Graphic Design encompasses a wide range of activities from the design of traditional print media (e.g., books and posters) to site-specific (e.g., signage systems) and electronic media (e.g., interfaces). Its practice always explores the new possibilities of information and communication technologies. Therefore, interactivity and participation have become key features in the design process. Even in traditional print media, graphic designers are trying to enhance user experience and exploring new interaction models. Moving posters are an example of this. This type of posters combine the specific features of motion and print worlds in order to produce attractive forms of communication that explore and exploit the potential of digital screens. In our opinion, the next step towards the integration of moving posters with the surroundings, where they operate, is incorporating data from the environment, which also enables the seamless participation of the audience. As such, the adoption of computer vision techniques for moving poster design becomes a natural approach. Following this line of thought, we present a system wherein computer vision techniques are used to shape a moving poster. Although it is still a work in progress, the system is already able to sense the surrounding physical environment and translate the collected data into graphical information. The data is gathered from the environment in two ways: (1) directly using motion tracking; and (2) indirectly via contextual ambient data. In this sense, each user interaction with the system results in a different experience and in a unique poster design.
Technology always shaped and was shaped by every aspect of the society. In this sense, Graphic Design (GD) -the discipline responsible for organising visual communication in our society (Frascara, 1988) -, has always been keeping a symbiotic development with the technological improvements (Cooper, 1989). The recent technological advances, since of the last quarter of the twentieth century, are no exception. Nowadays' practice of GD is located between the traditional approaches and the use of the new information and communication technologies (Neves, 2011). Besides, today's audience is changing and no longer contents to simply digest messages (Armstrong & Stojmirovic, 2011). The contemporary public increasingly approaches design's artefacts with the expectation of interaction. This started to force the mixing of the traditional print and locationspecific media with digital electronic media. Posters are no exception. The digital screens, which have infiltrated all kind of spaces, set up a new design challenge, allowing the inclusion of video and animated GIF (Benyon, 2016). However, as in other moments in history, a new generation of designers are embracing these technologies, in order to combine experiences and to create a novel form of communication -The Moving Poster.
This new medium of communication, which is not a poster, in its traditional sense, does not present itself as an interactive application (e. g., websites or digital application). It inherited the traditional vertical poster format and its composition rules, but often has a digital version with different temporal states (e.g. (Pfäffli, 2014), (Studio Feixen & Giger, 2017) or (Creative Review, 2017)). According to Brechbühl (Benyon, 2016) it still is a poster, but “the animation part is more like a fifth colour, or a special print technique.”
Typically, the moving posters are designed based on a set of temporal states, displayed to the user in a sequential way. These posters border on storytelling, but still only communicate the same information (Benyon, 2016). Although in some artefacts, the interactive and generative principles are starting to be taken into consideration (e.g. (LUST, 2014)). According to the Screen Design principles point of view, its development and implementation are still not well achieved (see (Macklin, 2008)). Concepts as ergonomics/human factors, human-computer interaction (HCI) and Interaction Design (IxD) may integrate more levels of information to fully engage the viewer. In the coming periods, this kind of posters will become mainstream and will begin to respond to their environment using information gathered by input devices (as such cameras, RFID tags, or audio devices) (Benyon, 2016). Thereby, digital technologies will enable dialogues between the artefact and the viewers and will promote the seamless participation of the user and the serendipity of data derived from a process-oriented GD (Armstrong & Stojmirovic, 2011).
Following this line of thought, we consider the adoption of Computer Vision (CV) techniques in this scenario as a natural step towards the moving posters’ strategic definition. In this sense, we develop experiments in the design of a moving poster wherein CV techniques are used to define the poster’s shape. However, contrary to current mainstream approaches, the poster is shaped through live input data gathered by user tracking. In this way, the user can directly manipulate the graphical elements in the composition, and at the same time see the result of the manipulation. Although it is still a work in progress, in these first experiments the data from the user and from the surrounding environment already shapes the elements of the poster.
The remainder of this paper is organised as follows: Section 2 briefly presents the background of the field; Section 3 thoroughly describes how the poster is designed; Section 4 describes the poster element’s movements; and finally, conclusions and future work are presented in Section 5.
Desktop Publishing (DTP) revolution led Graphic Design (GD) to be the first profession reshaped by digital technologies (Blauvelt, 2011). Contrary to the strong resistance of several designers to DTP technologies, in the turn of the millennium, computer have already adopted as GD primary tool (Meggs & Purvis., 2011;Blauvelt, 2011). Besides, desktop publishing presented new ways of displaying information and approaching grids, changing permanently the methods of design (Licko & Vanderlands, 1989;Meggs & Purvis., 2011). Thereby, GD was transformed into a more interdisciplinary and ubiquitous field. These characteristics increased whenever digital technologies embed a bit further into our everyday lives, creating more “spaces” to be designed (Lupton, 2006).
While graphic designers embrace and use recent digital technologies, they do not fully understand them (Neves, 2011). Like in the 1990s, nowadays the computer continues to be viewed by several designers as another tool -j
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