Alphabet Soup Compress Evaluation

Pairs were picked out of a hat at random. I got paired with Gemma, she evaluated my project by looking at me sketchbook work and final piece. Here is her evaluation.

Final piece - click here to view full project

What is being communicated and how? (refer to the final piece only)

COMPRESS - The way this has been communicated I would say isn't obvious, but when I knew what the theme was it became clear it was being communicated by the compression of a letter to a point it was almost illegible.

How well does this answer the brief? (why do you think this?)

This does answer the brief as the 10 letterforms have been compressed, therefore communicating to the audience. I like how it isn't too obvious at first, as it makes the audience more intrigued, but at the same time it is not impossible to guess.

How well has the idea been visually explored? (refer to research/ sketchbooks)

Ellis has looked into the idea of pixellation in quite a lot of detail, looking at different methods and the different extents to how pixelated something can be. Other approaches to answering the brief have been noted, but dismissed due to being to obvious.

What are the strengths of the resolution? (refer to the whole body of work)

I think the whole idea of pixellation is an interesting way of going about the brief, it's interesting without being 'cliche'. I like how colour has been applied, one colour use twice throughout with several tones, that form the shape of the letter.

How could it be improved?

On a couple of the letters 'g' and 'e' I found it hard to distinguish what they were, other than that they were in alphabetical order.

SELF EVALUATION - COMPRESS

What are the strengths of the project and the final result?

I think my final piece is visually stimulating and is not an obvious conclusion to the set word 'compress'. Although it is not an obvious conclusion, it does take the word 'compress' quite literally (compression of a file). I think the colours go together well. I though if I used a different colour for every letter it might get a bit confused and too busy visually. And would look equally as boring if the letters were all the same colour, I think I have reached a happy medium with the use of one colour for every two letters. I like how the final piece needs spacial awareness, looking close up at the letters the form gets lost and legibility is decreased, but if you stand back and look from a small distance the letters take form and are easier to read. Experimenting with pixellation in my research, with the ways of pixellation and amount, it helped to create a better finished piece because I tried to push the pixellation as far as possible without the letters being illegible.

How could the project output be improved?

Some of the letters, as mentioned in Gemma's evaluation, 'g' and 'e' were hard to work out what letter form they were when set aside from the rest, so maybe some of the letters pixelate worse than others. Wanting the final piece to look like a family I used the same amount of squares for each letter, but in doing this some of the detail gets lost in certain letters. For my research I feel I could have looked further into my other ideas and experimented with them more. Although I feel like a researched enough in the time given.

Overall

Overall I am happy with the final piece. If I have some more time I will look into making the letters more legible.