Design Exploration / Project 1: HONOR Talents Global Design Awards 2023

30.8.2023 - 18.10.2023 (Week 1 - Week 8)

Takuto Hozumi / 0354047 / Bachelor Of Design (Hons) In Creative Media

Design Exploration

Project 1: HONOR Talents Global Design Awards 2023

---

LECTURE

Assignment Overview

Project 1: HONOR Talents Global Design Awards 2023

You are challenged to explore all forms of design skills - graphic, interface and animation. Using the design themes for the HONOR Talents Global Design Awards 2023, create, produce and submit artwork compilation for one of the competition’s category:

• Wallpapers
• Themes
• Watches
• Open design

Choose one of the design themes:

1. Cultural Prosperity · Celebration: A Totem of Renewing Festive Culture

Create with important traditional cultural elements of various countries, such as Lunar New Year, Mid-Autumn Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Christmas, Mother's Day, Day of the Dead, Halloween and Eid al-Fitr.

2. Renewal of life · Return: Contemplate human beings' relationship with all things.

With sustainable development as the starting point, your creations must incorporate the concepts of environmental protection, biodiversity, energy conservation and emissions reduction within the design details.

3. Genesis · The Future: Imagine the Innovative World of the Future

The world of the future will be constructed with the power of technology and art, using creativity and imagination.

Refer to this link for design templates, info and examples of works: https://www.hihonor.com/my/honor-talents/global-design-awards/guide/

---

INSTRUCTION

HONOR Talents Global Design Awards 2023

1. Research

I first checked the selection criteria. The following is taken from the website.

Selection Criteria
Through the fair and professional review process of the HONOR Talents Global Design Awards, we can select the works with the most design, the most innovation and the most market application potential.

1. Aesthetics: strong visual impact, reasonable composition and harmonious color.
   
2. Technological Sense: expressing the innovative beauty of combining tech and art.
   
3. Creativity: The design is ingenious and has original elements.
   
4. Applicability: accurate information transmission, suitable for HONOR consumer products, accessory products and MagicOS, etc.
   
5. Conveying power: showing cultural feelings and humanistic connotations.

I would like to focus on paintings as a representative of aesthetically superior objects. Among them, Art Nouveau designs, which are considered to be decorative and flamboyant, have a graphic design appeal, and often use plants as motifs, which is consistent with the theme of "2. Renewal of life · Return".

Finally, I chose 2. Renewal of life · Return as my theme.

Fig.1: Style of Art Nouveau

Creating originality requires the multiplication of multiple elements. Therefore, I came up with the theme of plants + animals.

After further researching the animals in the design that would go apparently well with the plant pattern, I was attracted to the meanings symbolized by the following 2 animals.

Fig.2: Deer

The deer's characteristic large antlers look like trees at first glance, and I thought they would make an attractive picture plane when combined with plants.

The deer is said to be auspicious as a messenger of the gods. It is said that the deer's antlers are antennas for receiving messages from the gods. Deer are highly spiritual creatures and have the ability to balance their lives by switching between reason and instinct. The spiritual message is that deer are "to be balanced”. Be aware of the need to balance the spiritual world with the material world. It is also a symbol of gentleness and delicacy.

Fig.3: Dog (Legendary Ver.)

Legendary dogs, often placed in religious facilities (shrines, temples, etc.) in Japan and China, have curly hair, and I thought this would also work well with plants such as ivy.

The dogs are said to be incarnations of the dragon god, and in some countries and regions, they are the object of worship. Because of this, in those regions, it is believed that the white dog will be reborn as a human in the next life.

2. Moodboard

In addition to the above research, we collected reference elements such as "zentangles" and "henna tattoos" as plant-like patterns and compiled them in the following Moodboard.

Fig.4: Moodboard (W2)

3. Idea Sketch

I did some quick preliminary sketches to give me an idea of the screen. These are also listed on the Moodboard.

Fig.5: Rough Sketch 1

Fig.6: Rough Sketch 2

Fig.7: Rough Sketch 3

I decided on Fig.6: Rough Sketch 2. 

This set the overall direction of the work: deer and plants in an Art Nouveau-like frame. Then, more specific sketches were made to determine the more detailed composition of the deer.

Fig.8: Sketch (Deer & Botanical Pattern)

The handwriting is not symmetrical in some parts, but this will be corrected during the digitization process.

Fig.9: Final Preliminary Sketch before Digitalization

This is an artboard with the same ratio as the actual requested size (6000px x 3000px), and the frame was inserted into the sketch and composited.

4. Technical Execution

In W3, I considered how to turn Fig. 9: Final Preliminary Sketch into a final artwork.

Data created in Illustrator inevitably has a lot of sticky paint, or worse, it is difficult to create a hand-drawn depth. Therefore, I plan to further process the data produced in Illustrator with Photoshop. In this case, I prepared a simple sample image and identified the type of processing to be applied.

Fig.10: Sample Image

This is a sample of a typical style of illustration created in Illustrator.

Fig.10: Applied Noise

Of all Photoshop's features, the one I found most suitable for Art Nouveau artwork was the noise filter. This is by "Grayscale noise 4~6%, Gaussian scatter".

However, the border becomes blurred and the pattern is not so clear.

Fig.11: Applied Sharp Mask

Apply Sharpen once to define the contour lines.

Fig.12: Applied Sharp & Noise

I think this is okay to set the processing to apply noise after applying sharpening.

In the case of this sample, the overall color has faded and turned out not so good, but the artwork I plan to do will not use bright colors and will have a more subdued overall look.

For reference, the following is a list of artwork I have created in the past using noise.

Fig.13: Design Style Estimation

My past work that would be the closest impression to the outcome of this project should be Fig.13 above.

Fig.14: Start of Path-making Work with Illustrator

For W4 update, The goal is to have a complete data set of Fig. 9 illustrations by W4. I have already started drawing. (13/9/2023)

Fig.15: Week 6 Attempt 1 (20/9/2023)

The data was continued to be converted to data in Illustrator. The artwork was shown to the lecturer for feedback in the Week 6 class. Then obtained suggestions for improvement regarding the design of the picture frame and the background.

Feedback;

First, it was noted that many Art Nouveau frame designs have a circular arc at the upper sine. Since they are characterized by organic forms, I decided to conduct further research over Week 7.

It was also noted that there is a lot of negative space in the background. It was suggested that one idea was to insert a design that looks like used paper.

Fig.16: Reference of Art Nouveau Style 1

Fig.17: Reference of Art Nouveau Style 2

The two figures above are a design drawing by Alphonse Mucha, and a building in Barcelona. In fact, you can see that curves are used extensively. I decided to renew my frame design.

Fig.18: W6 Artwork Design (27/9/2023)

The previous frame design (Fig.15) was very geometric and did not feel very organic. Therefore, this time, the frame was made by placing random shapes in reference to animal patterns.

Fig.19: Layer Separation in Every Object for Animation

My goal till week 6 was to get to the point where I could start working on animation, but I struggled with the frame design and didn't get there. Instead, I organized the naming of all layers and objects in the AI file and completed preparations for smooth importing into After Effects.

Thus, the tasks to be completed by W7 are as follows;

1. Complete the first attempt of the looping animation.
2. Consider the composition when the artwork is set as wallpaper on a cell phone screen. (As Fig.20 below)
3. The artwork is converted into a file for competition entry (Provided PSD file).

Fig.20: Layout into Wallpaper

https://www.hihonor.com/my/honor-talents/2022/winners/

Fig.21: Foldable Wallpapers

5. Submission to the Competition

Participation in the competition was completed by submitting the following requirements through the official HONOR Design Award website.

1. Foldable Wallpapers (JPG)
2. Wallpaper Overall Design (JPG)
3. Animation (MP4)
4. Design Elaboration (PDF)

Fig.22: Submitted

Fig.23: Waiting for Review (7/10/2023)

Postscript;

I checked the website on 11/10/2023 and it passed, so my application is officially complete.

Fig.24: Review Passed (11/10/2023)

---

FINAL OUTCOME

Below are the all artworks for the competition I created for this project.

Fig.25: Foldable Wallpapers (Final ver. 6/10/2023)

Fig.26: Wallpaper Overall Design (Final ver. 6/10/2023)

Fig.27: Animation (Final ver. 6/10/2023)

Fig.28: Design Elaboration (6/10/2023)

---

REFLECTIONS

Experiences

Design Exploration's first assignment was to participate in the HONOR Talents Global Design Awards 2023. I had actually participated in this competition last year in Typography class. At that time, I had only two weeks to work on the project and was not satisfied with the quality of the finished product. But this time, I had a relatively more flexible schedule of 7 weeks and was able to research, make a moodboard, and draw sketches during the conceptualization stage to develop my ideas well. As a result, although I don't think perfect about my work, I do think I managed to produce something better than I did last year.

Observation

I have never been good at creating designs with artistic elements in this way. Even with work and assignments, the practicals generally have a clear goal of a finished product. For example, a client's request is one of them. However, in the case of artistic works, such a thing does not exist. The only thing that can be said is a few words given as the theme of the competition, but they are very abstract. This project reaffirmed for me the importance of careful research at the concept stage.

Findings

At first, I tried to choose a suitable motif for the theme, but this was difficult since I was not given a specific motif. I had to actively determine what the theme would be myself. So, on the contrary, I created a reason that would make the theme conform to what I wanted to create. I like animals, so I set an animal as the theme and summarized the results of my research on it. Simply put, it was after-rationalization. I am still not sure if this is the right way to participate in a competition, but "completing what is required" and "creating something based on your own preferences" are 2 very different feelings, even though they seem to be doing the same designing thing.