Major Presentation Introduction Hi everyone, thank you for coming. - - PDF document

Major Presentation Introduction Hi everyone, thank you for coming. Today I am going to be presenting on the individual major that I created, my senior project, and what I learned throughout the process. Background First of all, I am going to touch on my background that got me where I am today. I grew up in the small town of Norwood Young America, Minnesota. A huge part of my life has always been sports, specifically volleyball, basketball, and softball. In deciding to come to St. Olaf, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to major in, but I did know that I wanted to play basketball and softball. As for other experiences I previously worked as a media manager for a heating and cooling company, which included managing the company’s website, Facebook, YouTube account, and more. I also interned at Target Corporation last summer as a business analyst and will begin working their full time starting in June. Management & Media Relations So as I said before, when I came to St. Olaf I didn’t know what I wanted my major to be. However, I quickly determined which subjects I liked best and those are management, media, and psychology. I was aware of the option to create an individual major from

• ther St. Olaf students so I decided that if I really wanted to pursue my interests that an

individual major was my best option. I eventually decided on my major, which is titled Management and Media Relations. The overall goal of my major is to answer the question, “How does media change how people communicate and make meaning?” For

example, how does a company or organization like Target use media-based content to represent the people who comprise the organization? And how do consumers and audiences interpret those media representations to create a coherent understanding of what that organization does? To answer these questions I created three pillars of my major, which are principles of management studies, technological media, and social media. The principles of the management pillar explore courses like management policy and strategy and industrial/organizational psychology to determine how communication structures society and work. From these studies, I learned that in order for an organization to be successful, conversations within must be candid, honest, and frequent. The technological media pillar includes classes like foundation new media and digital rhetoric and new media literacy to explore how communication initiates. Through these studies, I learned how to communicate using modern technologies through writing and design. Lastly, the social media pillar includes classes like marketing and social psychology to see how communication circulates. From these courses, I learned techniques on how to research a target audience and how to best market to that target audience based on my findings. The Psychology of Design

For my senior project, which I have titled The Psychology of Design, I was inspired by a few overarching questions that emerged from my coursework. These questions included, “What makes a design successful?” “Why are we attracted to certain designs over

• thers?” and “What role does psychology play in the creation of designs?” These

questions led me to begin my research on the role that psychology plays in design. Today, I will present some of my findings and show you examples of my work based on this project. Simon Norris, the managing director of Nomensa, which is a design consultancy that seeks to combine psychological insight with design, states that, “Great design requires great psychology… Psychology is the science of behavior and the mind. When design and behavior match, the design will be superior.” Basically Norris is saying that in order to create a successful design, the designer must lead viewers toward the exact way they want them to perceive the piece. In order to do this, it is vital to understand how the intended audience will read and react to a design before beginning work. If a designer understands their audience they will save time and be more effective. For example, when considering these two abstracts, an audience is directed to feel very differently depending

• n which one they look at. The abstract on the left is much more dark and sad, whereas

the abstract on the right is bright and happy. Just through the use of colors and patterns, a designer can evoke very different feelings. Moving from these points, I wanted to determine how a designer knows what the audience wants to see. I found that an audience’s reaction to a design is based on the

emotion that they feel, which moves into deeper research of how our brains are

• composed. Our brains are made up of three levels, including the visceral, behavioral, and
• reflective. The visceral level of the brain is the automatic or prewired layer. In relation to

design, the visceral level involves the appearance, touch, and emotion. The success of the design at this level is dependent on the current feelings or experiences of the viewer, as well as the look, feel, and sound of the image. Next, the behavioral level of the brain includes the brain processes that control everyday behavior. At this level, the function, performance, and usability of a design are most important. Design success is determined by pleasure, effectiveness of use, enhancement, and innovation. Finally, the reflective level of the brain is the contemplative part. At this point the viewer considers the rationale and intelligence of the design. The viewer will be satisfied at this level if the design reflects their personal self-image or memories. In order for a design to be successful, it must excel at all levels of the brain or attack the level of the brain that is best for the intended audience. Psychological Principles Based on the different levels of the brain, psychologists have developed a variety of principles that can help designers determine how an audience will respond to their work. I’m going to discuss three of the main principles that I found. First is cost-benefit analysis, which is the breakdown of behavior based on the difficulty of a task in relation to the perceived reward. If a task requires high energy, it must provide high reward. Thus, a design must offer a benefit to the viewer and can’t be mentally exhausting. For example, looking at these two poster designs we would all agree that the one on the right

is less mentally exhausting to read than the one on the left. The one on the left is disorganized and lacking emphasis on any portions, whereas the poster on the right emphasizes the event name and dates by using effective colors and organization. Next is Hick’s Law, which states that exposure to more options results in a longer decision making process and the longer the decision making process the more likely the viewer is going to move on. Designs must be simple and have a clear message; otherwise viewers will become discouraged and continue on to the next design or product. For example, looking at these two websites it is clear that the design on the right is easier to digest and will most likely keep a visitor’s attention when coming to the site. It has less text and images, as well as clear navigation. Lastly, is Gestalt psychology, which was developed in the 1920s. The theory states that the brain self-organizes information in an orderly, regular, symmetrical, and simple

• manner. We assume unification or relatedness to visuals based on proximity, similarity,

continuance, and figure ground perceptions. As a designer, it is important to remember how our brain organizes and unifies the individual parts of a design to create a whole. Design Process Considering these psychological principles, we can see how they have led to the creation

• f design principles. Some people believe that designs are created without theory and
• vision. However, designs are visual organizations of elements that involve many

guidelines and much psychology. Before any design procedure, a designer must consider

the goals, stylistic requirements, physical limitations, and solutions of the design. After determining the content of the design, or the information that the design seeks to communicate, the designer can begin the form of the design, which includes the manipulation of the various elements and principles of design. In artistry, content is what artists want to say and form is how they say it. Form consists of many stylistic concepts, such as unity, emphasis, scale, balance, line, and color. In the design process, form and content are inextricably linked because a design is both ineffective without a purpose and ineffective with poor form. Design in Action To recap at this point before we move into the Design in Action section, I started with determining that psychology plays a heavy role in design due to how our brain affects the processing of designs. I then discussed psychological principles that relate to our brain processing and lead to the creation of design principles. Finally, we are now going to move into the design in action portion of the presentation, which will show how I was able to take this research and create designs of my own. In order to do this, I learned three different Adobe Suite Shop programs, which were Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. I learned how to use each of these programs through Lynda.com. After learning the programs, I completed three different projects within each of them to showcase my design capabilities and what I learned. For each program I am going to walk you through two of the designs I created. Photoshop

First we are going to start with Photoshop. Photoshop is known for being the best photo manipulation program because it offers a multitude of filters, effects, tools, and illustration capabilities. The first project that I will share is the color project. The color project included using a picture I had taken and then creating five different versions of that photo using various color schemes. However, before editing color, I wanted to enhance the image in a few

• ways. This included using the cloning tool to remove the dirt on the windows, making the

colors of the walls and windows bolder, and removing the wiring and small box in the middle of the image. Following this, I began to change certain colors. In order to change the colors I used the color selection tool and created new layers. I changed the colors of the flowers, the inside of the flowers, the bricks, and curtains. To achieve the different color schemes, I edited the colors using hue/saturation, levels, black/white, brightness/contrast, and the layer style box tools. If we relate this project back to the psychological and design principles, we can see that color plays the biggest role in determining how this image makes us feel. For example, the top center image might make us happy because the flowers are very bright and bold. However, the bottom right image might make us feel sad or concerned because of the use of black and white and a blood shaded red. The next project I will share is a photomontage. This project was very enjoyable to create because my inspiration came from my sister’s engagement in Paris this past summer. The complete image includes 5 different photos overlapping one another with text over the

• top. First, I used four images of the couple and then added an image of a heart, placing it

at the very bottom of the layers. Following this, I added lyrics on the very top. This project displays the importance of color, emphasis, balance, and line. The opacity of each image had to be carefully selected in order to see clearly the emphasis of each photo. The lines had to match up to connect each photo. The lyrics and heart are emphasized through their red color. The overall image is balanced through all of these elements. Illustrator Illustrator is an excellent program to use for design because it utilizes vector-based images, rather than resolution based like Photoshop. Vector-based images are composed

• f paths, rather than pixels. Due to this, Illustrator enables us to resize or alter images

without loss of quality. It is a great program to create logos, shapes, and graphics; however, it offers less filters or image editing tools in comparison to Photoshop. The first project of Illustrator is the logo project. To begin the logo project, I knew I wanted to create a logo for a potential company that I would want to start someday. I wanted it to be a graphic design company and began brainstorming what I wanted it to be

• called. I decided on Ingua Designs. The word “Ingua” comes from a couple sources.

First, the road that my cabin is located on is called Ingua Trail. Second, the lake that my cabin is on is called Inguadona Lake. My cabin is my favorite place in the world so it made sense for me to pick a name that is associated to it. I chose the second half of the name, “Designs,” simply because it would be a design company. Ingua is a very unique word, thus I felt the name needed a second word to give more explanation as to what the

company does. The graphic I created is how I sign the “A” of my name in cursive and then rotated to look similar to a writing utensil. A logo’s design should attract customers and give an idea of what the company is like. The fonts of this logo play a large part in showing what the company is like. The first font has a playful and laid back tone, while the second font is more neat and professional. The combination describes my personality and how I would want the culture of my company to be—work hard while having fun. The graphic portrays that this is a design company by looking similar to a writing utensil, while also representing myself because it is how I sign the “A” of my name. It is important to keep a logo simple and easy to read, which relates back to Hick’s Law, which states that if something takes too much energy to read or decipher, we will move

• n. It also doesn’t include too many elements or colors, which also relates to Hick’s Law

and the cost-benefit analysis. The next project in Illustrator that I’m going to share is the Word Art project. To begin creating my word art project, I first decided on what message and emotion I wanted to

• invoke. I determined that I wanted to create something deep and emotional, so I focused
• n love and dreams. I was inspired to choose these themes because of listening to the

song Just a Dream by Nelly, which is where the text of my word art originates. Following this, I determined what font I wanted to use. I chose a more feminine and modern looking font to display the message of romance and dreams. Next, I drew the flower graphic, because flowers are often associated with love. The stem flows down from the top of the image to create a curvy, dreamlike feel. In this design, I was very aware of emphasis and spacing. The primary focal points are darker in color and the

words and flowers are balanced throughout the design. This design exhibits Gestalt theory because of the proximity, similarity, and continuance of the different elements of the design. InDesign Next, I explored InDesign. InDesign is an excellent program to use for creating multi- page projects and templates. The program also offers a master page system that allows a designer to create elements that exist on every page of a project. Other unique capabilities

• f InDesign include the intuitive word wrap tool and the ability to link elements from
• ther programs without having to convert them to pixels. However, InDesign offers less

illustration capabilities and very few image manipulation tools in comparison to Illustrator and Photoshop. The first project I created in InDesign was a poster and I determined that the focus of my poster would be a concert for the band Fleetwood Mac. I made sure to use a recognizable Fleetwood Mac logo that is labeled for reuse. Besides the logo, I only used the song titles from the album Rumors and the information from the concert I attended last year. I used

• nly two fonts and created the other graphics on the poster using shapes offered in
• InDesign. In creating this poster, I focused on creating balance in the composition, the

type, and the images. The shapes, lines, spacing, and text are all equally balanced throughout the design. The colors and the small amount of words make the poster easy for the viewer to digest, while still being memorable. I lead the viewers toward the message I want them to take away from this poster by making the Fleetwood Mac logo

large and centered. Then, based on the research of our natural tendency to read from top to bottom, I navigate the viewer toward the bottom of the poster to the concert information. The next project that I created in InDesign was a business card for myself and my potential company someday, Ingua Designs. The graphic portion of the logo is the largest element on the card and is centered in the middle. The complete logo is also a prominent element of the card and is placed at the top left, which is where most viewers’ eyes will be drawn to first. The card includes only the essential information needed and is evenly spaced and readable, making it easy for a viewer to consume. I chose the fonts to match the logo’s fonts to create consistency. The only colors used on the business card are blue and black, while the background remains white to not distract from the text or images. This project displays both Hick’s Law and cost-benefit analysis because it displays a clear message that requires little effort to digest while offering much reward. Portfolio With all of the research that I compiled and the designs I created, I formed a design portfolio for myself. This design portfolio will be extremely beneficial in the future when I begin to pursue my dream of becoming a graphic designer. I hope to continue to add to this portfolio as much as I can. (Go to website) Explain.

Thank You That concludes my presentation but I would like to say thank you to my advisor Rebecca

• Richards. There is no way that I could have created this major or completed this project

without your help. And with that I would like to open it up for any questions that you might have.