which when played thought the animation timeline shows the direction of where the particles were heading. However, no particels could be dispersed just yet as I needed to add a shape and add basic rules to the objects. These rules would give the software information on the objects would react, in addition to reacting to their environment. For example it the spheres which were going to shooting up from the ground would then collide with the ground, instead of clipping through it. Give the animation a more realistic perspective.

Throughout the session I looked briefly into the 4 perspective camera angles, so that I could get a much greater understanding of where my objects were, with in the program,

Here is what text looks like with lighting effects but no sky and base. This is great when you are after understanding what light is effecting just an object.

Here is what the text looks like in standard editing mode.

Here are a couple of short animations which I produced within Cinema 4D.


C4D Experiment #1 from Jordan Harnett on Vimeo.


EXAMPLE 6_Editor_a from Jordan Harnett on Vimeo.

Overall this Cinema 4D software tutorial helped me understand that I as a graphic designer I must be much more diverse in the way I produce my work. Being quite skillful in many particular softwares would extend my creativity, making myself a much more valuable assets for jobs when I graduate.

Narrative Design

For this lecture we looked at the process of Narrative Design. Narrative Design is of great importance when it comes to developing visual communication, and although it is commonly used in film, literature and games design, the process can also be used within graphic design. I consider graphic design a jack of all trades, being able to utilise many different medias in order to achieve its goal, design tells story's.

When producing a visual story you need to ask 4 important questions to best understand what kind of narrative you are trying to tell. These questions are;

What is the issue?

What will be the events?

If needed, who are the characters?

What is the content?

All these are very basic questions one should ask them self before producing a story.

Like all narrative processes we start with a beginning middle and end, planning our story and layout of the foundation. Due to the creation of Freytags Pyramid (1862), Gustav Freytag developed a visual graph after documenting the patterns of storytelling.

Afterwards we looked into the 8 series of conflicts. These are the proposed only style of stories currently told today, by Arthur Quiller Couch. I found this interesting as that I have never hear of these series of conflicts before, and it enlighten to me how limited stories really are. I also noticed that many books fall with more than one of the categories provided, which reminded me about the word convergence.

Series Of Conflicts

"Man Against Fate"

"Man Against Society"

"Man against The Supernatural"

"Man Against Machine"

"Man Against Man"

"Man Against God"

"Man Against Self."

"Man Against Nature"

Something which caught my eye during the lecture was Pixars 22 rules of storytelling. I knew that they had principles of animation, however I didn't know they had these rules. I found this rather interesting as I admire the works of pixar. The Rules are as followed;

Overall the lecture showed my that having a good narrative for design can really improve my over message I am trying to communicate.