Communication is a Virus

Onion News:

Onion news is an American fake news website quite similar to what we will be making. They show fake news stories either regarding recent news or just seemingly random stories. The stories are internationally focussed but usually regard the United States. Like oir website will be, every story on the site is fake.
The big difference between this website and the one that we want to create is that Onion news is very over the top and very clearly fake. It is almost marketed as fake news and is specifically for comic entertainment. We want our website to be as believable as possible so we will try not to hint that the stories are false.

Communication is a Virus

We decided that we wanted to look at making a mock websites which featured a lot of different lies in the form of news stories. Naturally the first place to look is at news websites:

Each othe these websites have a lot of the same aspects across them:
-Logo at the top
-Usually a navigation bar under the logo
-Search bar in the middle or right of the screen
-Images across the page
-Many show adverts at the top or right side
-Often have date and time
-Usually have videos

To make sure that our website looks genuine we will have to make sure that we focus on all the aspects that other news websites have and at least think about and experiment with each of these points.

Kailie Parrish

This is a really good example of some information graphics which works really well. The designer recorded her dreams for 2 and a half months and then categorised them into groups (location, mood, type etc) through lines and colours.

This links in well with the 'What is a line?' brief because it is physically made up of lines but also shows a line of events which matches to one of the line definitions.

Visual Language - What is a Line?

Starting examples of each of the 3 beginning statements to choose from for this brief.

“A formation of people, objects or things on besides/behind the other.”

 

A formation of people behind one another

  

 Objects on one another

 

 Things beside one another

“A connected series of events, actions or developments.”

 

  Connected series of events

  

Actions

 

 Developments

“A mark indicating position, connection or boundaries.”

 

Mark indicating boundary

  

Position

 

 Connection

(The line around the top left corner of the piece indicates its connection with the corresponding line around the already connected pieces)

Vogue - Past Covers

As another point of research I decided to look at past issues of vogue and their covers. The first thing that comes to mind when someone hears the word vogue is the magazine and all of its connotations so I thought it could be useful to look into the design of the cover.

The cover of each vogue is quite simple and follows a set of pretty strict conventions. Each cover has at least one female model and the vogue logo (Which is just the word 'vogue' in a set typeface). The logo doesn't always have to be fully visible but it is always in the same position at the top of the page just like the model (or models) is always centered. There are then a few paragraphs around the outside of the model which explain some of the features of the months issue. The covers are all quite generic and none of them really stand out in terms of layout or design although the photograph of each model is eye catching and must be the main selling point for the cover. Vogue is specifically a fashion magazine before it is anything else so they don't really need state of the art design as people will buy the magazine for what it is. 

This research wasn't much help for the Don't Panic brief at all because the cover design is not at all the kind of thing that I found in the other posters on the website and I don't think it would fit the audience or tone of voice at all. Although it wasn't helpful in relation to the content of my posters, It was definitely interesting to see the set conventions of each cover and how photography can be really important in a piece of design. 

Don't Panic - Existing Posters

To start the research for the Don't Panic poster brief I looked at some of the past winning posters to see the kind of thing that other people have created which impressed enough to win.
Here are some of the examples that I liked the best.

Original by Jake Evans

This is actually one of the posters that i liked the least. The colours are really bright and quite hard to look at together which makes the image less appealing to me. I suppose the colours are supposed to be a representation of CMYK as a reference to printing process but that idea itself is not very 'original'. 

The illustration seems quite random which I guess relates to the title in a way, but it doesn't have any apparent relation to anything and looks just like a random sketch. 

Fresher Girl 2009 by Nathan Fox

I do really like this illustration and the mixture of techniques in the image. I actually have this poster on the wall of my bedroom. The colours are bright and contrasting but I think they compliment each other in the overall image. The content of the image is interesting and detailed and it creates an overall effect of one of those pictures where you can spot something else every time you look at it.

Home by Matt Macgregor Glen

I really like the idea behind this image and I think it has been implemented really well. The idea is to make the type into the style of an birds eye overhead floor plan of a building. This is the kind of plan that architects or interior designers might use to get an idea of exactly where everything is in the building including windows and doors etc. I think it has been done really well and creates an interesting cubic style font

Nature by Sam Ashton

This design is again really cubist styled which works well s a representation of rocky looking mountains. The simplicity of the outlines in contrasted by a relatively complex shading style which makes a really nice image overall. The choice of background colour makes the snowy peaks stand out against the rocks and the simple use of progressively less and less colour intensity in the higher rocks gives a sense of depth and scale to the whole image. 

Euthanasia by Traffic

I like the look of this piece of design but I don't really understand the context of it. The simple bold shapes work well and I like the fact that the male human figure is prominent. The figure is immediately recognisable as a male human figure even though it is a simple white silhouette and actually doesn't look much like the contours of a person at all. I can only guess at the context of the poster in saying that the pink orbs that seem to be penetrating the figures head are in some way a representation of the definition of euthanasia. This isn't immediately obvious and I would never be able to guess the title of the poster if I didn't already know it but in terms of aesthetics I do really like this poster.

There are 208 poster examples on the don't panic website and a new one is added every month.  

You can see that each poster is really different in different ways. The posters range between illustration and type and vary a lot on style and colour so really the only useful thing that i can gain from this research is that the final look of the poster seems to be the most important thing. There isn't really a lot of 'message' to try and communicate and realistically the posters function is to look good so that students will put the poster on their bedroom walls and inadvertently advertise Don't Panic.