My Interpretation of Data

This week we were set the task to make our own infographic posters using what we had learnt from last weeks lesson. He had to use the information gathered from last weeks questions to construct a poster showing the data. We also had to stick to three triad colours, we did this because it gave us a chance to show that we understood the different colour harmonies. I decided to pick 3 colours that were quite out of the ordinary because if I were to choose the generic red, yellow, blue then it would come across as very unprofessional and unoriginal. The colours seemed to fit together nicely and made the poster look very appealing to the eye while still being clear.

The results were given to us in percentages so I took inspiration from one of the posters we looked at last week and decided to use an image that was relevant to the data I was showing and cut it into percentages that showed the data. It was quite hard to use a pencil to show the data so I decided to use a stereotypical teachers hat, it ended up working quite well and I was very proud with how it turned out. I decided to use the rope for the hat as the divider and it ended up looking very interesting and did not look like it was just added for no real reason. I gad to make some estimates on where I thought the rope would go but it looked like they all fit and made sense with the data. My poster can be seen below.

Infographics Introduction

What we did in the lesson
Last week we were set the task to answer a set of questions created by Steve. We did this because Steve wanted to know some of our opinions on certain things that happen in lessons and also because we needed this information to make our own Infographic data. We then had to complete a question sheet, these questions could only be answered by looking at data presented on a pie chart/ bar chart. I found this relatively easy and completed the task.

Looking at different posters that use Infographics
Steve showed the class some different posters that all were different when it came to representing data. They were very interesting to look, we discussed the pros and cons of all of the posters and the different ways we would change the posters to make them clearer to read. I learned that data can be shown in many different ways and does not have to be shown on the stereotypical line graph or pie chart. I also learned how to make a effective poster that shows data clearly, for example we learn that a poster with a lot of writing does not allow the reader to easily understand what is being put across in the poster. Posters that relate there data to what they are talking about, (e.g. animal posters using animals to represent the growth in data by increasing the size of the animal) allows the reader to understand instantly what the poster is about and makes the poster look very appealing. One of the poster we looked at that was the most effective can be seen below.

Primary Research

What is primary research?

Primary research is new information you have carried out yourself that cannot be found anywhere else. The information can be found through questionnaires, surveys and interviews, all affective in there own ways. 

What are the negatives and the positives of both types of research?

Primary research is effective because it allows you to find the specific information you may need for a task, sometimes secondary research can be unreliable, for example the source where you may get your information may be false and not true. So by doing your own primary research can ensure that you get reliable useful information. Sometimes there might not be any secondary research available, doing your own primary research ensures that you get the information you need. However primary research can have some negative effects, for example like with my questionnaire more people my age (e.g 16-20) answered the questions so I did not have access to a lot of results from different age ranges. Only forty people answered my questionnaire meaning that I did not have access to lots of results meaning that my questionnaire was not as accurate as it could have been. These are the sorts of areas where secondary research excels because they have the chance to get to a wide amount of people that are all a variety of ages. The secondary research could have been done a long time ago where the results would have been different to how they would be today, by doing your own primary research you can make sure that you get the most up to date information as possible.

How did I construct my Questionnaire?

My questionnaire was very simple and easy to answer meaning that I managed to get a lot of information from a wide variety of people. The questions that I asked can be seen on the pictures on this blog post. I asked my questions in a particular order so that it would make sense and meant that I could get more information. e.g. My first question was, 'What is your gender?' and the question after was, 'Do you use YouTube?' this meant I could find out if more women watch YouTube that men or vise versa. There were also no multiple choice questions in my questionnaire because I only wanted to find out certain information, for example when I asked, 'What type of videos do you watch?' only giving people one choice meaning that people had to thing harder about the question and I got more specific information. Looking at the results I have got, it looks like YouTube is very popular and that people seem to enjoy it so much that they return to the site daily. More than half of the people who did the survey enjoy YouTube over Television, this may be down to the wide variety of different genres they can watch at anytime. Looking at some of my results I have found out that to have the best chance of having the most successful channel you must, be a gaming channel that uses YouTube to publish their videos. You must also upload videos daily to appeal to the audience that uses YouTube everyday.

Qualitative and Quantitate meaning

Quantitate information is numerical data that can be converted into statistics, it can be used to find out facts and find patterns in results an example of this could be the bar chart about, 'How often do you use YouTube' because its data that can be put into a numerical form.

Qualitative information is non numerical data this is usually used to uncover trends and opinions. It is also used to gain an understanding that may have been hard to see before.

Where I found the meanings of Qualitative and Quantitate!

S.M.A.R.T. Target

The Dark Knight: Hospital Scene Analysis

Power is shown almost the whole time throughout this scene. This is used because it needs to be clear on who has the power and it also allows the audience to see the perspective of the characters in this scene. Films like, 'Batman' need to make it clear who has the most power in each scene otherwise the audience would find the film hard to follow and would be confused on who has the up hand.

Camera Shot Analysis: 

In this shot you can see behind the shoulder of two face with the Joker towering over him - this is an example of the power that the Joker has over two face. Having the shot behind the shoulder of two face allows us to be put in the same position making us feel intimidated.  This shot is used more than the other shot shown below because when looking at the Joker from this angle it adds tension and mystery to the interrogation making you want to know what is going to happen to the two characters. 

This shot is completely the opposite to the last shot because we are now behind the shoulder of the dominant character. Allowing the audience to have the perspectives of both the dominant and non-dominant character, gives the audience a chance to feel how the certain characters are feeling. When the audience are put in the same position as the Joker they may feel superiority and authority.

The camera also slowly zooms in with each different shot that it changes to, showing the build up of tension and how the situation between the two characters escalate with every second. If the shot did not zoom in and just stayed at a medium shot then this scene wouldn't be as effective and wouldn't create the 'on the edge of your seat' feeling for the audience.

Expansion and Compression Designs

Expansion - Becoming larger and covering a bigger surface area, for example you could expand your home to make it bigger so you can have more things inside it.

Compression - The reduction of space and the volume of an object, for example compressing the size of your TV to make it thinner.

For the two words I have chosen I have used some of the features offered by Indesign to change how the words look. The 'compression' word has been compressed in different ways, for my first design I compressed it from above and below while for my second 'compressed' to compressed in from left and from the right. I thought this was a very effective way of showing what the word compressed meant but it made the word very hard to read. The last design I produced only included the, 'ss' in, 'Compression' I thought that this was a very interesting way of showing what compression meant.

I used the same sort of effects for expansion but I did the opposite of compression. For the first expansion I placed all of the letters close to each other but stretched them out upwards and downwards, even though it was easy to read, I did not show clearly what expansion is. My second expansion only stretched out the, 'E' while leaving all of the other letters the same width and length. I thought that this was a better improvement from before and it all seemed readable. However my last 'expansion' had a variety of expanded letters and non expanded letters and ended up not looking appealing to the eye.  

Peer Assessments and Mini Film

Why are Peer Assessments important?

Peer Assessments are where you grade another peer's piece of work based on the mark schemes. This allows the person grading your work to think hard about whether you have reached the right standards. Additionally the person grading your work gains a clearer understanding on what they have to do to meet their target meaning that they will produce better work. Having class mates peer assess each other means that feedback can be given back to the students at a quicker rate.

When marking someone else's work you need to look very closely to see if what they have wrote and the information is correct. Peer assessing improves this skill and will help you be more aware of what you are writing/doing. Peer assessments always provide good feedback that can be used to improve their work.

Mini Film

We had also got set the task to use some clips and make them into a mini film. These clips were not set in any particular order and did not have a lot of good audio, also we did not make these clips so we did not know the story behind what was going on. This gave us a chance to make our own small stories and show them to the rest of the group. It also allowed us to improve out editing skills, which I could do with! We had to cut parts out, mute the audio and change the angles at certain points meaning that we had to group all of our knowledge from the past lessons into one film.

In the opening of my scene, I switched to different angles to show how time had went by. I thought that this worked well and help the audience to understand that he was waiting at the bench for a long period of time. While the characters were talking I used the over the shoulder shot, I used this because it allows the audience to see the characters faces and their emotions. I also switched shoulders to the character that was getting spoken to so the audience could see there reaction. When one of the characters took away the other characters umbrella I decided to go back to my original shot and zoom out, so that it could be seen clearly and it gave an indication that something was going to happen.

After using all of my new knowledge to create this mini film I found out that I still struggle at trying to find the right sound/soundtrack to fit with a particular setting/scene. When it comes to shots and angles I feel like I am getting better with this and am getting the hang of it now.

Branding and my Poster Guidelines

This is a full photo of my monster but not my final piece:

What is branding?

Branding is where you create a unique image or name for a product that can be easy identifiable to a consumer. Doing this allows the creator to claim rights to there unique image or name meaning that no one else can use them without having the rights.

How have I incorporated this into my work?

When using the logo, 'The Kraken' the 'K' has to always include the horns from the monster. This is because it iconic to the film and gives it more of a unique look. The font for the logo also has to be highlighted with the pink from the colour palette, 'C0 M49 Y37 K0, R243 G157 B145' this is unique to the brand.

All of the text that is used has to be in the font, 'Charlemagne Std Bold' and the smallest font size an text can be is 18pt. Text should not touch anything else on the page, like the edges of the page or pictures, this make everything look more ordered and more professional. When it comes to typography the font, 'Charlemagne Std' only includes a Bold typeface and should be used for titles and subtitles only. The font has to be serif because this is part of branding.

When it comes to our image guidelines at least some part of the monster must be used in all types of  our advertising. The colours palette for the monster include, 'C17 M100 Y98 K8, R190 G24 B24' for the head of the monster, 'C93 M75 Y1 K0, R42 G74 B154' for the tentacles, 'C0 M0 Y0 K0, R255 G255 B255' for the torso and eyes, 'C82 M67 Y67 K89, R12 G18 B12' for the eye brows and stripes on the tail. If the torso is being used in an image the head has to be used because people could get confused with the torso being the head of the monster.

Monster Poster

My final product:

This is the final version of my monster poster, I am very happy with how it turned out. The picture is a zoom into the monsters face, I did this because it adds a sense of mystery to the poster, only seeing the monster's face makes you wonder what he looks like head to toe. I used the effect of zooming into the monsters face because there was a monsters inc poster that also used this effect and I thought it looked very interesting. The colour of my monster's head was always going to be red because of the way the head looked so because the colour red stands out I decided that if I were to zoom into the monsters head and only use that as the poster it would catch the viewers eyes. The colours used for my poster all fit well together and do not look out of place also the colours black and red have always been stereotypical of evil, blood and hate so it does give you an idea on what type of genre the movie is going to be.

In our first lesson we had to draw our own monsters for each other and use them in our poster. After we had done this we were told that we had to draw these monsters on Illustrator, we did this by using the pen tool. Most of us had never used the pen tool before so this was the first time for a lot of people. So for our second lesson we were shown how to use the pen tool correctly. It started off being very confusing and weird to use but after a some paying around with it on some pen tool games and tracing over some lines we had become very good at using the pen tool.

As I talked about briefly before, the colour scheme for my poster is very eye catching. Hierarchy is a term commonly used by graphic designers and its meaning is, 'where the viewers eyes go first'. The first thing people would look at in my poster would probably be the eyes of the monster, this is because they stand out against the other colours like the red and the black. Their eyes would probably move to the title of the film, also because the colour white stands out against the other colours. Thirdly I think the viewers eyes would either go to the date of the film or the slogan of the film. The poster is very basic and does not include a lot of information like other posters so with these two being the only information left it would only seem logical that the viewer looks at one of those two next. As mentioned earlier there is not a lot on my poster making my poster look bland and not interesting, so the text had to be made bigger to make up for this. However this worked out fine, and the text was easily readable a clear inline with the eyes and middle of the magazine. The font that I used was called, 'Charlemagne Std Bold' I used this font because it fits with the genre of the film, most fonts that try and look scary/intimidating end up looking over done or unreadable the font I use however did not.

The early stages of my poster:

Surveys and Planner

In our last theory lesson we discussed different ways of giving out surveys and some of the advantages and dis-advantages of them. One of them being face to face surveys, some of the advantages of using the face to face method is that you can gather a lot of information in a quick amount of time. The information they give us may not be reliable due to the people being in a rush or not having enough time to think about the question in detail. Also older people or anyone else who would not get a chance to answer an online survey have the chance too. Online surveys are different they can provide more accurate results because the person answering can do it in their own time can has the chance to really think about what they put. Online questions can be stated very simple and can be finished at a quick pace. Data that has been received from the survey can be processed faster and is very accurate. Information on how to answer the survey can be displayed at the start of the questionnaire so that people have a clear understanding on how they are meant to answer the questions.

After we had discussed this we were set a task by Leanne to find out some secondary research on YouTube Channels. This meant that we had to find out some statistics and information from other sources. So that we could use this information to get a general idea on what we may ask people about in our questionnaires. When looking for information we had to make sure that the sources were reliable and were not made by a random person (wiki). We had to check this because if they were made by a random person they would have a high chance of being untrustworthy. We also had to make sure that we wrote down the websites were we got the information from, so that we can give them credibility. We also included images from the website (YouTube) because the information is 100% accurate and can be used to back up the information we had found.

Planner

We also set up our own planners so that we could note down any additional work that we may have to do for the following lessons. This means that we can keep everything organised and also it means that we will be less likely to forget that we had to  do work. It also helps us remember what we had do the past lesson for our blogs.

Secondary Research

YouTube is a video sharing website that was founded in 2005 by three men. One year later due to the success of YouTube the company Google bought the rights to the website and is still owned by them today.

Research:

• Channels that appeal to the younger generation seem to be dominating the charts. 
• Channels ran by companies are also dominating the charts for the most popular YouTube channels - It would be wise to have a link with a company when making a channel.
• Vevo is the world's leading all-premium music video and entertainment platform with over 4 billion monthly views globally.
• Music is the most watched genre on YouTube
• All channels ran by one person are usually in a partnership with another company. - Again it would be wise to link with another company 
• YouTube engagement across genders is 58% male and 42% female. - Make sure that your videos are appealing to all genders
• 77% of users are under 35-years old, while 58% of all users are male. - Content that a younger audience can relate to would benefit how many people watch your YouTube channel
• Average length of a YouTube video is 4 minutes and 12 seconds. - The shorter you have you video the better.
• YouTube is the most popular video when it comes to blogging with 81.9% of total embedded and linked videos; followed by Vimeo (8.8%), Daily Motion (4%) and MySpace (1.1%).
• YouTube is very popular on phone and tablets and it takes up more than half of YouTube views overall. - May want to always keep in mind that you have to ensure your video is tablet/ phone ready (easy to read on small screens)
• When events happen for example the wrestling Summer Slam that happened last month, this can effect the amount of views a channels gets, in this instance it would be WWE.

Links to where I found the research:

http://socialblade.com/youtube/

http://www.reelseo.com/top-youtube-channels/
https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/en-GB/statistics.html
http://sysomos.com/reports/youtube-video-statistics

Glossary

Glossary

Connotation - A feeling that a word gives to a person

SMART Target - A goal that we set ourselves

Media Text - Anything Media based e.g. Newspaper, Adverts, Television Program Magazines etc.

Demographic - Target Audience e.g. Age, Gender, Where they live, Wealth

Linguistic - Language form, meaning and language in context (mothership and teleporters)

Visual/Technical - shots, angles, structure of scenes and lighting (close up, long shot and medium shot)

Symbolic -  Representations, stereotypes in text/films (Space, robots and space ships)

Male Gaze - Something that is used to appeal to the male audience usually something about women

Star Theory - When a character is made to appeal to the target audience
Commodity - A character is played by a famous actor that the audience is likely to know
Ideology - A characters that has a goal that they want to achieve
Primary Research - New research that you have carried out yourself that cannot be found anywhere else.
Secondary Research - Research that you have found from another source that is not your own.
Public Relations - The relationship between the Media and the audience.
Marketing Mix - The tactics that the company uses to try and appeal its product to its audience or to a new type of audience. This can also be used to promote their brand.
Brand Guidelines - The way or style a company promotes it's brand.

Grids

Grids are tools that print and web designers use to create, 'perfectly aligned typography' and 'pixel-perfect website layouts'. Grids are not easy to create and require a lot of time and effort to get correct however when done right you will experiences amazing results. Learning how to use grids in your work increases your typography skills and abilities. Grids can make anything look 10 times more professional than they ever could without it. There are lots of different types of grids that you can use, some of the more popular ones are, 3 grid system, fluid grids and the 960 grid system.

When it comes to making a good grid based design, you first have to understand the mathematics of the whole idea because you are constructing a grid you always have to think about proportions. Measurements are very important when it comes to construction and ratios also have a very important part. One of the problems with grids are that they have to be balanced, when making your grid more complex you decrease how usable it actually will end up being. If your grid is too complex it can become almost impossible to even work, when making a grid you always have to remember this. Grids are used to keep everything inline and well structured if this is not accomplished then you have not truly made a grid. Even though making a grid requires using your mathematical skills, the mathematics involved are very easy to learn and most of the equations can be done on a calculator. Adobe Illustrator has added there own column system to make it easier  to learn and understand. 

To help me understand how the whole grid system worked I had to do some research these websites helped me out the most: 

• http://www.creativebloq.com/typography/column-grid-poster-design-made-neat-and-easy-10122682
• http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/five-simple-steps-to-designing-grid-systems-preface
• http://www.thegridsystem.org/

Film Page Analysis

Film page Analysis

Front cover

This film page uses a range of different type in get the reader attention. Firstly with the title, it uses San-Serif text to look more round and easy to read while still making it stand out. The words, 'Total' and 'Film' and both in upper case letters and the all of the letters hit the top and the bottom of the point size meaning that none of the letters Descend or Ascend the X-height.

No ligature is used on the front of the magazine, this is probably because ligature is used to make things easier to read but because the text is very large there is not need for this. The, 'pugs' all include the serif writing style this may have been used to make the, 'pugs' look more high class and professional showing the audience that they should take the magazine seriously. A different font is also used for the, 'pugs' and the heading, this is probably because the picture on the front cover is a character wearing quite an elegant choice of clothing and the text needs to fit with the picture to compliment it!

Double page spread

All the text used here does not feature any sort of Ligature, this maybe because the tracking used on the text is very wide spread so it easier to read. The Leading used is also very wide spread and all of the text is bold again making it very easy to read. Serif is also not present here because all of the letters have a very low Kern and if Serif was to be used it would look clustered and unreadable. A wide range of lower and upper case letters are used here, the upper case letters have been used at the start of sentence and are used for product names, the lower case letters have been used everywhere else. Italic is also used when quoting someone. Overall the text is very easy to read because of the wide amount of room it gives you between sentences and different lines, this magazine could have been available on a tablet or a phone. The wide amount of space allows the user to quickly and easily highlight some text using their phone this would make sense for why the everything is set up as it is. The spaces between the letters are kept the same so the person not reading the article on a tablet or phone can read like they usually do.

Camera Shots/Angles in film

Angles and Shots in Films

In our most resent 'Moving Image' lesson we were taught about different camera angles and shot in films and what effect they bring to a film. 

Different camera shots have very different uses that all effect what the viewer can see when watching the film. This is why it is very important to choose camera shots very carefully when making a scene. Close up shots are usually used to focus in on something, for example a character's face at a dramatic moment in a film. Zooming in to the characters face means that the audience are given the opportunity to read their faces and understand how they are feeling. A medium shot is usually used to only capture a specific area in a setting, for example you would use a medium shot to capture a character making coffee. You zoom in to the setting so that you can see the character clearer but still see what the character is doing -if a close or long shot were used here, you would not be able to see what the character is doing clearly. A long shot is used when trying to capture the scene around a character and is usually used at the start of scenes so that the audience can clearly identify where they are and what the character is up to.

Different camera angles are used to point you towards where you are meant to be looking. One type of angle shot could be behind someone's shoulder while two people are having a conversation. This puts the audience right in the moment and allows the audience to imagine that they are looking at the person from a character's point of view. Another angle could be from the ceiling of a classroom, this fits in all the characters at once and puts the audience in the position of a God looking down on all of the people.

We had to apply these techniques into our own little film and use a wide range of angles and camera shots to add different effects to our work. We went ahead and shot our film but from many different view points. This allowed us to choose what suited best with the situation and what gave the audience a clearer idea of what was going on. We used quite a lot of close up shots due to our film including a lot of conflict. In these parts we would zoom into the character's faces and would clearly show how they were feeling.

The film can be seen here!

Typeface Part 2

Typeface Part 2

What is the difference between a typeface and a font?

A typeface is a particular style of a font, e.g. Ascender, Decender, X-height, Serif, Upper case, Lower case, Point size, Ligature and Baseline. This changes an exsisting font by increasing how wide it is, how thick it is or making it italic. Where as a font is how the text is actually shown and displayed and only changes the presentation.

What is the difference between a Serif and a Sans-Serif font?

A Serif font is a font that adds edges/tales to all of its letters. This can be used to make a font look more high-class and professional the font looks quite like the sub header used. A Sans-Serif font is completely oppisite to the Serif font, instead of adding the edges/tales to all the letters is removes them making the text look more round and easy to read.

Parts of a typeface

Ascender:

Bad x

This is an Ascender because the 'd' in 'Bad' goes above the x height.

Descender:

Easy x

This is a Descender because the 'y' in 'Easy' goes below the x height.

X-height:

x

The X-height is the height from the bottom of the 'x' to the top of the 'x'.

Serif:

Gotten

The added edges/tales on the ends of each of the letters.

Upper Case:

HELLO

Letters that are capital and are bigger than there original.

Lower Case:

hello

Letters that are in there normal state with no added features.

Point Size:

Bay

The point size is the distance from the highest point (Very top of the 'B') to the lowest point (Lowest part of the 'y')

Ligature:

A Ligature is where one letter links up with another letter like the 'fi' in this photo. This is used quite often because it is apparently easier to read when letters are joined up together.

Baseline:

x yes

The baseline is the line measured under the letters but only from the bottom of the 'x' the tail on the 'y' breaks the baseline.

What is Kerning, tracking and Leading and how are they different?

Kerning:
Kerning is where the spaces between letters has either been reduced or increase to make it look more appealing to the eye.

How to Kern in Indesign:

To kern in Indesign you will have to highlight your desired text and find the option displayed and either click the negatives to reduce the spaces between the letters or the positives to increase.













Tracking
Tracking is where the space between a group of letter has been reduced or increase instead of making it look more appealing this make the text as a whole easy to read and more closed in or wide spread.

How to Track in Indesign:
To use tracking in your work you will have to o to InDesign > Preferences > Composition and Select Custom Tracking/Kerning, and then click OK.









I found out how to do this by reading: http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/typespacing/a/kerningtracking.htm

Leading
Leading is the distance between the baseline and the other baseline either below on above the text.

How to change the leading in Indesign:

To change the leading you will have to find the leading menu which looks like this and change the value to what you desire.

I found out how to do this by reading:
https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/leading.html

Typefaces

Typefaces

British road sign:

This can be found on any sort of British transport sign.

BBC One:

This sort of typeace can be found on any of the BBC adverts or channels.

Metro Newspaper:

This typeface can be found on the Metro Newspaper and is used in their logo.

Burger King:

This sort of typeface can be found on the Burger King logo and on its menu. This typeface is used because it makes it very easy for people to identify something Burger King.

Keep Calm and Carry on:

This typeface used for the, ‘Keep Calm and Carry on’ poster is the same as the London Underground and British road signs typeface. This is because they are both well known British texts and shows that this is a british quote

London Underground:

This can be found almost anywhere in London and represents the London Underground. This is also a well known British typeface.