Seminar: Research w/James

One of our final sessions with James included researching into our essays further. As we were half way, or near the end of our essays, the seminar proved quite essential to see where my peers were in terms of their work, and to receive any motivation, feedback or responses I'd needed from James and my peers.

The discussion for the work was quite a small one, I'd have preferred some more feedback but didn't bring my own essay to be assessed, this could have proved quite helpful as from my first hand-in there were a lot of errors in my work. I could have done with James going through the work with me, my main flaw in my work is that I don't make a lot of sense; I'm unable to create sentences that sound correct and flow naturally, as this is something I also struggle with whilst speaking out loud. However, hearing how other people had progressed with their essays really calmed me down, a lot of my peers were behind me in terms of where they were at, which relaxed me and proved to help me to finish my essay at the correct time.

Although the seminar was short it gave me enough confidence to continue with my essay - if I had brought a sample of my essay for evaluation, this would have proved much more better for myself, as I'd have made changes to errors and my feedback for my first submission would have been a lot more positive.

Seminar: Reflective Writing

Similar to our Reflecting Thinking seminar, in preparation for our Essays, we were given by Amanda Tinker an opportunity to reflect on any previous writing we have produced. The seminar gave me a lot of knowledge on how to prepare for my essay, and gave me knowledge on how to carefully plan out my essay so it wasn't rushed.

Reflection is:

• An ongoing process of thinking about your development in relation to your work
• A record and review of your work
• A way to gain new perspectives on yourself and your practice

My own reflection is something I rely on heavily, it motivates me to create my own work, if something isn't well planned out or if I've not thought about it, then it causes me to not want to create anything of good quality, I rely on my feedback to progress forward and feedback from my peers particularly is something I enjoy getting responses to, Amanda's lecture reminded me of this.

Reflecting writing and thought processes allows me to realise what to improve on next time, it allows me to improve my writing as well as a lot of thought goes into each piece of work I produce. It's allowed to me to make decisions a lot quicker and plan out my work a lot more; research is something I'm now intent on focusing on and the thought process behind this is key.

"Weighing up different courses of action before deciding what to do"

Over all, although a long seminar with a lot of information crammed into an hour, it was really useful for me as it allowed me to make sense of how to plan my essay correctly, research, the process of design, and how I can respond correctly to things that make a lot more sense. I'm quite used to rambling a lot and not making a lot of sense, I don't check my writing properly, so it's something I can defiantly look to improve upon. I found this seminar quite helpful.

Seminar: Reframing Workshop

Continuing on from our afternoon lecture, we looked more at the way companies approach their ways of meeting the customers. For example, 'by changing the frame, you dramatically change the way of solutions' meaning that the idea behind this is that by changing the way you look at things or appoach it from a diferent view, then the way of solving the problem or looking at it becomes drastically different - it's not black and white anymore.

'Being able to question and shift your frame of reference is an important key to enhancing your imagination because it reveals completely different insights' We, as graphic designers, especially need to take this on board because of our clients wanting to constantly have innotvative ways of approaching their company/ideas.

Our task reflected upon this, based on amigram tattoo's which show two different words looking at the perspective it's shown from, similarly this is what we as graphic designers should consider - how our audience/consumer COULD interpret our product. I chose to use black and white, two opposite colours and to merge them both together. My idea was to keep this as simple as possible because I didn't want to over-complicated things, the idea was to have the black/white as contrasting each other and slowly changing the 'BLACK' text into white text.

I first drew this out using a sharpie marker and pencil, originally the block was going to gradually get darker as you looked down the page, however I changed this so that white would then go back to black as well as this reads better on the page. The idea behind the seminar to me was quite helpful, it let me realise that I can apply this to my own work - that I need to look at things from a different perspective; I keep using different people to value my work so I know what it looks like from a 'consumer' point of view.

Seminar: Infographics

U.S Gun Deaths in 2013

Following on from our lecture in the morning, our seminar tried to reflect what we'd previously learnt - with Tracy we looked at problem solving design and communication. In short, we wanted to look at info-graphics (interpretations of facts and observations through graphic design). They help to simplify complex data to convey understanding, which is an essential skill for graphic designers - it needs to be memorable but visually beautiful.

The examples we explored in the seminar were from the Glasgow School of Art; one students work, shown above, by Sarah Jane Cassell - she chose to represent the "closeness" of her relations to other people, be that friends, family or others, using different colours for each person. The affect of her work is quite empowering to me - it represents quite clearly how she feels about each person, showing dips in the relationship and cut off points, leaving questions open to the people interpreting it (did she stop becoming friends with them or were other factors included?)

The idea for my response to the seminar came from this. I wanted to reflect my entire personality; from well-being, relationship, living arrangements, game time and work load. My idea was to have the same lines that Sarah had, using them to represent how happy this makes me. It was also a good practice for my proposal project, as I wanted to try something with minimalist/infographics for this.

Seminar: Typeface

To reflect on our lecture on typography, our aim was to create 6 different unique fonts to 3 letters (I was given HIJ)
I initially struggled with this because of the way we were given this on-the-spot, I'm quite accustomed to researching into typefaces/typography before hand and then designing something based off inspiration; however it was quite interesting to come up with different designs for each letter. Particularly, I liked my cursive J and removing sans-serif from each font (which I like using), especially with H, I tried looking at different ways to present sans-serif so used triangles.

My favourite concept is the J with the line through it, this is really simple but works well, I also like the H with the stripes through as it looks more interesting to the eye than just a standard letter, with the lines coming off from the bottom.

Seminar: Graphic Styles

Using the library as my secondary resource, I decided to research graphic styles in more depth instead of picking one and reseaching that entirely. The book, "Graphic Style: From Victorian to New Century" by Steven Heller and Seymour Chwast, is updated every few years with more modern graphic movements, such as Street Art and Hand Lettering.

My chosen focus was "Victorian" style of graphics, which was taken from the Industrial Revoultion. Because of the economical downturn of the 19th century, wealth became the sole interest after the Revolution;

"Between the end of the eighteen century and the iddle of the ninenteeth, the once profound English sense of social, civic and artistic responsibility diminished. Wealth became in effect for motivating cultural force"

The artists referred back to the Victorian era as a sense of power/wealth and decided to use this to improve the standards of aesthetics (So in contrast to the Industrial Revolution) This movement was partically not developed and an invention, but responded to the state of the economy and the mean to gain wealth back.

 The movement has been under critic because the Victorians taste confused designs and functions, meaning that they were over-complex and not simplified down. Artist Critic and architect Agust Welby wrote;

"How many objects of ordinary use are rendered monstrous and ridculous simply because the artist, instead of seeking the most convient form and then decorating it, has embodied some extravagance to conceal the real purpose for which the object has been made"

I also learned throuh reading that the Victorian style influenced advertising in particular with graphics, and started the idea of using them together. It was a way of presenting "rewards for the Victorian life-style"

Altough this is a old movement (spanning between 1820's and 1900's) it is particularly influencial because of the 'circus' style themes of text and the use of advertising, which is used hugely in the 21st century. The book also showed expansion on every other movement and proved an interesting read, I really enjoyed presenting it to my peers.

Seminar: Mind Maps

With Richard, we looked at artists who used mind maps or posters to explain and rationalise the process of creating work. For myself, I was really drawn to the more humorous side of the mind maps, particularly ones that had little pictograms next to them or were presented in a more visual way.

For my own process of work, I took inspiration from what others had previously said around me and what I thought of myself; although I am quite critical it allowed me to realise the "mistakes" I make in my own work and the processes I should change to improve upon my work. This was clear when I realised everything I do, I do back to front, processing the final piece only a few weeks into the project. This is quite reassuring for me to do, but prevents me from looking at a lot of ideas for a brief and limiting to me to what I can do. It also prevents me from researching anything as I've already selected an idea and means a lack of wide research.

I really liked this exercise as it made me rationalise my thought process a lot more and realise I'm quite motivated by one idea/piece of work, and not through lots of researching. It was also quite fun to add a humorous twist on top of this.