20160615 cjohnson portfolio
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THE WORK OF CRAIG JOHNSON
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ABOUT ME2
INFLUENCE4
INFOGRAPHIC10
JUST THE FACTS14
REFERENCES24
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I am a designer who enjoys focusing on clean type and design with raw hand drawn elements. Creativity is a valuable skill which is important not only in artistic fields. It can be an asset in many fields and across all industries. Being able to think creatively leads to an emphasis on expression, and this can generate thoughtful designs that draw the observer into the work and leave the viewer wanting to know more.
I am currently studying at the University of Queensland, working towards a Bachelor of Multimedia Design with a focus on user experience, user interface and user centred design. Throughout my time completing this degree, I have come to understand more than I thought possible when it comes to design and the many thought process involved. Many of my courses have tasked me with thinking differently when it comes to being able to iterate quickly and look for the best solutions for open ended problems.
This portfolio answers some of the questions that were asked of me during the first semester of my second year. Some of the tasks asked of me were based around data interpretation and visualisation, both simple and complex.
A focus on learning new design skills and methods are the driving force behind my work. This leaves me constantly hungry to work on more interesting pieces. I take great pride in my visual design work and present you with this portfolio for your perusal.
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AARON TURNER
As a musician and graphic designer myself, I am drawn to other multifaceted creatives. Aaron Turner is a great example of this. The first experience I had with Turner’s work was in through his band Isis, who were a post-metal and atmospheric group from the United States. Apart from his musical contributions to the group, Turner also handled all the graphic design elements for the group’s releases and merchandise. These two fields of creativity always went hand in hand, with one reflecting the other.
Turner’s work in graphic design and his musical endeavours extended to a music label he started and ran called “Hydra Head Records”. Through this label, he was able to create work for a lot of my other favourite bands at the time. His use of mixed media such as hand drawn illustrations and lettering, paired with clean design and photography had a strong influence on my work as a graphic artist.
The ideals and aesthetics that I started to admire within Turner’s work started to influence my own work. The use of recurring themes, mixing course with clean elements and textures to create a sense of wear and rustic stylisation is something that I connect with.
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AARONHORKEY
A few years ago, I started to notice some amazingly detailed illustrations interlaced with hand drawn designs for movie posters, events and band artwork that always left me thinking, “these are beautiful”. Around that time, Isis (previously mentioned Aaron Turner’s band) toured Australia. Through OMG Posters I saw Horkey had produced a tour poster for them and from there I was able to put a name to this recognisable style. I quickly familiarised myself with his catalogue of work, and after researching his style, I began to feel influenced by creative layouts, high level of detail and elaborate and intricate decoration.
At the time, all of Horkey’s work was only being posted on by a select number of individuals whom he trusted. Horkey was keeping a very low profile online, his presence could even have been non-existent. I admired this mentality and how this affected his work - he had a raw and pure dedication to his art. This only made me want to find out more about him, his work and his processes.
Every piece that Horkey produces is completely hand drawn with no digital influence. As I began to explore his work, I started to think about more elaborate and stylistic layouts of lettering to create decorative text pieces.
Horkey’s work is by far my biggest influence in terms of modern artists and designers.
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THE ART DECO MOVEMENT
Sometimes drawing influence from a single designer can be too precise, and can lead me to focus too closely on their particular efforts. Only by stepping back and looking at their contemporaries can I get a better grasp of the characteristics of a complete style.
The Art Deco style to me embodies a lot of the design aspects which I aim to achieve in my digital design work. The use of harsh grainy gradients from early works, strong geometric shapes and repetitive use of symmetry and angles really stand out to me.
One of my first memories of noticing something as Art Deco was in my childhood in the cartoon “Batman: The Animated Series”. This stylised look was amazing to me and completely different to other cartoons that were around the time. It seemed so simple and bold, yet complex and elegant at the same time; a perfect juxtaposition for design.
Over the next few years, I began to notice the style more and recognise it in many different creative forms. I noted its use through repetition of the same characteristics; through graphic design, typefaces, architecture and structure all around me. All of these aspects made it very identifiable and inspiring to me as young designer.
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THE 2013 SEATTLE
SEAHAWKSThis piece was selected
to be displayed at the 2016 Physical & Interactive Design Exhibtion held by
UQ at The Edge in SLQ
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Using the statistics located on the National Football League’s website, I was able to create an infographic based around the 2013 Seattle Seahawks. The infographic focused on their performance and path to becoming the Super Bowl XLVIII champions.
The aim was to build a narrative of the journey which lead the Seahawks to a 13-3 record and becoming the first team to qualify for the 2013 post-season. Through this narrative, I was to visualise complex data into quickly interpretable images.
The key focus of the infographic is the regular season win loss ratio where the observer can view all 12 post-season qualifying team. This shows a wide array of data through the use of a line graph over a timeline to illustrate how each team finished against each other and other points of reference. Visualising this information became a difficult task when needing to make each team visible against each other as lines intersected and group together into similar patterns. The design choice of the darker background takes an approach of stocks on the market and their performance over a period of time.
There are other elements that help contribute to building the narrative of the Seahawks success. A sectioned pie chart displaying the points for & against by each game. The pie chart showing the allocation of who scored the points for the Seahawks during the regular season. A comparison bar graph of the number 1 rated players in the league versus their Seahawk rivals. Lastly, a progression chart of the play-off bracket for the 12 qualifying teams.
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THE 2013 SEATTLE
SEAHAWKSThis piece was selected
to be displayed at the 2016 Physical & Interactive Design Exhibtion held by
UQ at The Edge in SLQ
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“Minimum number of remains of World War I casualties uncovered in
northern Italy since 1990 because of retreating
glaciers : 40”
Harper’s Index, Harper’s Magazine Vol 328 Issue 1969 (2014) p11
The first of the fact related places and was eager to see what I could achieve with the given information and my own personal design ideas. I chose the visual elements to help drawn focus to the fact to help the observer identify the location and meaning behind the fact. The colour scheme was also designed help with these details.
The structure of the main element is a great example of how I can think about design in ways of geometry and symmetry. By constructing the design using triangular numbers, it led to a strong area focus. Instinctively, I was able to work in the reworded fact into the design and maintain the original design concept. The typeface selection of a typewriter style font helps the visualisation of the time period referenced and the underlining having a hand drawn feel to continue the period focus aesthetic.
The colour scheme has a very cool palette bought across from the fact to visualise the cold and icy elements of glaciers and Northern Italy. The gradient of the triangular element to give the minimal appearance of a snowcapped mountain. A drop shadow was added to help bring the design to life and give a sense of reality to the image and the context of the fact.
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“Factor by which the brightness of a recent
supernova exceeded that of all the stars in the
Milky Way : 20”
Harper’s Index, Harper’s Magazine (April, 2016) p9
Even though the appearance of this design is very simple, a lot of thought into elements and meaning went into this piece. This was also the piece of the 5 Just The Facts where I really started to settle into a more consistent approach.
From the original fact I decided to research the population figures of South Korea to give me better idea of the portion of population that was being addressed. Once addressed, ideas of representation of that portion were brainstormed. A wi-fi symbol was a stand out choice due to it connotations to the internet and internet usage.
While the portion highlighted in the representation is accurate to the percentage, it also resembles an exclamation mark. This was a small design choice on my part to show a growing concern of internet based issues that are going on a global scale.
The colours chosen are taken from the South Korean flag. The Blue was purposefully removed from the design as it clashed with the red and did not stand out against the black. This decision to withhold its use help create a cleaner design. Adding to the simplicity of and internet theme of the design, a modern monospace font was selected for the wording. A new ‘M’ in ‘program’ was created to replace the standard ‘M’ of the typeface and seamless added in it’s place.
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“Estimated number of South Korean teenagers
who attend Internet-addiction-prevention programs each year :
4,000,000”
Harper’s Index, Harper’s Magazine (April, 2016) p9
Even though the appearance of this design is very simple, a lot of thought was put into the various elements that make up this piece. This was also the first of my five “Just The Facts” pieces of where I started to settle into a more consistent approach.
From the original fact, I decided to research the population figures of South Korea to give me a better idea of the portion of the total population that was being addressed. Once I had a grasp on this, I brainstormed ideas on how to best represent this. A wi-fi symbol was the stand out choice due to its connotations to the internet and internet usage.
While the portion highlighted in the representation is accurate to the percentage, it also resembles an exclamation mark. This was a small design choice on my part to show a growing concern of internet based issues that are going on a global scale.
The colours chosen are taken from the South Korean flag. The blue from the flag was purposely not included in the design as it clashes with the red and did not stand out against the black. The decision to withhold use of the blue helps create a cleaner design. Adding to the simplicity of the internet theme of the design, a modern monospace font was selected for the wording. A new ‘M’ in ‘program’ was created to replace the standard ‘M’ of the typeface and seamlessly added in it’s place.
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“Portion of Americans in 1966 who said that they trusted the government
most of the time : 2/3Who say so today : 1/5”
Harper’s Index, Harper’s Magazine (April, 2016) p9
This piece is a stand out in my recent work that focuses on the differences in proportions over time. The representation is confined and flows nicely as the eye travels through the piece.
I took inspiration from early adaptations of the United States flag where the stars formed a circular pattern instead of the modern box cluster. As the wording in the original fact used fractions with uncommon denominators, I used simple mathematical logic to reduce these to percentages. I was then able to achieve an effective way to present the numbers so that the observer could interpret them more quickly and easily. The decision to have the highlighted stars flow in a clockwise direction is to separate the two figures and still allow the design to flow.
The typeface used was selected due to it’s stately and official appearance. The capitalised nature of this font bears a strong resemblance to monuments located around Washington D.C and other governmental emblems.
I used the colours of the United States flag due to relevance to the fact. The two figures were placed in different coloured sections to differentiate between the two figures, but keep the common theme through the highly recognisable red, white and blue colour scheme. This choice helped tie the design together in a concise manner.
In 1966, U.S. citizens
that trusted their Government was 66%
Today, that number is only 20%
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“Number of emergency room admissions for
fireworks-related injuries in 1983: 8,278
Number of these injuries that resulted in the loss
of fingers: 126”
Harper’s ; Jul 1, 1984; Vol. 269 (1610)
As the original fact information was from 1984, I deemed it appropriate to work with more relevant information but still keep the same theme. Through some research, I discovered a report regarding the reported injuries due to fireworks in 2014.
The scales of size and colour were designed to relate to each other. The scale of colours was created by generating a specialised palette for this design through using blends and defining each step in the transition. I selected the appropriate colours in the scale depending on their value. This is to show a visible difference between larger gaps in percentage and only slight between closer values.
The minimalistic human figure helps the observer visualise the areas that are injured most frequently, whilst not distracting from the data being displayed. The coloured areas relate back to the circled percentages and their size relation to each other.
The strong, bold typeface was selected to alert the observer, and draw their attention to the information. This representation, due to it’s nature, takes on a sense of caution and warning, and shows that these injuries do happen, and can affect the victims in a variety of physical ways. Inspiration for this design was taken from warning posters that are located in hospitals and doctor’s surgeries displaying easy to interpret statistics regarding a variety of health risks.
BREAKDOWNOF REPORTEDFIREWORKSRELATED INJURIES IN THE U.S.A.IN 2014
http://aaronbturner.blogspot.com.au/
http://www.bloodsweatvinyl.com/
h t t p: // b l a c ko s p r ey x m e g a f aun a .blogspot.com.au/
ht tp://hifructose.com/2010/09/20/aaron-horkey-interview/
h t t p: // w w w. e r r a t i c p h e n o m e n a .c o m / 2 0 12 / 0 5 / a a r o n - h o r k e y s -postapocalyptic.html
http://omgposters.com/
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/
All design, layout and photography by Craig Johnson
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