Techniques, Materials, tools and Equipment used in Design and Manufacture (2.1,2.2,2.3,2.4)

There are many essentials of techniques and materials which are used in design. It allows artists and designers to be freely creative and produce their desired work.




I am going to list a few techniques which are used in design:-




(Techniques which are commonly used in design work)




Patterns..
- Sun Rays/Lighting/Rays of Light




- Coloured Silhouettes




- Ink Splatters/Swirls/Florishes




- Flowing lines




- The 'Smoke effect'








- Contrast




- Gradient




- Colour




- Letter Spacing




- Case




(Upper Case & Lower Case)




- Anti-Aliasing




(Smooth/Sharp edges...Things that look perfect don't always look interesting, if things are messed up a little, such as blurring the background or adding a lens flare to a photograph, adds depth and interest.)




- Imperfection




(Imperfect your image, for example you can make a paper photograph appear ancient, dirty and old by adding a brown contrast colour to the white edges of the page.)




- Blur




(Blurring one object, brings focus to the other e.g. Gaussian blur tool/ windows vista Aero theme blurs any elements thats behind it, giving it a layer depth effect.)




- Alignment




(Aligning a part of a logo or rotating creates interest.)




- Trim Fat




(Trimming unecessary components)








Materials/Equipment and Tools used




We use many equipment and tools etc in the workplace to fulfill our needs and requirements in order to complete and work on projects. Today we have many better equipment than back then. Artists now have the latest equipment of technology which allows them in a more efficient way to be creative.




To start off with we need the basic tools and equipment such as:-




- Computers are the main design tool, it's not just the use of producing your designs but its also used for business purposes e.g. emails
- Mouse
- Keyboard
- Desks
- Chairs
- Windows Vista
- (Stationery)
- Paper
- Pens/Pencils
- Notepads/sketchpads for scribbling down ideas and sketches to start off the project, brainstoms and   mock-ups.
- Sticky notes
- Folders for maybe internal use
- Graphic design books for inspiration and technical help etc.
- Pens
- Ink Jet Printers
- Enevelopes/Parcel materials
- Filing Cabinets to keep things organised and filed
- Scanners
- Photocopiers
- Graphic Tablets
- External USB Firewire hard drive for backing up files




These are just a few of the available materials which we use here at T2 and are materials which designers/artists now can use than which they couldn't before. Before computers it was all hands on work using physical equipment to come up with new design concepts, such as measuring tools, exacto blades, chemicals, paints, pencils, sketchpads and so on.




The software which we use in design




Adobe Software:-




Photoshop;




This software works with pixels and is used for the editing stage of the process in the design industry. It is mainly used by graphic designers, photographers and image manipulators. This software allows the creation of images from scratch or even to edit an existing file. There are advanced features and tools that can be used in photoshop such as, Layers, colour correction/modes, history brush etc. which is useful for editing manipulation. This software is generally used for photographs, manipulation, texture editing, correcting etc.




Illustrator;




This software works with vector graphics and is used by most artists/designers. It is a common used software for the creation of art, logos, cartoons, illustrations, drawings etc. Vector graphics are mathematically made up of anchor points and paths. It is the most suitable software to use for the main designing stage, as vector graphics produce the best quality image and can be scaled up or down as desired without any pixelation.




InDesign;




This software works well with other adobe programmes and is used by most designers. It is really useful for layouts and the design of documents such as; Brochures, leaflets, magazines/books, menus, cd covers, flyers, posters and many more types of documents.
In Design allows you to align everything correctly in it's actual size using guidelines, x/y etc. It also allows you to use many tools like illustrator and frames or grids. Another clever feature that can be used in this software is that you can 'undo' as many times as you require (all the way back to the opening of the document) This is efficient for many designers incase a mistake is made. Also to increase the speed of the running of the software, Indesign sets the display performance to a 'low/standard display performance' (which keeps a fast running flow of the program) However, if it is changed to 'High quality display' It may slow down the program as Indesign is showing all of the elements in a high resolution display.




Flash;




This is the software that maybe banner creaters use to creat online interfaces and online gaming. Flash is also used for animated websites, online videos, flash games and website interfaces.




Autodesk 3d Studio Max;




Autodesk 3ds max (and 3ds max design) software provide a powerful use of 3d modelling, animation, rendering and tools that enable artists and designers to quickly produce for production. It is a 3d computer graphics software which has modelling capabilities and has a flexible plug in. The two versions share the same technology and features but they both have different experiences and specialised tools.
This software is frequently used by Visual effects artists, 3d artists, graphic designers, architects, Tv commercial and visualisation studios. It is also used for movie effects and movie pre-visualisation. It is a customisable user interface, it has normal map creation and rendering, global illumination and has its very own scripting language.




Rendering;
There are many types of renders and plugins which are used for different purposes.




Scanline rendering (which we use at T2) - This is the default rendering method in max which over the years has had several advanced features that have been added to this type of render, such as; global illumination, radiosity and ray tracing.




Mental Ray - This is a production quality renderer which is integrated into the later versions of max, and is a powerful ray tracing renderer with 'bucket rendering'. This is a technique that allows distributing the rendering task for a single image between several computer efficiently.




Rendering Man - This has a third party connection tool which is available for those that need to integrate max into render man render forms. This type of rendering can make Pixar's films.




V-Ray (which we use at T2) - This is a third party render engine plug-in for 3ds max. It is used widely which frequently substitutes the standard and mental ray renders that are included in max.
V-Ray continues to be compatible with older versions of max.




Brazil R/S - This is a third party high quality photorealistic rendering system which is capable of fast ray tracing and global illumination.




Final Render - This is another third party ray tracing render engine which is capable of stimulating a wide range of real world physical effects/phenomena.




Fry Render - A third party, photorealistic physically based, unbiased and spectral renderer which is capable of high quality and realism.




Arion Render - A third party hybrid interactive, unbiased raytracer which is based on Nvidia CUDA.




Indigo Renderer -  This is also a third party photorealistic renderer with plugins for 3d Studio Max.




Maxwell Renderer - This is a third party photorealistic rendering system which provides robust materials and highly accurate unbiased rendering.




Octone Render - This is a third party unbiased ray tracer with plugins for 3d studio max and is based on Nvidia CUDA.




Big Render 3.0 - Another third party rendering plugin. This is capable of overcoming 3ds rendering memory limitations with rendering large pictures.




Lux Render - This is an open source ray tracer which supports 3ds max, cinema 4d, soft image and blender. This renderer focuses on photorealism by stimulating real light physics as much as possible.




Software Release Dates:-




Adobe Photoshop;




Photoshop CS5 was released on April 12, 2010. The development team revealed the new technologies under development, including 3D brushes and warping tools.
In May 2011, Creative Suite 5.5 was released, with new versions of some of the applications.




Photoshop Plugins;




- Colour correction plugin
- Special Effects plugin
- 3D effects plugin
- Camera Raw




(Adobe Camera Raw is a special plugin supplied free by adobe. It is used to read and process raw image files so that the resultant image can be processed by photoshop.)




Adobe Illustrator;




Illustrator CS5 was release in May 2010. It has perspective drawing tools, variable width strokes, control over opacity in points on gradient meshes, shape builder tool (similar to path finder tools) and a bristle brush, which enables users to imitate real life brush strokes while maintaining a vector format.




Adobe InDesign;




InDesign CS% (7.0) was released in April 2010. However, Indesign CS5.5 version (7.5) was newly released in April 2011.




Characteristics




The characteristics of a design is a big key element used in design. One of them is consistency which covers most of the smaller elements, such as the amount of letter spacing you have. The characteristics of how the design is presented should reflect the tone and personality of the publication.




I am going to use the keepmoat homes wave as an example of characteristics.
I have specifically chosen this design as i think it has a very characteristic flow in colour and shape for example.

First of all the characteristic of colour really seems to emphasise the design. There is a consistency of both colours throughout the wave and also throughout the rest of the branding publications.




Keepmoat use two shades of green which are pantone colours:-




Lighter Green: 375 Pantone, C = 31, M = 0, Y = 94, K = 0
Darker Green:  376 Pantone, C = 50, M = 0, Y = 100, K = 0




These are the corporate colours of the two greens that are used on the wave. The two colours work really well together and the colour for this company also has a purpose of meaning.




The colour green is the colour of nature, healing power, growth, safety, freshness, growth and hope. It is also a restful colour to the human eye. In relation to the company, the colour of nature could relate to the nature of the houses and environment, freshness of the grass surrounding the new fresh house types and is a restful, safe company to buy homes with.
Overall the colour just gives the company the new, fresh and nature feel that it needs to sell their homes.




This is the overall character of this companies image. The image of fresh and new. However, the shape of the wave also has character as it is a flowing smooth shape, which gives it a restful and friendly feel. The company needs a friendly feel as their target audience is selling their homes to families.




In addition, the potential of these characteristics gives a positive effect on the company. However, if the colour and shape was different, this would achieve a different effect.




For example, if the colour was red and it was a square-on block shape, i personally think it would create a negative effect and character to the design and company.




Red relates to the meaning of anger, power, danger and forcefulness. However, it also relates to desire, passion and love. But this colour is not relevant to the companies purpose neither their target audience.




Characteristics achieve many different effects not just on the design but also on the person viewing it and also they should be chosen efficiently to achieve the correct desired results.