This is the first day of our new module, Visual Imaging and Interaction. We began by covering some essentials; rubrics, attendance, past pupils work and so on.
Kyle discussed something thats always really bothered me. That is the concept of Master and Apprentice. Back in the day to learn a skill or trade you would essentially shadow a master of said skill. You would do so for a long time around 6-7 years until eventually you mastered it yourself. I think today we put too much emphasis on university, it seems to be the one of the few places to obtain any skills, in doing so we obtain large amounts of debt and a lot of people come out with no skill at all. The concept of Master-Apprentice has always appealed to me as I just want to get stuck in and see what the industry has to offer.
We have been tasked with creating a music app/player. This is a very exciting brief to me as this will be our first real crack at designing a user interface. One thing to consider with this brief as that the market for such apps is super saturated. This means I will have to find a creative approach to stand out amongst other music apps. In regards to my approach, I think a focus on the content of the app itself and it’s features would be ideal, as if I simply styled it creatively and that was my whole approach then i would worry what that might look like at a lter stage of development.
We looked at icons and talked about their importance. Many brands have their own bespoke icons that each serve unique purposes. Icons are something I never paid too much attention too previously, but now as I type out this class blog there are over 20 icons on my screen at the moment, all individually designed with thought. It is this consideration that helps bring a product together. These icons act as little illustrations that not only represent the product/brands personality but serve to aid in the users intuitive experience.
Kyle informed us that we will be undertaking a series of master apprentice tasks over the duration of this module. These tasks are to help us develop a further understanding of how different elements come together to create one finished product. This is calling back to what I mentioned at the start of this page, the idea of master and apprentice. These tasks will be focused around recreation, with our first task being to recreate a set of icons. I like this idea, I feel it will be really constructive in regards to projects so I am eager to get stuck in.
Being our first class of the module we didn’t cover a great deal of content but we did look forward and what we discussed sounded very promising. I am eager to start work on my music app but before I do I will be completing the master apprentice task as I believe it will help me to lay the foundations for the app. All in all it seems as though it will be an exciting class with a lot of hands on work.