Throughout the subject of Design for CMS Content Managers with Daniel Julià we have learned about web layout using HTML and CSS as well as PHP working with WordPress. Finally, we practised such knowledge by designing and programming our portfolios.
You will find some of the results in this next compilation:
Gemma Fontanals
Daniel Iglesias
Emily Eldridge
Gaizka Pagonabarraga
Andrea Rueda
Laura Magallón
Carolina Orozco
The following publications are the final works of the subject of Typography, which is part of the Postgraduate in Design of Graphic Elements included in the master’s degree. Our teacher Salvador Huertas introduced us to the architecture, composition, analysis as well as the critical evaluation of typographic fonts.
Love Letters – Emily Eldridge
Gordon Matta Clark – Gaizka Pagonabarraga
Feminismo – Andrea Rueda
Mondosonoro – Laura Magallón
Diario de un nómada – Angela Aginako
On delusions (Yayoi Kusama) – Gemma Fontanals
La teva ciutat invisible – Marta Mestre
Disseny gràfic sostenible amb el medi ambient – Àngela Balcells
Negativo – Blanca Garaluce
DOWN – Daniel Iglesias
This is food trucks – Maria Millan
TIC TAC NYAM – Judit Murcia
Disfrutar – Guillem Matarrodona
Modapiel – Anna Carbonell
This course, for the subject of Identity of Graphics Applications guided by Xavier Alamany, we have focused on creating a cultural festival located in the Montbau district of Barcelona. All of us conceived the project broadly designing the graphic identity and defining the type of activities.
To do so, Alamany helped us by insisting on the first step: to know the neighbourhood. Following his advice, we would offer useful opportunities ideally well welcomed by its residents. Would festivals be aimed at a family audience, youth or would it be for all ages? Would it pretend to create affinities in the neighbourhood or maybe attract other local people in the city? Before asking so many questions, it was essential to do research.
We recognised soon the singular personality of the area, built between 1957 and 1965. It was necessary to consider all the elements: its geographical situation (between Collserola and Ronda de Dalt), the architectonic interest (influenced on Bauhaus), the green footprint (60% of the surface is vegetation), the migratory diversity, the veteran residents (35.2% are over 65 years old), the drug addiction stigma, the associative life and more details that have been relevant along the Montbau’s history. Finally, stepping on it was one of the best ways, but the most priority, to discover it.
Here are some of the results developed in class:
JAM Jornades de Autogestión en Montbau – Àngela Balcells
The proposal consists on generate social relationships in the neighbourhood within a program that promotes reflection, new learnings and leisure opportunities through projects based on collective self-management. From here, several lines of activities and graphic elements emerge: Montbau expresses (triangle), invites (semicircle) and meets (rectangle).
Montbau Mural Fest – Blanca Garaluce
This urban arts festival puts the spotlight on the elderly, especially them because they are the ones who started living in the area since the inauguration of the land, rising later their families. For this reason, the purpose is to generate a history of the neighbourhood through the connection of arts and their memories.
New Urban Itineraries – Gemma Fontanals
N.I.U is a multidisciplinary offer with the intention of rethinking the neighbourhood based on walking it again and again. Through routes and itineraries aims to rediscover the area to perceive it with different eyes. The name that is attributed to it, “nest” means at the same time “a safe place, from where to be provided, to which to return”.
MAKE IT! Montbau Arts Festival – Emily Eldridge
This festival begins with the idea of taking advantage of the building’s facades that preserve the architectural style of the neighbourhood. The final visual result is identified easily for its colourful patterns. It takes as a source of inspiration the wide variety of them used in most of the constructions of the area.
Montbau Film Festival – Daniel Iglesias
This project bases its design on an element that works as a visual system, which appears regularly both in the world of cinema and in Montbau’s architecture: the rectangle of 2×1. The objective is not only to make the neighbourhood well known nationally but also to add to its personality a sense of seriousness and professionality.
Visit this site to find more works of the rest of classmates:
http://eina.grafic.info/identitat/
Throughout the subject Introduction to programming, taught by Jordi and Oriol Collell, we have learned both the basic notions and the more complex ones of the digital era that have allowed us to develop our skills in web programming as designers.
These are some of the final works we created based in different SVG animations. They are built with HTML, CSS and Javascript from libraries like Green Sock, using most cases TweenMax.
During the sessions of Digital Video and Animation we have learned and worked with Diego Fernández the techniques and methods of audiovisual creation for the media environment: from basic video characteristics, 2D digital animations, an introduction to 3D, as well as to the audio processing throughout the edition with After Effects.
These are some of the final projects of the subject:
GIRO Festival, the alumni Dacil Sánchez Final Master’s work, has been featured in the publication of Duotone – Limited Colour Schemes in Graphic Design, by Sandu Publishing. The book explores the possibilities and applications of two-tone palettes in graphic design through three sections that cover different effects and finishes: colour matching, duotone effects and graduation. As the name indicates, the festival aims to enjoy in a different way this type of cultural events, alternating between yoga during the day and concerts at night.
Know more about the project here.
Last Tuesday 15th of May we had the visit of Gabriela Lazbal on the subject of Rich Media Projects. Lazbal works at King, a leading interactive entertainment company for the mobile world, known worldwide for its gem game Candy Crush. After being six years in the team, she is nowadays working as a Senior Artist and as a Lead Artist supervising all the follow-up of the Bubble Witch 3.
Gabriela was born in Argentina, where she studied, but she has been living in Spain for nearly 20 years, having worked in Madrid, Zaragoza and Barcelona so far. From the beginning, she explains that her trajectory is quite multidisciplinary, always guided by her artistic vein.
Since she was thirteen, she knew that wanted to study the Fine Arts degree. However, as she is a curious mind, she discovered other disciplines along the way, such as film and television production and also analogue and 3D animation. Besides, before establishing in King and parallelly to her studies, she had dedicated plenty of her time being a teacher and working independently as a freelance.
During the session, Lazbal explains in detail the process of making video games. In the case of the Swedish company, they follow a work methodology based on the SCRUM model, which avoids hierarchies, enhancing proactivity and coordination among its members. She highlights that the success of their projects it is based on the communicative routine they persistently build.
“The most positive thing that SCRUM has is the retrospective. In this sessions, we discuss what has gone well or badly both professionally and personally, to avoid carrying problems or accumulate misunderstandings. Is the moment we establish honest relationships through conversation.”
Lazbal tells us that brainstormings are composed of different types of work profiles like artists, game designers, producers and data scientists. Also, developers and testers use to join the team when all of them start the prototyping stage. The idea is that they don’t see each other only once for the initial brainstorming, but they meet regularly being everyone involved in every decision even if is ideating, analysing or sharing the results of tests along the evolution of the product.
“Discussing ideas together makes simply enrich them, that’s why teamwork is so important.”
Lazbal defines their process as progressive and introduces us the concept of sprints. This methodology consists of stipulating a group of tasks and schedules them in weeks or months. Then, all the team have to work together to reach the deadline. The purpose of this system is to be able to test the product as soon as possible. Although both creative and production stages use to grow simultaneously, the concept always goes first. For this reason, Lazbal remarks how much necessary is to define the drawings a lot, going through many steps if needed, to achieve a definitive version that will be used as a reference when creating the 3D images.
During the talk, other aspects appeared associated with the design. On the one hand, it was interesting to realise the value of the typographic treatment and the UX / UI method. In the end, they contribute to define the style of the world’s game and satisfy the user expectations. On the other, Lazbal gave us advice on how to deal with the real world. Through anecdotes, she told us how to prepare a job interview, tips for the portfolio and the importance of being proactive but receptive at the same time, maintaining a flexible attitude and an open-mind ready for receiving the feedback that benefits us so much.
Throughout the subject of Analysis and Management of Digital Publications with Enric Mor, we discovered the DCU (User-Centered Design) and the stages that configure its iterative process. It is necessary to apply it in each interactive product because it helps to improve the usability and accessibility of the user experience.
We learned about UX/UI redesigning the official webpage of a real client. To do it, we complete all phases of the project. We started with its definition and research. Then we analysed the architecture of information and developed the sketches. After that, we continued designing the wireframes and prototyping the result. And finally, we did the evaluation. Also, we alternated the theoretical content given by the teacher with dynamics developed in class.
The first activity was an introduction to Design Thinking. In pairs, we had to create a personal briefing. In one hour, we understood the essential thing that is to know about the needs of the person who’s going to use the product or will take benefit from the service, in that case, a wallet or purse. To achieve this, we had to interview each other, leaving aside our preferences as designers and proposing real solutions that could satisfy each case.
The design of any online platform or application must contemplate user journeys. It means that is important to define previously which type of activity is, its contexts of use and the emotions experienced by users to detect such failures that we understand now as opportunities for improvement. On this occasion, we defined profiles and routes of people who would use an app to listen to music.
In this activity, we used flowcharts to design the navigation of an app whose functionality consisted of a search and encounter system for lost pets.
Towards the end of the subject, we carried out this activity that consisted of, by groups of 3-4 people and in 18 minutes, constructing a structure that would stand on its own with the following elements:
And something else, the marshmallow must be located at the top. The initiative is raised from Harvard by Tom Wujec who took us to the curious observation on the success (or failure) of working as a team, especially among design students.
From the beginning, we talked about iterative design, a cyclical methodology of multi-stage problem-solving, always based on validating assumptions on the user behaviour in real-world tests. Prototypes and analysis of a product or service are made continuously to achieve a more and more recent perfected version.
In the subject of Analysis and Management of Digital Publications, we have developed infographics of topics related to the Internet and technologies. In the last session with Diego Fernández, we showed our results in class to share and discuss them all together.
Every project was diverse at both formal and content level. Themes were very broad: from the existence of cookies, the world of emojis, the success of online dating, the streaming music, the usage and abuse of smartphones or Instagram and the curious case of #foodporn.
On the occasion of Sanit George, some of the students of the Master’s in Graphic Design have developed a collective fanzine.
This proposal comes from the desire to share personal interpretations of the 23rd of April’s festivity. The 11 participants, narrate and illustrate based on typical elements from the popular legend. Books, dragons and kisses appear in different ways at the same time we question them, reinterpreting the story with princesses that puncture and roses that are not for sale anymore.
The self-edition consists of 28 pages, black and white interiors and a silk-screen cover printed in the workshop of EINA Espai Barra de Ferro. In the same Arts Centre, the fourth edition of PRINT.ed Singular Publications fair took place on Saturday 21st of April, where the zine was available from 11 am to 8 pm.
Daniel Iglesias @dani_bydani
Aina Alsina @aidux_
Paula Lavergne @paulalavergne
Blanca Garaluce @blancagaraluce
Judith Murcia @judithmurcia
Àngela Balcells @ngeladraws
Gemma Fontanals @gemfontanals
Laura Magallón @cosmichorchata
Andrea Rueda @andreard_
Maria Millán @mariamies
Emily Eldridge @emily_eldridge_art
