A Question of Research

 I decided the next project I would look at would be one I felt was one of my strongest projects to ever produce, this was my Major Project for my third year and was the project where I put in everything I learned over my years in education to build a very strong and competent project. One thing I notice straight away that I do differently is I started responding to my research before at all the projects I have looked at I hadn't done this. I had only responded by saying what I like about it or what I had learned from it, I hadn't responded by drawing next to it this drawing is influenced by the research. This I think is what propelled my research further and improved it, I really like this idea of actually responding to the research rather than just typing something that confirms I understand it. Along with this it's a much more fun way to research so why didn't I do this for my other projects, was it because I just hadn't thought about doing it?

 Instead of just looking back at projects that I really like I need to also look back at projects I am not so proud of, I think this is where I can learn the most about myself and see exactly where I feel I went wrong or maybe where I didn't go wrong. A project that I certainly want to forget is from my second year called Ethical Design, in this project we were tasked with creating something that responded to something we believed in. I want to look back at this project and see where I went wrong and what I feel I could have done differently now. I did before looking at the research folder for this project think that the problem with this project was the research however when looking over it again I'm not sure the research is what let me down, I think the research is pretty strong yes there could have been some more bits added to it but its still pretty good. What I notice again is my affinity for using mindmaps and lists as they littered throughout the project again, this real...

 I think while it is important to look at how I actually design something, it is also important to look at how I come to design something. To do this I want to look at some of past projects from university and work out how I get to the designing stage, which includes the research stage, ideation, and the lead-up to the final piece. Even me writing this part about what bits I want to look at is a look into my design process stating with research trying to get a base of knowledge about something and then starting to think about how I will take this knowledge and apply it to my designs. I decided to start with a project that personally I am very proud of, in the latter half of the second year we had a project called " live design brief" we were given the choice to pick a brief from a set of competitions being held that year and while I may not have won anything I still feel this project was where my research and designs shined however looking deeper into this project may show to...

  This time I tried my hardest to design without a grid, going so far as to focus the design itself on "Disregarding grids", much like with the previous design I at first started designing in a grid even if there wasn't one there. However, I caught myself and pushed myself to break this, putting the type at odd angles and working with it in massive size. Along with this I also didn't have a big block of text to design around and ultimately I feel like this made the design process and design overall much worse, I find it so much better and easier to design around a block of text it allows me to understand how the audience is going to look at the design and how the rest of it will sit. Thinking about how I find it easier to design with a block of text on the page and working to a grid has made me start to think about why I feel I need to stop doing this, what is exactly wrong with it? I think it was much more interesting when I was looking at my own methodologies and wh...

  Continuing to investigate my methodologies I decided to make another poster however this time I would try and steer away from using grids, leaning on already comfortable design styles such as swiss design, and just try to push myself further to create a poster in 5 minutes. This is what I created... As you can see I found it very hard to move away from the swiss style of design or even design without a grid, when you watch the video of me designing this you will see that while I didn't first create a grid I feel I still used one, just one that was in my head and forced me to design like this. While I know grids are important and help to make a design more readable and better for the reader I just wanted to see if I was able to do it without and what it would look like. As it turns out I can still design without a grid by creating a grid in my head. I think this is both a good and a bad thing, while I may not be able to let myself go free with my designs at least I know that I hav...

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...