Some photo's of emotions

So here a handful of photo's featuring emotions, which isn't the most exhilarating of tasks but hey what can you do, aside from take some pictures.

Here's a photo of contemplation

Cheekiness afoot in this picture.



A bit of surprise in this photo

Frustration is apparent aplenty in this aperture.

Principles of Animation: Revision

There are a number of principles when it comes to animation and the way that things move in order for them to appear natural, here is a just a quick revision of these principles in my own words for future reference as there will be tests later on that will go into these principles in detail.

1. Squash and Stretch: This principle states that as an object moves in certain ways it will squash and stretch depending on the forces being applied to it while it's moving. It's important to note that the shape retains it's mass and as it stretches in one direction it thins on the opposite axis. The most simple example of this is a ball as it hits a flat surface and bounces.

2. Anticipation: This means prepaing the audience for the action that is about to occur, for example a dancer jumping off of a platform would bend their knees and a golfer would raise a golf club up above their head before swinging. Removing the anticipation creates gag moments where an action occurs without the audience expecting what comes next.

3. Staging: Staging is the idea that the idea and meaning of what is happening on screen is unmistangly clear what is happening and what is going to occur. This is akin to staging on theatre and film.

4. Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose: These are animating techniques where Straight ahead action involves drawing subsequent drawings from an original frame, one after the other that creates a more fluid movement and makes for really good action sequences however it is hard to mantain proportions of an object over a number of drawings. Pose to pose involves drawing the key poses of an action and is a more planned out approach to animation that is more suitable for scenes with high drama.

5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action: These are elements that make an animation more realistic as it gives the impression that they adhere to the laws of physics. For instance as a character moves it may take a few frames for limbs and hair to catch up to the motion of the main body.

6. Slow In and Slow Out: This is the idea that objects accelerate and decelerate with any movement that they do, akin to a car starting and stopping. this applies to all motion as nothing can go from no mevement to full speed.

7. Arcs: Most human and animal movement occurs across arced trajectories, this should be applied to everything that moves from a joint such as arms and legs.

8. Secondary Action: Secondary actions are used to give actions more life. An example of a secondary action is a character who swings their arms as they walk or they whistle as they move, these actions need to compliment the primary action.

9. Timing: Timing in animation is the amount of frames given for an action that determines the speed of the film. Correct timing gives the impression of realism and can help flesh out the emotion of the character.

10. Exaggeration: Exaggeration is the act of making an animation look more alive by stretching movements or dimensions of a character as drawing the characters as like-like as possible creates a dull movement and can make an animation appear lifeless.

11. Solid Drawing: Solid drawing means drawing objects in a way that conveys three dimensions, giving the objects and characters weight and volume.

12. Appeal: Appeal in a character is akin to the charsima of an actor in that the characters have to appeal to an audience whether they make themselves out to be protagonists or the villian of the piece, the character has to be able to connect to the audience in order for the animation to be effective.

Luke's Photography Class: Depth of Field

Greetings, slautations and all that good stuff.

Kicking off this unit of photography we were assigned the terribly tumultuous task of finding photos that demonstrated effective use of depth of field in an extremely shallow manner.

Here are the collection of images I've found as well the links to the site they originated that show this off wonderfully.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/teenytinyturkey/2870905547/ - A glass full of vegetables.

http://digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/depth-of-field.jpg - A beanstalk with a creepy back ground, out of focus.

http://www.whistlerisawesome.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/5723939713_42e5fd0ba2_z1.jpg - Birds the word for this photo that shows of depth of field.

http://biglensfastshutter.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/20110124_d320248.jpg?w=590&h=263 – This picture is a nice sports shot that demonstrates depth of field with a wide angle.

http://oneslidephotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Beginners-Guide-to-Photography-Controlling-DOF.jpg - Picked this one because it shows off depth of field quite nicely…  

Yep, no other reason…

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Luke's Nature of Design Class: Ipad Questions

When it comes to Industry trends we are tasked with keeping up to date with state of current technologies and how they are impacting the workplace and it's a big thing to consider in this workplace as with the constant change of technology falling behind is a dangerous thing to do in this industry. So we were tasked with the following questions regarding the Ipad and tablet based technology in general.

In your opinion how important is it for mobile applications and devices to both look good and function properly? Comment on both the attractiveness of the software and the hardware.

In such a new take on the personal computing medium it is important that both form and function take equal measure of thought in its design. New technologies, especially when it comes to computing people tend to be very wary of purchasing it without outside opinions on how they hold up for what their advertising. First impressions count a lot in this industry and how well an app or piece of tech is received initially is a strong indication of how well it is going to sell. Selling an app on its potential is almost a mark of failure in its design as proven by some of the worst tech ever released.

The easier it is for people to wrap their heads around the tech, the quicker they’ll start spreading good praise through word of mouth and positive reviews will bolster initial sales.

Who designed the iPad? Was it an individual or team? In your opinion, do people use this device because it looks good or because it functions well? Or does it do both?

When it comes to looks and function I think it’s safe to say that it’s a bit of both, if you’re viewing the iPad as a means to view through several sheets of data quickly, easily and with as little fuss as possible, there is nothing better than a tablet to get to these documents in a timely manner. Tablets are designed to look neat and tidy no matter what environment you’re using them in so its looks contribute to its popularity.

How has the iPad changed the way some businesses function? Can you find examples of where businesses have implemented the iPad into their day-to-day activities?

The ipad has made carrying large amounts of text easier since stacks of paper can now be carried and accessed at any time through the slim device. The easiest place to see where this has a huge effect is the legal system where attorneys have taken to carrying around iPads in lieu of briefcases filled with documents due to the easy storage and accessibility of any item that it has on file.

Overall, what other major flaws of this type of technology? Can you think of anyways in the future that this hardware will be improved to the point where it will compete with desktop and laptop computers?

The major flaws with this technology at the moment lie where precision is required, as the iPad doesn’t offer the same precision as external devices such as stylus/ mouse or even in the case of doing considerably more typing then simple e-mail text, a keyboard. The alternatives that the iPad offer are harder to use then the devices they are emulating.

How do you think the iPad could help your day-to-day workflow? Are the answers straightforward? Is it more a case of combining this technology with others that already exist?

In its current state I find it hard to see how it would help my current workflow other than an overly pretty external device to transport files. As further additions are added further down the line there could definitely be a use especially if more software becomes integrated into the hardware and it starts to connect to more devices, really embracing the idea of an entire home as a pc, then I could definitely see a use for this.

Consider the following–has the iPad shaped the way we do business? Or has business and technology shaped the way Apple developed the iPad?

It’s a little bit of both as there has definitely been input both ways, as new technology is developed with a mindset of fulfilling a need that the market has for the tech and it is up to the individual companies to identify this need. In this case Apple found a new way to take their mobile technology to the next level and they went for it with good results.

Is the iPad and tablets in general a passing fad? Or do you think this type of technology is here to stay long-term?

The sustainability of this technology depends on a number of factors:

First of all at this point in its life cycle tablets in general are at a stage where the ease of which developers of both external software and applications that directly interacts with the tablet is a big factor in the growth of people using tablets in their daily lives. If developers of external devices and software can jump on board and devices like the ipad become a window to controlling several aspects of our home the ipad really will be a revolutionary tool that will change the way people manage their house hold.

This leads on to the second point that I would like to bring up with ipad specifically as Apple's method of doing business with outside developers is to put them through a rigorous process of checks over the development of apps for the device all of which costs more money for the developer. Without the open source of development constantly spurring innovation the uses with which the technology could be stunted until another company comes along with a cheaper more open alternative that's still easy to use.

Many people say that the iPad is an unnecessary piece of hardware caught in limbo between a laptop and mobile phone. Do you think this consensus is accurate? Do you think that your answer could be different in five years’ time?

At the moment that statement is true to a point. A lot of the innovation that the ipad could really capitalise on hasn’t actually happened at a state where it is feasible to market to a large audience. But as these technologies come out and tablet devices become more integral in interacting with a wide variety of hardware, all of a sudden what is viewed as an unnecessary piece of hardware becomes the window to connect to everything and anything.

Conduct a discussion with the whole class and determine based on the general consensus the pros and cons of tablet-based technology.

This last question is a tiny bit tricky for someone in my position where I missed the class where this was discussed in detail, so it’s hard to list anything as general consensus when its one opinion, that said I think my opinions are pretty well fleshed out in the previous questions. In its infancy whether it catches on or not has to do with the consumers’ willingness to buy the product, to make their lives easier in a way that makes them wonder how they ever lived without one.

A fairly large wall of text to be sure for this post and the bad news it isn't over, as there are more text heavy posts to come, its a good thing I like wrkiting so much or this would actually seem daunting.

Going Green Website: Initial Design and Feedback

So it is time to post some feed back over a little flash program we’re cooking up for the interactive portion of our animation class and after presenting the initial idea to the class we were required to take the feedback and mull over it while we implemented changes to the design that address the points raised by the class. The Original pitch is below:

Now there is never going to be a perfect example of an initial concept for a design and this is no exception as my colleagues have dutifully pointed out the flaws in this current design.

1.       The way the wheel is designed, the arrows can only go in one direction, and it might be a good idea to have them g both ways.

2.       Perhaps a way to quickly navigate to each room as oppose to going in sequence, possibly giving them their own space in the wheel menu as well as colour coding the rooms appropriately to give them distinguishable features.

3.       Make something that can serve as a home page with a bit of a tutorial to guide people to the interactive elements in the work.

4.       Give the piece of work some branding, this gives the work something the people viewing can easily associate with that particular experience.

In response to these criticisms I came up with this piece of work, a more refined concept though not the whole picture and sadly, lacking colour.

How the previous criticisms were addressed (or not addressed in some cases) is as follows:

1.       Giving the arrow a backwards button seemed contrary to the idea of someone going through the house in a linear fashion. The design for the arrow would no longer be reminiscent of the arrows used in every recycling logo that the target audience would be able to identify and associate to going green.

2.       This is one I do believe in as a person should never feel like they have to stick to the rails so in the wheel I added a slider that would have icons or text for the three different settings for quick navigation if they really wanted to jump to a specific scene, this also means that they wouldn’t have to go back in the sequence creating unnecessary load times for the user.

3.       This is something I wanted to address with its own screen as creating any one of these images as a home page would detract from the other two or clutter up the screen of the chosen setting which is something I would like to avoid.

4.       When it comes to branding the piece that I would associate with the brand would be the wheel although a phrase could be added to that or a heading.

There's more work to come down the pipeline but for now it serves nicely as an initial concept page.

Writing Effectively: A critique of the copy writing in the army recruitment page

Aside from competing in the worlds longest heading competition* this first lesson of our writing unit has us critiquing the text used in the army recruitment article located here.

We were given some standard questions to go over and instructed to post them here so here they are in no particular order:

1. Does the copy get to the point quickly?

It gets to the point that it's going to be hard, it starts off with a negative spin and then slowly works it into a positive. In a selling point of view it asks you to think hard in the first sentence which isn't an effective way to sell their careers and get people interested to join the army.

2. Is the copy shy about the offer or incentive?

Simply put, yes, it is shy about what it is offering. It only draws attention at one point to the incentives where with the use of bold text at the end of the first paragraph and even then the incentives aren't clear. If they had extended "Unlike any other job" to encompass more of that sentence it would be a bit more eye catching as a way to feed someone down the page, but that would imply the first sentence was effective in it's selling pitch. (Hint: It wasn't)

3. Is it easy to respond to?

No, most of the links buried in this page lead to preparation and other ancillary web pages that don't lead to any page where you can physically join up to the army. There is a link to a list of job listings on the army site but it's the start of a maze of links that isn't very clear.

4. Does the copy overcome every objection to replying, leaving the reader with no choice but to act?

This copy does the exact opposite of this, and instead does a fine job of instilling some doubt as to whether or not you would be a good fit for the army.

5. Does the copy use simple words?

This is actually something that it does do well, the language used is simple and easy to understand.

6. Does the copy use active language (does it address the site visitor as ‘you’)?

yes it does use active language in the way that it addresses the visitor.

7. Is the copy broken down into simple sections and bullet points?

No it is simply a written testimonial of a soldier and it bounces around the key points. It brings up the challenging aspect of the career every paragraph while bringing up the other points when it could have consolidated it a tiny bit.

Next post will be a write up of my own interpretation of the page aimed at selling the army lifestyle and careers in a way that would get people to actively enlist.

(*This entry was disqualified immediately on account of being too small)

Panorama - rama*

So for the first photoshop lesson after the break we found ourselves tasked with the preposterously perilous process of  manually creating a panorama shot from a selection of images and mending them together to create a cohesive photo of a wide angle shot. A daunting task with only the most basic of automation from photoshop at our disposal, meaning we had to stick to basic transformation and rotational tools with the odd bit of masking layers to achieve the end result.

The following is the images used without any work done just stacked next to one another:

And the following is the end result after all the work has been done:

Pretty seamless with only minor distortion so overall I am pretty happy with how the end result turned out considering I have never done anything like this before.

(*Indicative of multiple items which is not the case, but who knows unless someone points it out right?

...

Son of a...)

Improvements to the Schweppes Rocker Bottles

It's been a week since the class critique of all our ideas and since then I have written down some improvements to both the idea and the pitch itself to help give it a more eye catching and lasting appeal that will hopefully hold up as a finished product. We were tasked to take what we learnt from the critique, write up a list of improvements and then do a quick sketch to present to our control group.

These are the list of improvements starting with the idea itself.

Improvements to the idea:

1. Needs to be simplified, in its current implementation it is two separate parts as well as the syrup which is sold separately which raised concerns over its complexity and price. Current train of thought is to make it just one item and then the syrup is added, while still retaining the twist and shake to get the custom flavours out into the bottle. This also addresses another concern raised in the idea of the rocker bottom piercing the bottom of the rocker top as the sharp end could be used as a weapon, but if it's all one item people can't get to the sharp piercing part of the bottle without tearing it apart which is just as dangerous as a person cutting into a regular P.E.T.E bottle.

2. A better way of incorporating the cooling element to the bottle, such as a form of gel that would already come with the bottle so people would only have to get the syrup they want and insert it into the bottle. This would also increase the viability of over the counter sales as it's extra cooling can be a selling point from any location.

Some ideas to improve the pitch, due to my limited analogue skills this is going to be a big one:

1. The colours need to be more vibrant and eye catching, which is even visible in the photo as the colours don't really show that well and you need to look really closely to the image to see anything substantial. Current thought train is to have light colour towards the centre of the design that grow in intensity as they reach out to the edge of the page.

2. Needs to include more information on the product including greater coverage of the cooling facts as well as the advantages that brings.

3. Overall presentation needs to be clearer, and more coherent. The four quadrants put the information all over the page with a very loose structure of focus.

4. The main bottle could be implemented into the image with a bit more coherency, as it stands the bottle is just dumped on the page and conflicts with the four quadrant symbol. It could still catch the eye if it was a major part of design but it was worked into the other elements.

5. Title could be cleaner with typography that would be associated with the product and the company making it, (In this case Schweppes). If current idea of making one bottle goes through the control team could simplify the name down to something akin to just "Rockers".

Getting these improvements into a quick sketch is the challenge I am presented with now, more developements as they occur.

The Analogue Pitch: Schweppes Rocker Bottles

Here is the photo of the analogue pitch submitted for an assessment regarding critical thinking and idea development, more to come later on in the day regharding issues and improvements as well as control group updates.

The analogue pitch

Other idea's that came before the bottle: Fried Noodles

WEell today is the day that our first assessment for Luke's Design and critical thinking unit of this subject and before this blog is graced by the analogue pitch of the "Rocker Bottle" design I came up with, I thought I would take the time to go over a couple of the other ideas that I came up with when it came to thinking of a product. As you already know from previous back logs of posts talking about Schweppes bottles, it was required that that sort of critical thinking was applied to a range of products.

the first product on the chopping block was a simple one:

Mi-goreng noodles

Yes, the obscure noodle snack that seems to either spread by culture or word of mouth, I hadn't even heard of the things until I came to Wagga some years ago and I was shocked that I had gone so long ignorent of this simple yet delicteble food that serves the poor admirably. However looking at the packet I can understand why this food had gone on so long without my notice and maybe you'll see why when you gaze at the following...

To me this doesn't exactly market the taste of Mi-goreng well and conveys more of the food suggested you add to the noodles to enhance the flavour, the most glaring example being that of the egg that takes centre stage on the packet and looking closely at the other vegetables and odd bits added to the dish it's very hard to see any noodles at all, in fact I daresay that without the "Fried noodle" label on it I would easily mistake this for some sort of Asian meal in a packet (Which has all the charm of a sandwich from a petrol station vending machine). It has to be said though that the colour scheme of their logo works well with a good mix of warm colours and the packaging wasn't the orginal reason I choose to take a look at Mi-groreng noodles. It was these:

The sash packets, scourge of kitchen benches everywhere as they spill over in globules lumps and sticking to fingers as they make the second last voyage of there existence to the bowl. There were a number of ways to go about this but the first idea that came into my head was to completely redesign the package from the plastic sash's to the wrapping itself to a cardboard box that came complete with bottles for the individual sauces that would squirt out more controlled offerings of the sauces.

The other issue to address was the lack of noodles being visibly shown on the packet while keeping all of the suggested things visible on the package but such a task did seem slightly odious as to get an idea of how to lay it out i would have actually had to cook up a fair chunk of Mi-Goreng and then pose it for reference. It may not seem like much of a reason to drop the idea but a transition from plastic to cardboard seemed to carry just as many negatives as positives and the idea of evolving a product to make it better seemed hollow in this case.

Dave's photoshop Class: Selection tools

Today in Dave's Photoshop class, the lesson was all about selection which on the surface doesn't sound like much, but in actuality selection is one of the most important things you have to master in programs like photoshop, especially if you want to create anything of actual worth when it comes to manipulating or creating images.

The exercises Dav presented us started with the basic shape of a circle and then progressed to the letter "S", a printer, a car on a highway and a girl sitting down. (That's also in order of difficulty with the circle being the easiest and the girl being the hardest, hair can be a nightmare when it comes to selection). Not only did we have to cut out these objects and paste them on a black background which highlights the irregular shape defects caused by the selection tools but we also had to use the pen tool. A vector based tool that creates curves between points based on anchor points and takes a fair amount of fiddling to get right, even for seasoned pen tool users.

The following image is the black background with the objects unceremoniously pasted onto the surface to show our accuracy with the pen tool.

Selecting with the pen

The next task was to create an image where objects were pasted into the scene and made to look as though they were part of the original photo, for this a highway picture was given and the car was duplicated and enlarged slightly to account for the distance in space and then the edges were blurred to help get rid of the stick out effect that objects get when you place them in another scene. A plane was then finely cut from another photo and placed into the shot with the luminosity lowered to wash out the strong colours it came with originally. The edges were once again blurred so it doesn't appear as a copy/paste job.

I'm seeing double

That wraps it up for today's photoshop class, stay tuned as updates to the Schweppes advertisement progress are posted later in the week.

Drawing Dave's Photoshop class: Badgers and Bombs (Abstract layer work)

For today's photoshop escapes it was our task to take a bunch of images and then arrange them in such a manner as to be unrecognisable next to the original images. Our first job was to use the images supplied by Dave featuring the moon, Einstein, a nuclear detonation, and an x-ray of a hand. Since I'm not really a fan of abstract art this was mostly me winging it in terms of lay out and composition, trying to find a balance between something good to look at while keeping a central focus. For me this was the eye of Einstein which despite the numerous replications I kept the eye on top of itself and the multiple eyes actually did a good job of enlarging the eye.

We are all sons of bitches

After the first image we were sent to retrieve images of our own so naturally I went straight for pictures of honey badgers and city scape's with an aim of creating a Godzilla like image although the honey badgers get lost in the layers of cities and pictures of stone angels.

Badgers in the City

That was all I managed in the three hour time slot although I can see how people can use these abstract art pieces to convey things, I'm just not sure it's for me.

Dave's Photoshop class: Dolly* tool

For this Wednesdays class the main focus was on the cloning tool with a few exercises covering its application across a number of images. For the first few exercises it consists mostly of fixing up images removing the scratches or in the case of the lake photo removing a garish red dash from the centre of the portrait. The others were outright modifications changing door signs while completely removing elements of other images.

This is the photo of the computer case with before and after showing the removal of the scratches which wasn't as straight forward as it seemed with a number of scratches covering different shadowy areas that could easily escape attention unless your paying very close attention to the image.

Before:

After:

The next photo had a lot of work going into the finer details as the red gash ran right across a lot of high detail objects so it required going into the image at a high zoom and touching out all of the red while ensuring that hard lines of the various objects continued naturally without any jarring edges or weird colour variations.

Before:

After:

The next image was of a door where an unfortunate sign was accosted with the worst font in history and is recovering in intensive care after a mace was used to remove the offending text.

Before:

After:

I have it on good authority that the door will make a full recovery although whether this is the last we've seen of the offending text remains to be seen as investigators on the scene only found traces of the bad. More exciting updates as the story progresses.

(*It's like Dolly, get it?....You know... Dolly the sheep, with the cloning and... actually you know what? Forget it! Your no fun anyways. )

Luke's adverstising class: Addressing the issues of Schweppes and sumertime

Here we go, probably one of the hardest thing to do considering the sheer amount of design work that has gone into the brand but after a bit of searching around I've come to the conclusion that I could definitely get away with designing a few things to address the issues I bought up with the design in the previous post about the Schweppes summer time bottles going all the way down to the bottle itself.

On closer inspection of the cons of the bottle design it has occurred to me that the main highlight of the conflicting designs of fifties and late eighties is a flaw that goes all the way down to it's fundamental roots. Schweppes has always sold itself as a traditional drink that will always be the traditional drink and it's angle they tried to pursue with a cheetah in a previous advertising campaign to varying degrees of success.

The vibrancy of the packaging has always been a positive strength of the brand that makes it stand out so the departure from that vibrancy with it's scratchy aesthetic doesn't serve to promote the brand from it's competitors that mostly stick to a single or duo tone colour to promote their brand (eg: the coca cola company).

Doing research through Deviant art has yielded some interesting designs that would instantly be more effective and eye catching while sticking with what the company is known for, such as this entry from the deviant artist exadorv, that catches the vibrancy and hue of the colours and gives a compelling summer themed advertisement.

So what is the angle I'm going for in my own redesign of the Schweppes bottle that I have scrutinized so heavily you may ask?

Simple:

Schweppes - Setting the tradition

By embracing the positive influences of it's design throughout the different time periods, re-create the bottle, with a new design scheme that propels them throughout the ages as being the tradition, as though everything to this point has lead to this design.

the next post will be research and sketching of bottles so stay tuned for more exciting* developments as they occur.

(* Exciting as far as this site is concerned or if you live in a giant grey cube+)

(+Not that there's anything wrong with that).

OH&S Chronicles: Confidence is another form of carelessness

So here we are at the second of the great* OH&S chronicles and this tale of misfortune comes from Queenslands own OH&S awareness website. A handy little resource that gives several accounts of accidents that have occurred in the workplace often highlighting that the cause of these accidents weren't actually things that you would typically be a factor to contributing to an accident.

In this example, a workers over confidence in his abilities lead to the incident, highlighting this important lesson to approach oh&s from any conceivable angle when it comes to assessing risks in the environment. If the proper steps aren't taken, you can never know if the next tractor+ that turns over and ruins a life is yours.

(*Great has many interpretations from great success to great failure, something to bare in mind when someone uses the word "great")
(+ If one replaces tractor with any other object that could hurt or fatally injure you in your relevant field of work)

Luke's advertising class Research: Schweppes summer rewind bottle design

Bit of a lengthy title for this blog post which is detailing all about the effectiveness and non effective elements of a Schweppes bottle featuring the logo of their summer rewind promotion. Now just based off the previous advertising campaigns Schweppes has always tried to adopt a refined mature sense of imagery with their products. This has often resulted in retro designs ranging from the kind of graphics you would expect to see in the late fifties as the following image can attest towards.

This retro style and aesthetic has been carried out to different degrees ranging from the bottles themselves to the graphics printed on the labels.

Schweppes has also taken on the motif of bubbles and has it ingrained into the physical bottle of all of their plastic bottles while glass bottles feature the bubbles motif as part of their graphic, interestingly enough the graphic is reversed on plastic bottles, where the bubbles have been integrated into the bottle but the graphic on the labels feature glass bottles as prominent pieces of art.

An image of the bubbles motif Schweppes uses in the design of their plastic bottle

When it comes to colours Schweppes find themselves in a position where their free to use a wide range of deep colours though their range, and each colour has been matched appropriately to the flavour.

So while this is all well and good how does the current bottle I have in my hands compare with a mainstream market, weighing in it's pros and cons? Well for starters an a few images to give an idea of the product. (I don't have a camera available at the moment)

This is the bottle that I have in my hands -

And this is the logo that they've added along the top of the label of the bottle with a blue colouring scheme that is featured across the entire range of Schweppes products from lemonade to Pepsi, to solo, to mountain dew, etc.

The particular gimmick of this promotion is that when you collect enough points from drinking Schweppes products, you can send away your codes and points and get a shirt, which is a simple enough gimmick although it does lack a bit of the grand prize feel of a lot of other promotional offers however there isn't an element of chance to this promotion aside from their total stock.

Breaking down the design of this bottle and it's corresponding label yields a mixed bag of pros and cons.

Pros:

1. The blue and orange stick out to an extent that the gimmick stands out amongst the other bottles that its next to on the shelf.

2. There is no chance with the gimmick so if you buy the product a certain amount of times you will get the item you desire, if you do indeed desire the item in question.

3. The bottle itself is well designed, recyclable and suitable for mass production and consumption in a way that is favourable to a super markets way of stacking product.

4. The print across the bottle harkens back to the older days of glass bottles and helps to re-iterate the retro feel that Schweppes endorses.

Cons

1. The retro look of the glass printing gets cut off abruptly at the bottom of the bottle.

2. The gimmick doesn't have the same sense of reward as other competitions with a big pay out.

3. It harkens back to two different time periods with the gimmick of the faded shirts being a fashion from the eighties while the bottle aesthetic has roots in the fifties.

4. The scratching aesthetic that they've added to the logo gives it a degraded look that once again seems at odds with the graphics normally associated with the brand.

 Whether or not there are more pros and cons for this design could be debated, as this particular design has gone through several iterations to where it is now, but this current design does have its issues. But can anything ever really have a perfect design? Perhaps we'll find out later, perhaps not, either way it'll be interesting to see what comes of this in future iterations of the ideas Schweppes has carried throughout the years.

~ Fin

Basic photoshopping Exercise: They Cannot be Stopped!

This is the image done for David's photo manipulation class, in which we had to go through the basic tools while mucking around with the stock standard photos that ship with Windows 7. Seeing the penguin photo I immediately knew what I wanted to do and it was just a matter of going through the right steps with the right tools.

First thing I did was grab the background image, which was the desert image, and separated it into two sections using a mix of the magnetic lasso tool and the polygonal lasso tool to get the selection as close to the mountain range as possible. I then separated the two elements onto different layers and began work on adjusting the hue, saturation and colour balance until I found the right combination I was after.

Finally I added a gradient to the to the sky part of the image, that was a mix between deep red and a red with a drastically reduced opacity to give the horizon line a red tinge.

To add the penguins I selected one of the penguins, once again using a mix of lasso tools to get the best possible selection I could get, and then cut and copied the penguin across to the desert image The penguin was then duplicated again into a second row and then the edges were touched up with the blur tool to remove the hard edging that follows most cuts without feathering. These two penguins were then duplicated until the entire bottom row was covered with penguins.

For the final penguin I used the same selection method of the penguins to cut it out of the image and into the desert image where i used the free transform tool to re size him to an appropriate height, and then created another layer nestled between the cliff face and the sky. A paint brush and a healing brush was used to add a red tinge to the penguins yellow coat.

The texting tool was used to create the text (Shocking I know) and then was edited with the transform tools to create the upwards arc. Finally once all the elements were put in place the image was flattened and then saved out as a jpg file where it now hangs at the top of this post.

Hurray for basic photo shopping skills.

OH&S Chronicles: Oh McCain, you've done it again!

So for the homework task for last week's OH&S class we were instructed to find an issue and report it here on the blog, and well I've found two that are of particular interest. The first being an accident that occurred at the McCain food factory at Ballarat, and the second being a construction site accident that ended up with a man having six bolts enter his skull. These tales of woe and misfortune are as follows.

McCain Incident

MCCAIN Foods is facing a hefty fine after a maintenance fitter lost his thumb in a machine three years ago.
The County Court at Ballarat was yesterday told that the Ballarat food manufacturing company failed to provide training to the victim, whose right hand thumb was amputated after the workplace accident on February 21, 2007.
Crown prosecutor Justin Lewis said the victim and an electrician attended a broken down potato washing machine at 4am to repair it.
He said the victim put his hand in the machine and it suddenly started operating due to an electrical overload, causing his hand to get caught in a chain and sprocket.
"The accused production supervisor thought he had been trained in the lock-out procedure but he was not,'' Mr Lewis said.
The court was told that the same machine, which was old and regularly required maintenance, had a mechanical problem earlier that day and its side guards were replaced.
"There were some isolation procedures (in place). The machine was tagged and isolated earlier in the day. The difficulty was that while this procedure was undertaken earlier in the day, (the victim) had not received any training for it," Mr Lewis said.
McCain Foods pleaded guilty to two counts of failing to provide and maintain a safe working environment.
The prosecution said the maximum penalty for the offence was $966,870, but submitted that a fine ranging between $70,000 and $90,000 on each charge would be appropriate.
Mr Lewis said the company had prior convictions, which the prosecution regarded as serious.
Defence barrister Robert Taylor argued that the fines should be on an aggregate basis and at the lower end of the scale.
He said McCain Foods had made safety improvements to the machine since the incident and there were substantial training commitments at the company, with $5.9 million spent on health and safety over the past three years.
He said a supervision system was put in place in 2006 and, since 2007, the company closed one day a year for a safety training program for its employees.
Mr Taylor said the victim received training before he returned to full-time work four months after the incident.
McCain Food's national financial director and resource manager, a production manager and occupational health and safety representative attended yesterday's plea hearing before Judge Duncan Allen.

Now this is clear cut as an OH&S issue report can be with findings going back to the root cause of the accident, lack of training and proper awareness procedures enforced which resulted in the loss of a workers thumb. The coverage of the next report is not so clean cut.


If only they had OH&S nailed down


A construction worker had six nails driven into his head in an accident with a high-powered nail gun, but doctors said Wednesday they expect him to make a full recovery.

Isidro Mejia made his first public appearance Wednesday since the April 19 accident that left him with nails embedded in his face, neck and skull. He told reporters in Spanish from his wheelchair that he does not remember much about the accident, but is grateful to be alive.

"He says that he's very happy to be alive," said Dr. Rafael Quinonez, a neurosurgeon who removed the nails at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center. "And he told me this morning that he thought he was going to die. He was happy when he opened his eyes, and he saw that he's still with us."

Mejia, 39, was building a home when he fell from the roof onto a co-worker who was using the nail gun on the second floor, Los Angeles County sheriff's Deputy Mark Newlands said.

The two men tried to grab each to keep from falling, but both tumbled to the ground. At some point, the nail gun discharged and drove the nails into Mejia's head.

"They're extremely powerful," Newlands said. "They've got to drive through three-quarter-inch (two centimeter) plywood."

Three nails penetrated Mejia's brain, and one entered his spine below the base of his skull. Doctors said the nails barely missed his brain stem and spinal cord, preventing paralysis or death.

"We did not have too much hope that he would survive, but we did it and he survived," Quinonez said.

Five nails were removed the same day and the sixth, in Mejia's face, was removed April 23 after swelling went down, the hospital said.

Doctors expect him to fully recover after undergoing rehabilitation therapy.

Authorities cleared the co-worker of any wrongdoing.

The underlying OH&S issues with this incident are a little harder to pin down to the direction the report took in which the co-worker firing the nail gun into the mans head is the primary focus of the news story, but before that this whole chain started because of one minor incident in comparison. The simple act of falling off the roof led to this series of unfortunate incidents which one has to ask what measures were put in place to prevent such an accident.

Well that's it for this *cough*last*cough* weeks OH&S report, there may be another one later in the week depending on how this week goes.

Stay safe, until next time folks

Get the Glass: A reflection

Get the milk was an interesting exercise in interactive authoritative media, even though it had it's problems it was in hind sight a positive experience, combining elements of board games, "skill" based challenges (More on the use of my quotations there later), with a little bit of general milk knowledge and puzzle solving thrown in for good measure.

Listing the positives about this game is fairly straight forward.

1. It has a fairly nice graphical style that is reminiscent of claymation and other similar stop motion disciplines.

2. It's technical use of Flash to seamlessly weave together all of the elements they've brought together is impressive.

3. Clever use of puzzles, not wanting to spoil it for others but even certain challenges that seem impossible to guess, have the answer sitting right in front of you.

4. The animation work was smooth and I didn't notice any frame skipping.

5. It gets the balance right on the frustration/reward for the board game elements, balancing lives, luck and knowledge.

The Negative things on the other hand.

1. The steering controls on the first challenge left something to be desired.

2. Touching on the challenges again the time constraints were definitely on the very fine tuned edge of being a bit too harsh.

3. There are certain knowledge questions about milk that are asked that were actually asking questions about local states in America that sort of made it a game of guess work for anyone not in the know of other countries.

4. The dice can definitely be exploited and if you you know what your doing you can get high numbers all the time, although this does in a way lead onto my next point.

5. Those police are dirty rotten cheaters and don't let anyone else tell you otherwise

Effective advertisement and the non effective advertisements

Perusing over advertisements looking at what makes an ad effective and what makes an ad non effective seems to be something that's entirely up to a persons preference, after all "know your target audience" is something any ad designer would know before hand and with the target audience comes a certain set of likes and dislikes. I have seen many advertisements that did well at making themselves look approachable to someone in the market for their product but left me clueless as to what their product did or what was the point of the product.

The following three advertisements were ads that I found to be very effective in the way they catch the eye in a way that was related to the product while still leaving no question as to what your getting.

1 A fine advertisement for hats

This image is effective due to it's use of two very recognizable symbols (Those being Adolf Hitler and Charlie Chaplin if you didn't know), stripping the two people down to their facial hair and choice of head ware which draws attention to the hat. It's a very minimalistic style of ad drawing upon peoples vilification of a historic figure while using a figure that many cherish to promote their head ware.

2 Sex sells best when it isn't about Sex

This ad is effective due to it's use of lighting and product placement to instill the suggestion of an image that isn't there. This image catches the eye and makes the person either take a close look or in the case of glancing past, makes the person look again. Closer examination of the image leaves no illusion of the product while still being pleasing to the eye.

3. If it looks like a duck

A nice use associative imagery makes this ad another good contender for an effective advertisement. The vacuum cleaner is used in such a way to draw a comparison between itself and the power of a hunting rifle, while the colours ensure that the vacuum cleaner is blended in with the scenery as though it belongs there.

How not to make an effective advertisement.

1. Lack of focus equals a lack of attention

This ad suffers from being far too convoluted to be effective, they've opted for a lot of cut-aways, cutting away the face and even their own logo in an attempt to get people interested with the phrase being the hook that there's more the person doesn't know. All it leaves the viewer with is a wall of information that is more in line with an article then an advertisement leaving the viewer not really sure what it is their even selling. Facts and figures are well and good but they need to be presented in an appealing way, they can't just be dumped on the page when you have other elements pointing to them.

2. Don't show what you're selling

If you can beleive it this is an add for a pet memorial service though you would never guess it by just looking at it, it's a graph with the same dog in two different poses and reverted in some to show an increase in revenue although why anyone would think of putting that as your main drawing point for something that is suppose to sell business to a memorial service does seem to be a bit on the low side of class. This ad also suffers from the same issue as the one above it suffering from a lack of fouc that further obscures what their trying to sell.


3. Some things should never be mixed, while other things are a bit much, some manage both.

Definitely an interesting advertisement campaign, meant to highlight an infusion between two separate elements into something good, and that's where this advertisement falls flat. While this advertisement works on the weird factor that makes a person look twice if their glancing by, any time spent staring at this ad seems to cause revulsion from the creatures pose to the way he's licking his lips and the way every element on this advertisement is pointing to it's crotch.

This is the First

But surely not the last, I mean how can it be the last when there is still so much to do with so little time, this piece of reality is small now, but with the right poking and prodding it will grow into something a bit more sensible in all the chaos of ones mind.

Well as sensible as an egg yolk floating in a pool of chicken offal in any case, which brings us to the next post...