This was one of the first courses that I have taken in the Industrial Design department. The objective of the course was to introduce students to the tools and techniques of graphic visualization while leveraging the creative process. The course consisted of an intensive sequence of exercises to give students an idea of the different mediums to express visual communication including but not limited to composition, sketching, working drawings, rendering, storyboards, and info-graphics.Through this course I was able to gain skills in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.
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Visual Storytelling I: Journey Map
This assignment challenged us to visualize our personal journey to Iowa State by using sketchnoting as a technique. Sketchnoting is described as "a technique that engages your whole mind, your analytical verbal as well as your contextual visual side." We were encouraged to start a visual library based on the elements that helped shape our journey; people, places, activities, and motivations. Then we used these elements to thread a story of our journey through a traditional journey map or organic sketchnoting. The gallery below is the design process, followed by the final product.
Visual Library
Final Product
Visual Storytelling II: Movie Storylines
The goal for this assignment is to learn about storytelling by analyzing movies. The analysis is based on visualizations of key elements of the story: people, places, activities, motivations, storyline, beginning-middle-end, conflict, resolution and context. We also studied existing visual examples of stories. My partner and I analyzed the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is a movie that presents a nonlinear story. The first image below is my personal design, and the next two are designs that my partner and I worked on together.
Visualizing Complex Systems: Industrial Design Program
On this assignment, we shift our focus from single products to complex products, specifically a complex system. Our complex system was the industrial design program itself, the undergraduate and graduate programs. The goal is to visualize the INDD program from an incoming student's point of view. We learned how to visualize learning objectives, experiences, and resources by applying what we learned in previous assignments. My team produced posters for different concentration paths including soft goods, experience, makers, business, and engineering. My primary duty was to help visualize engineering as a concentration path in the INDD program. This was also the first time that I've used Adobe InDesign.
Rapid Communication: Product Redesign
The ability to quickly communicate a visualization of coworker's or client's needs of a specific product is a useful skill as our world becomes more global; spreading across different states, countries, and continents. This assignment is an exercise in being able to communicate the design process through images, presentations, presentation boards, and rapid ideation sketches with a quick turn around. I chose to redesign a Vietnamese coffee maker. The goal was to improve the product by identifying problems, solutions, and a redesign through the design process. During the process I employed the fishbone technique and learned how to used Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. The galleries below show the initial sketches, the fishbone technique, and the final rendering.
Sketches
Fishbone Technique
Final Rendering
Final Project
The final project for this course was of our own choosing. I decided to redesign my senior design poster for EE 492 with the skills I've learned in IND D 540. Below is a comparison of the poster from EE 492 with required elements and the creative approach I took in IND D 540.