Vital Tips For Effective Logo Design

  I looked a online article when I using Facebook, I found it was really inspiring, it talks about what should be a professional logo, for example what things need and what things should not appear, etc. 
  According to the article, it said a good logo is distinctive, appropriate, practical, graphic and simple in form, and it conveys the owner’s intended message. A concept or “meaning” is usually behind an effective logo, and it communicates the intended message. A logo should be able to be printed at any size and, in most cases, be effective without colour. A great logo essentially boils down to two things: great concept and great execution. 
  The process is almost same as how I am doing in uni, basically identify the brief first and then do a range of research to start my design. I found 5 factors that make an effective logo design which are "Simple", "Memorable", "Timeless", "Versatile" and "Appropriate". Simplicity makes a logo design easily recognisable, versatile and memorable. While, An effective logo design should be memorable, which is achieved by keeping it simple yet appropriate. An effective logo works across a variety of media and applications. For this reason, logos should be designed in vector format, to ensure that they scale to any size. The last, the logo should be appropriate for its intended audience. For example, a child-like font and colour scheme would be appropriate for a logo for a children's toy store, not so much for a law firm.
  Once I looked at this article, it gave me a lot of senses about designing an effective and professional logo. I believe it will inspire me a lot in my practice and creative industry.

Trip to Hong Kong, inspiration

  During my Christmas break, I went back to my hometown Hong Kong for holiday, actually I didn't go back for more than a year so I miss it a lot no matter my friends, food, etc. But I don't know why I saw a lot of interesting and inspiring things for example from the streets, buildings, etc. It was a really impressive trio for me even though I just went to my hometown, the place is not fresh to me. The most unforgettable memory was the Pixar gallery I went in Hong Kong, it showed a lot of sketching which was fantastic and wonderful works. I saw how the professionals did the illustration which I can learn from it. I found that the illustration style is quite different with Japanese anime illustration.

The Pixar exhibition

Another gallery about Traditional Chinese typhography

I found something that I think is interesting to me

  

Screen printing on fabric

  Normally, I did screen printing just printing on paper not fabric, therefore, I wanted to try printing on fabric as I thought it would be really interesting because if we print on a t-shirt, we can sale it to someone or we can wear it by ourself, it would be really unique. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I didn't have any experience printing on fabric so I needed the assistant to teach me. But I found that the process were really similar to printing on paper, basically, only the screen and colour are different, the rest are quite similar. I really enjoyed the process, it was really fun and I really like the final outcome but when printing on the fabric, the most important thing is to find a heavy thing to hold the screen so that the screen won't be moved and we can print on a correct place. I think I may do more thing like this so that it can be part of my products in my career.

Something new for me in 503

  During the module, I worked a new thing that I haven't try before. In the studio brief 2 of he module 503, we were asked to work as a team e.g with others from different courses. To be honest, I was really scared when I received the brief because I didn't know much people from the other courses so I felt struggling to find a partner. But once I found my partner to work with, it was really interesting, it seems like working as a professional, I know that in our design career, we have to work with many people from other pathway or even someone who didn't study art before. I learnt many new things while doing this brief which I have never learnt through graphic design such as the marketing strategies, it is really useful to me in my practice, it influence me that when I designing something, I should also think about the marketing strategies but not only design. Working as a team really need communication, if we don't communicate well, we won't know what the others want. Hence, I think the most important thing is communication. It was a really unforgettable experience.

'Making a show of yourself' Presenting PPP File

  In this lecture, we learnt how to do a "Good" presentation. To be honest, presentation is the hardest thing for me due to the fact that English isn't my first language, therefore, I always feel worry and nervous during my presentation. While, in this lecture, I learnt that in a professional presentation, it would be quite simple, which means mainly include images because if there are too many texts in the slides, it may affect to the quality of presentation, however, as a foreigner, I feel really hard not that include that much texts in the slides because I need to look at it while I am talking but I know it is the thing that I have to tackle. Someone suggested that I could holding some note card.
  Moreover, we have to smile while presenting not to be too serious because if being too serious, the presentation would be really boring so we have to make it interesting. The most important thing is to take our time during the presentation, not to be too rush, adding a few pauses, it will relax us, help them to catch up and consider potential questions later.
  I really hope I can improve my presentation skill even though I said the same in last year, it is a really long term challenge which I can't be improve in a short period but after the lecture, it gave me some advice how to make a good presentation.

Linkedin Workshop

  In this academic year, we learnt to set up our own professional page to connect with  more designers in the design industry or to display our works so that more people can see it. The platform is call "Linkedin", basically, it seems like Facebook which we can connect to anyone we want or share some design news. The platform allowed us to make more "Friends" in the design industry which they can give us a lot of useful feedback about our works so that we can develop it better. I believe it is the same to every designers around the world, they always try to contact to others to discuss with their works, I think it is a really good way to do so.

 

Animation skills

  In this year, I did a lot of tasks about animation in Photoshop which made me started to be interest on it. It is quite a useful technique I think because I always made a lot of design which supposed to do a digital mock up such as digital poster, adverting video, etc. However, I didn't know what I could do before having the animation workshop. While, I learnt a lot of thing from the workshop which makes me be able to produce some digital (dynamic)mock-up. It was a really impressive lecture/workshop for me because I used the skills that I have learnt from the workshop into the module 503, 504 and 505 which is really useful. I hope I will have more chance to develop my skills through Youtube, workshop or even from my friends.

Just a simple video that I produced from the workshop

I used the same technique to make a video for module 504