UNEXPECTED FEEDBACK

After asking for feedback from peers, I decided to ask adults for some feedback too. As I am afraid that the feedback would be too one-sided. I got some unexpected feedback from an adult.

From previous feedback from peers, they tend to think that playing the cards with close friends would be a better idea than playing with strangers. They thought that they would not want to show their darkest side to stranger or acquaintance as they would want to build a good impression in front of people. However, the new feedback I heard from my friend's parents is exactly opposite to that.

My friend's parents thought that it would be harder to reveal their darkest side to close friends. As close friends know about all their past, they would hold back when playing with close friends and would be scared to show their dark side. On the other hand, when playing with strangers, they thought that they would be more open to answering those questions. What they care more about is their close friends' thoughts, instead of strangers' first impression.

This feedback his so interesting to me. However, I received it a few days before the deadline and there is already not much time left to make big changes. Therefore, if given more time, I would definitely further develop the concept of my work and listen to more feedbacks from different age group to get unexpected comments that I would never have thought of. 

MODULE EVALUATION

I feel like this is the least time given for finishing the whole module. I don't know if it is due to the pandemic or its just my own personal issues, but I am definitely working under loads of stress in this module. As the deadline is around one month after COP's I tend to feel so dead and not motivated to work for this module after the COP deadline. I procrastinated and had no motivation to work for the almost 2 weeks after the COP deadline. I felt so stressed every day, yet, have no motivation to start doing work. Whenever, I got that slight motivation to start, I felt like I was having a creative block and that my ideas were so bad. 

I also realised that I tend to magnify my stress a lot. I always feel like there is no time left to finish everything and I would not be able to handle it before the deadline. This habit of magnifying my stress is giving me even more stress. However, I would say on the other hand, it helped me to work efficiently..? I started to officially start working around one and a half week before the deadline. Before that, I did some brief research and reviewed the brief to get myself familiarised with the requirements. After officially starting to actually work on the design work, I felt like the pressure that I gave myself actually pushed me to produce a large amount of work within a day.

Overall, I am quite satisfied with my final outcome. This module requires a lot of observation work and responds to feedback. These kind of primary resources from peers actually is turns out to be taking a big part in my research work. I would say crits with peers were the most useful primary research. I even changed the whole design direction 4 days before the deadline. It was tough and I was working under a lot of stress, but luckily I ended up liking the final outcome even more when compared to my work before the change. Peer feedback really had helped me a lot in the module and their feedback actually acted as a primary research for my work. Although I was not comfortable in attending the google hangout crits, I tried my best to get feedback from peers. I texted my friends for comments and asked them "what if"questions in order to get more audience's feedback. 

FINAL OUTCOME PRESENTATION

RATIONALE

POINTS TO INCLUDE IN RATIONALE 

• to break the tradition of first knowing the good side of a person when you first met them 
• test real friends 
• get to know each other more 
• minimal design, hiding something, arouse curiosity 

"You Dark As Fuck" is a set of playing cards that is designed to play in drinking occasions. The idea of the deck is to break the tradition of first knowing the good side of a person when you first met them. Audiences can get to test real friends, know more about acquaintance, or even know more about their true selves. 

Minimalism is applied in the packaging design. On the front cover, "You Dark As Fuck" is printed at lower right corner in a small text size. This is to communicate the idea of people tend to hide their dark side from others, instead of revealing them directly to people. Using this way of presenting the text is definitely not the most comfortable in terms of legibility. This is to create the sense of curiosity and confusion among audience. 

The same concept is applied on the back cover. The sentence "not-so-nice to have met you" is printed in the same size as the text in front, except, it is in grey. This is to further create the sense of confusion among audience, and make the text even harder to read,  with an underlying justification of hiding the text, like how people hide their dark side. 
As for the inside, a distorted image of old paintings of Satan is used on the fronts and a dreamy gradient of pink and blue is used on the back of the cards. The distorted images represents the the idea of the dark side of humanity as a distorted personality of people. As for the pink and blue gradient at the back, it represents the good impressions that everyone would like to give when they first meet a person. This is also the side which other players can only. see when they were playing the game. This also creates a contrast between the good and the dark side of humanity, as well as to further create the confusion among players. Players would not expect the card holder to read out dark content when they look at the dreamy colours on the back of the cards. 

INSTRUCTIONS 
Gather in a circle, continue clockwise.
1. The first person who entered the room picks a card.
2. Read the question aloud.
3. Pick a yes/no card and place it in the center of the circle, with the card facing down.
3. Everyone guess his/ her answer and pick yes/no.
4. The chosen person should reveal the card.
5. Those who got it wrong has to drink.
6. Everyone will proceed to guess the reason behind his/ her choice.
7. He/ she chooses the player with the closest answer.
8. Others will all have to drink.

NEW PACKAGING

DESIGN PROCESS

To be honest I am so stressed as there is not much time left until deadline. I came up with a decision of changing the whole direction of the branding and packaging design style. It makes me feel really insecure as the final design looks a lot simpler than the initial one. The final design looks effortless and so simple. However, I think that it is the best execution to the theme and the whole idea and meaning of the project. Only the back design of the cards are key from the initial idea and everything changed and is looking really different from the initial design. 

INITIAL 

DEVELOPMENT 

FINAL

PRESENTATION

FINAL REFINEMENTS

After listening to my graphics design friend's idea, I decided to change the design direction into minimalism. To keep consistency with. the box packaging design, I decided to change the designs of the cards into as simple as possible to match with the minimal theme. 

1ST CHANGE

Compared to the initial design, this is comparatively simpler. It looks fine for me, but considering the fact that I am going for a minimal design, and all the research on minimalism designs, I decided to most the black border and use only the. manipulated image as the whole background of the card. Therefore this design will not be used as the final outcome. 

2ND CHANGE 

This would be the final outcome of the cards. With only the image as the background and small text to keep the design clean. 

Mockups will then be made to present the design. To be honest, if time allows, and resources are provided, I will definitely make this deck of cards into real one. My friends are really interested in playing them and I would be really happy if my design is real. 

MINIMALIST DESIGNS

GOOGLE
https://designshack.net/minimalist-graphic-design/ 

https://www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/mastering-the-art-of-minimalist-graphic-design/ 

• Minimalist graphic design is a philosophy of creating something where every element serves a purpose. It is simple, clean and beautiful. It is highly usable. These designs are easy for users to understand and engage with. We’ll take a look at minimalist graphic design with ten tips for doing it well, plus examples of those principles in action.

• Elements such as color and typography are also used with an emphasis on simplicity with extremely pared down palettes that may include only one hue or typeface. Details and space are design factors that really rule the aesthetic. Because there are not a lot of elements to work with, every design divot is on display. 

• keep it simple 

• Use Simple Yet Impacting Typography

INSTAGRAM

I also found out that there are actually instagram accounts that has tutorials for graphic designers. They teach us how to use softwares, how to create certain effects, or even how to achieve a certain style. I found this post really useful which is created by @thewilsonwings. It is a really useful account for me in terms of learning some designs principles and hard skills. 

MY THOUGHTS

The biggest thing that I have learnt is that minimalist designs tend to have each and every element useful. There won't be any element that exists our of no where and has no meaning or function. Principles on colour usage might not be applicable as I would like to keep the stretched Satan images in their original colours to keep the aesthetic. As mentioned previously, desaturating them causes difficulty understanding the images. Therefore, minimalist design principles will only be applied in the terms of the usage of fonts and typography. Something clean and small.