Design - Student Works
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Item Exploring inclusive personas for sustainable UX design(2024) Felfly, Ingrid; Macdow-York, Danielle; Santos, Angeline; Sperano, IsabelleWe wanted to explore how Social Sustainability could be incorporated in User Research in the UX Design field. For this, we chose to dive deeper into what inclusivity could look like in "Personas". When personas have a user base, *inclusive personas* look at the commonly unique needs of users in that user base, so that as much as possible, no one is left out. In the process, we used the Categories of Inclusion (Cognitive Differences, Ethnic backgrounds, Physical Capacity, etc.), the Pyramid of Diversity (ranging from No Difficulties to Severe Difficulties), as well as the Persona Spectrum of Scenarios (Permanent, Temporary and Situational) for inspiration. Some of the challenges encountered were: time, research methods, information architecture and visualization, as well as accessibility to user tests. This was a great opportunity for us and it definitely felt like a starting point that opened up more doors about what inclusion could look like in user research in UX Design, and what level of granularity is useful at that stage so that we can make products more accessible to users.Item Mind the service gap: improving UNISON for public safety workers(2024) Chu, Vik; Sperano, IsabelleThe client and community partner for this Design capstone project is UNISON, a web-based application that allows public safety organizations to effectively manage limited resources in order to proactively respond to public safety incidents. This year-long digital experience design (DXD) project allowed students to apply design thinking and the design process to solving real-world problems. The fall semester focused on defining the scope and context of the design problem. Research during this phase was conducted with UNISON and various stakeholders and included methods such as interviews, co-design sessions, and surveys. Design artifacts from these methods include affinity diagrams, various charts and tables, and a final presentation that sums up the discovered issues and opportunities for improvement. Two solutions were proposed, a redesign of the user interface and the creation of a mobile app, both of which were approved by the client to be further developed in the following term. Activities during this second phase focused on the iterative development and refinement of the proposed solutions and included methods such as prototyping, user testing, and additional co-design exercises with the client. The outcome is a product with a more intuitive and helpful user interface that has already been deployed by UNISON. Additionally, the new mobile application will benefit front-line public safety workers in particular by offering critical information at the right time and in the right place.Item Research recast(ed): S2E18 - Student Research Day: student research spotlight - Katryna Yasinski, Madison Karpiak, and Amy Wildeman(2023) Miskiman, Megan; Schabert, Reinette; Yasinski, Katryna; Karpiak, Madison; Wildeman, AmyIn today’s episode, we are joined by three student researchers here at MacEwan: Katryna Yasinski from the Faculty of Fine Arts and Communications, Madison Karpiak from the Faculty of Arts and Science, and Amy Wildeman from the Faculty of Nursing.Item A designer's guide to internationalization and localization of design(2024) Onwudinjo, Jennifer; Ruiz, AdolfoThe Diversity and Adaptability Composition Test (DACT) booklet is a test established to assess the effectiveness of a proposed design. A design must pass the DACT by satisfying a set of checkboxes, questions, and requirements. This test serves as a guiding assessment tool, examining designs to ensure they follow its principles of diversity, inclusion, and adaptability. The DACT aims to create a standard for evaluating how well designs engage a variety of audiences while honouring cultural diversity by outlining precise criteria.Item Research recast(ed): S1E18 - Student Research Day - authenticity, design activism and immersive audio(2022) Ekelund, Brittany; Cave, Dylan; Beaver, Elana; Odashima, Carolina TiemiToday we learn about three more student research projects focused on child and youth care, design and typography, and immersive audio visual scholarship. In our second Student Research Day podcast (and our LAST episode of Season 1), we speak with another three student researchers. First, Elana ‘Lainy’ Beaver talks about her part in a course-based research project on authenticity in child and youth care. Next, we sit down with Carolina Tiemi Odashima to talk about design and typography as we touch on all four projects she presented this past year. Lastly, our very own Dylan Cave is interviewed on his scholarship on immersive audio visual research, and using modern technology to elevate a traditionally developed ballet to bring the art form to a new standard.Item Exploration of human anatomy and fashion in digital illustration(2023) Ly, Long; Visscher, AlmaThe goal of this project is to explore human anatomy and fashion through the medium of digital illustration. Because society moves at such a rapid pace, individuals are less likely to appreciate the people or the world around them. As a result, one's appearance becomes a vital determining factor in people's perception of each other. The purpose is to look at how fashion changes a person’s first impression based on their clothing styles. A person's appearance could feel different based on the ratio, colour combinations, and texture of their clothes regarding their body shape. The core learning of this project comes from the Advance Fundamental Class by TB Choi, a character concept artist, through the support of Student Undergraduate Research Funding. With the guided exercises about three-dimensional form and poses, clothes wrinkles, face and hair, the class heavily emphasizes the attention to line weight's expression. By describing the subject clearly through lines, it speeds up the coloring and rendering process by solving the form and space questions before tackling the hue, brightness, and saturation of the subject. The progress of this project is shown through the artist's class exercise while it also reflects through different projects that occur during the time, which included human anatomy speed sketches, Charles Bargue's sculpture drawing study, tote bag contribution, and storytelling through images.Item Film-to-Book Design(2023) Cayanan, Barbie; Pacher, ConstanzaDead Poets Society is a movie directed by Peter Weir, written by Tom Schulman and a novel adaptation by N.H Kleinbaum. DPS follows the lives of the students of Welton Academy, balancing stressful classes and extracurriculars for a successful future. The rare opportunity of discovering their passions and identities arrives; a new English teacher has been hired and changed their teenage lives forever. The book's cover is reminiscent of the poetry book (Five Centuries of Verse) that the students read in their DPS meetings, from the textured font, the golden wreath and the wear and tear that's complimented with references, quotes, key items and visuals on the inside. Each chapter's beginning, midway or end has important details, evidence of teenagers messing with the book or overall time wearing down the quality after every use. DPS was set in 1959, and the novel uses serif typefaces (Miller Text), type with texture (the title and typewriter notes) and handwritten poems, quotes and doodles to put the reader in the mindset of a teenager in an old boarding school. All dark academia elements, visuals of wear and tear on the cover and each page, handwritten details, limited colour scheme and textured type create a cohesive message that separates the novel from the film. The redesign proves the book did not lazily copy scene by scene and line by line. It provides a different experience and different perspective of the story.Item Light photography concept for the album design of Pipe Dreams by Jim Walker and The MacEwan Generations Big Band(2023) Hussein, Daenya; Pacher, ConstanzaThe album Pipe Dreams by Jim Walker and The MacEwan Generations Big Band captures the fluidity and essence of Jazz and Big Band in one record. We hear notes of South American, East Indian, and Celtic vibes to start the unique record off. The fusion of Jazz and Big Band in the album has a mix of energy, excitement, and spontaneity in Jazz but the controlled discipline of Big Band. The concept for the album's design was to capture the two sensations of sound and movement into one cohesive creation. Light photography was used to display the feeling of movement and energy captured from the album. As a soft reminder of the tones used in the first three tracks, the use of dominant flag colours of Brazil, India, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland are displayed in the light painting. To keep a consistent tone, the typeface Abril Fatface is used to echo the feel of Big Band and Century Gothic for the secondary header to keep the balance. As the light painting streaks across the cover, it guides the viewer to the back with the title tracks and the continuation of the light painting. As we open the album, we slide out the record and insert to see the consistent use of light painting at a macro scale. The use of complementary colours, orange and blue, as subtle reminders of the colours in the light painting from the album cover.Item Horoscope wheel for the Book of the Year 2022/23 - Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch by Rivka Galchen(2023) Hussein, Daenya; Pacher, ConstanzaThe dark-humoured and satirical novel, Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch by Rivka Galchen is a historical fiction story of a German widow Katharina Kepler who is accused of being a witch. As a result, Katharina is taken to trial for her accused wrongdoings, and she is soon helped by her Imperial Mathematician son, Johannes Kepler. The inspiration to create a horoscope wheel came from the character of Johannes Kepler, an actual individual from the 17th century who was an imperial mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, natural philosopher, and writer of music. The concept was that Johannes created this wheel with horoscopes that foretold his mother's future. The horoscopes go back to the story and borrow the good and bad events that happened to Katharina Kepler. The primary colour of purple was inspired by the original cover for the book Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch, with hints of gold as accent colours and white and light purple to stay on a similar colour palette. The typeface Menuetto, created by the German typesetter Dieter Steffmann in 1994, is a modern twist on the old Gothic German type used for the primary type of the horoscope wheel. The horoscopes may only match Katharina Kepler, but it’s a fun idea and design to acquire someone’s interest in reading the novel Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch by Rivka Galchen.Item Competition submission for the 'Pipe Dreams' album(2023) Onwudinjo, Jennifer; Pacher, ConstanzaJazz is a genre that tends to pull its listener in. This is expressed by turning a two-dimensional surface into a three-dimensional experience. It visually draws the viewer into experiencing the album’s spirit and feeling. Creating this illusion of depth is done with the use of layers. Each layer represents a single note in music and when layered they make a beautiful composition.Item A story told through recipes(2023) Onwudinjo, Jennifer; Pacher, ConstanzaThe package design for herbal remedy flashcards. The design is centred on the relationship that exists between rumours and truth. The box is designed with a witch concept and leads users to believe what is inside has something to do with being a witch, but the user discovers that this is far from the truth and all the box contains are recipes for how to cure illnesses. In the same way, Katarina was only trying to help but was accused of being a witch. Rumours may say one thing, but the truth can be entirely different.Item Unspeakable: a game adaptation of MacEwan's Book of the Year design series "How to Pronounce Knife"(2022) Tolentino, Kayla; Pacher, ConstanzaLanguage has a significant part in the book How To Pronounce Knife. Many of the characters from the book encounter challenges in their everyday lives that have to do with language but still embrace who they are, and they don’t try to be what societal norms are. This ideal and raw characteristic of the characters from the books is what inspired this card game. Unspeakable is a card game that challenges players to guess words and phrases based on the book how to pronounce knife. It is perfect for people who read the book. The game involves acting phrases or words from the book provided by the other team. The objective is to have your team guess the answer without talking and using gestures alone. The game is easy to play anywhere, requires less preparation but needs a lot of imagination. It is created to learn how to communicate with others without using a single word and get rid of language barriers, just like how the characters in the book show so many ways to communicate, not just by language but also through gestures and connections. The packaging design reflects the lightness of the short stories and how ferocious the characters are. Vibrant colours are used to demonstrate the character’s rich experiences and to break how society describes immigrants’ lives as sad and tragic. The primary colours are red, white, and yellow to unify it with the book still. The unique, minimalistic, and joyful shapes mirror the book’s artful blend of simplicity and sophistication. The wordmark logo represents fold pages to indicate how the game is based on a compilation of short stories. There are 100 cards with words or phrases from the book, a sand timer, a score-pad, and a game guide inside the box. The cards are also colourful to keep the dynamic feeling from the packaging to the inside. The words are bolded and have a page number beneath so the players can still reference where the word or phrase came from in the book. Overall, the design makes the packaging dynamic and whimsical, which associates with the book’s general feel.Item Unspeakable: a game adaptation of MacEwan's Book of the Year design series "How to Pronounce Knife"(2022) Tolentino, Kayla; Pacher, ConstanzaLanguage has a significant part in the book How To Pronounce Knife. Many of the characters from the book encounter challenges in their everyday lives that have to do with language but still embrace who they are, and they don’t try to be what societal norms are. This ideal and raw characteristic of the characters from the books is what inspired this card game. Unspeakable is a card game that challenges players to guess words and phrases based on the book how to pronounce knife. It is perfect for people who read the book. The game involves acting phrases or words from the book provided by the other team. The objective is to have your team guess the answer without talking and using gestures alone. The game is easy to play anywhere, requires less preparation but needs a lot of imagination. It is created to learn how to communicate with others without using a single word and get rid of language barriers, just like how the characters in the book show so many ways to communicate, not just by language but also through gestures and connections. The packaging design reflects the lightness of the short stories and how ferocious the characters are. Vibrant colours are used to demonstrate the character’s rich experiences and to break how society describes immigrants’ lives as sad and tragic. The primary colours are red, white, and yellow to unify it with the book still. The unique, minimalistic, and joyful shapes mirror the book’s artful blend of simplicity and sophistication. The wordmark logo represents fold pages to indicate how the game is based on a compilation of short stories. There are 100 cards with words or phrases from the book, a sand timer, a score-pad, and a game guide inside the box. The cards are also colourful to keep the dynamic feeling from the packaging to the inside. The words are bolded and have a page number beneath so the players can still reference where the word or phrase came from in the book. Overall, the design makes the packaging dynamic and whimsical, which associates with the book’s general feel.Item Unspeakable: a game adaptation of MacEwan's Book of the Year design series "How to Pronounce Knife"(2022) Tolentino, Kayla; Pacher, ConstanzaLanguage has a significant part in the book How To Pronounce Knife. Many of the characters from the book encounter challenges in their everyday lives that have to do with language but still embrace who they are, and they don’t try to be what societal norms are. This ideal and raw characteristic of the characters from the books is what inspired this card game. Unspeakable is a card game that challenges players to guess words and phrases based on the book how to pronounce knife. It is perfect for people who read the book. The game involves acting phrases or words from the book provided by the other team. The objective is to have your team guess the answer without talking and using gestures alone. The game is easy to play anywhere, requires less preparation but needs a lot of imagination. It is created to learn how to communicate with others without using a single word and get rid of language barriers, just like how the characters in the book show so many ways to communicate, not just by language but also through gestures and connections. The packaging design reflects the lightness of the short stories and how ferocious the characters are. Vibrant colours are used to demonstrate the character’s rich experiences and to break how society describes immigrants’ lives as sad and tragic. The primary colours are red, white, and yellow to unify it with the book still. The unique, minimalistic, and joyful shapes mirror the book’s artful blend of simplicity and sophistication. The wordmark logo represents fold pages to indicate how the game is based on a compilation of short stories. There are 100 cards with words or phrases from the book, a sand timer, a score-pad, and a game guide inside the box. The cards are also colourful to keep the dynamic feeling from the packaging to the inside. The words are bolded and have a page number beneath so the players can still reference where the word or phrase came from in the book. Overall, the design makes the packaging dynamic and whimsical, which associates with the book’s general feel.Item Experimental type - The city by Ray Bradbury part I(2022) Tolentino, Kayla; Pacher, ConstanzaThe City by Ray Bradbury is about an unpopulated planet far from the Earth. The city waited twenty thousand years for the men to arrive and designed to kill them to seek revenge because they were the enemies who abolished Taollans twenty thousand years ago. The first part mainly describes what the city looks like and how the men arrive. It started from a peaceful arrival that made the men keep going to see what was in the city. The city’s senses speak to each other, as the Ears and the Nose take in information about the visitors and ask the Eyes to watch them as they explore. One of the men senses something familiar about the place. The men begin to panic as the city fully awakens. The layout’s design pulls inspiration from the flow of the story. The first page reflects how the arrival of men is peaceful. The text is also left-justified to portray how everything is going evenly. It is where the city is trying to gain the men’s trust to stay longer. However, the second page talks about how the city lures the men and traps them. Some men have mixed feelings about the city, and the city’s senses are starting to wake up. The idea behind the bad rags and different placement of texts is to show the chaos happening to the story. The city’s dialogue is calmer, depicting its actions. It’s in a serif typeface to show that the city is old, and the men’s dialogue is more disorganized as they start to question and get a discernment that something is wrong with the city. It is in sans-serif to portray a modern feel. The city’s senses are in sans-serif and bold to highlight the city’s covert actions. Additionally, it has glitching background elements, mainly on the second page, describing the chaos and violence as the city traps and tries to wipe the men out.Item Book design - A collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe(2022) Drouin, Ashley; Pacher, ConstanzaThe goal of this project was to redesign a book or a collection of stories. This book consists of six short stories written by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is known for his horror stories and poems that deal with mystery, death, and other macabre subject matter. The cover design includes a dripping blood illustration above a rich red background. The colour and design of the cover represent murder and death, which are major themes present in Poe’s writing. The typeface is a clean sans-serif font written in large white letters which gives the book a modern feel and contrasts against the red. The inside cover is black with white illustrations of a cat and a heart. These two illustrations are images that relate to two of Poe’s most well-known stories, The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat. The interior includes a small illustration at the beginning of each story and a black and white texture on the left page. Each illustration and texture is different and represents a specific symbol, theme, or emotion of that particular story. Lapture Display is used for the chapter openings, a serif typeface with jagged and sharply cut edges. This typeface works well with Poe’s work due to its edginess and gives the book an unsettling feel. The illustrations play off of this font due to their use of simple black lines with a mixture of soft curves and sharp points.Item Book design - A collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe(2022) Drouin, Ashley; Pacher, ConstanzaThe goal of this project was to redesign a book or a collection of stories. This book consists of six short stories written by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is known for his horror stories and poems that deal with mystery, death, and other macabre subject matter. The cover design includes a dripping blood illustration above a rich red background. The colour and design of the cover represent murder and death, which are major themes present in Poe’s writing. The typeface is a clean sans-serif font written in large white letters which gives the book a modern feel and contrasts against the red. The inside cover is black with white illustrations of a cat and a heart. These two illustrations are images that relate to two of Poe’s most well-known stories, The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat. The interior includes a small illustration at the beginning of each story and a black and white texture on the left page. Each illustration and texture is different and represents a specific symbol, theme, or emotion of that particular story. Lapture Display is used for the chapter openings, a serif typeface with jagged and sharply cut edges. This typeface works well with Poe’s work due to its edginess and gives the book an unsettling feel. The illustrations play off of this font due to their use of simple black lines with a mixture of soft curves and sharp points.Item Book design - A collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe(2022) Drouin, Ashley; Pacher, ConstanzaThe goal of this project was to redesign a book or a collection of stories. This book consists of six short stories written by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is known for his horror stories and poems that deal with mystery, death, and other macabre subject matter. The cover design includes a dripping blood illustration above a rich red background. The colour and design of the cover represent murder and death, which are major themes present in Poe’s writing. The typeface is a clean sans-serif font written in large white letters which gives the book a modern feel and contrasts against the red. The inside cover is black with white illustrations of a cat and a heart. These two illustrations are images that relate to two of Poe’s most well-known stories, The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat. The interior includes a small illustration at the beginning of each story and a black and white texture on the left page. Each illustration and texture is different and represents a specific symbol, theme, or emotion of that particular story. Lapture Display is used for the chapter openings, a serif typeface with jagged and sharply cut edges. This typeface works well with Poe’s work due to its edginess and gives the book an unsettling feel. The illustrations play off of this font due to their use of simple black lines with a mixture of soft curves and sharp points.Item A typographic interpretation of “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury(2022) Blaak, Rachel; Pacher, Constanza“The Pedestrian” is the short story by Ray Bradbury about a night in the life of Leonard Mead. Set in a dystopian 2053, Mead is walking alone through his neighbourhood when he is confronted by a police car. After struggling to understand his reasoning behind going for a walk, the police car arrests Mead, explaining that he is being sent to a psychiatric facility. This final design is playing off of the intrusive nature of the car’s speech. It is very aggressive in its tone as compared to Mead’s soft descriptive nature. When approaching this project, it was apparent that the car’s dialogue must be all-caps and sans-serif. On the other hand, Mead is a writer by profession, being very descriptive and poetic in his narration, calling for a soft serif with plenty of rags, creating fluid shapes. The two types of dialogue are very different to represent the difference between human nature and that of a robotic car. The car is not engaged in the conversation, shown by being right-aligned, as if they were two separate monologues. The small caps within the body text represent the cold nature of the scene the reader is placed in. The Background imagery is an abstract rendering of headlights to show that car’s presence. The car’s speech changes in value depending on its volume, getting dark the softer its tone is.Item A typographic interpretation of “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury(2022) Blaak, Rachel; Pacher, Constanza“The Pedestrian” is the short story by Ray Bradbury about a night in the life of Leonard Mead. Set in a dystopian 2053, Mead is walking alone through his neighbourhood when he is confronted by a police car. After struggling to understand his reasoning behind going for a walk, the police car arrests Mead, explaining that he is being sent to a psychiatric facility. This final design is playing off of the intrusive nature of the car’s speech. It is very aggressive in its tone as compared to Mead’s soft descriptive nature. When approaching this project, it was apparent that the car’s dialogue must be all-caps and sans-serif. On the other hand, Mead is a writer by profession, being very descriptive and poetic in his narration, calling for a soft serif with plenty of rags, creating fluid shapes. The two types of dialogue are very different to represent the difference between human nature and that of a robotic car. The car is not engaged in the conversation, shown by being right-aligned, as if they were two separate monologues. The small caps within the body text represent the cold nature of the scene the reader is placed in. The Background imagery is an abstract rendering of headlights to show that car’s presence. The car’s speech changes in value depending on its volume, getting dark the softer its tone is.