Indesign: Workshop 3

Narrative Design

When developing visual communications, the usage of Narrative Design is of key concern.

 
When discussing narrative; it's important the establish the key components of one

• Exposition: The set up and explanations of a subject or scene
• Rising Action: The content that gets you invested/entertains
• Climax: The peak where one or more narrative beats are resolved
• Falling action: The winding down of the story
• Denouement: The resolution of  any remaining elements.

However, from a designers point of view; Our take on this structure is not as simple nor is it as conformative to this structure, as we typically need to illustrate or demonstrate the solution to a problem, rather than tell as story (Not that the two can't exist in the same narrative).

We need to tune ourselves to our audiences when creating the messages we need to send them, rather than them tuning into us; creating emotional connections and narratives to the things we want to sell, so that people could buy into.

All of these things are built up with the use of Imagery; Sometimes being enough to carry a proposal or narrative on its own, Tones of voice, Using scale and placement to invoke tones of voices(Loud or Quiet, Impacting or Subtle ect), Symbols and inconography; Restricting information to alter an audience's perceptions or using simplicity to help sell the product, and colours; helping dictate the moods and feelings an audience should have of your work.

Animating within After Effects

Having created an illustration prior, and split it up, to importing it to After Effects; some simple animation could be achieved using each element as it's own separate object.




This animation uses mostly transformations and rotations for the various movements that the character completes, however some scale animation was added to the torso section, to give a subtle simulation of breathing.

This animation, in total, took roughly 9 hours to complete fully.

The Substance of Style

Style, in a very brief explanation, is who you are; what you do and how you do it. It's a culmination of all the influences you've been exposed to and is how you view and interact with the world.

No one is free or acts outside of Style. Everyone has one.

Marcel Breuer noticed this idea of style and how it often dictated the work and artist or designer would create, and decided to divorce himself from it; creating purely logically designed items, and removing everything he deemed 'excessive' or 'non-important'.

However, Apathy to style is a style, in and of itself, and was eventually replicated and adopted into culture.

Styles are structured by their hierarchy.

Styles are made up of Classes> Which are made up of Attributes> which the Attributes can Change. 

Message and Meaning: We swim in the Media Ocean (and we control the waves)

Designed Messages always need to be understood the same way, by every time, by everyone, as well as have them react appropriately.

It'd be no use if an advertisement from Asda was cryptic and no one understood it, and the ones that did decided not to shop their.
That's a bad message they'd be sending.

Messages is the word for any communicated transmission from one source to any receiver, such as a poster or a spoken message.
Meaning is what we mean when we talk about the source of the sender's message, or their expression, and is what the receiver infers the message to be,

Often times, the ways in which a message is sent is just as, if not more, important than the message itself. It's crucial, as a poorly optimised transmission could lead to receivers have a hard time understanding your message, or not understanding it at all.

Senders is the term used to refer to designers when used in this context, or Encoders. We're the ones who translate meanings into symbols or forms to be sent as a message.
These messages need to be visualised from the point of view of the receiver, or the audience, so we can create the message more effectively, to be targeted more effectively. The more data we, as encoders, have, the easier it is to target and structure our messages.
     (-this is all important, as if decoders aren't effectively communicated to, then they won't buy into
        your message and ultimately, whatever it is you're trying to market-)

When deciding on the correct way to send a message is also important, as you need to pic the correct Channel, or the method that the message is sent (as stated two paragraphs ago). Essentially, there need to be some basic questions that you ask yourself as you're putting your message together, from the point of view of your audience (as stated last paragraph).

Some of these questions include;

• Is it Urgent/Time sensitive?
• Is immediate feedback needed?
• Does a permanent record need to be kept
• Is the content complicated? Private? Controversial?
• Is the content be communicated inside or outside?

Ideally, you'd want your message to make use of as many appropriate channels as possible, with some being more appropriate than others. The radio may be an amazing place to advertise a new song, yet a poster could lack the content. And vice versa for more visual advertisements. You need to be constantly aware of the medium and message you're trying to present.

Design Authorship is a slight deviation from the established norm in the graphic design industry, in and that it's the Designer themself that's in control of their own messages and the pursuits they take to express them, like Anthony Burrill, pictured above.

These designers often take a much more self contained artifact and use it more in place of a directed message, rather than the broad and generic messages favoured by businesses.

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The receiver, or decoder in this instance, is what we would call our audience. The ones that we market towards, and we need to be mindful of how we approach how we word the messages we send them, in order to maximise the amount we can manipulate and influence their actions.

This topic was covered rather extensively by the psychologist of the hour, Marshall Mcluhan, who documented the effect the media had on the public.

He stated that media could only ever be an extension of knowledge, and extension of an ideal, of what we already know, and could not be a replacement for it.

That we shouldn't try and understand the media by thew words it uses, but why the words are used, which will in turn make it easier to construct future media, for the purpose of the audiences viewing it.

He postulated that the world and media isn't something that we don't understand, or at least the audience at large didn't. They didn't care about the people or the motives behind the media, and this made it easier for those people to get their messages across.

People like to have their preconceived ideas and beliefs confirmed, people seek out affirmation and validation in the things they buy, so it's probably best that we, as designers, try to stick to hegemony and certain expectations for people.

People also hate feeling like they're missing something, behind the curve or not experiencing something good. Creating a world of haves and have-nots greatly enhances the chances that more of your audience will want to buy what you are marketing.

People also want to find goals to fulfill, no matter how easy or trivial they might be, even in lieu of how fast the world moves around them, so it's nearly impossible to complete any of them; as though the you, the ball and the goal are all moving as you step up to score. 

Because of this, it's important to create advertisements that meet these certain needs, as well as last long enough for them to be 'completed'