Design For Good

Poster, illustration and animation made for my college (Enmore Talks) group event.

The cat's out of the bag (or kinda obvious for those who live in Australia) that I study at TAFE for Graphic Design and I've been inactive for the past two weeks on this group event!

Every two weeks, each group of classmates has to host an event to bring guest speakers talking about a particular topic and my group is the third to go with the theme, "Design For Good". Including myself, I have a total of eight people, the group with the least members, but they're all familiar classmates I get along with. Also, my group's name is "Anecdote" for this event.

In my role, I was in charge of the poster design and motion graphics (animation).

I drew a few early concepts for the poster and my design often comes with illustrations. Unfortunately, I lost my drafts and presented two thumbnails at the last minute. But surprisingly, my last design with the box was chosen by majority vote along with Mariana, another classmate of mine with the same votes in my group. I cooperate with her recycle character pushing bad things away with my box of goodies.

The recycle mascot doesn't have a name and character design by Mariana, but she was happy I randomly came up with my version of her vision. The character was originally black with stick hands and legs, but she likes the green change and added face — the colour later became our group's theme too. Also, its name is "Recycle-Kun" or "Recycling-Kun" as a placeholder and went along with it.

During the process, my regret grew from the heavy responsibility after I realised I was working on the poster alone. I did ask Mariana and another classmate, Angel afterwards to assist me in placing the required texts and logos, while I was focusing on getting the main illustration done solely on Illustrator. If I could change something, I'd rather have someone else in charge of the poster while I'm working on the illustration for both the poster design and dividing it into different parts for the motion graphics.

Alternate Posters

Green version

Blue version

Thao, a classmate who's been contacting as many guest speakers as she could, informed me who the people joining the event. The information was necessary because my two group leaders/managers, Sonia and Ki, recommended me to draw a piece of furniture and many references related to the guest speakers. I was flexible at the line art phase to some changes and drew a chair relating to Koskela, an asterisk at the end of random alphabets referencing Frost from their logo including an asterisk, an aboriginal flag and nature itself relating to the causes Cocogun designed for. Unfortunately, at the polish stage of the drawing, our last guest speaker, Garbett responded to Thao late for me to add any changes referencing his works.

My group project involves a requirement of making three different variations of the poster design. We agreed to only change the background colour and paper textures I crumbled and scanned three times. Yellow is the original background colour like the ray of the sun, but my group prefers green and blue — relating to the Earth — which I used for the alternate versions.

A week before the event, last Tuesday, my group was unlucky from my college's printing involving cyan ink, making the error noticeable on blue and green backgrounds with ripple effects. Regardless, I still put up around 24 posters around the campus while everyone else who was present worked on the chalkboard — I was originally going to participate, but fear took better than me when I tried using the stepladder for the first time, so I focused on finishing the posters and prepare the motion graphics instead.

The next day, Wednesday, Thao told me she only encountered one poster as she made her way to class, and it brought me to print 21 more copies of the poster and spend the whole class walking around the campus as a break from everything I worked for the group before setting up the motion graphics.

Oddly, on the day before the event, three of the posters were missing, leaving the blu tack remains and yellow posters only at the front entrance. Thao remembered the posters I put up last time and believed me after suspecting sabotage or someone wanting to steal one of each colour. I wouldn't mind if anyone wanted my designs after hearing a few classmates wishing to keep my designs, but my group and I find it rude to remove the posters before and during the time of the event. In the end, the experience of sabotage could happen in the real world and reflecting on my emotional attachment I managed to settle the problem by printing another copy.

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Motion Graphics

Out of my group, I was the most confident in animations, which led me in charge of the motion graphics required as part of the group project. I followed my group's request and made the storyboard concept.

The concept was an empty box filled with lots of trash. Then, Recycling-Kun drops last before the box closes itself and reopens with the goodness.

As the person in charge, I have the master/original After Effects file and send copies to my team who can collaborate. I had seven different parts ready, but only five including myself participated. Ki takes two parts, who already finished on the Anecdote title card and works on the random junk falling inside the box with assets of the different trash he made. I've given Mariana one of the easiest parts of the empty box begins to drop and open itself because Sonia insisted on the second hardest part of making wacky effects of the closed box despite her tight schedule. I allowed Sonia to work on her request with Angel working with her as a team. Lastly, I took the entire background and final hardest parts of the animation, along with adjusting, combining and fixing my classmate's parts into one.

Honestly, it was difficult and sometimes frustrating after I asked or assisted my classmates many times, but I kept a level head throughout the process since I was aware of their skill levels and understood why some teachers responded with a slightly impatient tone. However, I'm glad I experienced what it's like leading a part of the group project because I also learned something new from my classmates after obtaining their finished parts into the master version and dissecting their methods. In the end, I'm proud of my team because we managed to finish the animation before the event today!

By the way, I'm thankful to my teacher, Craig for allowing me to download his entire sound library royalty-free to use them for the animation as we're the first group from my semester to add sound effects and music in the motion graphics!

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During the event, I enjoyed and was inspired by Cocogun's presentation the most, wishing the railway stamp collection in Japan existed in Australia because I'd be more motivated to spend a lot exploring outside to appreciate each station and location I step foot on. Koskela's presentation got me thinking more aware of environmental waste. Despite being unrelated to the main theme, Garbett is the most interesting with photographs seen as one thing can be seen as another thing. Unfortunately, I didn't have the chance to ask a question during the Q&A to receive his published book because I was afraid to ask an obscure question if he knows the "Funyarinpa" because his work samples remind me of that game reference, an abstract painting later can't be unseen after knowing the answer. Lastly, Frost made me think that every text we use has a tone of voice, not only told by pictures.

Overall, I'm glad the group project is over and I'm able to rest better after knowing it's done, for now! Also, I ended up cosplaying my character Saitou on that day because Thao told me, "Why not?" and it was the only green I had. I did feel guilty that I didn't have to contribute much during the event since I've worked a lot and so much behind the scenes. At least I printed out a postcard-sized poster as a thank you card signed by everyone in my group, including Ayeisha and Yun!