Reflection (2.11)

1. The most successful part of our campaign was the continuity between the ads and keeping a sense of familiarity through the use of similar design elements such as layout, color, and typeface choice.

2.The least successful part about our campaign was the abysmal choice of photoshop names.

 Also some of the ads have layouts that don't look entirely professional and could probably be improved with an improved composition.

3.Each ad was carefully made over several classes with lots of feedback from various sources, so overall the project was done very carefully and very close the to the fullest that we did with the allotted time.

4. With the provided marking scheme, it seems that the mark that we deserve is in the high 90s.
The file we completed can be found in groupwork under "duck group marking scheme.pdf"

Campaign Ad Sumbmission

Revision (2.10)

The first thing that we did to improve the feel of our campaign, as per suggestion from our peers, was to unify the bottom bar and text color choices throughout all the advertisements to give them a more cohesive feel.
Another thing that was done to improve the looks of our ads was various small changes to make the ads look more clean and professional, such as removing the xs on the eyes and removing various strokes and reducing the size of drop shadows.
As per Mr.Bishop's suggestion, the placement of the text and alignment was also changed to be more unified throughout the ads and to make the layout look cleaner and easier to read.

Charity Research (2.4)

1. Their conservation efforts are part of a bigger conservation approach that spans across Canada, the United States and Mexico. Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC) is a part of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan (NAWMP). The objective of this international conservation program is restoring waterfowl populations to average levels enjoyed in the 1970s.
2. The charity operates primarily through the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, raising awareness for their programs, and using donatiosn to help governments put in place policies to protect wetlands and waterfowl.
3. DUC is primarily based in Stonewall, Manitoba
4. DUC operates on a continental scale, working with organizations in U.S.A and Mexico to help preserve waterfowl population across North America.
5. Their current advertisemetn and awareness strategies involve the use of infographics, and are focused heavily towards the older generations that can be involved in politics to help put protective policies in place.
6. I am not part of the target demographic, so I cannot say from personal experience that they are good because I have seen their ads(I have not), however the ads themselves are very well designed, informative, and persuasive, and the only thing that DUC needs is a way to get them seen more, as well as an angle to get the younger generation involved.
7. The communication to the public could be improved most easily by increased exposure to the public. The actual advertisements they have are very well designed, they are just not very often seen by their target demographic.
8. The demographic that mostly supports the charity are older people who are very interested in nature and do not want to see it destroyed. For the donation portion of our campaign, this is also the demographic that will be targeted, but also younger people for awareness and volunteering purposes.
   

2.5- Proposal/Pitch

    Our campaign will consist of 3 major parts.
1.To get volunteers-Targeting 16-22 year olds who need community service hours/want to help the environment. Ads in schools, volunteer finding sites, local nature areas(conservation/nature centers).

2.To raise funds. Targeting 45+ year olds who are very nature oriented(e.g fishing, hiking, camping, canoeing, etc.). Ads in local nature areas(conservation/nature centers), national parks, nature magazines, local newspaper.

3.To raise awareness. Target everybody. Local nature areas(conservation/nature centers), local newspapers, various magazines, around schools, nature focused webpages/blogs. Various small business with a relaxed feel.

1.      What medium will you be working with? Be specific.

The most common medium we are planning to work with are print ads, because they are more likely to be taken seriously, noticed, and are the only ways to convey the message to our demographic; in local nature areas, parks, and nature focused magazines.

2.      How would you get the message out to the identified demographic?

We feel that the best way to get the message out to our chosen demographic would be through targeting the locations they visit and look at, mainly parks, conservation areas, nature magazines, and specialty nature stores such as for hiking and fishing.

3.      How will you communicate the mission/mandate of the charity through your campaign?

We will mostly be using images of wildlife and especially wetlands, along with short but powerful text describing the destruction of wetlands and death of waterfowl.

4.      What is the core message of your campaign? How will you convey that message?

The core message of our campaign is that the loss of wetlands is detrimental to the health of the land, the ecosystems, and especially aquatic wildlife such as waterfowl. It will be conveyed mostly through images, but also data of the destruction occurring and biased phrases blaming big companies.

5.      Why should your campaign be chosen? What will make your campaign most effective for the chosen demographic? (e.g. My campaign will appeal to Canadian teenagers because...)

Our volunteer portion of the campaign will appeal to teenagers/young adults because a lot of them will need volunteer hours, and especially because it’s a common fact that wildlife and habitats are being destroyed, a lot will want to help these aquatic ecosystems.

Our fundraising portion of the campaign should work relatively well because it is targeted at people who spend a large portion of their time in nature, so they appreciate it and know firsthand what they are trying to save. We are placing ads in national parks and nature areas which they often visit, as well as nature focused magazines that they will most likely be reading, so the message will definitely be heard. Because they are being placed in nature appreciation areas, they will be more likely to view the ads in a positive light of trying to save the environment.

6.      The measure of our success will be, quite simply, the amount of new volunteers and amount of money raised.

Graphics Unit Glossary Asssignment

Kerning: 

Kerning is the space between characters. There are many ways to change the kerning, the 2 biggest being auto, which uses the spacing built into the font, and optical, which manually figures out where one character ends and the other begins in order to effectively change the spacing between them.

Leading:

Leading is very similar to kerning, except instead of measuring the horizontal distance between characters, it measures the vertical distance between characters on 2 different lines. 

Baseline:

The baseline is a line that goes along the bottom of a font, excluding descender. 

Serif / Sans-Serif:

A serif is an attachment to the ends of a font that is usually a line derivative. Serif fonts are called "Roman" and sans-serif fonts are called "Gothic". Sans-serif fonts are fonts without a serif.

Bleed:

A bleed is the part of the design that is included beyond the actual print dimensions so that when it is later trimmed the minute inconsistency of the printer and cutter will not cause unprinted paper to be part of the print because it would look really bad.

Cropline:

The CropLine is a province-wide, toll-free, phone service on crop management tips, herbicide recommendations and pest alerts produced twice a week in season. The number to call is 1-888-449-0937. Leave a message for OMAFRA’s field crop specialists, and they'll do their best to address it on the next CropLine. If you'd rather listen to the CropLine on your computer or MP3 player, you can subscribe to our new CropLine Podcast!

Gutter:

The gutter is the part of the page that is blank on the outsides of the pages that is usually used for bindings. They are not to be confused with alleys, which are blank spaces between columns of text.

Points:

A point is the smallest unit of typography measurements. It is equal to 1/12th of a pica, or 1/72th of an inch.

Pica:

A pica is a unit of measurement in typography that is equal to 1/6th of an inch. 

Snapping:

Snapping is a feature in most graphic design programs that automatically moves objects to the nearest grid line  reference point, or line it up to similarly placed options. 

Spread:

A full picture taking up 2 pages.

 Justification

Justification is the way of aligning text. For example, center justified will put all the text in the middle, left justified is standard and will keep all the text on the left, and full justification. It is synonymous with alignment.

Character Style

The character style is the set of parameters such as kerning, leading, and size that is applied to a certain set of characters. 

Paragraph Style

The paragraph style is the set of parameters such as font, and line spacing that is applied to paragraphs.

Object Style

Object styles are used for formatting frames and other vector objects and include parameters such as colors, thickness of border, and transparency.

Swatch

A swatch is a collection of colors that is used throughout a project. 

Stroke

A stroke is the outline of an object, aka border. It usually has a width, color, transparency, as well as any layer style effects that one can choose to add on.

Fill

A fill is what fills the inside of an object. It can consist of solid colors, as well as patterns, pictures, and gradients.

Process Color

The process color, also known as four color or CMYK, is a method of printing using the 4 colors Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key(Black) in order to create a more accurate representation of true colors.

Spot Color

Spot color is similar to process color in that it uses the CMYK inks, but the difference is that it prints on only a single run and also sometimes uses orange and green inks.

DPI

 DPI is dots or pixels per inch, and is a measure of the resolution, how many pixels will fit on one inch.

Offset Lithography

Offset lithography is the most common commercial printing process. It involves transferring the image first onto rubber plates with water, then the rubber plates transfer the ink to the paper more accurately because ink is hydrophobic.

Screen Printing

Screen printing is a process through which designs are printed onto a surface by spreading ink over a mesh sheet on top of a stencil to produce the desired image.

Letterpress

The letterpress is a form of typing through which ink is transferred onto wooden or metal blocks, then placed against a paper to transfer the ink. It was invented by Mr.Gutenberg and was the basis of the printing press. Because press is part of letterpress.

David Carson Analysis

David Carson has a very unique style of graphic design. Overall, his style has an overall feeling of retroness and relaxation, with his interesting hand-drawn text layering and using both retro colors and techniques.

First of all, his choice of color is rather different than most standard graphic design; he prefers to use drab and more retro-looking colors than vibrant standard ones. The following pictures illustrate his use of his unusual color choices

Another interesting technique that appears to be one of Carson's signature designs is the use of hand drawn, messy text, layered many times usually to the point of illegibility. Note that a lot of the themes of the overall piece is represented in his typography, each letter drawn in a certain way to represent the overall feel of the piece, and that his color choice is also present in these pieces.

Overall, his works have a very interesting style, a lot of which include typography as a decoration while also sending a message. His color choice compliments his typography style by making it seem like an older more calmer style of graphic design, supporting his overall themes of happiness and overcoming problems. 

Blobbo Vs Cripping Depression

The blobbo animation video file

Camera Angles Video

 Tyler was a bully and woulnt share the file so I have to link to his blog so you can see our groups work
http://comtoasttech.blogspot.ca/2013/09/camera-angles-video.html

Sound Assigments 2 and 3

 For the recording a random thing with instruments and automation and the radio ad, we worked in a group and both files can be found where tyler uploaded them because he is the one who had the files
http://comtoasttech.blogspot.ca/2013/10/sound-stuff.html

Soylent Green Article

Apparently I know how to use indesign

Soylent Green

Sound 1 Assigment

 These are pictures of how we did the assignment

written on the blog

Activity 1.5 - Logo Masup

Original Logos that I recreated:

Mashup:

Self Logo

 As one can imagine, this is my self logo that I had to create out of 3 shapes.

Summative

 My summative is here
http://grd11commtechsummative.blogspot.ca/

Field Assignment #7

#24-Record A rant

During our production process of Convict Concourse, Tyler ranted on camera about Barry, Cows, and unfairness in the world, and while this was going on I was recording it.

Field Assignment #6

  10. Use an old piece of technology

For this field assigment, I used my grandmas phone, which is a 2003 model nokia.
http://thenokiandtech.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/nokia6010.jpg

It's a bit old, and I really don't see how these phones were once popular and usable. The call quality is terrible. The texting is impossible. No internet whatsoever. The games are limited to pong and  some lame 2d platformer that literally has 6 pixels as a guy running around. The phone should be in a museum of ancient items, not used by my grandma. I don't even know what she uses it for! Never seen her hold it. Oh also the timer is terrible, it counts by .57 seconds, so the only thing you see is .57, 1.07, 1.57, etc. So that's that. Probably the only interesting thing I found on it are the ringtones. They all consist of sharp tones, but some of them were pretty interesting. Basically, it's really old and I have difficulty seeing how they were ever usable.

Field Assignment #5

12.Create a drawing using only type
I tried making a rocketship.


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Field Assignment # 4

  19. Thematic Screening
My friend and I had a thematic screening of kung-fu movies.
First we watched Hero
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299977/

then we watched  Fearless
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446059/

the last one we watched was The Way Of The Dragon
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068935/

In all these movies, the choreography for the fight scenes were exceptionally well done, and the story line for the first 2 movies were very interesting, with Hero having a ridiculously difficult to follow storyline and Fearless showing a really interesting and deep mental progression to the main character. The way of the dragon didn't have as good of a storyline as the other 2, but was still very well made and we enjoyed all 3 movies immensely.

Field Assignment #3

2.Found Typography

http://i.imgur.com/c9KIlCp.jpg

Field Assignment #2

18. Try something open source and describe your experience:

  The open source thing I tried was linux, and it didn't turn out very well at all. My friend came over to help me install because I thought he knew what he was doing. We made a new partition on my hard drive, told linux to "install alongside other operating systems", then when we clicked install we see the dialogue "Hard drive reformatting 1% complete.". So we instantly cut the power, but unfortuanately it killed off the bootloader so we had to wipe the hard drive and install it again. The moral is, don't try open source complicated things that have the chance to mess stuff up, because when you don't know what you're doing, it probably will.

Arrested Development Reviews

  The first episode we saw was not very to my liking, I felt that the humour was aimed at a completely different demographic, and the plot was very shallow and practically non-existant, although this could be a result of me only seeing one episode in the middle of the second season with no context. Some parts seemed completely redundant, and most of the humour was based on extremely immature concepts.

The second episode was somewhat more enjoyable, with more relevant plot progressions with the different characters and more interesting interactions between their respective subplots. The humour was more present in this episode as well, although it was repetitive because it was all based on ambiguity and political incorrectness.

  Overall, the two episodes kept my interest, but it wasn't really the best or the most funny show that I've seen.