Course Reflection
When presented with the challenge of designing a logo for the city of Kyoto, Japan, the initial phase, as visualized in the “above” diagram from A Designer’s Research Manual (O’Grady & O’Grady, 2009, p. 68), was focused on gathering a plethora of resources and performing comprehensive research into the city’s geography, traditions, and modern culture. The goal of the logo’s communication is to promote tourism; thus, it was imperative that information gathered must come from factual sources as well as being sure to study first-hand experiences of the location both from previous tourists as well as local residents. After the initial phase of research was complete, mind maps were developed based off said research in order to identify an abundance of key cultural, traditional, and geographical concepts and words that would be helpful in communicating the values of the city to the tourism market. This was a free-flowing word association exercise that was then analyzed for relevance. Upon investigation, more research into specific concepts (O’Grady & O’Grady, 2009, p. 68) was performed to further establish what elements would be useful and which should be discarded.
At this point in the process, the essential concepts and words relating to Kyoto were compared to their existence in the city’s current logo ideations as well as logo solutions for various other cities with shared qualities. This prototyping phase (O’Grady & O’Grady, 2009, p. 68) proved valuable as a source of creative inspiration while also serving to inform as to what should be avoided during the sketching phase as many of the logos researched did not speak at all to the target market. The thoroughness of the research and concept development stages provided ample material to begin the process of producing design solutions (O’Grady & O’Grady, 2009, p. 68). Using materials from the mind-maps, the sketching was done in separate phases, each relating to one of the primary focuses (tradition, geography, modern culture). This was also a free-flowing and creative exercise which, at times, combined elements from multiple categories in new ways to communicate ideas. Throughout the sketching process, concepts from Chapter 3 of Logo Design Love (Airey, 2014) were employed to ensure the most effective results were achieved.
Lastly, the sketches along with rationalizations were presented for critique. This assessment phase (O’Grady & O’Grady, 2009, p. 68) was critical in revealing the effectiveness of the current ideations. The responses aided in choosing a small number of concepts to further develop. Numerous responses alluded to the fact that many of my designs, even those that were most successful, felt too busy and could be simplified to communicate the same concept with less visual language. This was valuable insight, as it’s important to remember that viewer’s attention spans are short, and we need to communicate our message as succinctly as possible and leave a lasting impression as simply as we can. The assessment phase was also useful in reminding me that all of my solutions need to maintain the ability to be displayed in black and white. I produced most of my initial sketches with the color already in mind, thus, adding unnecessary shading and texturing to help communicate the concept. When further developing my final chosen concepts, I ensured to try multiple approaches to place emphasis on what areas could be completely filled and what would be left open in the case that a two-color approach was used. The feedback gleaned from this project will serve me well in the coming months as these are foundational principles that drive the media design process, especially the early stages.
Mind Map #1 
Mind Map #2 
Mind Map #3 
All Logo Ideations 
Selected Logo Ideations 
Finalized Sketches
References
Airey, D. (2014). Logo design love (2nd ed.). https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/logo-design-love/9780133812589/
O’Grady, J., & O’Grady, K. (2009). A designer’s research manual. Rockport. https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/a-designers-research/9781592535576/
Week 1 Reflection
Synthesizing information is going to be a huge component of my journey as I work towards my degree. To be completely honest, I have never been an avid reader and have never been involved in any field of work that involved a great deal of research. Learning to not only take on an enormous amount of new information but to combine it all to form new innovative ideas is going to be a welcome challenge.
Another key takeaway from the live session was hearing that we will be undertaking a project that involves sketching logo concepts. I made it a point in the Mastery course to reflect on one of my greatest weakness being logo design and drawing in general. It’s going to be a great step toward addressing this weakness by being forced to directly attack this weakness. I look forward to applying this same process to different areas of weakness throughout my graduate studies as opposed to simply choosing video/motion graphics as my weapon of choice, since I consider that my strength. I’m here to grow, not to reinforce what I already know I’m good at.
I’m somewhat concerned with my current research abilities. I learned the basics in during the Mastery course, but I’m clearly going to have to dive deeper into the protocols for proper research if I want to turn in the quality of work that I’ve come to expect of myself.
Throughout the MDMFA program, I expect to gain insight into the industry’s demands of me in respect to various roles. I hope to gain full knowledge of every job opportunity that I would potentially have in the field so that I can choose a path that’s most in line with my career goals. I also expect the program to challenge me in regard to technical proficiency. As I said, I feel like I left my graduate program with high proficiency in motion design and video production but severely lacking in terms of vector graphics and illustration. My hope is that this program will afford me the opportunity to enter the field of design with a toolbox of design skills that I’m completely confident in.
I thought long and hard before finally deciding to enter this program. I pride myself on never choosing to do anything unless I give it the full and complete attention it requires. In these early weeks of the program, I have discovered that it will likely require an even higher level of commitment than I had anticipated. I am absolutely okay with this. I look at it as a challenge in time-management which is a skill I can take with me for the rest of my life. As opposed to graduate school, I will not simply be completing my projects in the MDMFA program as quickly as possible just to get through them. I’ll be giving each project the time it deserves even if it means sacrificing in other areas of my life. In contemplating my long-term goals as a media design professional, I’m always drawn to the idea of title design. I have long been obsessed with title sequences in film and television shows and foresee myself one day working on these on a large scale. However, I currently wrestle for WWE and have recently realize the importance of building brands from the ground up. This is part of what drew me to this program.