A Question of Research

When I started creating the poster I also decided to record me creating it too, this allows me to look back at my decisions and design choices when making the poster at such a quick pace. It was definitely hard to try and create something in this quickly but I think the time limit forced me to lean on what I have learnt and allowed my methodologies to show themselves properly. Looking through the video I can really see how I quickly begin leaning on these rules and ways of working that I have read about in design books.    The first thing I do is to copy the type in and then lay out a grid system for the design, I first learnt about grid systems in the first year of  my BA. Here we were taught to use a grid system in our designs to effectively lay out a page and have the type look correct and fit into a overarching system, I have already looked at Grid Systems in this  blog  but it is interesting that I have learnt to use this and now almost am unaware I am usin...

Before starting the poster I made sure to create things that I would need beforehand, all this included was writing a short paragraph that would be included in the poster giving a bit of information about how I'm feeling in relation to the project. This is what I wrote; Since the start of this project, I have been confused and stressed trying to understand how exactly I am going to approach and answer the question and project that is laid out before me. These feelings were overwhelming and made me feel like I was constantly going in circles at the start. But now having persevered and kept working away at it I now feel I am finally getting somewhere, I have a direction I want to head in and a way of really improving and changing the way I work. I am now more positive than ever when it comes to this project and what sort of outcome I will create. This is exactly how I feel about the project currently and it's actually quite nice to have this sort of breakthrough in my thinking to...

In my drawing practice I am now still working on the human anatomy, still focusing on the hand, within these pages there are some good drawings of the hand but I'm still not that happy with it, it feels a bit too round and cartoony not really what I wanted. But maybe this is what I should be trying to look for, not creating something real and life like but more what I am comfortable drawing and creating in my own style. Something that I am HAPPY with, not something I think other people will like. Taking this idea I then decided that it may be better for me just to doodle, so I did that and let myself just draw what came to into my head. I feel this is where I have made a bit of a breakthrough in my drawing technique, while I still think its a bit amateur, I just need to keep drawing to improve this!, I feel my confidence in myself is beginning to grow and I trust myself more to be able to transfer what I am thinking down onto the page.   This small doodle of someone shouting "...

 Today I had a 1 to 1 meeting with my Tutor, before going to the meeting I wasn't too sure what I was going to need it for as I felt I knew what I wanted to do and where I was going next with this project. However, once I joined the zoom call and began to talk through my project I got some good ideas and steps I should do next. In my notes, you can see how we were talking about looking more into the methodology and rules that are laid out by other Graphic Designers/Thinkers in the creative field and how these influence Designers. Along with this while talking about how these new methodologies begin to impact and change the way Graphic Designers produce pieces of work, we begun to talk about looking at the rules that I use inadvertently when making a piece of design. This where we talked about me making something and then analysing what "rules" and methodologies I have been using and been unaware of using. In order to do this I need to first set out what I will create and ...

  From looking at the illustration books it mentioned that to get better at drawing you needed to first have an understanding of human anatomy and how the body looks, so this is where I will start. I want to follow their process to see if it can indeed improve my drawing skills and make me better at illustration, starting with the body felt odd to me as I had never done that before so I will start with the hand and see how good I can get at doing that. These are my first attempts at drawing a hand just from a reference image of my own hand, I think it's a good start but you can really see how I need to keep practising at this as the drawings are just not that strong and not where I want them to be.

 Recently we had a seminar that really helped me to understand what I want to do for this project and how I should approach my answer to the question, it was a really interesting lecture that opened my eyes not only to this project but to what I actually want to do for my Masters. Within the lecture, we were shown videos of a skater practising over and over again until finally he get the trick right and a road line painter perfectly painting the words "BUS STOP" on the road, it shows the real importance of practice and how you can practice over and over again until you become a master at your craft. This is what I should be seeing my Masters as, a year where I can practice over and over again until I become a master at my craft.  These are some of the questions that I wrote down in my notebook during the seminar that I think is very similar to the question I'm trying to answer in this project, one that is very similar to my project question is "How does it affect wha...

  Today we had a lecture where we had to create a story for how we are feeling about the project so far, I think the first two lines sum up exactly how I feel currently that being "Fucking Stressed"(sorry for swearing but it gets the feeling across better). I believe the stress to be coming from not knowing if what I am doing is correct, is this the right thing to be doing or is it a stupid idea that I can't use properly, along with this I also wrote about how I'm currently feeling like I'm spiralling downwards which is partially true. As I feel more like I'm repeating myself over and over again constantly looking into the same things and not really getting anywhere with it. I'm currently writing this in-between my lecture and seminar with the seminar happening next, hopefully, in this seminar, some things can be cleared up and I'll be able to understand what the hell I should be doing.

  This book written by Sean Adams, Peter Dawson, John Foster, and Tony Seddon they outline 365 rules for Graphic Design that act to help the first-time designer to make sure they gain an understanding for Design and what is needed to be "good" in the field. However, when reading it I began to think about why we need all these rules that essentially box us in and tell us how we are meant to be and how we are meant to design.  The first rule they start with of course is about Comic Sans and that we shouldn't use it as a Graphic Designer the point out that it is used for "home-grown" party invites and letterheads, in a scoffing manner saying that we as designers are above this sort of design. But I would argue differently that there is nothing wrong with the use of Comic Sans especially in that of "home-grown" designs, that is probably where Comic Sans is the perfect font to use, no other font would work as well. Why should we stand on a pedestal and look...

  The next book I looked at was "Stop Stealing Sheep" by Erik Spiekermann and E.M. Ginger, much like "Grid Systems" this book aims to be a teaching application for Graphic Designer so they can begin or fully understand the basics of Graphic Design that is the use of type and layout. However, unlike "Grid Systems" which I felt was written so if a designer doesn't use the techniques outlined in the book they are not a Graphic Designer, this book gives advice and points out where designers go wrong with type. Here for example where the type starts being really close to the rest and bunched up and then starts to move away from each other. I think this is a really good way of showing how to design with type and what pitfalls a designer can fall into. However I'm just not sure this is going to help me in answering the project question, I think focusing more on manifestoes and what rules they create would be more interesting to me and answer the question ...

When I started thinking about rules within Graphic Designer I instantly thought of "Grid Systems in Graphic Design" by Josef Muller-Brockmann, I remember starting my BA in Graphic Design and being told to look at this book as it would help us to improve our designs. Within this book Brockmann sets out a design system in which designers can work their type and designs, it creates a rule set in which a designer can find a way to create a grid system that can work for them and their designs along with how to use the system and what it can achieve. When looking at just the start of the book where Brockmann introduces the idea behind the grid system he is about to lay out, he uses this set of words repeating the phrase "the will to" implying, at least to me, that a graphic designer must use these rules to "cultivate objectivity", "rationalize the creative" and "penetrate to the essentials". It’s s as if without these rules a designer cannot ...

  This question scares me, I think I know what it could mean but I could also be so easily wrong. So I think the best way for me to understand the question is to break it down, each word trying to understand what it means in a greater background of the question. I started by creating a mind map off of the question, focusing on different parts of the question and either comparing them or seeing what they could mean. Looking at the question this way was a good way for me to begin to understand it and try and work out what exactly I need to do to answer it. Looking at the question I now think that the best way to answer it is to compare how two things happen and what exactly the difference between them is, along with this I really like the idea of looking further into the idea of RULES within the creative world focusing especially on Graphic Design. I think I could look at the rules that have been used in different art movements and then try and find ways in which they were broken by ...

What do I do next... I left our first lecture on "A Question of Research" with two things, a question, and feeling, that feeling being "what do I do next??". I came back and sat down at my desk with my question written in my notebook still wondering what do I even do with this sort of question. It was at this point that I stood up and walked down to my local ASDA, this allowed me time to just think about the problem. Without having to worry about making sure I was doing something, it's in moments like this where I am doing something else where I find myself being the most creative. During my shopping trip, I began to think more and more about the question we were given and how I would start to approach this project, I have been so used to working in a certain type of way that it is both going to be exciting to work in this new way and hard trying to make it work for me. I made this right after I got back from my shopping trip, I think it encapsulated exactly how...