Mood Board Learning & Primary Mood Board for my project

When trying to convey a design idea, moods, feelings and fluffy stuff like that are hard to communicate. So professional designers will often use mood boards: a collection of textures, images and text related to a design theme as a reference point.

Mood boards help others to 'get inside our heads' in order to convey a thematic setting for a design or to explain function in piece of work.

Real world inspirations are all around us. So use the camera on your phone to take pictures of everything you see that inspires you - whether that be a bird in flight, a great use of typography on a sign, or the brickwork on a building. They don't have to be great photos in the traditional sense - it's all about capturing thoughts, impressions, themes and feelings.
When putting together mood boards, think of yourself as a curator rather than a collector, and try to have meaning and threads from one image to the next. It makes for easier interpretation.

Whether it's being electronic or physical, the layout of your mood board needs to give prominence to key theme images, then surround these with smaller supporting images that enhance the theme. 
When someone looks at a large image on your board in their heads they'll have questions about it - which they'll quickly scan the rest of the board to find answers for. If you place smaller supporting images around the larger image they should do this job for you by clarifying the messaging given in the larger one.

Locking an idea or a style down in a mood board can be detrimental, as the client will feel shoehorned into going with a particular style. Keep everything a little loose and don't make everything look too finalised.

If you're using preview images from image libraries don't worry about the watermarking on them - it all adds up to a 'hey look, we can change this - these are ideas' feel to the board.

Don't ignore the power of a few isolated words on a board. They're fantastic show-stoppers and give your viewer pause for thought as they have to mentally read what's in front of them. Big, bold words juxtaposed together work very well at creating drama, tone and meaning for any project.

Finally, don't forget to test out your boards before you send them off. Remember, it's not a game of Pictionary, so if your testing audience have to ask too many times what an image means or why it's there, then it probably shouldn't be there in the first place.

The whole process of creating mood boards should be fun - a refreshing break from the often tedious tasks of the jobbing designer. If you're not having fun then it's a sure sign you're going about things the wrong way...

(Resource from: http://www.creativebloq.com/graphic-design/mood-boards-812470)

Here is a mood board that I have primarily developed for my personal project, I plan to execute a book project contain the use of conceptual photography in its content, on purpose to practice my personal creative thinking skills and planning skills. I plan to use photo manipulation in graphic design field to execute the content in the way to combine my photography and graphic design skills. I choose the thin sans sarif fonts in content, cause it gives the clean, simple and clear style of the contents. I have chosen 5 styles of fonts. 

This mood board is a primary decision, I will develop more later on in the process of doing this project.

Thesis Topic Finding

What is Creative Problem Solving?

Creative problem solving, a type of problem solving, is the mental process of searching for a new and novel creative solution to a problem, a solution which is novel, original and not obvious. (Wikipedia)

Creative Problem Solving is a proven method for approaching a problem or a challenge in an imaginative and innovative way. It’s a tool that helps people re-define the problems they face, come up with breakthrough ideas and then take action on these new ideas.

There are 6 steps that are broken down into 3 stages.

Stage 1, Explore the Challenge; in this stage, there are 3 steps: 

Objective Finding - Identify Goal, Wish or Challenge; This could be a wish or a goal. It might be the initial dissatisfaction or a desire that opens the door to using the CPS process.

Fact Finding - Gather Data, Assess and review all the data that pertains to the situation at hand. Who’s involved, what’s involved, when, where, and why it’s important. Make a list of the facts and information, as well as the more visceral hunches, feelings, perceptions, assumptions and gossip around the situation. In this step, all the data is taken into consideration to review the objective and begin to innovate. 

Problem Finding - Clarify the Problem, In this step, explore the facts and data to find all the problems and challenges inherent in the situation, and all the opportunities they represent. This is about making sure you’re focusing on the right problem. It is possible to come up with the right answer to the wrong problem. Re-define what you want or what’s stopping you.

Stage 2, Generate Ideas; there is 1 step in this stage:

Idea Finding - Generate Ideas, Generating ideas is much more than brainstorming. During this step, be vigilant about deferring judgment and coming up with wild, outrageous, out-of-the-box ideas. This is where you explore ideas that are possible solutions and have the most fun. It’s also where you need to stretch to make connections, take risks, and try new combinations to find potentially innovative solutions.

Stage 3, Prepare for Action; there are 2 steps in this stage:

Solution Finding – Select and Strengthen Solutions. First, try to strengthen and improve the best ideas generated. Next, generate the criteria that needs to be considered to evaluate the ideas for success. Apply that criteria to the top ideas and decide which are most likely to solve the redefined problem. The best idea needs to meet criteria that makes it actionable before it becomes the solution. A creative idea is not really useful if it won’t be implemented.

Acceptance Finding – Plan for Action. In this step, look at who’s responsible, what has to be done by when, and what resources are available in order to realize this idea as a full-fledged, activated solution.

http://www.creativeeducationfoundation.org/our-process/what-is-cps

What is Open Source?

In production and development, open source as a development model promotes a) universal access via free license to a product's design or blueprint, and b) universal redistribution of that design or blueprint, including subsequent improvements to it by anyone. Before the phrase open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of terms for the concept; open source gained hold with the rise of the Internet. Opening the source code enabled a self-enhancing diversity of production models, communication paths, and interactive communities. The open-source software movement arose to clarify the environment that the new copyright, licensing, domain, and consumer issues created.(Wikipedia)

What is Activism?

Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, or direct social, political, economic, or environmental change, or stasis. The term connotes a peaceful form of conflict.

Activism is the doctrine or practice of vigorous action or involvement as a means of achieving political or othergoals, sometimes by demonstrations, protests, etc. In philosophy, activism is a theory that the essence of reality is pure activity, especially spiritual activity, or process. It's also a theory that the relationship between the mind and the objects of perception depends upon the action of the mind.

What is Hacktivism? 

Hacktivism (a portmanteau of hack and activism) is the use of computers and computer networks to promote political ends, chiefly free speech, human rights, and information ethics.It is carried out under the premise that proper use of technology can produce results similar to those of conventional acts of protest, activism, and civil disobedience.

The term was coined in 1996 by a Cult of the Dead Cow member known as "Omega". However, similar to its root word hack, hacktivism is an ambiguous term (computer hacking is tied to several meanings).

Hacktivism is the act of hacking, or breaking into a computer system, for a politically or socially motivated purpose. The individual who performs an act of hacktivism is said to be a hacktivist. A hacktivist uses the same tools and techniques as a hacker, but does so in order to disrupt services and bring attention to a political or social cause. For example, one might leave a highly visible message on the home page of a Web site that gets a lot of traffic or which embodies a point-of-view that is being opposed. Or one might launch a denial-of-service attack to disrupt traffic to a particular site. Whether hacktivism is a crime may be debated. Opponents argue that hacktivism causes damage in a forum where there is already ample opportunity for nondisruptive free speech. Others insist that such an act is the equivalent of a protest and is therefore protected as a form of free speech.

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/hacktivism

Visual Narrative

A visual narrative is a story told primarily through the use of visual media. The story may be told using still photography, illustration, or video, and can be enhanced with graphics, music, voice and other audio.

Project Proposal

Statement of the problem

How Does Money Work? / We are Slaves / Economic Slavery

Banks and merchants have always been guilty of burying people in debts they can’t possibly pay off with the real intention of making them their slaves. Political slavery may not exist today, but economic slavery is rampant. If politicians are not trying to print up money, shave the gold coins, or other corruption schemes involving money, they’ve been guilty continual budget deficits, never having enough money, and war machines, with their imperialistic ambitions to take over the world.  Also, the human mind seems to never have enough, and is never satisfied. It wants the best society has to offer, and will often step on anyone to get to the top. (Jason Summers November 30, 2009)

Money and economy control the entire human race, we as humans are the dominate spices on the planet however we are as well as the slaves of money and economy, human slavery may not exist today, but economic slavery is rampant.

It is difficult to learn. It takes a lifetime just to master one subject. Understanding a complicated subject matter is a lifelong endeavour, and it seems the more you learn, the more you realise you don’t know. Humanity’s main problem is most of their time is dedicated not toward learning, but toward reproducing, eating, sleeping, working pointless jobs, and general existence. (Jason Summers November 30, 2009)

Corruption seems to be going on everywhere and in any field, as well as education that exists in our world right now; tons of private universities and colleges are no longer in concern of educating the students instead they rip-off the students by all kinds of excuses, they seem to be more in concern of business rather than education. Another corrupted situation that can happen to private universities and colleges is that some students can easily bribe the lectures on purpose to pass a certain subject or exams, some are more rampant as if they have tons of money, they can easily buy a degree or diploma certificate. And that is the darkness of the private education nowadays.

Unfortunately, the news profits from this psychological tendency, and exploits it in the worst possible way. Also, complex issues are not presented in proper light and instead are given in fifteen second “sound bites”, leaving people more confused than informed. Instead of educating and informing, they instead rile up emotions and mostly spread propaganda which benefits the big corporations. They also tend to incite party politics and left/right paradigms, instead of uniting people on issues. (Jason Summers November 30, 2009)

The other day I told a classmate of mine not to look for learning resources from newspapers because they are full of lies, sadly the fact is there. I have heard so many stories of how rich companies and the powerful people bribe the media to hide the truth and cover up what’s really happening to the event in a way to benefit a reputation of themselves. A perfect example is the incident that happened a month ago, Malaysia Airline has lost MH370 flight a Boeing 777 big airplane, there are tons of explanations from different people, and the news keep delivering emotional propaganda like telling everyone to pray and pray but never told any useful information of what’s really happened. News channel was filled up with analysis interviews which only gave people more and more questions in mind rather than telling people the truth. 

Objectives

In this project, I am planning to study the use of combining photography and graphic design skills together to develop this entire project as I personally major in graphic design and photography. 

I plan to conduct a project that involves a promotional video on purpose to improve my personal story narrative skills, cinematography skills, filming skills and editing skills, and I plan to conduct a book project as well to design a book with the topic and theme given above in the statement of the problem, the book will contain the use of conceptual photography on purpose to improve my personal creative thinking skills and planning skills as well as photography techniques and editing techniques in graphic design field, this book project will also help me learn more in graphic design field such as layout and other knowledges related.

I also plan to explore other use of medias to execute my project, in both analogue and digital methods, also to explore the use of combining analogue and digital methods, this will help me practice other skills and experiment on different possibilities to apply to my project, as well as helping me learn more on other uses of medias in a way to widen my personal skills and studies.

Target audience and purposes

In this project, my target audience is scoped to the private education organisations, politicians, and the victims of economy rip-off, aimed to the most people in the world. The purposes of this project are to make people understand that life isn’t only about working for “pointless jobs” in another way, life isn’t just about working for money, instead there are lots of other things that motivate our life; and to speak up and stand for the victims of economic rip-off, to point out the fact of the society corruption in the way to make the corruption guilty by standing for justice.

References

Jason Summers: Problems Of Humanity – A Quick Outline November 30, 2009 - http://www.jasonsummers.org/problems-of-humanity-a-quick-outline/