My Digital Signature- Final Design

The image has an ordered overall layout because as a person I live my life by order and rules, I can not stand chaos. It may also not sand out aethetically, but I do feel that as a person I don't tend to stand out from the crowd, I like to keep myself to myself.
The ‘JON’ part of the image is in a bigger, bolder font style to emphasize the uniqueness of my identity, over that of my family ‘MOORE’ identity. It is written in Arial font to show my warm and friendly nature, also it is slightly rounded as a text, not unlike myself.
‘MOORE’ is Bookman Old Style due to its long history, like my family name. The shadow was also added to show this point. Both are quite simple old fashioned font types, but that also represents my personality.
I decided on a cross shape form to represent the many crossroads I have had in life, also it indicates that there is more than one side to me. It is over to the left of frame purely for aesthetics.
I chose to use black and white as it gave the image a more stylized finish, and denotes how I tend to view the world in black or white, right or wrong. However the center ‘O’ is grey because firstly, it was a logical merger point, and secondly because in all life sometimes there are grey areas.
Although black usually represents bad, whilst white represents good, I decided to switch them around not only to make my first name stand out, but also to show that their is good and bad in everything.
For a full analysis please see all IDAT107 labels.
Some variations on the design show the light and dark the other way around, but again it doesn't make my first name stand out as much.
The second design shows the 'Jon' and 'Moore' side by side, but I do not feel myself and my family are 'side by side' in a lot of issues, so would not work.

Stonehouse future vision postcard

Building upon all of the previous ideas and research I have created an image using Photoshop to illustrate what the future of Stonehouse could be. Taking the Ann Demeulemeester store in Seoul as example for what could be classed as a totally ‘green’ building within my vision, and placing it over a run down, crumbling building, then adding an image of street activity from 100 years ago represents this complete notion of combining the best from the past and future. The Ann Demeulemeester store takes a modern, hip shop and turns it into a calm oasis in the middle of a heaving city. The building is covered in vegetation and moss:

“opportunistic plants that grow thick and green even in the midst of big-city smog while creating calmly insulated (and oxygenated) rooms within their folds.”

Joseph Grima “Go Green. Literally.”
This not only means the building is ‘green’ in an ecological way, it also brings this ‘green’ soul and aura, which was previously discussed, back to the area by having the modern structure and purpose, along with providing calm in the center of a city.
I also chose to represent the ‘green aura’ with the projection onto the side of the building, to bring the prosperity and soul from the past.

Original photo and 'future postcard' image.

My Digital Signature (part 3)

It would be easy to pick a font type for my design based purely on how aesthetically pleasing I find it and therefore the effect it would have on my design. Having researched the font types, there are many more aspects to take into consideration when picking a style like the history and connotations attached to it. There are many font types which would be technically good for the image. Verdana, Century Gothic, and Tahoma are all very similar rounded texts which were created to be versatile in the way in which they are displayed, i.e. not becoming distorted and visible what ever screen size it is displayed on. All would look good within the design but that would be it.
Impact, does exactly what it says in the name, it is a very bold font type that would make the image stand out, but I think it looks very condensed and squashed, which is in contradiction to me being a fairly open easy to read person. Therefore I have decided on the two font types Arial and Bookman Old Style.
‘Jon’ is to be written in Arial; personally I find it a friendly, warm font which is slightly rounded, all of which could be said about me. Also Arial was designed to be in tune with the mood of the last decades of the twentieth century, with a less mechanical appearance. It is the font’s uniqueness in design, along with its pleasant appearance, which make me feel it is the perfect choice to identify me.
‘Moore’ is therefore to be in Bookman Old Style. This font was created in 1858 so has a long history like my family name. It is also classified as a legible and robust text face, this links to the meaning of my surname, derived from working and surviving on harsh landscapes.

My Digital Signature (part 2)

Above are the main ideas for the layout for my digital signature, each with a brief explanation. All the designs are very ordered in appearance, which was a conscious decision from the out set, due to the fact that one of my main, and possibly best and worse, characteristics is that I am a very organised person always thinking through to the next thing, with every possible variable, to the point of being obsessive. I always like to be in control of situations and can not stand chaos. Also all designs emphasize ‘Jon’ more so than ‘Moore’ for the previously mentioned reasons of believing my name ‘Jon’ is my unique identity, whereas ‘Moore’ is just a given family name which has no bearing on my person, like my family doesn’t.
The designs on the right hand side of the page all show these qualities but I feel that they don’t show anything beyond that. The three on the left hand side have deeper meanings. Again all show the previous qualities but the bottom design is drawn to be like a mirrored reflection, showing that your family does have an imprint on your personal traits and makeup. The middle design shows a similar theme with your uniqueness being linked and merged within your family influences. However the top design represents all those ideas, but also has the added dimension of creating a cross like image to represent that I am more than one sided in my personality and that my life has had some crossroads where I have had to make brave decisions to make me a better person, and the person I am today.



The page above is the cross shaped format refined into a final layout and colour design, again with full explanations. First off I tried the design with the colour purple for ‘Jon’ as it would show another aspect of myself, with purple being my favorite colour. Then the ‘Moore’ would be coloured light blue, a colour below purple on the colour spectrum, denoting ‘Moore’ being below ‘Jon’ in my opinion. However throughout refining the design I felt that it would be better to symbolize this opinion by having ‘Jon’ in capitals, and ‘Moore’ in lower case, along with using widely different font sizes. I also returned the design back to being black and white, black for ‘Jon’, white for ‘Moore’, for two reasons. One, I feel it gives the design a more ordered, mature look, and two, it signifies how I often see the world in things being black or white. The final tweaks to the design were to make the connecting ‘o’ in the two words to be grey as this is logical to show the merger between the black and the white, but also signifies that I am only human and sometimes there are grey areas. Finally I’ve decided to add shadow to ‘Moore’ as it adds depth to the family name, and therefore represents the history. I also feel that this would make the design more aesthetically pleasing, which is the reason for placing the design to the left of frame.

My Digital Signature

Having looked at the task I have concluded that it should be broken down into three key elements. Firstly my name itself, what it means, where it comes from etc. Secondly, the choice of font(s) to represent the aspects I want to illustrate. And finally, the positioning and styling of the text within the frame.
As mentioned on a previous post I have already done a mind map of the factors which go into making me, me. However for this task I wished to simplify these influences to be as personal and identity focused as possible, so I created the following image to represent this idea.



After looking at this image I have chosen to focus in on the character traits I have, as I feel these are unique to making me who I am, as opposed to just experiences I have had.
The main points I want to point out with my name are that firstly it is two parts, ‘Jon’ being a name given individually to me, whereas ‘Moore’ is a family name linked to a large number of people. Secondly I feel that due to having a distant relationship with my family, other than my immediate family, the surname aspect of my name doesn’t define me in anyway, it just acts as an identifier. Therefore, thirdly, ‘Jon’ is the part of my name I wish to be mainly connected with.

Stonehouse aura

Going back to the idea of the aura and soul of Union Street I took a quick walk back along the street with a blank map and some coloured pencils to capture what I believed the aura of the place to be. The green represents areas of newness, life and prosperity. The red is the reverse, areas of decay and relative poverty, whereas the blue has factors of both, areas of wealth which do not help or improve the area, like the bars and nightclubs. I have left on the margin of the page showing the swirls of blue and green heading in the direction of the city centre because I believe there would have been a flip in the other direction of this aura towards Union Street less than 100 years ago. So with my ideas, it would be ideal to make Union Street a ‘green’ area again, in every sense.

My Website

As I have already discussed I do not tend to spend an awful amount of time online, and when I do it is the same sites every time. So having decided to create my site about myself I have no real problem with the content, but need to establish a basic site template with which to work with. To achieve this I have looked at some sites which interest me due to there author. I read a lot so have visited the sites of some of my favourite writers:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
http://www.eoincolfer.com/
http://www.neilgaiman.co.uk/
http://www.philip-pullman.com/
The common style between these sites tends to be a header top of page, followed by a quick links bar directly underneath, and the content with a sidebar underneath that.
Expanding my net I decide to look at the website layout for my favourite TV show, holiday destination, and a person who knows how to use the media to their best advantage.
www.fox.com/24
http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/wdwi/en_GB
http://www.jordanfanclub.co.uk/
They also seemed to follow the same, if not similar template. Therefore I feel this will be a good, solid standard with which to base my own site on. Basics I know, but planning from the basics means a good starting point to build upon.
The picture below is a rough template I have designed for my website based on my findings.