Zakki Mokuroku

Vision and Audio

From my last post about TV ad audio, I examined about differences between sights and sounds.

It is oftenly said that people gain 80% of the outside information from their sights. But does that mean that eyes are the most superior sensory organs? I must say that's probably no. While sight provides us lots of information, its valid range is unexpectedly small.

Theoretically, the angle of human sight is about 110 degrees. However, the angle that humans can actually see consciously is within the range of 50 degrees. It is less than one sixth of a complete circle. As I mentioned in the previous post, in such a reality, it is hard for us to recognize a visual ad if we are already paying attention to something else.

On the other hand, we can recognize sounds from any direction. Our ears do not have a blind spot. Even when there is a screen that hides the figure visually, we may still hear the sound. When we work on computers, we usually do not use our ears that constantly (unless we are accessin YouTube or something like that). Therefore, it is easy for us to catch an aural ad.

As a conclusion, eyes are superior to ears in terms of precision, but ears have a wider cover range. I believe the aural information is more efficient to create a prompt for the audience to watch the ad.

CD Jacket

 

A jacket that I designed for "G3", my friend's CD Album.

Are TVs becoming Radios?

As we all know, numbers of people, especially in the young generations, are getting their information from the internet these days.

I learned last year the most of the men and women in twenties are taking dairy news information from internet sites. Actually, I do so as well.

However, I noticed that even when I am working on my computer, I still left the TV on. I asked few others and it turned out that they were the same too.

Therefore, in a situation like that, even when our eyes are looking at the computer screen, the TV still broadcasts audio to our ears. I think you already noticed, but that's exactly what radio does.

We generally understand that the merit of the TV ad is that one can show transferring images. As a matter of nature, advertisers try to show their appeal visually. But what if the audience is looking somewhere else and misses the image? It's like fishing with strong line and rod but with no bait or even a hook.

I think the modern TV ads need to have more catchiness on audio side.

Catchy and Inexpensive

It is quite unexpectedly difficult to make a creative ad with low budget. Since the main goal of advertising is to persuade the audience and not to save budget, these two aspects usually do not become compatible to each other.

The TV ad series of Boraginol, the hemorrhoid ointment from Amato Pharmaceutical Products is a rare example of the ad that realizes this.

Take a look at this ad. The main compositions of this ad are only few snaps of images and the actors' lines. Since 2002, 17 ad series has released by today.

The strong point of this ad is that the audience can understand the product with just listening to the audio. I will talk further about this next time.

Impact of Blue & Red

 
Speaking of restroom signs, I once found this website that posts series of unique restroom signs all over Japan.
(Sorry! The page is written only in Japanese, but I think its simple enough to look through!)

Here are some of the ones I thought it's interesting.

  

The silhouettes are drawn in an abstract form. Kind of like a brush stroke.

 

 

Is is just me, or do people especially like to personify cars?

 

 

I personally like these types of designs that use icons that represents the object and not the object itself. We can still easily understand the gender difference from the colors.

 

 

Wow, that's clever. The fishes are representing the directions as well.

 

 

Oh year, now that's really easy to understand.

 

Looking at the overall website, I noticed that even the shapes of the signs are greatly changed from silhouettes of man and woman, the blue and red (or black and red) colors compensate its understandability. Therefore, color is an important aspect of design.

However, still, signs that rely only on colors cannot be an universal design, since not all people can see colors accurately. The wall between functionality and creativity seems to be thicker than I think.

Annoying Creativity

Creativity is an important aspect for designing, but not always.

Take a look at this.

 

Yes, it's the toilet sign we see almost every day. Now take a look at this.

 

This is what I found at a shopping center in Singapore last summer.
Yes, I can see that it is a toilet sign...but it takes me a extra few seconds to recognize.
I think there are three main problems here.

1. The sign is too big to see it as a whole.

2. Only half of the shape is exposed.

3. The sign itself is dim and does not catch people's eyes
     (Personally, I want it to be colored in blue and red)

I must say that a person who designed this is forgetting the most important factor for signs, which is "easy to understand." I believe that signs are one of the most excellent designs in terms of practicality.

In Japan, there is a word called "kinou-bi", which means "functional beauty". It refers to things that are designed very simply in order to serve its function. I think there are things that people should abstain their creativity to design. Or in other words, a person who can design a new toilet sign that still keeps its original functionality is a truly creative person.

Nico Nico Douga

As I mentioned in my last post, I usually spend my free time at Nico Nico Douga, the Japanese video-sharing website like YouTube.

This site, which earned the Japanese Good Design Award in 2007, is famous for its unique commenting system.

 

Here is the captured movie from Nico Nico Douga transfered to YouTube (you need to have an account to access Nico Nico Douga). See the white texts sliding from right to left? Those texts do not exist in the original movie. They are the comments posted by the viewers. The comments are overlaid directly on the video synced to the specific time. This allows the viewers to post a comment to certain scenes and it also creates a sense of a shared watching experience.

Today, 1 in 3 Japanese in their twenties have the account of Nico Nico Douga (Wow, I didn't know that until the last second). It is one of the most rapidly growing website in past five years.

Zakki Mokuroku

Well, so here is my blog, Zakki Mokuroku, which means "list of memorandums" in Japanese. I named it so to remind myself that I don't have to think about writing formally.

To say the truth, I am still not sure what to write for this blog yet... To be precise, I still do not understand the difference between the personal blog and professional blog.

Anyways, I will try to be creative as I can in this blog. Though I can't promise to be humorous since I'm not writing this in my mother language (which is Japanese).

Let me talk a little about myself. I was born and raised up in Japan until 7, then moved to California because of my father's job. Seven years later, I moved to Oregon and lived there for a year, but then moved back to Japan and lived there for rest of the high school years. And now, back in US, I'm studying at University of Oregon. Yes, I know, pretty complicated.

Still, I can clearly say that Japanese is my dominant language. I look around Japanese news sites on my free time. Somestimes I check movie sites like YouTube or Nico Nico Douga, which I will probably write about it next time.

One of my greatest hobbies is to draw illustrations. Not like those gorgeous paintings made by "arty" people but more cartoonish ones. Something like this.

 

I guess that's about it for today. I'm not sure how this blog will turn around but I would be happy if you enjoy it.