During Module 1 we followed the course Visual Communication given by Chris Vermaas. The idea was to learn more about how people look at things, what is nice to look at, what not, and why. All the assignments had to be hand in in .pdf-form, and shouldn’t be bigger than 200 kb. In total we had to do 6 designing assignments:

1. Bring a picture

The first assignment was very simple: take a picture with you that you feel strongly about. I chose a picture I made during the Kick-In:

I really like the warm-cold contrast the red and blue lightning give and somehow everyone’s expressions really complement each other.

 

2. Font change

The second assignment was to take a font and “fix” it. I chose the Calibri font, and changed the letter Q, the star- and doller sign. The letter Q was the only letter with its “tail” below the reading line, so I dragged it upwards. The star-sign was too high in my opinion, so I put it in the middle. Later I found out this made the asterisk into a multiply-sign, changing its original purpose. The dollarsign only had stripes above and under it, and I thought it looked better and more recongisable when it had a full stripe through it. 

Later I changed the format I made a bit:

 

3. Two pictures, two verbs

For this assignment we had to take two verbs and put them on two different pictures giving four pictures total. I chose the verbs “court” and “cry”. 

 

  

I chose a stockphoto of a lady eating chocolate, and a picture of a rose. In my opinion both words fitted with the pictures. 

 

4. Poster M1

Next we had to design a poster for the module end expo for module 1. From all posters from the students one would be chosen as “winner”, and his/her poster would be used to promote the event. I ended up making two different versions, since I was not too happy with the first one. The first one I made looked like this:

Later I ended up handing in this one as my final poster:

This one was less symmetrical with overlap, making it stand out more. The “protonen” I add to the circles are also more visible in this one. Looking back, I think I was proudest with this creation out of all assignments. 

 

5. Data visualisation

For this assignment you had to ask the people in your group a certain closed question and present the data in a clea, logical and understandable way. I asked around what people’s favourite skittle colour was, red, orange, yellow, green or purple. The group consisted of 25 people and the  colour red was the winner, which is why I decided to cut the red part from the rest of the pie chart.  I photoshop I added real skittles as background for the different slices, making it clear what skittles are again. 

 

In the end I wasn’t too happy with this one, but I didn’t have the time to fix it. 

 

6. Data visualisation 2

This assignment was quite a bit trickier than the previous one. This time we had to take our own data and combine it with the data of somebody else. I combined my data with that of one of my friend’s, who had asked people what their eye colour is. We came up with a format where the big eyes that were pie chart also had skittles in them, as pupils. 

 

 

All in all I did enjoy the course, even though it was quite hard to keep up with, especially since we did not get instructions on how to use photoshop or any other designing program. But I learned a lot!