U3025628
Sam Clarke
Tutor: Mitchell Whitelaw
Tutorial Time: Wednesday: 10:30-12:30
Project B : Geo Narrative
Project B: Rationale
For the second project in networked media production i chose to produce option 2: Create a Geo-narrative
Much like the first Project i felt that the Geo Narrative was the best way in which i could use my skills as a graphic design student. I feel that it gave me the most creative freedom, which in turns make me work much better.
For this project i decided to stick to a topic that was close to my heart; Graphic design “no suprise there”. I wanted to produce a peice that reflected Graphic design in a way in which people wouldent normally think of.
My first concept was to create a fictional time line, that told the history of Graphic design but with me as the centre of the universe; every aspect in some way would relate to me and my development in the feild. However i felt that this was too personal and could not be enjoyed by a wider variety of social groups.
The second concept i came up with was to agian produce a time line, but as accurately as possible, taking the 12 most important moments in graphic design history and placing markers onto the countries from which the events occured. Agian i felt i could make this work but it would only be exiting to people that had prior knoledge of Graphic Design or history.
The Third concept i came up with, was using the same timeline from concept 2 to pick out influential and important artists throughout the history of graphic design and add a placemark to the country they were born or lived in at the time of their invention/concept/idea. This like the previous concepts was a little stale and boring.
Lastly my final concept was to use the same Timeline, but create a sort of map of the stars. Sort of the kind you find in hollywood that tell you the location of Famous peoples houses. With this idea i used part of the the timeline from concept one, part of the timeline from concept two, i added important artists to the mix and then added place marks to show exacly where each of these individual graphic designers lived. So it ended up becomming a Graphic Design Star Spotting Map.
The technical process that i undertook to make this project was:
First i researched the google map application, i tested how i could add placemarks to certain areas and connect them. I tried different ways to connect one point to another. The first was to use the line tool, i connected all the dates together to see what shape it would make, however i decided this was pointless and removed it. Next i experimented with putting text in each placemarks box, this was the most important aspect of the assingment as the information is what brings the project together.
Next i researched and played with putting images above the text, so that the geo-narrative had some flare. At first it seemed as though only medium sized images would fit “530px-440px” withoute stretching the content box. Until i was shown that i could indeed stretch the images to any size i wanted it was just fiddly and time consuming. I then chose my 6 photos from other artists to place in the narrative. I chose the first 6 dates on the timeline as i thought taking images of things that were invented thousands of years ago that are only in museums would be impossible.
I searched through flickr for images that were creative commons so that i was able to remix them to fit in with the style of my geo narrative. The last 6 however were a mix my own own illustrations and photos from flickr, i then remixed and edited these in photoshop so just like the first 6 they all worked well together and gave the project a sense of unity. The images that i created were all hosted on imageshack.us, i used this service because i am currently using it for 2 other assingments and i was familiar with the way it worked with images and how they were hosted.
Next i added all the historical information to every placemark, this was the flesh of the project, it was what held it all together and connected one placemark to another. I then resized the type and changed the font to something that could be easily read, in hopes that people would actually read it and not just look at the pretty pictures. Next i added the 6 creative commons images and my 6 remixed photos and illustrations, i did this through editing the HTML code of each place mark, so that the images were placed exacly where i wanted them.
Once all the content had been postioned in the placemarks, i realed that by reading the title of each placemark you couldent tell what year each important event happened. To fix this i pulled the date out of the main historical imformation and added it infront of the title. So now by just glancing the user can see exacly when that event happened and can decide on weather or not thats what the want to veiw.
To place the project in a cultural context i researched, other ways people had expressed themselves on the google maps application. A personal favourite was the tokyo street walk, this allowed a user to walk along the a busy street in Tokyo and take in the sites withoute having to rub shoulders with anybody else. It showed places that unless you were a local you wouldent have normally seen. I wanted my project to give that feeling of something new and undiscovered to every person that veiwed it, i wanted them to take just a little something from it.
In relation to the use of google maps with graphic design as the subject matter there isnt really anything noteable or exiting, most maps consist of Business name,location, phone number and mabey a street veiw of the business. So it was very difficult to base my assingment on anything that had been done prior to Project 2. So like mentioned before it was based more on trying to teach the History of graphic design in a fun way and in a different medium.
All in all i feel that my map does what it is set out to do very well. It gives an indepth look at the history of graphic design with a modern twist.
Links to modern day websites and blogs break the monotony of reading walls of text, it aslo allows the veiwer to compare and reflect on how far graphic design has come.
This project like the last has given me a wider perspective of what the internet is, especially web 2.0. I have learnt how to use new applications and how content can be provided to an audience.
So heres the link to my google map:
- Posted:2 years ago
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