Clarissa's Communications Documentation Blog

I am trying to express the amount of effort work a girl in this day and age need to put in if she had to conform to all of the societal norms. I intended to convey how hard it is to be ‘perfect’ in a society that expects a certain aesthetic and all the products needed to achieve this. On top of that how only the beautiful and perfect side of the girl is shared on social media. In the first image will be a beautiful girl smiling to herself in the mirror and taking pictures of herself. Her hair will look curled and her makeup will be done, she will be a good representation of a ‘perfect’ girl. The second image and the bottom half of the page will have many products on the floor which are used to achieve this look. Makeup, weight loss pills, mass gainer, hair extensions, weights, pills, push-up bra, and hair products will be on the floor. The relationship between these two images is to understand what girls go through and what they have to do to look the way that they do on social media. 

Image 1: Girl looking in the mirror + taking pictures of herself

Image 2: Products scattered across the floor/ a collage of all the products that are placed in a way that seems to consume her. Or in a way that conveys the idea that she is literally built out of those products. Eg. the mass gainer protein powder around her hips and bottom, and weight loss pills as her stomach.

 

Clarissa, Want You, Kanine
Concept and Design

I began my artistic process by reflecting upon how the music made me feel and what emotions it evoked within me. I felt that the soundtrack itself was quite: wild, chaotic, dark, and consuming  I then thought about how I would be able to express this in a way that the audience would be able to identify. In order to make a piece easily reflect the sounds and or emotions evoked by the music, I found that the design didn’t only need to resonate with me but also with my views. I tried my best to convey the generic aesthetic of the music genre through an accurate visual representation of what the genre looked like to the mass. How does one convey the dark and electric nature of the music through shape? I then began to think about the font shapes and how I would design or alter them for this piece. I made the edges sharp, elongated, and distorted certain letters so that they would fit into the aesthetic. I decided to start my piece in the center rather than scatter it across the page as I believed this composition would best reflect the emotion of being consumed as the design starts from a certain point and then spreads out in a disorderly manner covering more and more space of the page. I use Gestalt theory of proximity to make sure that in the primary layer, none of the letters actually overlap, I did this because I felt that the song had a sense of order in the chaos. The music was not chaotic but it evoked feelings of wildness and chaos, thus I used this feature to convey that. I purposely used dissimilarity in this piece meaning that none of the letters or patterns particularly mirrored each other to express a certain alteration and mutation that evolves as the focal point moves towards the exterior of the design.

INITIAL SUBMISSION                                                  FINAL SUBMISSION

           

As a person that really values the aesthetic in the design of a piece, my initial submission was regarded as quite “pretty”. While I did achieve a level of accomplishment that the design was pleasing to the eye, I lacked meaning to the piece. Even if the meaning and intention behind that design were always there, I was unable to effectively showcase that. After the professor’s feedback that the piece lacked in darkness or didn’t convey the emotion of “toughness and aggression”, I began to focus on enhancing these and implementing this feedback into my work. I decided to add a new layer behind the main layer and completely distort the object. This created a sense of confusion because the piece was no longer a perfectly balanced and plain image. It became an image with depth and layering which allowed me to bring my design to another level. I then also added an outline around all the individual lettering, which brought more dimension and chaos to the piece. I added more lettering as well as used more space in the piece to evoke the feeling of consumption to the piece.

If I had the opportunity to improve my project one more, I would probably experiment a little more with the effect available on the software in case I thought that one effect better suited another. I would have liked to begin with a few sketches of different designs as this would have given me a way to experiment with smile designs before setting my eye on one.

FINAL DESIGN:

We decided to use very basic imagery to best depict the process of traveling using trains/subways. We decided and simplified this plaque into four stages in order to cross out details that could complicate the story’s progression. We also decided to depict our plaque as a circle to symbolize continuity. The start and the finish of our images repeat the cycle which makes it comprehendible since the aliens didn’t have the same distinctions in directions as the ones the humans had. We begin the process from the top of the cycle. The image shows a minimalistic depiction of a subway, a human holding a coin. Then moving clockwise, the human is seen walking onto the train with that coin. In that image is also another symbol that resembles an upside-down drop of water. This symbol in this frame is however empty and is only outlined. The third image shows the human aboard the train. The money is at the front of the subway and is no longer connected to the man. Not only this but on the sides of the train are the two symbols. One is outlined like in the previous frame whilst the other is filled in. This is a representation of the train or object moving from one place to the next place while carrying the human. The final frame shows the man getting off the moving train, leaving behind the coin, and arriving at a new destination. This is depicted with the filled-in location sign displayed on the right side of the frame. This cycle then continues again as it does in real life with a human once again buying a ticket to go from A to B. We thought that the most important aspect of our image is not to explain to them what a train looks like, but to explain the movement from one place to another. Regardless of the image, the aliens wouldn’t recognize that this is a train. We focused on the movement of the human’s movement with the change in the destination through the filled and empty location signs. Regardless of the aliens didn’t understand that the symbol we chose was a human sign of location, they could see the difference or change between the filled and empty symbol and understand that the images they see are not referring to a stationary concept. The Aliens use written language and are portrayed as a single logogram. This means that is a written or pictorial symbol intended to represent a whole word. Our entire plaque only consists of 5 main logograms. A train, walking human, still human, coin, destination A and finally destination B. Using this method would make it easier for them to recognize since it is interpreted similarly to their own language, as single images rather than a composition of signs like an alphabet.

 

Shown below are the 10 color palettes with each 4 colors for the Color Scheme Project.

Color Screens_Clarissa

After the feedback that I received in class from both my professor and my peers, I’ve compiled the most important additions and notes to add for my final product.

• Make the piece darker
• Use more layers to add depth
• Add more text to create a more chaotic atmosphere

Clarissa_SoundVisualization_FINAL

How do aliens in the story use language and communication styles different from the human language (oral, pictographic, phonetic, etc.)?

Humans communicate using the alphabet and words are pronounced through the sounds that the letter makes when placed in a certain order. The Aliens use a written language and are portrayed as a single logogram. This means that is 
written or pictorial symbol intended to represent a whole word. This is seen on our human world like in Chinese characters or egyptian writing. There is no alphabet but each individual image represents a certain meaning or message. Phonically, humans have an alphabet. Each letter is attached to a sound, but the aliens have a specific sound as a tone or frequency that a human cannot replicate. Which is why in the novel, the protagonist cannot replicate the sounds and rather uses speakers and microphones to communicate with them.

How does the physical structure of our body inform the way we communicate? How about the aliens?

There is a lot of body language that comes into play when communicating. That is why communicating over the phone and in person has a different effect since in-person, body language can express emotions that sound can not. For humans, body language and verbal language enhance our communication. For the Aliens, they do not have a specific or reoccurring position of the face or noticeable body parts to the human eye. This makes it more difficult to communicate with them since emotion or intent is less clear. They also do not have a sense of direction or specific physicality making it more difficult to communicate with them since their societal norms and understanding of life is completely different to ours. Logic is different to them making it that much harder to understand each other.

Song: Want You – Kanine

Full HD Image: Clarissa_SoundVisualizationx