Final Year University Projects

The inspiration for Grumble Tum’s illustrations are based on my favourite “kawaii” Japanese characters. When my symptoms were at their worst, these characters would cheer me up and put a smile on my face. Kawaii is the term used in Japanese for cute and as I wanted to produce welcoming assets I thought this style would suit Grumble Tum. (Sumikko Gurashi | Cute kawaii animals, Cute cartoon wallpapers, Kawaii drawings, 2020) These characters created by the company San-x state, “Sumikkogurashi” are the characters living a quiet and solitary life in the corner. They might be able to settle down when they’re in the corners but they don’t like being in the center of the room. When they’re taken to the center of the room, they always rush back to the corner. (Sumikkoguarashi Characters, n.d.) Each character has its own distinct personality and are simple illustration style. I aim to make the characters for Grumble Tum have personality by simply giving them facial features to seen more human a...

These are the main colours to be used on Grumble Tum’s website and app. The pastel primary colours bring a sense of calmness while bold colours emphasise different aspects of each illustration.  For important headings and brand name, I have decided to use the sans-serif typeface family, ‘Acumin Variable Concept’ due to its versatility and variety of weights and styles. For body text, I will be using ‘Trebuchet MS’ as it is simplistic, readable and most importantly users should already have the font pre-installed on their computers (especially those running Windows OS).

This is an idea of the subjects I would like to include on my website/app and include in my navigation system. This should aid users in finding information quickly as my aim is to make the website simple and concise.   Other IBS related website’s navigational structures either do not include all topic areas in the hope of minimising the amount of content to navigate through or are too overwhelmingly detailed. This is apparent on the ‘ibs network’ website where their navigation system is not only inconsistent but extremely detailed. (The IBS Network, n.d.) Theibsnetwork.org. n.d. The IBS Network. [online] Available at: <https://www.theibsnetwork.org> [Accessed 25 November 2020].

With Irritable Bowel Syndrome, there are specific foods that individuals will need to remove from their diets to avoid flare-ups. Food is the primary focus for IBS sufferers, it teases and tempts us, causing undesirable symptoms. In Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo paintings, food is the main focus of his surrealist art and represents this problematic relationship with food. Food is intertwined with us; we need it to survive. For IBS suffered food is consciously and subconsciously in our thoughts, especially when planning the next meal. Quite literally food is the self, and we cannot escape this and sometimes feel trapped by it.   (Arcimboldo, 1566 - 1591) ‘The Gardener’ is a clever piece of artwork. On appearance this painting is a bowl of vegetables but upside-down is a portrait made from vegetables. It has been theorised that, ‘signals from the brain to the gut play a critical role in maintaining optimal digestive function, reflex regulation of the GI tract, and modulatio...

I decided to illustrate my logo design ideas for my degree project using Adobe Illustrator. I thought about the letters and whether they could be manipulated to appear like an object related to my topic. The logo design with 'Tum' uses the 'm'. I changed this on two occasions to look like:  A person sitting while holding their knees - thought they could be having a stomach ache hence their sitting position. A person sitting while holding their knees with pink typography - this was to make the letters stand out so that the 'm' wasn't lost in the design. Grumble Tum businessman - as IBS affects both men and women, I thought that the 'm' could look like a man wearing a shirt and tie. The sad face could represent a stomach ache.  Additionally, I illustrated an idea from my original sketches where the 'G' appeared to be a nose and 'r' a frown. I used the font 'Daniel' to achieve this and manipulated the tracking in order for the ty...

Using my graphics tablet, I decided to sketch some logo design ideas. It was my first time using Clip Studio Pro in order to draw digitally. I quite liked using this software as it was simple to use and has additional functionality that I would like to explore. I attempted to manipulate the 'G' in Grumble to look like the nose in a face and the 'r' to look like the mouth. I quite liked to idea of adding a face, as I thought this may feel more familiar to the audience. I thought adding colour may help the user see the face more clealy. I explored this idea at length before illustrating this on Adobe Illustrator.

Once we had finished the development stage of our website, we needed to then present this to our peers and instructors on the course. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend this session as I had been scheduled a work shift during this time frame. Our other teammate Li, was currently living in Malaysia and struggled with the time difference throughout the course. As the clocks went forward an hour, this meant that she had even less time to help develop the website and attending the presentation would have been at an unsociable hour in the morning. As only one person needed to present as a minimum requirement we nominated our teammate Funmi. She was not only a strong speaker but had participated in group presentations previously for other courses. Therefore I knew her speaking experience would be beneficial to the team and was the best option considering our circumstances. I aided Funmi with some information about developing the website the evening before the presentations, to make s...

By creating a user flow diagram, we are able to more easily determine the path that the user may take when using the website in conjunction with the social media support group. We do this in order to understand/simulate the user's journey through my product.