To build on the first part of unit 3 project, the second part aims to investigate the legibility of pictograms and the factors that influence their legibility. Pictograms are graphic symbols used to convey information quickly and effectively, particularly in public spaces where language barriers may exist. However, there is little research on the legibility of pictograms, particularly in different contexts and populations, as well as examine the recognition threshold and boundary of pictogram.
Factors that will be investigated include the design elements of the pictograms, such as shape, color, as well as the context in which they are presented. The results of this study will provide insights into the legibility and recognition of pictograms and the factors that influence their effectiveness, which can inform the ethics and design of pictograms for different contexts and populations. This research will contribute to the development of cultural design insights for pictograms, and ultimately enhance communication and accessibility for diverse audiences.
“Nian” explores the visual language of Chinese New Year, examining the cultural significance of this festive occasion and its various customs and traditions. Focusing on how graphic elements can tell a story and convey meaning through their visual representation, the publication investigates the meaning and usage of pictograms, icons, and silhouettes, in addition to the photography, handwriting and calligraphy, and how they can be effectively used/used in combination to communicate identity, ideas and emotions.
This project aims to showcase the power of Graphic Communication Design in communicating cultural and social themes, and its ability to evoke emotions and memories through visual representations. In addition to the visual elements, this publication highlights the importance of cultural heritage and the need for intercultural dialogue. By investigating the true meaning of “Nian”(Chinese New Year), the project seeks to uncover the deeper significance of this festival and its role in shaping Chinese culture and traditions, in which superstition and beliefs play a big role.
In Chinese culture the number 6 and 8 are been considered as luck and wealth, hence there are 168 photographs in the book.
Geene,A., Johan, E. and Arjan de Nooy (2018). Ornithology.
Shi, C. (2018).* A book of ____: Sign*.
Vosinakis, S. (2017). Digital Characters in Cultural Heritage Applications. International Journal of Computational Methods in Heritage Science. 1. 10.4018/IJCMHS.2017070101.
Zhu, Y. (2003). Graphics, Signs and Words in the Design of Visual Transmission.
Aladin Borioli and Lapper, E. (2020). Aladin Borioli – Hives. Paris: Rvb Books.
In this project, I took a step back to investigate the meaning of “consumption” and “consumerism” from the consumer’s perspective. Dictionary says that consume is to destroy; to eat up or drink up; or to spend wastefully. I have also interviewed people asking them what is consume means to them. Apparently, consume means differently to different people. In my interviews with my friends, the most common words they use to describe what consume means to them are stress relief, guilt, impulse, satisfaction. However, we all forget that the most basic consumption is to live and to sustain life. And it seems like we are consuming more than we should. So, what is consume? And why we consume in such manner?
In the meantime, I was also interested in the Chinese language and culture and how it is related and portrays consume or consumption. Chinese characters are pictogram language. Here the character 贝 means shell and in the ancient time, shell was used as currency so the character contains it are mostly related to money, treasures or trade commodities. There are 73 Chinese characters that contains the shell now. The character 金 which means gold is another character that are often related to consumption and metal. Here I layered all the characters that have the same component and tries to investigate how the Chinese characters portrays consumption.
I have also visualized what consumption means through collage base on my own understanding.
In my final outcome, I combined all the former practices and created a book that achieved and visualized different form of consume. This book has two ways of reading it, fold and unfold. The foldings are intended to create an interaction with the readers so when reading the book, it is also a process of exploring for the reader at the same time I want the reader to also think about what is consume to you while reading the book. By using Chinese character on the side, I also want to challenge and explore the pictogram language and how it is being presented and understand by none Chinese speakers. After creating this book, I continued my study of consumption. David Graeber’s study of consumption share the same idea as mine which he believed that the chase of material goods has overtaken all other parts of social life, trapping people on a quest of desire that seeks to fulfill human vanity. However, he also investigated the merchant side of consumerism that helps the society to grow which is a new path that I can explore in my future studies. Now that I’m asking myself: Is consumption good or bad? What consumerism indicates about our attitudes toward ownership, desire, and social connections? How much consumption is too much, are we greedy for consuming too much, or should we consume as much as we can?
We chose the New York Times cover of May 24, 2020, which marked the harrowing milestone of 100,000 deaths from Covid-19 in the United States as our object to expand, translate and contextualise.
By collecting information on group memories, statistics and news under the pandemic, we wanted to truly and objectively reflect everything that is happening in the surrounding society through the medium of experimental book design, so as to output thoughts and values on the global crisis.
When graphic design becomes a medium for human beings to re-examine memories, events and grief, it can not only better study and excavate the practical value and social significance of graphic design language, but also enable the public to reflect on the past and restart the future.
Week 1
For the first week, our group decided to redesign the cover page with our own understanding of the situation.
For the first two iterations, I was experimenting with the idea of how to only use colors and visuals to express something that horrifying and sadness.
Then I started to explore the idea of the conspiracy theories that swept across the globe as well as the misinformation and the fact that people are numb to the numbers. By using encryption language, it sarcastically showing how people are reacting to the news related to COVID-19. The ignorant, numbness, and mistrust.
Week 2
Looking at the work from all of our group members in its totality, we got the sense that we were telling the story of the pandemic. This resonates with the idea of newspapers being a repository for the narrative of our collective experience of time and events.
In essence, telling the story of the pandemic through graphic, visual form, serves the same function as a newspaper itself, thereby transcending the front page of the NYT we chose to speak to the wider context and usage of newspapers as media and memory.
My work spoke to the very beginning of the pandemic. What was happening was incomprehensible even to scientists and doctors. It also felt violent and scary and confusing, full of misinformation and questions.
Then everything shut down and the novelty of being in lockdown came to the fore. This is where Reya’s work would come in, talking about how to deal with lockdown, the coping mechanisms and structures people created in their lives when normality ceased to exist.
Then Nat’s work would come in, grappling with the grief of overwhelming magnitude of the death toll.
And finally Steck’s work tells the end of the story, the survivors of the pandemic who bear the scars of the disease.
In creating this narrative arc we think we can transcend the specific moment in time of just “100,000 deaths” and turn it into a reflection of living through one of the most consequential events in recent history.
Digital printers are fundamental tools used in our design process and they are supposed to make exact copies. Printing anything several times should result in it looking exactly the same. However, it never quite works out that way especially with inkjet printers. The color settings, alignment and resolutions can have a great impact on the printing outcomes, thus making the design outcome somewhat unpredictable.
Week 1
In the first week, I played around with the printer’s setting, off-sets, subverting the functions, as well as the printing process.
Printer settings and overlaying and off-setsDragging the paper while printingsubtracting colors, and invert color channelsChanging the printing resolutionsAdding extra pieces of paper while printing
Week 2
The second week I explored further with digital printing in layers, including changing the values in resolution, offsets, and colors. My expectations of how the printing outcome would be and what it actually has become clashes even more. When I switch the colors of the color layers, the entire vibe of the image changes. The change in resolutions and offsets results have yielded frozen moments of each layers, which recorded the printing process.
dragging the paper and off-setsPrint each colors separately in different layers and change colors in different color channel.Printing each color channel separately and each layer is printed in different resolution.
Week 3
The final week I took the advise of documenting every printing process and experiment how each layers can manipulate the look of the final printing outcome.
“Call Someone You Love” written in Chinese on a billboard in New York City. Photo By Bowen Tao
This photo was shot in New York City, USAMay 2020 during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown and after the death of George Floyd (an African-American man who was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis).
I took this photo as inspiration and use it as the starting for this project.
Week 1
Method 1
For the first experiment, I was exploring the idea of how the change of different language would result in different reaction of understanding this image. Also by translating the words in Chinese into different languages I want to challenge and to resolve the language barriers people have come across.
Method 2
The second iteration is to place the content in different places which creates different impact and different story behind.
Method 3
The third iteration I tried to play with the treatment of the same images to see how can different treatment emphasis different part of the images and brings the reader different feelings.
Week 2
For the final version, I decided to make a zine named love in quotation mark and translate them into 10 most used languages in the world because the things illustrated in the zine are also global issues and taking my ideas from first iteration, I want to resolve the language and cultural barriers.
The zine tells a story of love with quotation marks around this first image with a set of documentary photographs. It is separated in to two chapters that explain the story behind the images: why would be message like this on the street, why is it in Chinese, why is there policy walking around, and why people in the background are avoiding these polices.
The first chapter is about covid pandemic, which illustrated many story of love and unable to love because of this pandemic and social distancing and to call someone you love when they are still able or just to check up on them in this special period of time.
The second chapter is about racism. It explained the why there would be Chinese written in New York street as well as people are avoiding the polices. It also tells a story of hate which is the antonym of love but at the same time love still exist even in the dark times, which is why I chose this image to end the zine.
The set I chose is the South Sea Bubbles playing cards from Harvard collections. The 52-card packs were illustrated with scenes depicting individuals before and after the crash. In this project, I wanted to bypass the meaning behind the cards but focus on the graphic components.
Week 1
The first few iterations I tried with sorting them by the number of people present in the cards, and also cropping the illustration to only focus on different faces and peoples’ facial expressions, the third one I was focusing on their body languages of the action pointing, and isolate them, rearrange them to tell a new story.
I experiment with 3 ways of cataloging. The first one is just simply use the method of sorting and sort them in the number of characters presence in the card. The second one is use cropping and isolating each character’s facial expressions in order to study the graphic language and emotions. The third one is by isolating the characters action of pointing at something and rearrange them to tell a new story.
Week 2
In the final work, I decided to look more closely into the visual grammar of the illustrations and investigate how different stroke can be used to create different shadows and patterns.
I sort them into 6 big categories. Combined with cropping, I further categorize them into different uses.
I found out the horizontal strokes are used to create shadows on floors, skys, walls, and Table. Verticals are used in windows, celling, tables, and walls. Diagonals are used in windows, clothes, faces, walls and furniture. Cross strokes are used in clothes and fabrics, floors( mainly outside), and some furniture, walls and window. Discontinues strokes are used in clothes, environment such as mountain, water and ground. Dots are just mainly used on faces. I also found out that different shadows create by different strokes are in different shapes and depth as a result brings more perspectives to the illustration.
After cataloging the use of strokes, I was thinking of how I can use what I have learnt and put them into use.
As a result, I used these information and created some quick studies. I combine the researches with my first round of iteration, “pointing at”, and took a step forward, use the graphic grammar I learnt from this project to fill in the blank spaces, and piece two illustrations together and forms a new story and looks like they are fighting over something. I also used the same graphic grammar to create some of my own illustrations of insects since I was wondering how these visual grammar can be used in art and design.
Through this project I would like to investigate the purpose of the space as well as how people interact with the space in different time of the day.
Oct. 5th, 2021
For the first week of project Methods of Investigation, I picked the Gasholder Park located in King’s Cross as my investigation site. I will walk pass this park everyday and the unique architecture style always fascinate me, however I’ve never spent time in the park.
I tried different methods of investigation in the first week include photography, note-taking, categorizing, mapping, sketching, and recording to learn the space as much as I can.
Oct. 12th
The second week of the project, I chose to focus on the mapping and use it to investigate how people are interacting with the space. I record morning, afternoon and evening to see how people interact with the space differently during different time of the day.
The feedback I got from the class was to be either more data based or more narrative. I also need to focus more on the people and their reactions and interactions.
Oct. 19th
In my final iteration of this project, I implanted the detailed information of each individual that came to the park. I categorized them with shapes and colors to visually distinguish and study their interactions with the park.
Morning
Afternoon
Evening
Feedbacks
What’s working:
There’s a set of keys that symbolize and categorize people.
It is very comprehensive, quick visual understanding and clear communication
The systematic as it has recorded the behavior of people using the space
What’s not working:
There’s no strong reasoning for picking each shape to symbolize each action.
I’m using macro documentation now, I should look more closely at individuals.
The categories: some of my categories are assumptions and interpretations.
To develop this further:
Experiment with different symbols: What could a better symbol for run for example? It’s not only what you record but also how each symbol stands for. Thinking through the symbol, not just what you are recording but also how it translates into a visual communication.
Study the relationship between form and knowledge of recording
Adapt the symbols to describe other categories of behavior; create more categories that can tell more (facts) about the individual.
