Design Co-Operative

It has been a while since I’ve last made an entry on my ongoing work and seeing as I’m unaware whether we should be keeping a personal blog for research, just thought I’ll get it going, just to be on the safe side.

For starters, I’m going to add the description that could be found on the new brief:

Design Co-Operative 2008/9 -

This unit provides you with two new opportunities. First you will have the opportunity to work on an external brief, selected from a range of briefs from national and international competitions. You will also be introduced to working in a team. You will develop and refine your team working skills; you will also be introduced to the practice of peer assessment.

At this stage of the degree you have amassed a wide range of skills and experiences in both practical and theoretical matters related to the broad world of design, media and communication. Working in a team you will now have the opportunity to work from a selected brief. Your team will have been selected specifically so that individual member skills balance and complement other members and allow your team to fulfill the brief chosen.

• Interpretation of a brief.
• Role delegation within teams.
• Providing a work schedule for completion.
• Methods of design appropriate to chosen brief.
• Presentation of project to staff and peers.
• Interpreting evaluation of results.
• Performing peer assessment.
  

Mapping – Thoughts behind it. =(

I have not gotten around to updating this blog over the past few days or so due to the amount of information I need to digest to get my interface to a working ’state’. Mind you, I was expecting the process to be straightforward with Flash and its Actionscript function. But it turned out that I completely underestimated it and not to mention hitting straight-on at a brickwall every-so-often.

The troubles that I have faced over the course of working on the mapping brief and at the same time creating a website for it was…extremely challenging. To put it mildly. Because I was working with the projects on different Flash files, I thought when finished exporting the completed piece to another would be a dead-on straightforward job; like exporting an image and importing onto the other. The whole ‘loadMovie’ function on the Actionscript made me go round-and-round in circles, not to mention futile efforts on searching for the right solutions and putting it into use and not working It was frustrating on so many levels.

But for the sake of references, I’ll put a few that I thought helped me outt:

Adobe ‘loadMovie’ Function Help

Loading Extenal Swf – Method A

External SWF Preloading – Method B

Position Loaded Movie

Launching a Pop-Up Window

Embedding Flash While Supporting Standard
(I hope the above links help someone who was struggling with loading an external SWF into a current file.)

There are times where I found myself doing something overly complicated whereas I’m sure there are tons of easier approach to it. I would love to list all of the sites that I stumbled across but there is simply way too many of them. But at the end of the day, was it worth all the blood and sweat? (Okay, maybe I’m just exaggerating on the ‘blood’ bit)

I would say maybe. Making a website is a lot harder than I expected. When there is a lack of proper guidance around, it is tough. but both the mapping and the site has been finished. It is by no means a masterpiece but here is the final piece.

Mapping – With Flash!

If it weren’t for me injuring my back over the weekend, the images that I have used would be a lot better than what I am having at the moment. Sunny and clear-blue skies, the weather was perfect for photography over the weekend…

Here is something I did with the images I took before injuring my back:

Taking this image -

Ground Image Example

And changing to this -

Pixelated Image Example

Upon ‘pixelating’ and simplifying the image, I then proceed to choosing three colours that either stads out or occurs the most across the image. It is important that I note this down, the last thing I want is someone coming-up to me and accuse me of making the colours up; that alone is the last thing I intend to do.

Below is an image of the colour tabbing process:

Pixelated Ground Colour Tab

Pixelated Sky Colour Tab

You might ask what will I be doing with the collected data on the colours for each images? As I was looking for resources on how to present the source, I have came across this nifty tutorial on colour bubbles. I quite like the effect in which the file generates and instead of just presenting a static library/collection of the images, this effect done in Flash might make it slightly more interesting. Instead of it being spheres, I will have the colours bursting out in squares instead. And every now and then I come across some sites where the mouse cursor actually does something ‘interesting’, perhaps if I could find my way around and incorporate this effect into the site…

Mapping – Ongoing

Upon having my discussion and receiving feedbacks from the tutors, I reckon I will march on with the concept of ‘mapping the sky’. The reason behind that choice is that I find the possibility of ‘things’ you could go on with is plenty with sky. The sky itself is such a vast ‘entity’ that, there are no boundaries to it. And by that taking something that is as huge as the sky, perhaps stripping its essence and simplifying them into something that is diminutive would be…’ambitious’.

By narrowing down onto the list of stuff to do, I will be focusing on:

1) Epsom itself.
2) Mapping points across the selected map/area that is ‘walkable’ within a time window.
3) Using photography as the primary means of gathering data.
4) Take images of both the sky and the ground on the designated points across the map.
5) Select ideal images that will be used.
6) Simplify and extract colours from the selected images via Photoshop.
7) Create Flash map!

Here is a map of Epsom that I will be working around with:

Map of Epsom (with points)

The reason that I have decided to work with non-horizontal points on the map is due to the fact that it makes the traveling a lot faster and at the same time allows me to cover the designated distance at a more efficient rate.

On top of that here are some of the visuals for the website:

Index -

Index Page A

Index Page B

Contents -

Contens Page A

Contents Page B

Contents Page C

Just to give a brief outline on what the visuals are about – the website might need  a new index page and so by looking at that I have decided on just twisting things around and have a background image for a change. The current index page is a little static. Simple variations for the two index visuals, an ‘Enter’ button and background variation of squares or plain. And as for the content, there will be a map on the page where one could interact with it. Nothing too fancy, perhaps just images showing the location.

Mapping – Progress

I must confessed at the fact that keeping track of ongoing process and concepts is not my strongest point. And as much as I have wrote the information down, hoping to put it down onto a blog, I never really got around to doing it. Not to mentioned getting bogged down with the tiny bits and pieces of chores. Tiny bits and pieces adds up at the end of the day. But regardless, here I am again, hopefully I’ll get around to shedding a few lights on the concept and brainstorming:

Garbage :

Around the street, there is never a shortage of people’s waste lying around; depending on where you go, the street is usually filled with enormous amount of ’stuff’. The ratio of garbage around the street differs throughout the day. In the morning, perhaps, the clean-up crew would sweep along and bringing all the waste away. And late at night, especially on a weekend, the amount will mostly be a lot more compared to regular weekdays.

Its not like it is a bad thing or anything, stuff people dropped/left behind is usually quite interesting. Mapping the garbage on a particular street would be ideal and at the end of the day, producing a tally of the variations of garbage lying around that particular perimeter would not be a bad idea as well…

Garbage Bins:

Ever had one of those moments where you are in a place and have something in your hand that you desperately trying to get rid of but could not find a garbage bin?? Further building onto the above idea, mapping the locations of a specific (ie. colour, size, type) garbage bins around a town or a city would be quite interesting as well. In short, a database for garbage bins around a certain area perhaps…?

Metal-detector:

You will be surprised at how much stuff you could find when you walk around the park with a metal-detector. Plenty of ‘’stuff’ usually go undetected under the ground and I reckon it would be very exciting to map a particular plot of land…what remains could be found underground?? Hmm…where could I find a metal-detector?

Stars/Skies/Clouds:

You know how when you were a child, every now and then you get this long distance journey to a place in a car/bus/plane where there is not much you could do but look out through the window? And usually, by looking at the sky it occupies you throughout the journey by trying to figure what each clouds represents. On top of that the colours of the sky changes throughout the day. Changes are good, mapping the shapes and colours of something that is THAT huge of a scale would be challenging. But at he same time think about the variety of information that you could possibly benefit from something like that…?

All the above ideas are highly achievable/doable at the point of brainstorming. Whether having the time of doing it or not really comes down to which one would keep my interest intact through the remaining brief.

Stuff Stumbled Upon -

First 100 Days – Came across this interesting info-graphics showing what the president of the United States does on the first 100 days in office. I bet it took a while for it to be compiled but it is quite a nicely presented piece of graphic work though!

Sprint – An insane yet very cool looking site that contains tooons of widgets….one hell of a site. You could get a mini-version of this widget down to your Facebook to even your desktop. But was wondering at the same time whether the ‘facts’ are true or not.

Burger King Studio – Create t-shirts with your own design over the web? Personally thought the interface is fantastic and straightforward at the same time.