[photos] home..

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Not a joke, now I’m home for real~~ XDXD

This holiday feels so good

Linh Do 2009

Notes for me :

+ Holla amazing~~~~~ Just got my fisheye camera, gonna have a holga soon~ XD Can’t wait to see the films developed!!!

+ I know that I’m gonna into Audrey Tatou after the Amelie movie . But never knew that I would buy a dozen of her movies just in one time. Thanks mommy and daddy for the budget yey!!

+ Finished reading Davinci code. Dan Brown is so adorable and I mean it when I say it. I will not go watch angels and demonds before I read the original novel. Currently reading digital fortress though..

+ Photography class and Video class are waiting for me in next semester ..

+ My portfolio needs to be done within a month or two…

For now it’s just that myself. Look forward and run!! ^^

My Movie Poster

Basically, In Narratice class, We need to write a story and develope it ourselves.

After finish writing, chose a part in the story to make a screen play on it.

Today I’ve just did a presentation to pitch my screenplay.

And here is its poster ^^

Plot:
A typical high school girl telling story about herself, her daily life with a  strict mom and a nice but talkative step-father. Especially her love for landscape photography. One day she dreamed of being fall down from a cliff of a high mountain, and days later while going on a trip to Sapa, she found the mountain in her dream for real. She was about to fall down from the cliff if there wasn’t a guy to help her. He was a professional photographer and they became friend on the way traveling to the top of the mountain and back. When they reached the cliff again, he decided to give her his camera and suddenly disappeared. Later she was made famous by the Sapa photographs that she took with his camera. And one day a woman appeared and told her that she was the mother of the photographer the girl met and he died right at that first day they met falling down from a mountain.

The story seems to be misunderstanding and unrealistic in many parts, like it has been made up to cover something. Only when a third person’s POV is told, the truth is reavealed…

Game for content design project

link

link swf

This is a small game I made as the final project for Content design project class last semester.

Basically we have to finish a reading called “Looking into Space”, Graphic Design & Reading, Allworth Press, New York, USA by Zelman, S (2000), then chose a theme from what we understand about the press, made research and developed a concept for our project. Finally , we built our ideas into a flash file to demonstrate our understanding and thoughts. Here is my ideas’s description file: link.

^^Personally speaking, I think they were nicely represented.

Fighting for the upcoming semester !!

Linh 2009.

Andy Warhol

I always enjoy Pop Art and especially Andy Warhol and his art works.

But what I’m thinking now is that, if Warhol himself actually lives in current time, he will definitely be sued for copyrighted law. After all, the photographs he uses for his montages ain’t free, and they ain’t taken by himself either ^^.

Andy Warhol’s famous Marilyn

Never mind what I’m saying, this is just a random thought blablabla…

***I’m in holiday now, enjoying my semester break and lunar new year festival.  All the best for you guys :*

Linh 2009

Content in Design

“When it comes to design, the issue of content is that, you have to make content the issue.”

Inspired by feedback of from Magdalena Long
A result of Assignment 1 – Design & Communication

My writing paper

A discussion about

Major factors influencing the role of the designer in advertising communication

Prepared for:
Ms. Magdalena Long
Lecturer
RMIT University
Prepared by:
Do Thuy Linh
Group 1
Content Design Project

Advertising has existed long enough for its role in society to be clearly perceived. Nowadays, from watching TV, reading a newspaper, surfing the internet, seeing posters hanging along walking streets… we are naturally finding ourselves becoming the audience of advertising. Companies know how to use advertising effectively to promote their products  become incredibly successful, bringing along tons of cash and profits; As a result, the role of designers in advertising industry has never been considered as much important. Thanks to the mass-influence characteristic of advertising, an advertising designer holds a binary position of both the creator and the audience of what he/she is making. In this research paper, under the view of a student studying design, I want to discuss about the factors that may influence the role of designers in advertising communication.

Generally speaking, all the factors that affect the role of a designer can only be either internal or external issues. Firstly, inside factors are lying internally in the designers, coming from their head, mind and soul. For example, the designer’s responses for questions  such as what type of designer they choose to be, what kind of project they want or don’t want to do… When facing a new project, a designer has to consider and decide if he/she would involve in the work or not. The explanation for this is the fact that not all adverts were made with good purpose; their actual and final destination is to bring back benefit to the clients who have paid for the process of making adverts. For examples, products like cigarettes, alcohol, drugs or violent toys for children should be seriously considered before taking part in. Many designers claim that if they do not take the work then somebody else will and using it as excuse for taking all the offers they receive. By doing this, they may do not realize or just ignore the truth that their works may cause bad effects to the consumer society where they designers themselves being part of.

In an article by Michael Bierut named “The world in two footnotes”, the author has inherited an idea from Nick Bell and discussing about two popular types of designers: “agents of neutrality” and “aesthetes of style”. By choosing the type they want to pursue, designers have chosen their roles in the process of advertising communication. Becoming agents of neutrality, designers pass the authorship of the message to their clients where they only act as a tool to transfer message to the audience. Doing this, the designer put themselves in the passive position where they actually have no voice in their works, their role become smaller and can be influenced by any other elements in the communication process. Besides, designers want to become “aesthetes of style” considering themselves as the authors of the adverts, clients are just one who gave them the topics for their works. The designers in these cases have bigger roles in the process, however, subjective roles, where they take responsible for everything related to the outlook of the adverts they are doing.

However, both types of above designer’s roles can not be seen as model one because their passive or subjective characteristics. The reason is that, author of the message in both of the cases is either client or designer, which means, designers are following an old communication process inherited from Shannon and Weaver’s communication model, where a process of advertising communication be seen as the technical model illustrated in below image:

Applying this model to advertising communication, a client can be seen as the information source. Their aim is to make the audience become interested in their product (the message). In order to do that, a transmitter, which is advertising designers will create adverts to persuade the audience to adopt the product of the company. By following this old model, the role of designers, which has been discussed above, can either be passive or subjective. Advertising communication is a special type of communication, where we will never know if a project is working without feedback from the audience. Actually, the success of an advert is measured not by its outlook, but the practical sales of the product after the adverts are out of the market. By using the model of Shannon and Weaver, the audience, who should be the most important element in the process, is now considered as light as the destination in the linear process, as a result, they are have little influence to the designer than they should.

The role of the designer can only become objective when they know that they are creators of their adverts, but the audience is the author of the message their adverts transfer. In order for this to happened, instead of simply following the Shannon and Weaver’s model, designers should also consider semiotic aspect in communication. By knowing that different types of audience can have different behavior and understandings toward a message, by taking care of aspects and issues such as the audience demographic, political, cultural influences… designers can make sure the audience knows what they are trying to say and persuade them in a right way to get the best impact.

In conclusion, major factors that can influence the role of designer in advertising communication can come from either inside or outside of the designers. The most important inner factor seems to be the designer’s choice of how they want to work as a designer, and the most important outer factor is everything related to the audience and their understanding of the message. The role of a designer in advertising communication can range from passive, subjective to objective depending on their own choices when involving in an advertising project.

Reference:
Baldwin, J. & L. Roberts (2006) Visual Communication: From Theory to Practice, AVA Academia
Publishing, Switzerland.
Beirut, Michael (2004) The World in Two Footnotes: Are you an Agent of Neutrality? Or are you an Aesthete of Style?, viewed on 11th November 2008.
http://www.designobserver.com/archives/000216.html
Chandler, Daniel (1999) Semiotics for Beginners, viewed at 13th November 2008
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html
Chandler, D (2000) The Transmission Model of Communication, viewed at 13th November 2008
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/trans.html
Bennett, A (2006) Design studies: theory and research in graphic design a reader, Princeton
architecture press, New York.

** Afterall, have to admit that, content design project is one of the most interesting classes I have ever taken ^^

Photomontage

We were asked to make a photomontage/ collage from free stock single images.
I picked the topic related to “mental illness”, my idea is that untreated or under-treated mental illness may raise the crime in society. Above are 2 version of my work, one with text and one not. I can not decide myself which one is better so I upload here both. However I submitted the one without text.
Below is my explanation of the theme:

At first I chose the topic “mental illness”, however it turns out to be such a large topic to work with. When doing research, by chance I came into very interesting news: untreated mental illness may lead to the patient’s committing crime, thus I decide to take this information as the topic of my work, as a result I will made the theme based on a both realistic and horror atmosphere. As the topic idea is a problem related to society and mental illness, I want to construct it with real photographs and the best place for me to take nice shots and high quality photos are from free stock exchange image website.

My collage was made using 8 different images blend in together.

The first chosen image is the hospital corridor photograph. At first I simply want to express a gloomy space related to illness in the background. After that I use an image of a man touching his forehead, looking like he is having a headache and made it blend into the corridor image using multiply layer. My idea of doing this is, I believe that each people has a private imaginary room of thought inside their head, however people with mental illness are stuck and can not get out of their own “room”, thus they can not live normally like other people (the image of a bold man screaming and wanting to get out represents this idea). The top right of the collage is an x-ray photograph of a human brain/ head/ skull, which helps explaining the problem with the man having headache, who actually is having a mental illness. Furthermore, the fact that mental illness without right treatment or untreated may lead to stress and bad behavior among patients, those can finally end up with their committing suicide or even worse, crime, is what I want people to feel when looking at my collage. Therefore I decorate the theme with blood and a photo of a woman scarily screaming in pain. The place where I put the woman photo is the same as the position of the man’s ear, which also means that the voice talking inside mental patient head (a symptom of mental illness), without treatment, is getting louder and louder until the patient can not control anymore and finally gave up by following the voice instruction to do bad things.

This collage was made to call for balance treatment to people who have mental illness; because after all even mental patient do unusual things and can not control themselves, they were still born human like any of us, and nonetheless, it’s true that mental illness can be treated and many patients have been though this illness and become normal person after a period of treatment time.

This problem, however, should be seriously concerned in Vietnam, where the fact that untreated illness and under treatment to mental patient happen almost everywhere everyday, this is blamed mostly for the country lacking of financial situation, but if this problem continues and not be solved right, it may cause the society rise of crime as warned.

In conclusion, I named my collage “Untreated mental illness causes the rise of crime in society”.

Do Thuy Linh, sem2 2008, explaination of the theme , Assignment 2A , electronic image and design

Autumn sketch

Yeah I decided that this week will be all about my sketchs so now I’m posting another entry with a sketch.

I really miss my hometown now >”<

I’m from Ha Noi, the capital of Viet Nam, in the North, and it’s like 2000 km far from HCM city. As the result, the weathers here and there are totally diffirent. In HCM city , you only have two types of weather, dry or wet, rain or not rain, while in Ha Noi, four seasons. Well it’s not that I don’t like HCM’s weather, actually I love it here, but because I’m in the mood of homesick, so just want to talk a little bit about that.

It’s gonna be autumn in Ha noi soon, usually from August I guess. And in autumn, the weather is really nice, it’s dry, and cool, and the scenes are really really beautiful, you can see yellow leaves falling all your way, and winds blowing your hair while you are walking. I love autumn the most and then winter among all seasons. However, what’s not good in autumn is that, with all the beautiful scenes, if you’re kind of sensitive people, you may feel somehow lonely and sad without any reason…

Oh maybe it’s too much just stop driving this entry too corny XD, what I wanted to say is that, with a mood of missing autumn, I have finished this sketch.

I draw this based on a movie poster I have seen somewhere (don’t really remember ). The content of the movie has nothing to do with the meaning in this sketch. Just I by chance saw the poster, together with my own mood, I made this. And I name this “Autumn wind”.

Well a while ago, I remember seeing somewhere people using metaphor to express what they want to show. For example, to represent the sky, instead of drawing clouds and sun , or moon and stars, a painter can simply draw only a bird in a big blank white paper (Lee Oi Soo picture from my entry post before) . I want to try that too. In this example, I didn’t draw wind, but I draw a girl whose hair flying and looking at a leaf falling from above. Wind is actually what did make her hair flies and the leaf falls. Thus, this sketch has been called “Autumn wind”.

Sun and Moon exercise

 

 

 

 
So, the Sun and moon exercise requirement is to create a Sun&Moon symbol for a post production studio/ company which specialises in editing film and sound. The symbol is to be used on a website.

Following the instruction, I began with sketching out as many ideas of how moon and sun can be positioned next to each other as I can. For example, You can see on the first and second left pictures, some of my my drafts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

<– This is actually the idea I have chosen after considering all the drafts. This is why I have chosen it : At first I by chance drew the moon inside the sun shape, since we all know that the sun’s size is a lot bigger than the moon’s. After finishing and looking at it, suddenly I realized that their position standing together was like a smiling face emoticon. This is perfectly representing human happy emotion, which – firstly suitable with the suggestion of the exercise guidance, adding “anthropomorphization” into the logo, secondly bringing the friendly and joyful feeling into the logo, as this will be used for a film production company, in entertaiment industry. In general, the logo contains a meaning that our company cares about the audience and we want to produce great movies which can bring people happiness.

 

 

 <– This is the shape of the finish logo I’ve sketched. To presenting the company is working in film production industry, the moon and sun symbol has been put inside a square piece of film.

 

 

 

 

And here they are the final results with Adobe Ilustrator, the same logo with some diffirences in arrangement. Customers can chose what they prefer.
And completely finish !! ^^

Do Thuy Linh
s3183636

Art or design?

This is my thought about the intersection between art and design:

Artists and designers are often mistaken to each other. In some situations, artists can actually be considered as designers and vice verse. They say that artists do art, which is personal products, and they make art to express their own feeling and thought and emotion. In the other hand, designers design their products not for themselves, they make products to serve public purpose, public need, and their aim mainly is to sell their products well, which is a financial reason. Thus in theory, artists and designers are totally different, and I even heard many people say that, designers, in fact, are liars, who tell lies and trick their customers by visual means ( meaning their designs). However, that theory seems like to be true only in the past, nowadays, we can easily point out many artists who make art to sell, and designers who turn their designs into masterpiece. Let me show you some example today, about my favorite artists and designers:

Takashi Murakami (left) and Kanye West

About artists who sell their products, it’s clearly to see everywhere now, such as painters sell their pictures, photographers sells their photos, my favorite artist in this subject is Takashi Murakami (TM). TM is a famous Japanese contemporary artist who is considered as an Andy Warhol of Japan, he got his Ph.D in Fina Art from Tokyo Uni., he does sculpture, he paints, he holds exhibitions all over the world, he is, undoubtedly an example model for Japanese new art. But that’s not enough to TM, with an entrepreneur mind, he also joins into the world of advertising industry, TM becomes a designer, he makes his art to sell. His paintings are now be mass published everywhere, in any form ( T-shirt, video games, anime, toys and even chewing gum… ). TM designed cover for Kanye West’s “Graduation” album, and collaborated with Louis Vuitton to make an advertising video and designed LV new bag models combining LV luxury and Japanese cute manga character styles. Takashi Murakami and Some example of his works:

Takashi Murakami’s homage to Francis Bacon

His $10,000 bag for LV

For more information about Takashi Murakami, you can visit his company offical english homepage

or Takami at the Brooklyn Museum blog article here

John Maeda

A example for a designer who has masterpiece products, the most significant individual is John Maeda, you can visit his website . Being born in Seattle, John Maeda is considered as both an artist and a computer scientist inside the form of a designer. Look at his design and feel the complexity and simplicity JM has achieved:

Who can say that they are not masterpieces? Such graphics are not only considered Designs but actually Art. That’s the reason why John Maeda is highly appreciated and as a designer, he also has opportunities to hold exhibitions all around the world, because people want to enjoy his designs as art. Now, JM is president of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) ( here ) and is considered one of the leading designers over the world.

In conclusion, they are 2 significant people represent two types of model reflecting the “no frontier” distance between art and design. In my opinion, Art and design are like two siblings, who have both similarity and difference, however sometimes, people might mistaken them, let say, it’s like when two siblings look too alike, or they are twins. After all, they are still differentiated and considered as two individual people (visual type).

Do Thuy Linh _ s3183636

Top 30 most popular Japanese emoticons

Using typing emoticons such as (^__^) or (>__<) when writting sms, chatting or typing on your PC have become a very usual thing these days. Have you ever wondered what’s the origin of these imoticons? The correct answer is Japan. Yes, first imoticons are said to come from US, where is the birthplace of internet also, however the cuter looking, and nowaday even more popular between young people are come from Japan ^^. Here’s a small compararion between the two styles of emoticon.
Example:

Japanese Smile imoticon _ 2 bytes _ vertical read

American Smile emoticon _ 1 byte _ horizontal read

Isn’t it obvious that the Japanese emoticons are more easy to read, since we don’t need to turn our head 90 degree when seeing them (*_*) ) Eventhough American imoticons are more convinient to use (because they cost less space) and American imoticons are more popular around the world, Japanese imoticon are gaining more and more attentions and become extremely wide used among teenages in countries around the world, including Vietnam, because of its cute look and easy to type ^^

From the website I have discovered a ranking result in Japan, about the most popular emoticons that Japanese people using nowadays.

Will you try to use them ?(*^_^*)

Do Thuy Linh_s3183636