jubalationblog

In most of the modern media that consumes the world these days, you’ll find that there is a meaning behind everything. Whether it be the billboard you just passed for that Hollywood blockbuster film or the song that your favourite artist has released. Sometimes the meaning is relatively straightforward and other times it’s intrinsically weaved into the piece that it takes a few goes to decipher the meaning within. What a lot of people probably don’t realise, and this included myself until a couple of weeks ago, that there’s actually a word to summarise all of this. That would be ‘Semiotics’.

Merriam-Webster define semiotics as ‘a general philosophical theory of signs and symbols’. [1] In this case, I will be using recognisable imagery and symbols to analyse a chosen picture and attempt to dissect the meaning behind it. For this essay, I decided to choose an illustration designed by Michael Rogers. This illustration is based on the Batman Begins movie released by Christopher Nolan in 2005.

My reasoning for choosing this image is because I’ve been fascinated by designs that have been taken from pop culture and given their own spin in the way of minimalism and simplicity. This poster does that and I feel that a lot of the imagery holds different clues into exactly what the movie is about without going too deep in details. Another reason I decided on this illustration is because I really, genuinely lovely the Batman trilogy from Christopher Nolan.

On that note, I will be covering five points in my assessment of this poster. These are:

1. Dark colour themes
2. Safety
3. Religious contexts
4. Isolation
5. God complex

What drew me to this Batman illustration was the simplicity of three main colours. White, red and greys. The most overwhelming of colours would absolutely be the grey/blacks. To talk simply and straightforward, black in the world of Batman purely comes from the fact that he only operates at night in the same way as a bat would. When assessing the environment along with the character itself, black can then have both negative and positive connotations. In the positive sense it can mean protection and comfort, mysterious and contained. In the respect of the Batman character as a whole, this absolutely makes sense. While the movies are quite dark, Batman as a symbol is generally considered mysterious and as a form of protection for the citizens of Gotham which brings a sense of comfort also. In a negative way, it can portray secretive and withholding, power and control which, again, is understandable when considering Batman and the movies as a whole.

When discussing colour themes, another standout part of this illustration is the red cross on top of the building that then reflects onto the ground. Red can mean many things but in many cultures, the red cross is indicative of safety, health and medical aid. It’s easy to gather that the cross in this image is indicating a hospital nearby but I feel like it ties into the black silhouette figure of Batman on top of the building running along side it. A figure watching over others in an area where there should be relative safety because hospitals are considered to be a safe haven in times of need. When putting both the red cross of the hospital along with a dark colour palettes and the protector above the building together, it is easy to understand where the theme of safety comes into play.

The positioning in the reflection of the cross is something else to take in. As someone who has seen the Batman films, to me it’s ‘X marks the spot’ in the area of where his parents were murdered in the back alley. A running theme throughout the films, comics, books, games and animated TV series is the effect in which his parents being taken from him at such an early age have affected Bruce Wayne and his alter ego. In other regards, it absolutely could be taken in a religious context in the way the Red Cross foundation is synonymous with charity and aid. It is one of the most recognised symbols throughout the world so for it to have the same meaning in this illustration would make complete sense.

There is also the fact that the reflection stretches out much in the same way of Jesus and his cross for crucifixion. As in the stories from the bible, Jesus was crucified and vindicated for the crimes of the people just so he’s able to save them. This can be considered in the same lines as Batman since he is considered a vigilante by mass media within the Gotham universe and is feared by most even though he’s attempting to keep the town safe. Along with this, there is the winged angel above the red cross. Depending on which perspective you are looking at, an angel can either signify the death or salvation. I believe in this it is more indicative of safety and salvation especially as it is above the red cross and is considered a beacon of light in the dark night. Something interesting to look at is the moon behind the angel itself. The moon seems to be acting as a signal for safety as well, almost drawing people into where they can be safe and secure in the darkness of Gotham.

This can segue into the theme of isolation. This is a massive theme that keeps every different piece of Gotham media cohesive. As previously mentioned, one eye drawing moment is the lone figure atop the buildings looking down on to the streets. Throughout every piece of Batman piece, it is drilled in how isolated Bruce Wayne is in his personal and professional life. Only few are given the privilege of knowing who he is and even then it’s only small amounts. One piece of this illustration that I haven’t touched upon is the actual outline of Batman holding the piece of Gotham within himself. This can signify that he feels responsible for the entirety of his city and represents a heavy burden that he feels is only for him to carry.

Almost every single aspect of this illustration plays upon the trait of isolation. The single silhouette holding the town of Gotham, the small silhouette watching the city alone, the simple colours of blacks, white and red, the red calling for salvation and hope within the ever suffocating black and even the white text centre bottom stands out in it’s simplicity and isolation. The positioning and sizing of this text is almost drowned out by the overwhelming darkness from the rest of the image. The illustrator could have placed this anywhere in the white background that surrounds Batmans silhouette but instead chose to place it towards the bottom of the image where it still contrasts but doesn’t take away from everything else going on within.

Finally, there is the themes of a God Complex running throughout. This may come across as a bit of a stretching considering that Batman is supposed to be seen as the lone figure that keeps Gotham safe but is absolutely possible in the same breath. A God complex is defined as ‘an unshakeable belief characterised by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility.’

In the case of Batman, and Bruce Wayne, his only privilege was his wealth and status which allowed him to become the caped crusader. What I want to draw upon from that definition are the inflated feelings of personal ability and infallibility. Batman is seen twice within this image as a lone hero. This gives off the perception that he cannot fail himself, the city he calls home and, especially within the first movie, he doesn’t want to fail his parents anymore. With this, Bruce Wayne becomes a vigilante with immense power and a great moral sense of right and wrong above others. As he stands down, looking upon the streets, it’s shows his position above those below him and of the role he took on alone as the night watcher and protector of all others.

The lightning bolt behind the angel statue could also signify a God like comparison. God, or Zeus, is known to wield bolts of lightning as a weapon and to defend evil against good which is the same symbol as which Batman is perceived to the point that he himself became a symbolic image to protect others.

I’ve found this fan made illustration to be a very good indicator of exactly what the movie ‘Batman Begins’ to be about while also using incredible specific uses of semiotic symbolism throughout. Bringing together dark themes, simplistic designs, isolation and safety, it manages to create a descriptive image of what one would expect when going to watch the movie for the first time.

References:

Definition of SEMIOTICS. (2017). Merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 20 July 2017, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/semiotics

Gorgeous Geeky Illustrations by Michael Rogers. (2017). Abduzeedo.com. Retrieved 20 July 2017, from http://abduzeedo.com/node/76419

Black Color Psychology and MeaningAssociated with power, a. (2017). Black Meaning – Black Color Psychology. Color Psychology. Retrieved 20 July 2017, from https://www.colorpsychology.org/black/

That’s right. Billy Ray Cyrus. Pure 90’s mullet perfection. It literally needs no further explanation.

Our LO says we’ve gotta do a serious budget for a serious project. To me, Playful Paws felt like a serious project because I spent so much time on developing the design and layout for so much. So I’m going to include exactly what I spent along with what I would expect to pay if I was getting all the materials for such a project.

• A1 Poster – $33
• Business Cards – $30
• T-Shirt – $50
• Sticker sheets – $15
• 200gsm paper – $25
• Printing costs – $100 – $250
• Fuel costs per week – $40 – $60
• TV Advert –
  • Local: $1,500
  • National: $342,000
• Magazine Ad:
  • Full page: $7098
  • Double Page: $14,196
  • Half Page: $4615
  • Inside Front Cover: $17,028
  • Inside Back Cover: $8,159
  • Outside Back Cover: $8,869
• Animal expenditure a month: $2,500 – $5,000

Total costs roughly (max):  $364,491.

Seriously though, imagine if I really had that money. I’d be rolling in green/multicoloured because we are in Australia and not America.

Clearly I’m enjoying a night of Ed Sheeran because tonight’s title is brought to you by Hearts Don’t Break Around Here.

Everyone has a favourite brand. Whether it be Apple or Samsung? Actually Samsung or anything because they’ve got a very broad range. Google or Bing (Always Google). Facebook or Twitter. Faber Castell or Derwent. Acer or Asus. It all comes down to marketing and, much more often, brand favouritism.

For example, I have clear brand favourites. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m more than willing to try any brand once if they have decent reviews and they have a particular specification that I’m interested in and yes this is way more technological than it should be.

Now if I had to choose between Apple or Samsung, I would choose Apple. Not because I’m a fanboy but because logistically I believe Apple to be superior in the way usability friendliness. They are easy to use and to have to move everything from my iPhone to another phone would be tedious and annoying.

When it comes to computers though, I’ll happily take any PC over a Mac. It annoys me, and this applies to iPhones too, that you are required to pay through a certified Apple consultant to get the product fixed if it becomes faulty otherwise you can void the warranty and that’s unbelievably unfair.

If you’re talking about consoles though, I’m much more loyal to Playstation. They are some damn fantastic games. Uncharted. The Last of Us. Crash Bandicoot. Jak and Daxter. I’m not saying Playstation is fantastic and without fault like having to pay to play anything that’s multiplayer. But I would willingly go out of my way to buy a Sony product than I would Xbox and Microsoft. PS Vita. Project Morpheus. PS One, PS2, PS3 and PS4 all reside happily in this house.

So does Brand Engagement work? Damn right it works because I wouldn’t be loyal to a brand since I was a wee child if it wasn’t for the successful branding. Suck on that Microsoft and your DickBox.

That’s right. We’ve got another interpreted song title. Today is Ed Sheeran’s Castle on the Hill. Clever right?

We were required to test the usability of our brand and products in class so we needed 10 questions to get there. I didn’t quite hit 10 but 7 is pretty damn close in my opinion so I’ll roll with it. This is really just to see if our ideas are working in the way we hoped they would.

I hit up google docs and made a new survey pertaining to Playful Paws and certain aspects of its branding. The questions I went with were:

1. What is your first thought when you hear Playful Paws?
2. What do you think of this logo?
3. Is the colour scheme appealing?
4. Why/Why not?
5. Who do you think Playful Paws is targeting?
6. What do you think of the Playful Paws poster?
7. If you saw this brand, would you feel inclined to adopt from there?
8. Any other suggestions or feedback for this brand?

I was wrong, it’s 8 questions. I clearly struggled with math as a child because look at me now.

So after receiving my feedback once I posted it to social media and couple of mates, I got three responses back for my questions.

This beautiful title is brought to you by the musical stylings of one *NSYNC – Tearin’ Up My Heart.

But while I’ve got you here, let’s talk about NDA’s. What are they?

Basically an NDA is a Non-Disclosure Agreement. This is basically a legally binding contract that ensures confidentiality between two or more parties. For example, if you shared some juicy secret that you pinky swore over back in primary school and then it got out because you told someone else then you knew you’d get in trouble. Well think of that but on a much bigger scale of things.

From my numerous research, it can be concluded that there are three main functions when it comes to an NDA:

1. They protect all sensitive information between the parties
2. An NDA can help keep development rights exclusive with whoever/whomever has thought up an idea like, okay, someone came up with wicked idea of a gaming console back in the 70’s and figured this was something big but to start getting it developed, an NDA would have had to have been drawn up to keep it exclusive as hell.
3. Maybe the creator of the Atari said alright, here’s what you can tell people but I’m going to be really selective. Don’t you go telling people exactly what this device does but you can tell them that it’s black. An NDA allows the specifics of what can and can’t be spoken about to another or the general public.

There are literally no limitations to what goes in an NDA. Anything you want to keep secretive or unknown and it can go in there and the other party is held accountable if something gets out by this law abiding contractual agreement. Remember your rights though before signing one of these bad boys. You are well within your rights to ask questions before signing away your life. If something sounds confusing, then speak up and ascertain exactly what they mean.

If I had to apply an NDA type scenario to Playful Paws, I believe it would come down to the creation of new pet toys or maybe a cool celebrity wanted to adopt a dog and was like look, I want this animal but no one can know about it so sign this and we all walk away happy.

Okay, so this one was a bit of stretch but I couldn’t just put in schedule and expect you to know the title was Sorry by the Biebs.

So if you’ve been keeping up, you would have seen my previous gantt chart/timeline. Actually I think I just put in the timeline. Either way, you’ve seen that.

Now do I think that worked? Yes and no. I think the gantt chart was great because every now and again, I went back and checked on that bad boy and I’m like yaas you’re next and I’d get straight back on track.

Towards the end though, I absolutely loved check lists. I think I made about 4 or 5. Every time I’d knock one off I’d make a whole new one to keep it clean.

Please refrain from looking at the time and date in the top corner, thank you. Also the yoda snowglobe behind the paper.

Look, main thing is I used checklists. They helped me know exactly what was next along with a gantt chart. I’ve never been this organised in my life and I surprisingly like it. I got so used to living with chaos and through unstructured day to day life that I thought it was normal and having some sort of schedule has helped me realise that it’s actually much easier if you know what you’re doing next.

Today’s blog title is inspired by Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal. Ba badum badum dum dum badum dum dum!

So a part of our brief for our big marketing campaign, we had to smash out some interdisciplinary work. Find a student. Work for them. Maybe get a little something something in return, like return collab work, aaaand throw in your handover.

My person was Hannah. She was exceptionally nice and gave me full creative control and for that I’m eternally grateful.

Basically she wanted a poster done for her mini film project that she was required to do. The brief for it was a 1950s trans nurse conducting experiments on people.

I saw her opening trailer for it and it was wicked. She did such a great job. She also sent me her moodboard and storyboard for the film so that I could look at it and get some shit cranking. The biggest things I took away from it, which is called Oakland state by the way, was the rosary beads and the fact it was human experiments. Experiments to me says blood. Lots of it.

I made a few different concepts before settling on the final one. I’ll show a couple of them here. I think the concepts were good but I struggled to execute them until the final one which I was really happy with.

The second one was great but nothing about it felt right with me. Because I left it too late, I couldn’t spend as much time refining it because that idea could have been executed really damn well.

This was my final one though.

I’m more than happy with this one. It was simple and gave an idea of some weird religious shit going on with blood. Hannah was happy with it too and that’s all I wanted so win for all.

This currentle title is inspired by Paramore’s song Let The Flames Begin. Clever right?

So packaging. It’s a son of a bitch to do man.

First and foremost, let me show you just one of the boxes I did.

This turned into a cute tiny little dog house where the top two flaps crossed and folded into each other and then when unflapped?, they opened up like the roof of a dog house.

So this worked out so damn well when I did it at home. I got the fold lines and die lines perfect, the artwork was damn skipping good but when I did it at uni, it just didn’t want to go to plan and damn knows why.

To be perfectly honest though. This design was mint. It was clever and I loved it. I thought it was great and I’m happy with how my test runs went because it blew my mind when I finally set up especially because there were so much cutting and gluing. My hands were covered in PVA glue. Admittedly I did this at home but I worked damn hard son.

At uni though, with my failed attempts but that’s okay cause I tried, it was a lot easier to cut. Why? The. Die. Cut. Machine. That thing cuts your die lines and it gently dots and caresses the fold lines so all you need to do is push it out of the paper and then fold where that thing tells you to. It’s beautiful.

10/10 would recommend and I’m happy with my initial results.

I’m going to start changing song titles into something that’s relevant for my blogs. I’ve taken thnks fr th mmrs from Fall Out Boy for todays title.

So this blog is obviously gonna be about design. Really about what designs I’ve done or how I think I’ve done this tri designwise.

I noticed a super consistent theme with all my work and I think it’s that I’m quite reserved in my style but I also like things to be super simple. I don’t want to go over the top or hit somebody with a burst of colours that it’ll hurt their retinas for years to come.

I seem to choose a max of two to three colours, keep the logo ridiculously simple and basic and then design the collateral around it. But I’m happy with that because it feels more effective.

Why overload the senses? Wouldn’t you want the design and the message of the company to come forward more? Yes, I fully understand that you want it to stand out but sometimes less is more and I truly think that in today’s current design trends, simplicity is effective and sometimes elegant.

Last night, cause I’m super late on the blogs, I really felt like compared to everyone else that my work wasn’t as worthy compared to everyone else but I still think everything I did was effective. Everyone has different outlooks on design. Some go all out and some go simple and that’s okay. I personally prefer simple and that’s completely okay.