Aerin's NM3217 Blog

For this assignment, we had to present a visual abstraction of a chosen image to best articulate the image in its most stripped-down version. I have chosen an image of the National Museum of Singapore as I have just visited this museum recently and was in awe of their spectacular light show and exhibits! I was curious as to how I could abstract this image and also wanted to choose an object that was not too simple so that there are more opportunities for abstracting. Stage 1 I used the Pen Tool in Illustrator to trace over the image and decreased the opacity of the image so that it is easier to see my traced vectors. I tried to retain as many elements as I can so that more features of the museum building could be shown in Stage 1. Most of the elements were straightforward to trace as there are made out of straight lines. However, there were also curves in the image such as the door frames in which I made use of a good tip by my TA - which is to use the ‘shift’ key to create a curved ...

For this week’s exercise, we were tasked to comment on this typographic representation. After analyzing the typographic representation, I have noticed three main issues - choice of typeface, alignment, and readability. 1. Choice of typeface The choice of typefaces used is too decorative which made it quite unclear and illegible. Not only that, the choice of typefaces used for the header and body are also too similar which does not establish a clear hierarchy between the header and the body. This makes it difficult to read and does not capture the attention of the readers.  I would improve this by choosing a font like Sans-serif which is easier to read compared to the typeface used in the image. Sans-serif also helps the readers’ eyes to travel across the sentence lines which makes the words more legible. I would also choose 2 contrasting typefaces for the header and paragraph body. The contrast in the typefaces would help to establish a clear hierarchy between the header and body. ...

For this in-lecture exercise, I have chosen my Crayon ShinChan figurine to be the chosen subject and I have taken five different shots of my figurine. For the 1st image, I made use of a long shot, low angle shot and rule of thirds. Long shot is used as I wanted to show my figurine from a distance, while emphasising the location which is the table. The low angle shot helped to make my figurine look more powerful and heroic despite doing a relaxing task like having a sauna session. I wanted to have this contrast to highlight the nature of the activity that my figurine is engaging in, which is very relaxing, modest and soothing. The rule of thirds is achieved by aligning the figurine at the right vertical grid line which draws audiences’ eyes into the image and highlights the figurine. For the 2nd image, I made use of a mid shot, eye-level shot and rule of thirds as well. Mid shot is used as I wanted to emphasise my figurine while showing some of the surroundings. Since it is an eye-level...

  According to the lecture slides, the signifier is the physical form of the sign whereas the signified is the idea or concept that it represents.  In this advertisement, the signifier is the red tomato slices stacked up in the shape of a Heinz bottle, with the Heinz Ketchup packaging stickers on the tomato slices. The tomatoes are very red and nicely sliced, which suggests that they are very fresh and delicious. It signifies that Heinz could be trying to say that they are one of the only manufacturers who make ketchup out of natural, fresh tomatoes, as compared to other manufacturers who may be using preservatives, tomatoes that are not so fresh, or not using natural flavors of tomatoes. Hence, Heinz has the best ketchup manufactured using the freshest tomatoes. It can also suggest that Heinz Ketchup is healthier than other brands as they make use of actual tomatoes to make the ketchup, rather than artificial tomato flavors. The sentence in the poster “No one grows Ketchup li...