The Designer as Producer

As a graphic designer, we have learned how to design an artwork from scratch, and how to produce it in order to get a better chance in the future. It is very important to be a designer and producer at the same time. Some designer doesn’t like to be also a producer because they think they only design and keep the producing process for the one who can do it.

What I think is that in our classes like packaging class, we learned how to create and invent package from scratch (the logo, the layout of the package, information in the package, give away and even create attractive barcode) which make us have a good experience in the future when we are going to get a job.

In conclusion, we can get a better chance in working if we are a designer and producer. 

I Love NY More Than Ever

It was such an interesting topic to talk about. I love New Yurok logo is very famous logo and people all around the word start to de their logos based on it because it the most grape attention logo in the world and it has meaning behind it.

The most important point that makes me think a lot is “ is it legally to take other’s work and try to change it according to the situation of the country?” From my point a view, it is not legally to do it because it considered plagiarism as we taught in school. The reason why it is not legal to do it is because if we have a famous and successful logo that we can not forget because of its strong concept and then suddenly it change according to specific event maybe we going to forget the main logo and new one will stick more in our mind which is going to effect the logo concept itself.

For example, Jeddah logo for summer festival had been change to Jeddah sunk after the flood happened. From my point of view, this change make people around the world who come every year to Jeddah for people feel fear and don’t want to come again because they think it could happen again. So that change make negative effect on people’s mind specially who used to visit Jeddah every summer.

In conclusion, changing the artwork and design of other people could lead to have negative point view and especially if this change is for bad events and disasters. 

Beautility Good Design Has Utility by Tucker Viemeister

In this presentation, the girls were introducing the meaning behind the word “ beautility “. From what I understood from the presentation that beautility is compensation between two words, beauty and useful. In short it means that any thing in the word that is beautiful side and on the same time its useful and functional. I think that every think that god created it is beautiful and useful. For example, flowers are the most beautiful creature in the world and its useful to make perfumes. On the other hand, bee is an ugly insect but very useful because it makes honey for us.

In contrast, I liked the part that they talked about the ugly and useful objects. Like for example how designers here improve the meaning of beauty to more practical and useful things that we use to have but they are not practical. For instance, apple laptop bags were beautiful but not practical because it is big and harm the back. Now, the designer created new bags that is more beautiful and very useful that u can hold it easily anywhere you go and it has different colors and shapes.

In addition, I liked the part that discussed the beauty and the psychology behind it. In my opinion, beauty is very important in every thing because people’s eyes love to see beautiful around them. The meaning of beautiful is different from one to another, for example, some people see that Jessica Alba is a beautiful woman but if they see Charlize Theron they will think that she is prettier than Alba. This contrast effect refers to the person him self and to what he want to see.

Finally, no thing in this world is ugly, if you want to see the real beauty, just look around you, we will know that beauty is around us and just try to use this beauty to make it more used and more practical. 

Links: 

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=beautility 

http://www.jyi.org/volumes/volume6/issue6/features/feng.htm

A Life of Luxury by Hugh Aldersey-Williams

While we were presenting our topic about “ luxury “, I was thinking about what is the thing that makes me feel luxury. Luxury is a very complicated word that cannot have only one meaning. It has different meaning according to the person and what he feels to make him/her feel luxurious. In my opinion, luxury is any thing around us weather its moral or sensory that can make the person feel comfortable and pleasure him/her senses.

For me, I think that there is many things that make me feel luxurious. For example, international medical center (IMC) consider most luxurious hospital in Jeddah. I feel comfortable and save when I interned there. The weather and the services their makes me feel as if I am in a 5 stars hotel. Also the way the servicers and nurses dealing with people is really great and make me say it is a luxury hospital that I can not find like this dealing in any other hospital.

In addition, luxury is something very hard to obtain or to have because it is expensive so not any one can have it. For instance, Maybach cars are expensive and considered the most innovative and luxurious cars in the world.

Finally, you have to find your luxury in the way that you can reach it weather it is expensive or not to be more pleasure and to feel comfortable otherwise it is not luxury.

Links:

http://www.maybachusa.com/about-maybach.php

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/luxury

Responsibility Answers Absurdity by Michael Schmidt

It is such an interesting thing that we know how we as a designer can do many a design and share it with other people in the world to get others attention to our culture. Globalization is the term which make our locally designs be an international design. In deep, I can say that globalization is when you exchange your cultures, societies, economic or any process with other cultures and become known and famous.

In the presentation, they talked about how is that really important to have the trademark symbol or register symbol next to logo design to have the right to your logo. I think that this is really important and I knew that because as a graphic design student, teachers are asking us to have these symbols next to our logos.

In addition, food is one of the main elements that make connection between cultures. For example, when I went to Malaysia, I found a lot of Arabic traditional food restaurant out there. Like I found a restaurant that sells “ many” which is a very popular food in Saudi Arabia, and most of their consumer are non-Saudi people. I think that is a big example of globalization.

On the other hand, sushi, the Japanese famous food, is become a very popular and wanted food in Saudi Arabia and in other Arabic country because of its delicious taste.

In conclusion, us as a designer are the main responsible of reaching the informant to people around us and from our designs, people can know more about others thinking and behaviors.

Link:   

http://www.malaysiavacationguide.com/ain-arabia.html

 

Expelling School Violence by Carolyn McCarron

It is such an important issue to talk about. School violence is a big thing that can’t be shorted in just a paragraph or two. I really think that this was a successful presentation maybe because I have kids and I wanted to know more about violence between children.

My opinion is that children can effect from every thing around us, their parents, friends and different media such as videogames, TV, Internet or even mobiles weather in good or bad way. Children of this new generation are having different behaviors than the old generation because of the changes around theme. I think that media is the most affect thing on them. They see such violence in TV or video games and try to apply it without knowing if this is right or wrong. Also, there are many researches have done in such issue and concluded that children who consumer high level of media violence is likely to be more aggressive in the real world.

For example, when the famous cartoon Pokémon started to show and spread all over the TV channel and even in videogames, children looked at it and try to copy what the see from violence and play with their friends the same way that they saw. Even the unrespectful seen they get effected by it.

In conclusion, a designer can change this violence because the visual image is a very important thing that can have an impact on the child, so designers can change the bad image on the child mind by communicate with them in the right way and attract them to see good and beautiful things which can be affected by them in very positive way.

links:

http://onlinepsychologyadvice.com/?p=35

http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/violence/effects_media_violence.cfm

Ethical Design Education by Susan S. Szenasy

I think this is one of the best articles that I read about; it is a very important issue to us as a person and as a designers. Keeping our environment in our mind is a very important aspect especially to us “designer” because our field can change the world easily than any thing else. In the article, the author was talking about the Deterioration of our nature and how we as a designer must have ethical aspects to deal with this problems more.

The first thing comes to my mind is our environment here in Jeddah. Unfortunately, if you go to the beach, you can see trashes all over the place wherever you go and that is really make me very sad. If one person just clean up after himself, all the people will do the same thing. It is something embarrassing that such a country like this having all this technology and high economy with this dirties all around the street, malls, beach even next to garbage’s. 

As a result, changes that happened in our self’s can affect a lot of things around us.

Mental Whiplash by Leslie Becker

I really like this presentation; it’s about us as a graphic design student and how we can benefit from our projects and our teachers to improve our skills in the future. Students must be satisfied of any project that the teacher asked them to do it even if they didn’t like the project so they can have a challenging chance.

Regarding to what the presentation was talking about, teachers are the most impact elements on the students. If the teachers are more experiences and more welcoming to help the students in their designs and even the research, the students will become more responsible and have more chance to have a very successful design.

Talking about Dar AlHekma teachers especially in the graphic design major is really an important point that made a big debate between the students. Some of the teachers are not qualified enough to teach us because they only want to see what they like and not accepting what we like to do and that make the students more depresses and not proud of their works.

Finally, students in any working field must research well to have a good result and good project done based on a good research.

Reality Branding Addressing Real Concerns and Real Needs by Nancy Bernard

After this presentation I realized that branding is a big field that companies must have a strong strategy behind their branding. The more your company services is real and honest, the more your product is sell and successful. If the branding is successful, it will build a strong and good image on people’s mind and convince them in indirect cleaver message.

I think here in Saudi Arabia we are facing this problems of having many companies that build a good image in the people’s mind while this services is not real therefore they give bad reputation for the company. For example all the travel agencies here are following the same strategies for giving that kind of offers where you can travel to any country with less prices and when you go to their offices they tell you that the ad they did is not contains all the thing they want to say. By this way, they decrease their businesses because they weren’t honest in the services that they marketing for or promoting for.

In conclusion, being an honest company is increasing the businesses and gets a good image in the consumer. Also it is important to know and observe what is your client’s needed and be honest with them.

links:

http://www.realityinbranding.com/how-we-work/paint-the-picture/

Who Gets to Say What to Whom? by Maud Lavin

As a graphic designer, I believe that having a strong concept behind any design in any designs field is a very important aspect. The more your concept is strong, the more the design will be remembered. The strong concept can play a big roll of any successful project or design in any field.

I think that having a strong concept and bad design is not working because design and concept cannot work separately. If for example, a big company had a bad logo but their logo based on a strong concept behind it is not strong enough because people are judging visually from what they see, the company will not put a description of what their logo is about. That is what I mean by having really powerful concept and powerful visual design as well.

Finally, we as designers have to have that impact on people by our designs and try our best to achieve the point of having strong concept as well as strong designs in all graphic designs field. 

Socially Responsible Advertising Altruism or Exploitation? by Judith Schwartz

In our presentation, I was talking about Niche Marketers. Niche Marketers is when you have a special product with special characteristics and it is focusing on what you want to sell and tend to be idealist products

In the book, the author was talking about international brand that goes under this specific kind of marketing like The Body Shop company which considered famous with their beauty product and using natural things to satisfy their target audiences. They shared in many campaigns to keep the environmental clean by using these natural substances in their product

The local example that I have talked about in our presentation is Nectar. Nectar have many branches around KSA, and they are also very famous for their beauty product: perfumes, make up, shower jell and others. Women who are taking care of their body and skin and always want to be shine and fresh are their target audiences. Nectar has also the same way of The Body Shop in keeping the environment clean because they believe in their product and what the product contain of natural things

As a result, we can be socially responsible by doing small things that can change a lot of things around us

links:

http://trmep.tamu.edu/cg/factsheets/rm1-2.pdf

http://www.thebodyshop.com/_en/_ww/values-campaigns/community-trade.aspx?

http://www.thebodyshop.com/_en/_ww/values-campaigns/defend-human-right.aspx?

Healing with Design An Educational Approach by Chase A. Rogers

This presentation was really good and successful because it is very relate to our field “ graphic design”. It is very important to know the main element of the design that makes the design work better and have impact on our bodies. Color, sound, light and image have different impact on our emotions, body and soul and it plays a major role in setting up a particular mood or state of mind and emotions as well. It can really affect people if they know how to use it or how to get benefit from.

From my point of view, sound and light can had that effect on the person weather this effect is positive or negative. For example: if you go to a spa center they always put on that kind of alternative music, with soft lights that you can feel relax and comfortable. Also, it can effect you body reactions like you hear it without feeling you are going to close your eyes or sleep as a result of listening to that kind of music. Furthermore, the kind of lighting that in the spa centers makes you feel more luxurious and make the person less stressed or nervous. That is why most of the people who want to get red of the stress is recommended to go to the spa centers.

Finally, all kind of art elements “sound, light, color or image” can obviously affect our body’s emotions and can affect us as a designer in our designs. Therefore, designer must take these elements into considerations and research about it more then apply it.

 links:

http://www.spasounds.com.au/c-4-traditional-relaxation.aspx

http://clubspa.spafinder.com/2010/04/spa-light-on-lomi-lomi-authentic-hawaiian-massage.html