Semester A: Week 6- Week 8
Student: Tai Ser Yeet (22064351)
Programme: BA(Hons) Digital Media Design
Task: Global Charette Project
Project Brief
| Charette Project Briefing |
Week 6
Monday, 9th November
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| List of Group Members in Group B |
Today, my classmates and I gathered in class at 8.45 a.m. for the Global
Charette Project Briefing conducted virtually on Microsoft Teams. Schools
participating in this project include The One Academy, Malaysia, and the
University of Hertfordshire, Egypt. After the briefing, we were split into 7
groups consisting of roughly 7-8 people, combining students from different
countries. Since the spreadsheet already had everyone's email addresses, I
emailed one of my groupmates to discuss creating a group chat for our
interactions. Funny enough, one of my team members, Trisha emailed me with
the Google Meet link as well as the invitation link to the Whatsapp group
chat which they have already created. So efficient!
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| Poll for our Preferred Topic |
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Because most of us needed time to digest the information from the project
brief and research the topics we wanted to pick, we voted on the Whatsapp
group instead of deciding on Google Meet itself.
The results of the two polls for the suitable topic & theme
were:
- Topic: Responsible Consumption & Production
- Theme: Students: Perspectives and Stereotypes, (students to discuss/compare experiences to flush out and open up the discussion)
Later, we switched the meeting platform to Discord because it is easier
to call & message at the same time. Not only that, we all agreed
that it would be best if another meeting was held the next day at
10.30am (GMT) to get started with the brainstorming session.
10th November
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| My Notes for the Meeting |
Before the meeting, I conducted research on the chosen topic according to this particular article by the University of Oxford. It writes about the issues and solutions that we, as a society can contribute to the various sub-categories such as plastics, fashion, packaging, food, resource use and cosmetics, and personal care.
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| Our Voting Process |
During the meeting, we voted on which sub-category of the topic we would
like to focus on and the majority voted for plastics and food. One of my
members, Trisha gave an idea for basing our poster on a scenario whereby
students waste food at the canteen daily which I felt, relates to our theme
of student perspectives and stereotypes.
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| Our Collective Moodboard & Votes |
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| Our Moodboard Based on Figure/Ground Principle |
After that, 10 minutes were given to the group to decide on an art style
for the poster. When the time was up, we voted on whichever style we would
like to carry out and in the end, most of us liked the concept of a "hidden
meaning" within the design, the usage of geometrical shapes, and the idea of
incorporating Gestalt's Principle of Figure/Ground. Another meeting was set
for tomorrow morning at the same time to check everybody's progress.
My Sketch
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| My Sketch |
Description: It is the year 2085 and the children are studying in a
classroom with trash spilling through the windows. The teacher is teaching
them about the 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle). The message of the poster
describes the mindset of people nowadays, e.g. “Will one person’s actions
help to reduce climate change at all?” therefore continuing to use
single-use plastic for convenience. However, if everyone had similar
thinking, the world would be filled with a mountain of unrecyclable waste.
As a result, the future generation would have to suffer the consequences of
our ill behavior whether they like it or not.
11th November
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| Everyone's Initial Sketches |
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| Everyone's Preferred Elements From the Sketches |
In today's meeting, we imported our sketches into Figjam and we each took
turns presenting our ideas to our group mates. Later, we each wrote down
what elements we liked about each sketch and voted on which sketch was our
favorite. In the end, Trisha's sketch had the most votes and we went for
that.
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| Trisha's Artwork and our Ideas for Improvement |
Next, all of us pitched ideas on how to improve the artwork and finalized
the idea together. One of us also suggested creating a motion poster to give
greater impact but since we have limited time, we would need to speed up our
progress. Since everyone had classes on Monday, everyone decided to just put
their sketches on our FigJam board by nighttime and vote after that. On
Tuesday, we will show our final sketch to the general meeting.
12th November
I reread the project briefing once more before starting on my final
sketches and that was when I saw it. The brief states to create a "warm
& friendly message to the future students of UH". I immediately texted
my teammates and one of them proceeded to text her lecturer for feedback
on our existing ideas.
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| TOA Lecturer's Feedback |
The lecturer told us that instead of picking Trisha's idea, we could
choose mine or Zi Qi's instead. My groupmates preferred Zi Qi's idea but
in the end, we came to an agreement that we should just create our own
separate ideas as long as they followed the criteria below:
- Has geometric shapes
- Benefits of being sustainable by reducing food & plastic waste (in the context of students wasting food in the canteen)
- Has a friendly and warm message to encourage future UH students to be eco-friendly
It was rather sad to see all our hard work go to waste but at least we
discovered the issue sooner than later. Now, back to the drawing board.
13th November
I was getting advice from one of my lecturers, Mikayla about the issue
faced by our team and she suggested that instead of ditching all of our
ideas, we could still stick with one of our ideas but use warm &
friendly colors to satisfy the criteria. I thought that was a brilliant
idea because we do not have to start from scratch.
14th November
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| Delegation of Tasks |
Trisha messaged me and gave me the option of whether to work on the poster
outline or the poster animation. I chose the poster outline because I am
more familiar with Adobe Illustrator software and thus, I could complete
my work efficiently. I also needed to complete my part of the work by this
Thursday and upload it into a drive.
16th November
Screenshot of My Chat 1
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Screenshot of My Chat 2 |
This morning, Trisha texted me again and told me that she had a
consultation with their lecturer and had made changes to the sketch. In my
opinion, I preferred our previous sketch and I told her just that.
Thankfully, she was very understanding and we came to a compromise on what
designs we would like to change and what to keep.
My Outline of the Poster & Assets
19th November
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| Assets & Poster Outline |
As mentioned earlier, I used Illustrator to create the outlines. It
took me around 6 hours to complete this in one sitting. I also did not
erase some of the inner lines because I needed to pass the outlines to
my other teammates so they could color in the assets.
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Zi Qi and Trisha sent over 8 options for the poster and right off the bat, I didn't like any of them but I needed to pick one so among all of them, I liked the design with the dark background the most. However, I could not just accept a piece of work that is not good and send it for submission. Hence, I wrote a long feedback on things that should be adjusted.
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Screenshot of My Feedback 1 |
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Thankfully, they were nice about it and implemented my feedback into
the poster design. Below are the refined posters:
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| Refined Poster Options |
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| Screenshot of Lecturer's Feedback |
My groupmates also got feedback from their lecturer and made some
changes to our final design.
Our Final Poster Design
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| Our Final Poster |
Our Final Animated Poster
Our Final Interactive Poster
Our Social Media Postings
Our Presentation Slides
I am rather pleased with the final outcome considering how far we've
come from the previous designs. In my opinion, it still isn't the best
work that I can produce but that is part of working as a team, right? We
learn to come to a compromise on our wants while maintaining the team
dynamics.
23th November
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| Our Virtual Presentation |
Today, we presented our final works to a few special guests, lecturers, and classmates in a virtual meeting. I started off by introducing our group, the research process, and the chosen topic and theme. We only had 10 minutes to run through everything hence, we had to wrap up pretty quickly but it all worked out in the end.
Here are some of the key feedback from our guests:
- The idea, design, and concept of the poster are simple to understand and very well done.
- Ilona especially liked the idea of referencing the "Tetris" game in the animated poster.
- The interactive poster truly drives the point of our chosen topic and theme very well.
- What could be improved was if the social media postings had less text in terms of the poster's description because not everyone would read it.