User:Dennis van Vreden/descriptions

Description 1

For my Bachelor I had two graduation projects, an individual concept and an assigned project. I will describe the second. It is a visual identity for the Randstad area of the Netherlands as a contender to be Europe's Cultural Capital for 2018. It consist of several poster, letterheads, business cards and also visualizations of what the buildings and lighting would be like in lectures or exhibitions as well as designs for cars and trucks.
The concept for the identity was inspired by the amount of different cultures that exist within the Randstad area. I took a two portraits of a typical Dutch man and a woman of Turkish original heritage and used them as the base of my poster. Stylizing them to colorful icons and for each subject, film, architecture, dance, fashion and art I placed a different over the portrait and let the form connect with the portrait. For example the woman's portrait has a burka so I placed Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl Earring on top. As a top layer, in the center, you would find all the information as the logo, date, event, and location as well as an internet link.

To make a visual identity I use Adobe Indesign as my software program, because in Graphic Design I work a lot with typefaces and text editing in which Indesign gives a good range of options. By buying a Macbook Pro during my graduation year it allowed me to work on my visual identity everywhere I went, because I made everything from the posters to the letterheads all by using computer software which allowed me to travel in the country and be in the surroundings that I was making a visual identity for.
The base poster portraits I made with a certain vector technique in Adobe Photoshop. By degrading the full color image into only 6 layers of color I created nice layer shapes and have them each a nice contemporary color to go beneath the eventual subject.
For each subject I used a different photo related to the event the poster would be advertising for. This was all done in Photoshop. Each top layer would get a certain layer mode (called Lighten) in which only the lighter colors of the overlapping photo would show. So in theory you can see the face of the man or woman in between the gaps that were left from the darker colors that would not overlap.
The hierarchy of the top layer would be in the following order of font size and importance: Logo first; "R:", sublogo second;"Randstad, Culturele Hoofdstad, Europa 2018", event name third; for example it would read "The Golden Age", date and location fourth.

My idea of using a lot of color together with the human aspect of the edited portrait was to show a positive aspect of the multiple colorful people that live in the Netherlands, especially in the Randstad. To show that our country isn't just defined by windmills and 'wooden shoes', but rather show it's richness in different cultures that come together to create their own unique and open society. With open I definitely refer to the general open minded state the Netherlands has and also it's willingness to go beyond what is the standard. It was also important to not be idealizing the country's image, but still specifically show it's positive side, maybe even the country it could be.
As for specific design decisions, to start, it was a contemporary design using contemporary colors. Maybe even focussing on Rotterdam with it's modern looks since most of the city was destroyed during the second World War, so it was a conscious decision to focus on the now, and the future. Instead of referring to the Netherlands' past.
To give an example of one specific poster and what went on in the decision making: I had this image in my mind of a beautiful woman in burka filled with colorful patterns walking through the Rijksmuseum and Dutch Golden Age paintings. The idea that this combination would be very common in the Netherlands, but I thought would also give the Randstad one of it's unique settings. These cultures that in theory would perhaps clash could blend perfectly in an aesthetic way. So by placing Vermeer's classic Girl with the Pearl Earring's face as a layer on top of the woman in the burka's face it blended perfectly. I also felt like this was a sort of justification for the Dutch themselves, since a lot of talk was about the banning of the kerchief and the forcing of taking integration classes and learning the Dutch language, completely losing their heritage.

Description 2

The project will be an online film with cinemagraphs. A cinemagraph is a gif file that comes across as a photograph but has a slight movement somewhere. The form would be a database of cinemagraphs online in which you can choose your own narrative, make up your own story. The images would consist of moving portraits of people with short subtitles underneath and shots of scenery. It would be an experiment with how free we can get with a narrative in an online format.

Description 3

The Wonderful Media Design Technicolor Experience and ビヨンセ! Biyonse are two interactive installations.

Both the installations The Wonderful Media Design Technicolor Experience and ビヨンセ! Biyonse had the same setup, but were different in topic. They were set up with a projection and a Kinect underneath it. They also both had music and a center spot facing the projection where the ‘user’ gets in the Kinects radius.

TWMDTE* was exhibited for one day only, while Biyonse ran for four weeks in the gallery of Roodkapje in Rotterdam.
The installations used the Kinect to recognize the users skeletons and movement. The user enters the room not really knowing what will happen. As soon as they approach the center spots laid out in front of the projection the Kinect immediately reads the user and either Beyoncé or Dorothy pops up in the screen and reacts to every movement of the user. The techniques that were used in the animation and Kinect were Processing and Animata.
TWMDTE was developed to coincide with the Musical Symposium that took place during the Open Day at the Piet Zwart Institute to represent the Media Design department. Biyonse was a follow up installation to see it in a gallery space and watch the response. There is something quite fascinating to see people react when all of a sudden whatever they do is reinterpreted by technology and acted out into a superstar.

Description 4

Musicaloke is an interactive virtual product allowing the user to choose a character/celebrity/moviestar they want to become in their own virtual reality.
This product also works with the Kinect to recognize the users movement. It’s functions are based on a Karaoke machine. You choose a song and the character you want to become. You take a spot in front of the machine and start moving to the music and basically live your own fantasy life for a minute.

Developed for leisure, but also to boost creativity. Musicaloke is there to envision your fantasies in a musical way. Creating your own virtual reality as well as experiencing it in reality. It can be used for personal use as a sleeve+application for your laptop.