SE
Yes all very well, but it is no good sugar coating the truth, if it is really rubbish then you may as well say so.
To be honest with you, most of the time when comments posted just say "rubbish" with no reasons or to use the new tvf buzz phrase "constructive criticism" usually is because the mocks are so poor or the user is a troll, therefore what i am saying is the effort really is not necessary.
Rob Del Monte posted:
I agree that this forum is for all abilities.
I think that all abilities should post. Give everyone respect.
Point out that an object is not inside the safe area. recommend placing it in the safe area.
Don't just say "Rubbish!" bluntly!
People post because they know there are rubbish areas, and want pointers on how to sort them.
Saying "rubbish" deafeats the objective.
Itt is like going to see a doctor about some condition. Then the doctor tells you that you need to see a doctor about that injury and walks away.
Or you tell a teacher you are stuck on a subject, and want help, then you just get told that you are rubbish at the subject. then the teacher thinking they have really helped.
Please be constructive, or 'rubbishers' are infact being rubbish at 'tv foruming'. In my view.
I think that all abilities should post. Give everyone respect.
Point out that an object is not inside the safe area. recommend placing it in the safe area.
Don't just say "Rubbish!" bluntly!
People post because they know there are rubbish areas, and want pointers on how to sort them.
Saying "rubbish" deafeats the objective.
Itt is like going to see a doctor about some condition. Then the doctor tells you that you need to see a doctor about that injury and walks away.
Or you tell a teacher you are stuck on a subject, and want help, then you just get told that you are rubbish at the subject. then the teacher thinking they have really helped.
Please be constructive, or 'rubbishers' are infact being rubbish at 'tv foruming'. In my view.
Yes all very well, but it is no good sugar coating the truth, if it is really rubbish then you may as well say so.
To be honest with you, most of the time when comments posted just say "rubbish" with no reasons or to use the new tvf buzz phrase "constructive criticism" usually is because the mocks are so poor or the user is a troll, therefore what i am saying is the effort really is not necessary.
RD
There is point, because it creates a positive feeling, and people work well. I'm not saying that it should be sugar-coated, just some useful pointers for it. Don't say it is good if it isn't. Say that the colour scheme is ugly, and that you should reconsider it.
Maybe even, suggest redesigning the entire thing, trying to recapture the essence originally tried to be captured.
Also, what is a troll? It is a word I have stumbled upon, a couple of tiems, but I don't know what it means!
Maybe even, suggest redesigning the entire thing, trying to recapture the essence originally tried to be captured.
Also, what is a troll? It is a word I have stumbled upon, a couple of tiems, but I don't know what it means!
MU
A good, if old, debate. For what it's worth, here's an opinion from an observer from the broadcast industry:
Some work that gets posted here is terrible. It is a fact. People are entitled to think that terrible work is terrible. That is a fact.
Another fact, and you can deny it if you like, is that none of the aggressive name callers in this forum would actually speak to someone face to face in the same way they do on this forum. If someone showed you work that you thought was terrible, you wouldn't turn to them and say 'that's the biggest piece of crap I've ever seen'. You really wouldn't (although I anticipate responses saying otherwise). You'd be more tactful. Why? Because when you actually have to deal with someone's reaction to harsh comments you feel very different about it, and you can't just close down your browser and forget about the conversation. You have to see how people feel about your unpleasant comments... and possibly take a smack in the mouth for good measure.
If you want a simple guide about how to present your comments, you should just imagine you are making them to a mocker in person. That's a guage for how harsh you should be.
I have to agree that one thing that irritates me is people overly praising poor work. It's actually of less constructive use than nasty comments, as it is actually a lie. At least being nasty tells the truth about the work, even if it's unacceptable.
Another issue is that the people that post poor work are the same people who are making comments on other peoples work. If they think they're own poor work is good enough to post, then the chances are that they'll think other poor work is good. On that basis it will always be impossible to get a full and rounded critique on this site.
I also hate to hear 'but I don't have any software, so it's not very good....' That's nonsense. Get some paper, draw something, scan it in. Around 50% of my first stage pitches for work are in the form of hand drawn storyboards.
The most important thing is that there are at least some people who can offer good and useful advice, so the mocker can choose who to listen to. What we really need to accompany this is to lose all the assholes who make nasty digs. Everyone is entitled to post work, terrible or great, but no one is entitled to be nasty.
There are also plenty of people here looking for an ego boost, and that can manifest in a really condescending attitude. However, we all like an ego boost... especially designers... that's why we do it. Look at the text on the home page under 'MOCKS' where it explains this is a place to showcase work. Showcase means 'to present something favourably to get attention' after all. Just keep your ego in check, as there's always someone better than you. Much better.
Those of you who want the bad work to be banned are the worst offenders. If you want pure, great design, then learn where to go to see it.
How I see it, for what it's worth.
Some work that gets posted here is terrible. It is a fact. People are entitled to think that terrible work is terrible. That is a fact.
Another fact, and you can deny it if you like, is that none of the aggressive name callers in this forum would actually speak to someone face to face in the same way they do on this forum. If someone showed you work that you thought was terrible, you wouldn't turn to them and say 'that's the biggest piece of crap I've ever seen'. You really wouldn't (although I anticipate responses saying otherwise). You'd be more tactful. Why? Because when you actually have to deal with someone's reaction to harsh comments you feel very different about it, and you can't just close down your browser and forget about the conversation. You have to see how people feel about your unpleasant comments... and possibly take a smack in the mouth for good measure.
If you want a simple guide about how to present your comments, you should just imagine you are making them to a mocker in person. That's a guage for how harsh you should be.
I have to agree that one thing that irritates me is people overly praising poor work. It's actually of less constructive use than nasty comments, as it is actually a lie. At least being nasty tells the truth about the work, even if it's unacceptable.
Another issue is that the people that post poor work are the same people who are making comments on other peoples work. If they think they're own poor work is good enough to post, then the chances are that they'll think other poor work is good. On that basis it will always be impossible to get a full and rounded critique on this site.
I also hate to hear 'but I don't have any software, so it's not very good....' That's nonsense. Get some paper, draw something, scan it in. Around 50% of my first stage pitches for work are in the form of hand drawn storyboards.
The most important thing is that there are at least some people who can offer good and useful advice, so the mocker can choose who to listen to. What we really need to accompany this is to lose all the assholes who make nasty digs. Everyone is entitled to post work, terrible or great, but no one is entitled to be nasty.
There are also plenty of people here looking for an ego boost, and that can manifest in a really condescending attitude. However, we all like an ego boost... especially designers... that's why we do it. Look at the text on the home page under 'MOCKS' where it explains this is a place to showcase work. Showcase means 'to present something favourably to get attention' after all. Just keep your ego in check, as there's always someone better than you. Much better.
Those of you who want the bad work to be banned are the worst offenders. If you want pure, great design, then learn where to go to see it.
How I see it, for what it's worth.
MD
I would never wish to remove people's work from these forums, it should be open to all levels of designers. But i've been here since the begining, and was whitness to the very first mocks to go online (What If...) and have seen so many people post INTENTIONALY bad mocks, it can be hard to tell who has promise and who is taking the mick. I may sometimes get it wrong and in those occasions I am sorry.
I try to be fair, and I point out all the problems I can see, it may be blunt, but if I post work to be judged I want an honest appraisal, not some wishey washey "Wow thats amazing 10/10"
When I look at other mocks, I imagine I'm the mocker and I ask myself the questions I think about with mocks...
What is the Quirk to these?
Would this look as good or better than the current On-Screen look?
Why am I replacing a designer's current work?
How does this look reflect the content and channel's purpose?
I will still be honest and If I do offend, I will apologise, but I won't limit myself to praise and simple criticism, the designer may not be experienced, but thats why you need to tell it how it is, and rather than complain and ignore these comments, mockers should look back at their work and fix the mistakes. Not many mockers actually post updated images taking on board comments.
I try to be fair, and I point out all the problems I can see, it may be blunt, but if I post work to be judged I want an honest appraisal, not some wishey washey "Wow thats amazing 10/10"
When I look at other mocks, I imagine I'm the mocker and I ask myself the questions I think about with mocks...
What is the Quirk to these?
Would this look as good or better than the current On-Screen look?
Why am I replacing a designer's current work?
How does this look reflect the content and channel's purpose?
I will still be honest and If I do offend, I will apologise, but I won't limit myself to praise and simple criticism, the designer may not be experienced, but thats why you need to tell it how it is, and rather than complain and ignore these comments, mockers should look back at their work and fix the mistakes. Not many mockers actually post updated images taking on board comments.
MB
I think we should all think back to the earliest 'mock sites' and see what the original intention was behind them, and the kind of response they were looking for.
Back in the days of regional idents and presentation, it was considered an interesting exercise, just for fun (hence the term 'mocks' and not 'proposals') to visualise, in computer graphics, what a station might have looked like had it held a broadcast franchise before it actually had (such as HTV before 1968), or after it had lost it (such as ATV from 1982 onwards).
The novelty about this was that nobody had really given this stuff much thought, even in TV enthusiast circles. The only two main sites perveying this kind of stuff at the time and take it seriously I can think of were Java from Brad Jones and APFS from Mark McMillan (which had been borne out of a section in TV-Ark).
You had a clear starting point - i.e. the known, existing idents. There was then a clear brief - try and retrograde or develop (futuristically) those idents and document a fictional development history to show either (a) how a fictional 'old' design evolved into the true newer design, or (b) how the last extant design developed into the fictional 'new' ones.
Around this time, regionality on ITV started to disappear before our eyes and really the only thing left to mock would be 'what's BBC1/ITV1 going to look like in the next re-brand'. The emphasis then shifted, both on those sites and on others such as this one.
This led to two results; rather than there being any emphasis on the wit of the fictional 'development narrative' e.g. what Lew Grade did with ATV in the 80s, which was of equal, if not slightly more, importance than the graphics themselves, the emphasis moved to the quality of technical execution of the graphics. As pointed out above, most design proposals start out as hand-drawn sketches, and fully-fledged implementation comes a lot later, both due to time and cost constraints. It is a long way down the line that even broadcast quality test material goes into production, and a long way further still before the finished version is ready for transmission or print/publication.
So for one thing, this re-shifted emphasis to technical execution is mis-placed and doesn't reflect reality. A new idea can be expressed just as well in a hand-drawn sketch or even simply by a text-based narrative explaining a concept.
The second change is that many 'mocks' have simply become re-creations of existing brand systems, either to try and wow people on how realist their recreation is (and a recreation is just that; a recreation - not a 'mock' because it's a copy of something real) or to try and extend the concept used in reality and show different variants that could be used, or how the current them could develop and evolve into something else.
I would be the first to agree that taking either a current logo or the widely-anticipated next logo of a station (such as the forthcoming itv1 symbol) and putting different backgrounds behind it isn't really achieving much, and really the only thing left to praise/criticise is the choice of colours or shapes in the background, the fonts used, whether it would be more legible or have more impact than the current set, and so on.
I'm not concerned about mockers not keeping in safe areas - most broadcast designs won't show these in print or on web/PC presentation versions as it's superfluous - extra space can be added in to the images ready for broadcast, as the base materials (background film, etc.) are always likely to be created with plenty of scope for different crops to be applied relevant to each destination medium.
The sad thing about the whole 'mock'ing idea is that really there are few things left to mock - and lots of people who all want to try their hand at those small number of things. So, when you get a proliferation of 'new itv1' mocks, it can get boring and many people's attempts can look the same.
However, if mockers were to go back to, for instance, "This is what I think HTV would have looked like if it had started in 1955", they would invite just as much criticism from the board for either (a) going back to an old, hackneyed idea, or (b) for doing something that nobody really cares about and/or (c) isn't really relevant to forthcoming happenings in the current broadcast world. I may be wrong in that regard, but I sense most people here want to see 'current' mocks.
The truth is, 'mocks' in the original sense as applied to TV Enthusiast sites, ran out of steam as a concept around three years ago, and what we see on these boards are really just a dead horse being flogged.
The only things that really wow people any more are things like 3D renderings of alternative set layouts and animations, which are a logical progression from the previous idea of static images telling a story. This can lead to expectations being raised a little unrealistically such that many people still on the first rung of the ladder in technical experience are on a hiding to nothing almost right away.
This doesn't excuse the '5 minute job in Paint' type of mock, but it is usually fairly easy to spot something like this that isn't worth posting any reply at all about. What amazes me is how everyone still jumps on the bandwagon to keep the thread going for so long and for absolutely nothing.
As for mocks that are technically lacking somewhat but still illustrate a concept, I think the quality of the concept itself should be judged first, and the quality of execution second. It may be that the mocker themselves knows full well that the image they've supplied is not the best realisation of what it is they have in their head. It may well be that somebody else on the forum could read the concept and execute it more faithfully. There used to be a page on APFS (and probably still is, I haven't visited it for 18 months) where Mark McM would re-create mocks submitted by others, where the idea was clear but the quality could be improved. This approach, I think, was a lot better than simply discarding the idea along with the image.
I think many people here need to think about where this forum came from, get back to its roots, stop looking for complicating factors, and recognise that there are far fewer brands to play with these days (what with ITV regional branding now having long gone) and therefore will lead to duplicated subjects. Also, as branding is much stricter these days, there isn't even much scope for "This is how BBC2 could design an autumn menu run-down board". The fact that this leads to more repitition is inevitable and isn't the fault of the mockers.
In summary, I would advise people not to get so hung up on mock forums. If anybody get the feeling of 'we've been there, done that, seen that' and starts taking it out on innocent individuals who have only just discovered forums like this, they should perhaps move on to finding other types of websites to put in their favourites and find forums to go to that offer them something new. Rather than getting frustrated from no fault of the newbies. Heck, if you're bored of something, why stick around?
Back in the days of regional idents and presentation, it was considered an interesting exercise, just for fun (hence the term 'mocks' and not 'proposals') to visualise, in computer graphics, what a station might have looked like had it held a broadcast franchise before it actually had (such as HTV before 1968), or after it had lost it (such as ATV from 1982 onwards).
The novelty about this was that nobody had really given this stuff much thought, even in TV enthusiast circles. The only two main sites perveying this kind of stuff at the time and take it seriously I can think of were Java from Brad Jones and APFS from Mark McMillan (which had been borne out of a section in TV-Ark).
You had a clear starting point - i.e. the known, existing idents. There was then a clear brief - try and retrograde or develop (futuristically) those idents and document a fictional development history to show either (a) how a fictional 'old' design evolved into the true newer design, or (b) how the last extant design developed into the fictional 'new' ones.
Around this time, regionality on ITV started to disappear before our eyes and really the only thing left to mock would be 'what's BBC1/ITV1 going to look like in the next re-brand'. The emphasis then shifted, both on those sites and on others such as this one.
This led to two results; rather than there being any emphasis on the wit of the fictional 'development narrative' e.g. what Lew Grade did with ATV in the 80s, which was of equal, if not slightly more, importance than the graphics themselves, the emphasis moved to the quality of technical execution of the graphics. As pointed out above, most design proposals start out as hand-drawn sketches, and fully-fledged implementation comes a lot later, both due to time and cost constraints. It is a long way down the line that even broadcast quality test material goes into production, and a long way further still before the finished version is ready for transmission or print/publication.
So for one thing, this re-shifted emphasis to technical execution is mis-placed and doesn't reflect reality. A new idea can be expressed just as well in a hand-drawn sketch or even simply by a text-based narrative explaining a concept.
The second change is that many 'mocks' have simply become re-creations of existing brand systems, either to try and wow people on how realist their recreation is (and a recreation is just that; a recreation - not a 'mock' because it's a copy of something real) or to try and extend the concept used in reality and show different variants that could be used, or how the current them could develop and evolve into something else.
I would be the first to agree that taking either a current logo or the widely-anticipated next logo of a station (such as the forthcoming itv1 symbol) and putting different backgrounds behind it isn't really achieving much, and really the only thing left to praise/criticise is the choice of colours or shapes in the background, the fonts used, whether it would be more legible or have more impact than the current set, and so on.
I'm not concerned about mockers not keeping in safe areas - most broadcast designs won't show these in print or on web/PC presentation versions as it's superfluous - extra space can be added in to the images ready for broadcast, as the base materials (background film, etc.) are always likely to be created with plenty of scope for different crops to be applied relevant to each destination medium.
The sad thing about the whole 'mock'ing idea is that really there are few things left to mock - and lots of people who all want to try their hand at those small number of things. So, when you get a proliferation of 'new itv1' mocks, it can get boring and many people's attempts can look the same.
However, if mockers were to go back to, for instance, "This is what I think HTV would have looked like if it had started in 1955", they would invite just as much criticism from the board for either (a) going back to an old, hackneyed idea, or (b) for doing something that nobody really cares about and/or (c) isn't really relevant to forthcoming happenings in the current broadcast world. I may be wrong in that regard, but I sense most people here want to see 'current' mocks.
The truth is, 'mocks' in the original sense as applied to TV Enthusiast sites, ran out of steam as a concept around three years ago, and what we see on these boards are really just a dead horse being flogged.
The only things that really wow people any more are things like 3D renderings of alternative set layouts and animations, which are a logical progression from the previous idea of static images telling a story. This can lead to expectations being raised a little unrealistically such that many people still on the first rung of the ladder in technical experience are on a hiding to nothing almost right away.
This doesn't excuse the '5 minute job in Paint' type of mock, but it is usually fairly easy to spot something like this that isn't worth posting any reply at all about. What amazes me is how everyone still jumps on the bandwagon to keep the thread going for so long and for absolutely nothing.
As for mocks that are technically lacking somewhat but still illustrate a concept, I think the quality of the concept itself should be judged first, and the quality of execution second. It may be that the mocker themselves knows full well that the image they've supplied is not the best realisation of what it is they have in their head. It may well be that somebody else on the forum could read the concept and execute it more faithfully. There used to be a page on APFS (and probably still is, I haven't visited it for 18 months) where Mark McM would re-create mocks submitted by others, where the idea was clear but the quality could be improved. This approach, I think, was a lot better than simply discarding the idea along with the image.
I think many people here need to think about where this forum came from, get back to its roots, stop looking for complicating factors, and recognise that there are far fewer brands to play with these days (what with ITV regional branding now having long gone) and therefore will lead to duplicated subjects. Also, as branding is much stricter these days, there isn't even much scope for "This is how BBC2 could design an autumn menu run-down board". The fact that this leads to more repitition is inevitable and isn't the fault of the mockers.
In summary, I would advise people not to get so hung up on mock forums. If anybody get the feeling of 'we've been there, done that, seen that' and starts taking it out on innocent individuals who have only just discovered forums like this, they should perhaps move on to finding other types of websites to put in their favourites and find forums to go to that offer them something new. Rather than getting frustrated from no fault of the newbies. Heck, if you're bored of something, why stick around?