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GVA STUDIO – Distinctive simplicity

Three highly interesting creative people, have joined together to open a studio in January 2004 in GVA (Geneva). They have created a community which consists of journalists, photographers, architects, musicians, designers and stylists, who work together to display works in the studio. They really want to make sure to not have a fixed style, as they want to be open to everything and not copy anyone else’s ideas. They are experts especially in the typography scene, as they have gathered a lot of knowledge about it, and are convinced it is one of the most important elements in design. When doing something for their clients, they try to meet its expectation as well as possible, but also keeping their own style and source of inspiration in mind. They make everything as simple as possible, and this is the key to their success.

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Graphic abundance

Tom Pfister, Juliene Junghaeni, Roland Zenger, and Philip Luethi have had a very nice idea; they decided to put all of their talents together to make a 160 paged book with the title: “Daddy broke my bike.”. This is very interesting because they wanted to express themselves freely, without any theme or guiding principle that has to be regarded; in their designs they only incorporate the most essential piece of information or interest, they ignore everything else. This overall is so interesting because of the great idea, to integrate their skills and thoughts into an open minded, just like they are, book. The pictures on the following pages of the magazine show that they have great thoughts, and produce great designs, where each one looks different than the other.

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Evaluation

I am asked to write a summary of what I have learned and how I showed it in my most recent work; this is a really had topic since there is so much knowledge I have gained and only so little space to explain which almost guarantees some elements, if not key ones, to be missing. First of all, I have of course learned the principles of design: contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. I have developed the understanding for these four much more than I actually thought was possible. I have learned a huge variety of tools in Photoshop, which in the beginning I thought would kill me, because I couldn’t deal with that program at all! Not to forget the most recent thing I have learned once again, the rule of thirds. Fonts as well as colors and its effects have also been part of teaching plan and have been incorporated into my designs.

Incorporation into my new designs:

In the tag we can see the biggest amount of learned skills in the class used in comparison to my most recent works. Repetition is used in the shape of texture that should be seen on the tag. It is repeated over and over again since it is a texture. Color contrast can clearly be seen between the three main colors: black/gray, red, and blue. The “Designer Line” as well as the “Denim Shirt”, “SIZE M” and $192,11” is grouped together via proximity. It is all blue which represents a connection between them as they are all providing descriptive information about the product. “Designer Line”, “Denim Shirt”, and the bar code are aligned on the left side. Photoshop tools have also been applied here. I overlaid the texture with color that I inserted from my brick design. The font used (all in blue), is called Helvetica Neue, is very clean, and I think perfectly fits on a clothing tag.

The logo I designed also included a few, but not too many things we learned. The time consuming part of this, was finding a design I like, since I had over nine different ones. Regarding Photoshop, I used a clipping mask to insert the bricks into the letters. The font is especially chosen and downloaded from the internet to match the theme more than any that are initially installed on the computer.

Many of the learned techniques and knowledge has been put into the poster. First of all, there’s a very nice contrast from the snowboarder to the dark brick and the white text. In addition a lot of Photoshop work is inside this design. I had to brush the entire outside of the gray snowboarder with a gray brush that I had to configure with a lot of settings, to make it look more like graffiti, not like an overlay and something posted onto the wall. In addition, I then had to configure the brush and snowboarder with a big variety of fx options. Last but not least, the font on this poster is pretty decorative, and perfectly matches the theme.

I think that all of these three designed parts show a big amount of understanding of the key concepts learned in class, and a good capability of working with the most essential program in this class, Photoshop.

Inner City Clothing Tag

The MacBook Pro 17" Battery

This is an absolutely astonishing piece of design. It lasts up to eight hours which is absolutely unbelievable. Only a few changes were made to its previous product but these were very essential changes. First of all, the battery is built in, which saves the space of the mechanics of having an exchangeable one. This allows 40% more battery in the same amount of space used than before. With this, the user can charge his laptop 1000 times; more than three times as much as the normal notebook and all of this because of their adaptive charging technology (computer talks to the battery and tells her how much power is needed, power flow is then regulated or increased depending on demand). In addition, the shape of the battery is customized by apple to fit its designated space which is rectangular, whereas nearly all other producers have batteries that are like normal round shaped ones. The customized shapes allow the space to be used much more effectively. The battery being customized, also allows apple to do with it what they want: size and purpose can be determined by them. This is what they use as their advantage; the active material that stores the energy for the battery can store three times more than the industry standard. Apple says that they invest as much time and effort into their battery design than no one else in the industry; this is proven by an absolute miraculous piece of design that they have created for the new 17" notebook generation. The new MacBook Pro will be charged three times more often and have a three times more lasting battery than the average notebook – only a great design makes this possible.

Asus Bamboo

Finally, one of the biggest computer companies (Asus) on planet earth have reacted to the climate concerns; their answer: Asus Bamboo notebook. It is eco-friendly, made from sustainable natural materials and very light weight. At a twelve inch screen it only weighs 1.57 kg. It is loaded with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, has up to 4GB of RAM and a 320 GB hard disk, and of course it also has a fingerprint reader. All of these facts show that design doesn’t have exclude function, but even more importantly that design/form and function can work together WITH environment. This notebook is clearly making a big step towards future and environment friendly products, as well as advancement in technology.