Assignment 1

Assignment: To design my name so as to describe/communicate some aspect of me.

Criteria: Letters of my name must be readable. Final prototype to be size A5.

Process: 4 sketches > Pick one > Develop into 2 roughs > Pick one > Develop into final prototype.

I first came up with 4 thumbnail sketches.

1. MK is loving 2208.

• This idea was born out of trying to use my fingers to form my initials. It was when I was looking at the shadow of the “M” I had made that I realised that if I invert them, they form two victory signs. Or representations of the number “2.” As for the accompanying text, it is a throwback to McDonald’s tagline in its advertisements, ” I’m lovin’ it!”

 2. I am MK and I need coffee.

• The message (that coffee is very very important to me) wasn’t hard to come up with. Rather, it was how i want to present it that took quite a bit of thought. Initially, I figured that this idea has probably been used a few times over, but I thought it would be good to get some feedback on it since it felt like it has potential. 

 3. I am MK and I like mahjong.

• I did have a sketch for this idea. But as I had thought of this over the lunar new year, I had time and resources to execute the idea – by putting my mahjong sessionn on hold to do this. The shot turned out better than my initial sketch and hence I used it as my thumbnail sketch. If I choose to use this thumbnail, then it would need work in PS before it can pass as a CG anyway. (I can’t possibly submit a photo as a piece of CG right?!

4.  I aM Klutzy.

• This was possibly the hardest to execute – due to the amount of “damage” -related effects I had to add on to my initials. While I liked that there was some wordplay and the visuals tie in to the message, I felt that it may not be easy to create a CG out of that idea.

 

From my 4 thumbnail sketches, I finally decided on my second thumbnail to be developed into 2 roughs.

 

2.1 I am MK and I need coffee.

• I took the importance of coffee to me even further and dramatized the concept a little. Instead of a cup of coffee, a pack of coffee – similar to IV drips – is used instead.
• This rough is coloured after I had developed 2.1 and 2.2. I picked this to be my final prototype.  

 2.2 MK reacts instinctively to coffee.

• I changed the perspective of the drawing a little. Instead of a hand reaching INTO the picture towards the cup, I redrew the hand reaching across the page to the cup at the edge of the drawing. This is to create the feeling of a sense of action unfolding right in front of the viewer.

 

Reflections: I picked 2.1 to be developed into my final prototype because I had like the idea more.

Here is a listing of the feedback from the class on my tentative prototype 2.1.

• Hand – in full colour.
• Nails – paint them.
• IV tube / Name: the separation of my name from other elements in the drawing can be increased to make my name stand out.

 

But in addition to incorporating advice from my classmates and consultation with Ms Siti, I felt that more could be done to improve the overall design.

Along the way, I did consider changing the design to that of an actual name card, but I feel that if I had done that, I may have missed the entire point of the assignment. In the end, I introduced a “setting.”

I gave it a vintage look (or it could be interpreted as a coffee-kind of colour palette)., but that was partially because the pack of coffee and the “MK” are brown, so I had to balance out the hand colour too. It was initially a healthy peach-pink as you can see.

Now the setting, I added a table, and a noisy rainbow background. I feel that the noise in the background adds to the bustling and vibrant coffee-shop feel that exists not only in our HDB coffee-shops but also in your coffee chains.

Font used for the IV drip tube is “Turn Table”, font for my self introduction? “Caffeine.”

There you go, my final prototype for Assignment 1