Solar Cell infographic (Norwegian)

In both science and media class our project was to create an infographic poster about one of three things, of which i chose to make a poster about solar cells. The reason that I chose solar cells is because I had heard a lot about solar cells when it comes to green energy. Originally I was thinking about making a poster about green energy and solar cells, but the task specifically states that we should explain how a solar cell works. Explaining both is pretty difficult on a piece of A3 paper, also it was kind off difficult to make a green poster whilst using CMYK.

I used Illustrator, and here is my end product:

I started out with the colours blue and yellow, because I knew that I had to draw a sun (or at least solar rays) and a solar panel. The yellow also contrasts nicely with the blue. You can think of the blue background as the sky, and the yellow rectangles with information on them as solar rays. If you think that the text is tiny, just keep in mind that this was intended for A3 paper, where everything is larger. The fonts I used were Franklin Gothic Demi and Bradley Hand ITC. These fonts contrast each other because they look so different, even though they're both grotesk fonts.

The illustrations are simple. On first big yellow rectangle there is a simple explanation of how a solar cell is built up. The second illustration builds upon the first one, but this time telling you how it works.

I'd say my greatest challenge during this project was filling out the bottom. After the first two rectangles it almost felt complete, but there was a lot of space at the bottom. Luckily I found this relevant fact about how the electrical energy created by the solar cell is DC (Direct Current), and has to be turned into AC (Alternating Current) before it can be used at home.

I'm pretty proud of this poster, and I think that if someone showed me this poster I could easily understand it. It looks more colourful and interesting than the graphics in the science book. I actually wouldn't mind if more teachers used infographics during their classes.

Beat Me Logo Design

The first two slides are the coloured and the black and white version of the logo, followed up by the original design for the logo before I found out that we had to use negative space in our logo. The next two slides are screenshots of me working on the logo, and how my logo progressed whilst i used rulers. After that I have two slides of experimental concepts for the logo. One only being the letters BM, like an app or something similar. I prefered having all the letters, so I went with that instead. The other one has the letters float on the lines like a music sheet, but besides looking unpleasent it wasn't timely, like the logo was supposed to be according to it's description in the assignment. It should be timely and affordable. I made the logo look vivid, and the font I used doesn't scream "luxury". The next slides have the logo on some mashups. I thought that the bags looked nice because the shape of the logo fits with the overall design og the bag. The colours also contrast with the bag, and the negative space makes the text white. Then there's a slide with multiple background colours. Here I was testing out different colors, and it was here that I really went for the theme. As you can probably tell I ended up going for the red one, and beside that slide is the moodboard I created for the logo, which features pictures and fonts that shaped the theme and look, and also served as inspiration. I learned a lot about Adobe Illustrator from this assignment, and even though I'm not 100% proud of the outcome of the logo, this assignment definetly boosted by interest in logo design. I will never look at a logo the same.

Creating Fake News

In media class we got a project to create a fake news story in light of all the fake news that have been going around online. The news story had to be believable, and we were allowed to use any outlet we wanted to. I chose BBC, because i view them as a reliable source. My news story was originally going to be something along the lines of "Bill O'Reilly fired from Fox News", but that actually happend.

I shifted my focus to Tesla's new cars, and I decided to write this news story. Originally, I did in the layout of a news story that was shared like this. I never finished it because it didn't count as an outlet, so I switched over to BBC.

As you can see i changed the picture when switching over, because it felt more like advertisment when i used the car as the picture.

Fake news is the phenomena of news that are simply false, but they seem believable and shocking enough to share around. The term "fake news" has been popularized by President Donald Trump, as he uses it quite often to describe news networks like CNN, MSNBC etc. Fake news are dangerous because they spread incorrect information, and it's almost a bit tragic that we have to have classes dedicated to fake news awareness.

There is some truth to what i wrote, Tesla did recently release the Telsa S and Tesla X models. This makes it timely. To make people click on my fake news I made a questionable headline, with a picture of Elon Musk.

Logos with Negative Space

As a part of our homework in media class we had to take pictures of logos we found whilst we were out and about. The logos should use negative space. I won't write much about the logos, but I found the DelEx logo to be amusing because its a blatant copy of FedEx' logo, but it doesn't to the arrow illusion as well.

Anti Bullying Radio Campaign (NORWEGIAN)

Even though this video mentions OMM (OssMotMobbing), this was not made in cooperation with OMM in any way. We just had to label it as a part of the project.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Review (Spoiler free)

Rogue One is a prequel to the beloved original Star Wars trilogy, and was one of the largest releases of 2016. Rogue One was both a box office and a critical success. Despite all of this, I found the movie to be a bit disappointing.

The movie features an all new and diverse cast which I’m not a big fan off. Most of the characters were static, and those who had a character arch lacked motivation. In the beginning of the movie the main character, Jyn Erso didn’t like the rebellion (the good guys), but after seeing a message from her father that briefly mentions them she is suddenly willing to die for their cause. Cassian also becomes a bit nicer, but that’s about it when it comes to character development. One of the things I associate with Star Wars is the amazing characters, but these characters felt stale, and after exiting the cinema I could hardly remember any of their names. However, this movie in particular was not about the character, but rather the cause.

The plot is straight forward, collect an item and extract. My problem with the story is that the climax of this two-hour long movie is almost only a teaser of what is to come. The action scene in the end is great, and it finally makes the Stormtroopers feel a bit more like a special force instead of cannon fodder. The cinematography is also really good, they did a fantastic job at showing scale in the movie. One problem I had with the cinematography is that it sometimes looked artificial, especially in the scenes with CGI-Grand Moff Tarkin. It feels like they made everything look more computer animated through the lighting to make the CGI character look more normal in comparison. The special effects and the most of the CGI looks great, and the sound design is good as well.

The soundtrack felt uninspired, and it was hardly noticeable. The theme was not memorable, and follows a trope in movies where you can’t really notice the background music, something which is odd for Star Wars movies.

All in all, I think the movie was mediocre and lacked innovation, and I’d give it a 6/10. The movie was carried up by it’s amazing world and cinematography, but the writing and the characters could have been better.

Media Seminar 2017

Today at Mysen VGS we had a whole day dedicated to a seminar about media, It featured a bunch of guests, who each talked about their respective professions and jobs within media. The guests were from all over Norway, like from a local production company, a media orientated college, an artist/photographer and the communications director of TV2.

After a brief introduction, Jan Petter Dahl joined us to talk about his role in TV2 and TV2 as a whole. I found it interesting when he talked about how crucial social media currently is in the TV landscape. He also talked about how TV has changed over the years, and he even talked about the Justin Bieber incident that happened last year in Oslo, and even showed us some secret exclusive footage from that night. I think that Jan Petter Dahl did a fantastic job, and it was in my opinion the best presentation at the seminar. I learned a lot today, and I am thankful to everyone of the guests who decided to join us for the Media Seminar of 2017 at Mysen VGS/High School.

-Eric