Blog Posts I Didn't Make for SX

8/19/2019 Blog Posts I Didn't Make for SX

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Alice So Far19 Blog Posts I Didn’t Make


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Remember this mess? An escape room / advice on

stress, it’s circular nature and the power of the

individual to control it? I remember it, but not the

appeal it held at the time.

During crit, there was some feedback that it was too

complicated for the allotted time and the concept

was coming through more as hopelessness than

anything. At the time, I was a bit disappointed,

having been really caught up in the characters Iwould get to portray. A few weeks later, I am so glad

it was pared down (and that I took that advice). I’ve

gone from 6 rooms to 2, and had the energy to

make each of them pretty in depth.


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During crit it was suggested that I focus on the light-

switch room because of it’s interactivity and

originality (the other rooms were all pretty heavily

based on the struggle to wake up and get to work in

the morning).

The light-switch room has walls tiled in switches of

all sorts and a good deal of pull strings hanging

from the ceiling. Guests are let into this room in

small 2-5 person groups (like escape rooms). Theyare not allowed to leave through the same door they

entered through, but no other door is immediately

noticeable. In dim lighting they would all try different

switches looking for the one that reviles the exit.

Each switch or pull would have various results:


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• no effect• strobe lights• some string pulls being

retracted or dropped into reach• different colored spot lights• sounds or voices


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The most important effect is the spotlights. A certain

combination of switches causes a combination of

spotlights that revile the shadow of the exit door.

This allows the guests to the next… room / tunnel

thing with a feeling of exhilarated accomplishment.


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In the draft above, I looked at a pyramid shaped

room and a cylindrical room with a rounded ceiling,wondering which would mess with perspective and

depth the most when reaching for light pulls.

I had guests entering over a story tall ramp (for no

apparent reason) and through a curtain that would

take up the whole width of the Tate. This wassupposed to make the exit a mystery, but as you see

below, was deemed (by me) to be far over the top.

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Here you can see the space saving, more modest

version of the same rounded room. This is when I

realized the ramp and the spiral path for the exit had

no meaning.


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Looking for that reason, as well as some resolution

to the puzzle (it seemed rather pointlessly frustrating

if you solved it and got nothing), I looked back to

the source material. Alice’s first goal is to get to the

garden. My original maze of weirdness ended in aplace to relax and take a breath. These two goals

go together well.

The spiral exit from the light-switch room is now

inclosed, preserving the surprise for those who

haven’t been through the light switch room andpreserving the quiet privacy for those who have. The

walls are filled with gravity defying sculptures of

beautiful garden plants and the smell of fresh cut

grass (I’m sure Febreze has it). Hopefully they leave

this tunnel of greenery feeling calm, and sated.


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This inclosed tunnel would make a cross-section of

the rooms look like a double walled thermos. Frank,

if you don’t recognize this, you drew it. I’m keeping i

close to remind myself not only to do the cross-section, but also the 3/4 view and a flat view.

We also discussed what the outside would look like.

It could be something decorative or some stark.

Either one could completely hide the experience on

the inside. I considered a shipping container, but Ithink I’m going with a concrete block, much larger

than the room inside for some disorientation. The

outside would be strong and forbidding, the inside a

mental challenge and the exit organic and smooth.


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At this point, I started getting too complicatedagain. Frank advised me to try doing the light-switch

room with the most depth, maybe even doing an

animated gif showing it working. I’m still pretty

attached to the garden at the end. We’ll see how I

can work with both of those and the time limit (much

more limited than it should be due to my beingbehind in every other class as well).


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These are the approximate dimensions of the room.

The person shown is an adult as you can tell by

multiple anatomical markers and my extreme skillwith life drawing. The room would be a bit tight for 5

people and a bit empty with 2.

I drew this intending to pull it into illustrator and pen

tool over it, starting my final architectural drawingsof the exhibit. At this point I was a week and a half

behind the schedule I’d given myself. I also forgot

about branding.


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5


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Frank gave me the go ahead to either finish the

architectural drawings or start on branding. I knew if

I finished the drawings, I would find something inthe branding that caused me to change the exhibit

itself, so I went to logo sketches. Neither they, nor

the names came easily. I did decide at this point

though, that I wasn’t so afraid of including a bit of

victorian aesthetics in either the branding or theexhibit itself. A little bit of a steam punk feeling

started to creep in with all the light switches and

frills I kept ending up with.


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6


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These are the favorite sketches I ended up with. I

couldn’t really decide between them, so I decided

to make a brand board for each and see which was

the most successful.


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This is where going out of chronological order is

actually more ordered. This is the most recent and

fastest failing logo consept. It’s the top right logo

sketch shown above. I tried refining it in illustraitor at

first, the same way I’d treeted the other logorefinements, but it wasn’t working. In this case, I

went analogue (probably the influence of all the

hand type we had been doing in Type 4) for the

smoother frills I could get with a pen versus a pen

tool in illustrator. My plan was to take it back to

digital, image trace and start making glowing

somehow in the computer. I didn’t get that far

though, because I talked with Frank first. I’d gotten

one of the earlier logos to work, and time was

definitely passing.

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This was not that logo. It was one I spent an undo

amount of time on though. The tag says “try me,”

which would be the actual title of the exhibit, but

“don’t touch” stood out much more. It was suposed

to have a contradictory, mischievous tone to it.


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The brand board above was ridiculously fun to

make. I really enjoyed working with the keywords

“mischievous, impulsive, ornate and high energy.”

Imagining this one, I was very much in a steam

punk and fairies world.


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I even started remaking a pattern to use. I don’t

know why. This is pretty obviously a waist of time in

hindsight. I think I was intending to use this

branding with out doing further explorations. I was

taking a lot of time and wanted to start rushing,

either that, or I just got in a pixel pushing trance.

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This was the second mood / brand board I made.

While I was adamant at the beginning of branding

that I wouldn’t use a light bulb as the logo (the first

thing I thought of), this was different enough and

whimsical enough that I felt comfortable breaking

my own rule. I talked to Frank, and we agreed that

this direction was working the best, so I starteddeveloping it.


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I have very little to say about these. They wereextremely slow going and uninspired. There was

trouble making both the mushroom and the light

bulb readable. I tried adding spots to the mushroom

and shine to the light bulb, which made it

overcomplicated. I added threads to the lightbulb,

which I was unsure of, but kept.

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T M ! " #

M e

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M e

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9


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In the next step, I reduced the number of threads

and tried different treatments of them. I was much

happier with these.


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! " #M e


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This is the responsive logo set for this direction. I

wasn’t sure weather the type or the mushroom was

the smallest version. It was fun to make, but also not

reading right. The small mushroom was neither a

mushroom or a lightbulb to viewers.

In desk crits, we discussed the type and how it may

be a little much to have two such expressive

typefaces in the logo itself. I think I usually go over

the top in the beginning phases of projects, andwhen asked to reign it in, I don’t really know where

to go. That’s why I tried even though it wasn’t a

requirement. reigning the extra in is a skill I could

develop more, so it’s what I’ve got to practice.

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! "# % &

! "# $% ! " #$ %10

Winner of thi


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This is me trying to make the text less wiled, and the

mushroom more legible. Not quite there, but I found

one I want to continue with. This was the point where

started seeing the ghost of the architectural drawings

in my dreams, wondering how far I’d gotten on that

and why I wasn’t working on it at that moment.

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! "# %&

try me ! "# %& ! "# %& ! "# %t r y m e T RY M E

t ry me t ry me ! "# %& t r y m e

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This is a type exploration… ick. There’s going to

have to be a lot of changes over spring brake.

Next Steps:


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e t Steps

1. Choose a logo. Spend 30 minutes refining it.2. Refine the brand board to go with that logo. 30

minutes.

3. Sketch poster, invitation, catologue and website. 1

hour total.

4. Vectorize architectural images. 2 hours (I will

probably need more time, but am trying to work

faster, so I’ll give myself harsh timeframes).

5. Spend 30 min refining each piece of the collateral6. Put images into presentation and on blog. 20

minutes.

7. Wright bullet pointed script for presentation. 1

hour.

8. Practice presentation. 1 hour.


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30+30+60+120+(30x4)+20+60+60= 620 minutes or 10.33


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See late blog post count continued in my blog about theshow concept development.

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Blog Posts I Didn't Make for SX