Danielle Leigh Portfolio 2015

Danielle Leigh | Designerwww.DanSamLeigh.com | [email protected] | 07957 942 988

ContentsWorld Record Creation

SuperOrdinary

What is Average?

RPG Society

Escape

10 Billion

Play at Work Project

Gamification Design Document

Misc. Artwork

Misc. Photography

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About Me I am a BA Design graduate student who studied at Goldsmiths University. I am a friendly and enthusiastic multi-disciplinary designer who is dedicated and willing to learn new things. I have gained a variety of skills from model making and prototyping to graphical programmes such as Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop. I have a background in the arts and have had a love for drawing and painting for many years and have honed these skills. I have also been involved in a few exhibitions before university: a runner up in Welling School’s alTurnitive Prize, taking part in and helping to organise Erith School’s A-Level exhibition, and hanging a personal exhibition in Nolia’s 11 gallery in Stamford Street, London. I have experience in branding and graphic design for print and web from working at a creative digital studios, Make Agency.

I am adaptable and love to learn new skills. While studying design, I discovered how much I love how the subject crosses over many different disciplines and fields and I look forward to hopefully working alongside these many disciplines during my career.

World Record Creation

To break a world record is to aspire to be the best, to take a talent you have or acquire and push yourself to the limits of this ability. This could be something exceptional such as the record breaking at the Olympic games or something weird or seemingly trivial such as the most socks sorted in one minute. And with this project, I had to break a record of my own. After looking into existing records and at my own abilities, I couldn’t find one which I felt I could do or one which I wanted to do, so I decided to create my own.

I created a new world record of attempting to create the longest doodle in length. I found that the record could be applied as a team record or a solo record, expanding the possibilities. I first focused in on the solo record to look into the details and problems of the record and how it could be made challenging, creating new rules and exploring what classifies a doodle.

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Video World Record Creation

Video for the Longest Doodle in Length record attempt.https://vimeo.com/87889464

SuperOrdinary

What makes things ordinary? What goes beyond the ordinary? In this brief we had to define and explore the concept of the superordinary. At first I explored object which have become so ordinary that they become superordinary, like light switches and wall plugs. These are objects that have become so ordinary that they blend into the wall and become inviable to people’s consciousness. The idea of exploring things that have gone beyond the conscious then developed into the idea of looking at unconscious gestures.

Gestures are a way in which we communicate, both aiding our speech and reflecting our body language. They are movements we do not consciously do, though when we do consciously do them, our movements become awkward and cumbersome. Without gestures, our communication becomes harder and strange to others. It is only in their absence that we notice that they are supposed to be there. After research looking at the movements and gestures in videos, I created a range of jewellery to block gestures and make you notice the unconscious movements your body makes. I also explored how gestures could be changed to change peoples behaviour and body language.

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SuperOrdinaryJewelery Prototypes

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What is Average?

Scale is a huge part of design, not only in the literal sense but also in the cultural sense. How does your designs affect the world? How does it affect the people? For this project we were to explore how architecture, in the broad sense of the word, could be designed and how it would impact the world.We looked into the different research into height such as working out the true average world height and looking into research such as the Incredible Shrinking Man project, scale and the golden ratio, Hans Hemmert’s Level and finally, the Ames room.

The Ames room was a turning point in our designs as it gave us a way to change people’s perception of height. The Ames room works by playing with the perspective of things with the room so a person appears to grow or shrink as they move around the room. With this we looked into ideas which accommodated people’s height but also made people question their own height and question what is average. This resulted in the bus shaped as an Ames room, the cinema and plane built to accommodate peoples height and ergonomics.

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What is Average?Models

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What is Average?Models

RPG Society

This project required me to examine the role of ideas and beliefs in the world and and its relationship with design by finding and focusing on the obscure edges of society and culture and enhancing them to the everyday or the mainstream and finding design opportunities.

I chose to focus on the culture of tabletop RPGs such as Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder. After building a world I looked into the core features of RPG society and used these core features to create design opportunities. By using the core features of the society as filters, I reshaped the architecture of the world to reflect these features. The roundness of the architecture supports the core features of social co-operation and helps to build an integrated community.

I developed this further by using this idea and resizing it to a city-scale. By using the same idea of interaction and a central communal hub and using the structure of honeycomb, I created a city system, which placed housing around and within community building like shopping centers, schools and council buildings.

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RPG SocietyConcept Graphic

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RPG SocietyConcept Graphics

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RPG SocietyModel

Escape

This brief required me to identify an opportunity to design an escape, developing material culture as a series of systems, architectures, hacked elements and tools. Here me and my group focused on the idea of escape as a game and a way of travel. We began by identifying our own definition of escape, choosing to define it in as more playful and exploratory way. We created videos of us playing simple gameified forms of escape in different locations around London.

I felt that one of our early ideas of a game which could be transferred into different locations (such as museums) had a lot of potential so I decided to revisit it. I designed an escape-inspired game which was flexible around locations, so that the users could hijack a location and turn it into a game. After setting up the rules and game mechanics, I gathered volunteers to test out the game and created a video to document and display the concept.

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EscapeVideo

Video for the Museum Game trial run.https://vimeo.com/95402578

10 Billion

The project was given by author Stephen Emmott (who leads Microsoft’s Computational Science Laboratory in Cambridge), and was based on his book 10 Billion. We were required to create new and novel ways to engage people with the ideas found within the book, exploring alternative methods to communicate, visualise and articulate massive complex systems.

As it was a piece of science communication, we were required to find the appropriate visual and/or physical means to translate hard science into compelling narrative, using the power and uniqueness of the internet. Because the book focused on many aspects of climate change, we chose to focus on one aspect: hidden water. Hidden water is the water we use to produce things. We chose to focus on food as it is an essential commodity that has an effect on all people and we come into contact with it every day.

We looked into meals and the hidden water comparisons between the different items of foods or drinks. We used one item of food as a base for hidden water content and kept the scale of that item 1:1, then scaled down the other items of food according to the bases hidden food content. This resulted in a radical rescaling of foods that gave striking and memorable displays. The difference of water consumption become clear and easy to comprehend at a glance. We see that meats consume a lot more water that the more water efficient fruits and vegetables. The models were a way to display this information simply, universally and make the complex numbers of hidden water easily comprehendible.

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10 BillionConcept Models

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10 BillionConcept Models

Play At Work Project

We spend most of our lives working, and for many of us our job is something we see as tedious. Workplace wellbeing is a big issue, and I aim to improve it by designing systems using gamification to engage us in our work environment. Gamification is the act of putting a game system onto a non-game context. By using games as a catalyst to improve our wellbeing in the workplace, we can achieve job satisfaction and creative collaboration beyond what we have today.

Creating workplace games that address emotional wellbeing, physical wellbeing and personal development, I have considered a range of workplaces in order to create a compendium of games for a variety of jobs which players can choose and play.

Check out the live website on www.PlayAtWorkProject.com

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Play At WorkProduct Graphics

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Play At WorkProduct Graphics

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Play At WorkPrototypes

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Play At WorkWebsite Designs - About

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Play At WorkWebsite Designs - Games

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Play At WorkWebsite Designs - Game Page Example

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Play At WorkWebsite Designs - Game Page Example

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Play At WorkPoster


These are the background graphics for a publication, specifically designed so that the reader could have a progressional feedback mechanism throughout the report. I used a low-poly design to reflect the game theme of the text in Illustrator.

To read the report, check out my website.

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Cover

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Background Graphics

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Background Graphics

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Background Graphics

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Background Graphics

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Background Graphics

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Background Graphics

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Background Graphics

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Background Graphics

Miscellaneous Artwork

I have had a sizeable background in the arts before and during my BA Design degree and in that time honed many of my skills in non-digital graphics and artworks. Here are a few examples of my work.

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Misc. ArtworkScreenprints

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Misc. ArtworkNegative Drawing

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Misc. ArtworkLife Drawing

Miscellaneous Photography

Photography has long been a hobby of mine and has aided my work in design and art. I have explored both digital photography and film, particularly black and white film photography. Here are a few examples of my work.

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Misc. PhotographyFilm Photograph

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Misc. PhotographyPhotograph

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