Something that I never enjoyed in high school was design. The process of going over something over and over again until you eventually circle back to the original idea anyway was unbelievably painful to me, and so I have vehemently avoided it at university. However, it did seem like a great idea for a random audit when I walked into the room on Monday afternoon, and it was actually really interesting.
The class was a wide mix of characters, with a lot of coloured hair and layered long sleeves, and plenty of heavy gaming laptops to be seen. The lecturer is really funny; and his analogies were great. He mentioned how valuable recognisable design is for marketing, asking us if we could picture SpongeBob’s laugh in our heads, or taste a Red Bull by just thinking about the can.
The conversation then moved onto how posture and expression in design add to the recognition of a character, and makes or breaks their personality, and therefore the quality of the animation, branding, or story. Bluey being bright and excited, with the arms-up jump that she’s known for, or the iconic once piece poster that every white boy you’ve ever hooked up with has on their wall. He followed up on this with an explanation, and some photos, of U Design Week in China, which has a huge amount of character and brand design exhibitions, focusing on innovation and good storytelling. Sounds sick.
The lecturer pulled out his own collection of personal character designs that he either 3D printed or developed online, which were absolutely awesome, and a great representation of how development works. Spotted a couple of Nexus’ around the room, (shoutout to design students for keeping us alive) but literally not a single person had their book out. Almost everyone was taking notes on their computer which I suppose is normal for people taking a mostly tech-based degree, but do you people not learn by taking things down by hand? Maybe you don’t.
Nearing the end of the lesson, I learnt that the guy teaching us wasn’t in fact the lecturer for that class, but an actual design professional that was brought in to teach the class about what makes good character design. I certainly wasn’t wholly invested in this class (note my firm hate for design as a subject), but the content was actually really interesting. The links to iconic phrases, appearances, shapes and silhouettes as marketing techniques was something I’d never considered, and made me think.
All together, Design141 is an interesting class, and I’m lucky I got to step in and listen to someone with professional experience on the topic. It’s still not for me, but I can see how people would enjoy it!
Something that I never enjoyed in high school was design. The process of going over something over and over again until you eventually circle back to the original idea anyway was unbelievably painful to me, and so I have vehemently avoided it at university. However, it did seem like a great idea for a random audit when I walked into the room on Monday afternoon, and it was actually really interesting.
The class was a wide mix of characters, with a lot of coloured hair and layered long sleeves, and plenty of heavy gaming laptops to be seen. The lecturer is really funny; and his analogies were great. He mentioned how valuable recognisable design is for marketing, asking us if we could picture SpongeBob’s laugh in our heads, or taste a Red Bull by just thinking about the can.
The conversation then moved onto how posture and expression in design add to the recognition of a character, and makes or breaks their personality, and therefore the quality of the animation, branding, or story. Bluey being bright and excited, with the arms-up jump that she’s known for, or the iconic once piece poster that every white boy you’ve ever hooked up with has on their wall. He followed up on this with an explanation, and some photos, of U Design Week in China, which has a huge amount of character and brand design exhibitions, focusing on innovation and good storytelling. Sounds sick.
The lecturer pulled out his own collection of personal character designs that he either 3D printed or developed online, which were absolutely awesome, and a great representation of how development works. Spotted a couple of Nexus’ around the room, (shoutout to design students for keeping us alive) but literally not a single person had their book out. Almost everyone was taking notes on their computer which I suppose is normal for people taking a mostly tech-based degree, but do you people not learn by taking things down by hand? Maybe you don’t.
Nearing the end of the lesson, I learnt that the guy teaching us wasn’t in fact the lecturer for that class, but an actual design professional that was brought in to teach the class about what makes good character design. I certainly wasn’t wholly invested in this class (note my firm hate for design as a subject), but the content was actually really interesting. The links to iconic phrases, appearances, shapes and silhouettes as marketing techniques was something I’d never considered, and made me think.
All together, Design141 is an interesting class, and I’m lucky I got to step in and listen to someone with professional experience on the topic. It’s still not for me, but I can see how people would enjoy it!
