# data[].attributes.body
All in Group because of orientation and only the beginning of the project

# data[].attributes.body
I will have to admit that I am usually a group work hater. I have always been the one in charge, the one who wants to to the most of the work and the one with control issues. This is exactly why this unit will actually be a challenge for me, work related and personally, because this is something that I have been working on for a while now. Being controlling and bossy is nothing to be proud of. I think it sounds worse than it is, but group work has just not been my favourite thing to do.

During the First year, I actually started to notice how important collaboration is while working in a creative field. You do not have to like it, but it is all about connections. I realized that this is a very important issue that I actively need to work on if I want to be successful at what I am doing. I am not a very social person, I do not have the need to make friends all the time, I do not make things nicer than they are - I either click or I do not. No smalltalk no fake interest. This is not a bad thing though but it can come across rude very easily and that’s just not how you connect. I need to find a way in between both extremes. Also socializing is very exhausting to me when i do not feel like it.

Summarized, I was worried to work in groups.

But my group is actually very cool. I do not have to be the way I would be usually because everybody is very engaged and motivated to create something cool. Also its just girls and that is a major plus to me personally. The vibe is just better.

I think there are multiple things that we can agree on and our ways of designing are not that far away from each other. We noticed that during the second task, because we often drew and thought about similar things. Communication is very light and easy and criticism is accepted. There are no unnecessary fights or whatever. I am actually very excited about how it all will turn out in the end.

I have been really confused about the brief though, because I do not really understand what we have to do and what the difference between the group project and the personal project is. Also, I have just been getting used to my schedule and my teachers - that is all gone now. It is a bit annoying because I have to redesign my whole day to day life, working hours, etc. which is hard for me because I take routines seriously. Also I just really liked the teachers we had in Unit 5 and I was really happy about everything, it all feels a bit more distanced now. The teachers that talk to me now, are people that I have never seen in real life, my GD teachers know who I am and I have talked to them multiple times face to face. I hope that everything will became clearer during the next weeks.

# data[].attributes.body
I had my first personal tutorial this week and it has been clearing things up for me a lot. I talked to Matthew about the difference between the group and the personal work and I get it now. It is always very important to me to analyse the brief 100% before I even start thinking about ideas. I believe that it is really important to actually get the goals of a project and understand what you have to do. Many issues people have during projects are because they did not read the brief properly and I just do not want this to happen. If I start thinking about ideas before understanding what need to be done, I would just want to do those ideas no matter what and miss the actual goal of the project.

I was just thinking that it is really ironic that I am in the whole „Community“ project even though I am not that of a communal and social person. I have almost no family and many different kinds of friends, it feels like something I never really had. My family is broken up and my parents do not have many friends. I never had friends with the same interests in my very small hometown and I never felt like I belonged there. If I would be asked, I honestly would not know what my community would be. I always felt like somewhere in between, never really at home.

# data[].attributes.body
This week felt really productive. I started on Monday preparing our presentation of the reflection tasks we did on the weekend. Also I had to create the collage that represents myself and that was actually a lot of fun. At first I did not really know what to include, I just knew that I wanted it about where I am from/ about my home. I was talking to my mum and I remembered that there is that one picture of me from when I was still in her womb, so before I was even born. I am waving on that picture its so funny, like I knew they were watching me. I decided to make that picture the main focus because this is what positionality is - its the community and surrounding that you’re born in. To me, positionality is a lot about privilege, some get born into rich families, some into ones that have to struggle. You just do not choose if you want to be black or white, rich or poor, straight or whatever you might be. You’re just born and then there are consequences that you will have to live with for the rest of your life. That is a totally not fair concept and I believe reminding myself that birth is literally random, is so important when thinking about positions and communities. Your family is a community you’re a part of just because you’re born into it, not because you chose to be with them (for example). People do usually do not choose to have a good education or opportunities, they are either accessible or not? You’re either lucky or you „just have to work hard and anyone can achieve anything“. I hate that. Some people can work their ass of and still would never reach goals others might do without trying too hard. Life is not that easy, and instead of talking these untrue sayings people should maybe do something to help decreasing the difference between living standards and privileges we are born into, and focus on being empathic and helpful by doing antiracist/sexist/... work.

Anyways, thinking about education, I thought about including my grades and a letter of my school for the background. That just shows generally that my family was middle class, I had good grades, I am a girl and my age. I added the fact that I am white and straight since that is very important about my upgrowing aswell. Lastly, I added elements that represent my home, like a tea bag, sheep and the sea. I also put in some of my standard drawings to represent my style. I really do like the outcome, I like rough styled collages anyways.

We have to do a presentation about our personal ideas next week. I have 3 ideas, but my favorite one is about putting my home, regional tea tradition into more modern communities and seeing how these traditions keep getting people together, no matter where they are. I want to focus on street/modern people, young adults in cities from 20-28. I think it would work the best as an editorial and for my personal project I would do a video/music video? I want to put graffiti on tea cups etc., put people in parks and to the ceremony there, I have a lot of ideas how to visualize that already. I need to look for some research that has been done about the topic though.

# data[].attributes.body
Anyways, we agreed on food as our main topic. I actually like that because food is something all of us can relate to. What first came to my mind is the tradition of tea in the region where I am from. It is very different to British Tea traditions and I do not really drink it, but I always thought that is is really interesting. I thought about taking a classic tea set and making it more modern and cool. Then I was showering a few days later and I do not know how but I had the idea of connecting tea tradition with street culture in Germany. I have a lot of friends who are from my region and who do not live a traditional life, it they still respect that tea tradition and love it. I thought about making an editorial about that, putting graffiti on the mugs, taking pictures of hiphop/street guys in a park following that tradition. I think that would be very interesting - looking at how tradition can be adapted over time.

On Friday we called to do the reflective tasks for our group meeting and it was really fun. We decided to do collages to represent ourselves for the first task, then we did fast drawings for the second one. I think it is much more interesting to do those drawing in 30 seconds like we did, than thinking too much about it. I enjoy things that are raw and honest.

I agreed on creating a presentation to show our drawings in the feedback talk.

I have to admit that for the first time ever, I feel like working in a group is helping me a lot. I like that there is structure, we meet every few days and we compare and talk about our work and ideas. That forces me to not do everything last minute like I did in the past - that is so important. I hope that I will keep that in future projects because i am really getting used to doing work early as possible.

# data[].attributes.body
The group tutorial on Tuesday was fine but I did not feel like it really helped me personally. I was really confused again about the differences in the projects. Also, I do not really understand why our group is splittend in these tutorials. I honestly do not care about a random other group and their personal feedback, and it is annoying that we do not know what is going on in the tutorials with the other half of our group. We communicated that but it would just be easier to stay together generally and then have larger conversations with different groups? I get the idea of getting inspired by a different group but I believe that there would be better ways to do that.

After the tutorial our group met and we talked about the feedback. We made plans to meet up and think of ideas for the presentation next week.

The talk on Friday was not my favorite, it was just not the work I am really interested in. I am generally interested in more moder, futuristic work. But I made notes about the questions she talked about in the beginning because I find them really interesting in terms of rescearch. Where does community end? Etc. These were important questions to keep in mind.

I will continue researching for my main idea, and do the presentation tomorrow. Also my group wants to do a Mindmap together, that idea came from watching the rescource by Sharon Betram, about what community is. What does community mean to us? I believe we have to talk about our perspectives as a group to find out about each other more and to make the project more cohesive.

# data[].attributes.body
During the last week before the break, we had another tutorial with our tutors. It was still with a different group, which I still do not like. Only three people from our group showed up, which was disappointing since this is a group project. Only at the end of the 9th week, I understood what exactly we are meant to do. I feel like it it really hard to communicate with teachers because its only online. I believe that questions like these would be clear in the beginning if everybody would be in a real room, because confusion would be seen a lot easier than online. Obviously, this is not the teachers fault. It just feels so distant even though you could contact anybody anytime (but then you have to wait till/ if they respond). These circumstances are just something everybody has to get used to over time I guess.

At the end of the week we met again and made plans on how to move on over Christmas/ generally. We decided on making timetables per week for our groups, weekly meetings and so on. Also, we will create a shared Mindmaps and moodboards for our shared idea. To me, the most important thing in this project is working together. It is really sad that its mostly just 5 people in our group coming to meeting ands reaching out. I personally started protocolling our meeting and generally what I am doing for Uni. I feel like this project is 80% organizing things and 20% actual work. I think a protocol is very helpful in this case.

We then met up to decide our main idea for the group project. We made everybody come to a call for the first time, since this is the most important decision, which was really great. Finding a shared idea was really easy because everybody agreed very fast, we all shared the same favorite. I also decided on the idea for my personal project and I am very excited to get started in the new year. We chose an idea where also the many architecture/furniture students in our group can focus on. India, Rocky and me will be the graphic design/poster/... team. I am very excited to see the outcome and to get started soon!

# data[].attributes.body
This week Uni started again but for me it did not really feel like we were on a break. Over Christmas and during the break we worked constantly and I am happy about it. I think it would be really hard to reconnect to the idea if we just stopped for a few weeks.

I found the tutorial on Tuesday good, I liked that we were alone with our group and just talked about what we have been up to. The feedback was only to define the audience a bit more, and we decided to create a mindmap to do that. Other than that, we just have to keep experimenting which I am fine about. We did not really talk about the personal projets. I really enjoy that my group is mostly hard working and really organized. We get along very well and its easy to make decisions. I really did not expect that and I am happy to make friends aswell. As I already said, my previous group projects were really bad and I did not feel recognized and heard. I think a major key point in our group is that we are all equal, there is no boss, just people who share more and some share less.

I was quite busy personally because there is a lot going on in my private life right now, so I did not manage to watch this weeks lectures. I will do that next week. I find it really hard to motivate myself these days, especially when there is even more going privately. I have always been the person that is never at home, always going somewhere, I have been busy. I just love being busy. But being at home all the time, it drained my motivation a lot. In Germany, we have been on lockdown since November, stricter lockdown since December. Going to Uni was such a motivation to me, just seeing all the people there, how they dressed and acted and whatever, it inspired me a lot. I don’t have creative friends here in Germany and it draines my passion and inspiration about what I am doing here. It does not really feel real anymore. I really miss having connections, getting inspired and just having to dress up, get up, go out to learn. I feel like I am becoming lazy and i hate it but on the other side this is okay due to the circumstances. Still hard to accept and hard to find a way how to work with this feeling. I will update if I found a solution!

# data[].attributes.body
I then started working on posters/flyers again and wanted to finally finish them. i had kind of given up on them, but in the end I really liked them.
I want to create a flyer with multiple pages, and I want to ask Phoebe and Inida from my group to help me with it. That’s the goal for the moment

We had a tutorial on Tuesday and to me it was really confusing. We had like 10 min with our tutors and then they left us with an other group. We had to give them feedback about their idea and work. I did not really like their idea because it is about helping old people during convos, which is an honorable thing to do, but I think its quite an obvious ad easy idea. They also did not seem really organized and like one girl was doing all the work. We also have to give feedback to our group members and present our ideas for our individual projects. That was really good, because we can all talk very openly and everybody was open for critique and feedback. We meet usually 2-3 times a week now which I think is great. We also agreed on giving each other „jobs“ so we know exactly what to do and when to do it. The allotment will be done next week and then we will focus on its brand, like the logo and merchandise. I really like how its working - it does not feel forced at all, it just flows. The only negative thing is that some members re really quiet. One girl looked at our Padlet for the first time this week and she kind of embarrassed us as a group during the tutorial. She basically asked what we are actually doing with our group in front of the tutors, which is not quite the right timing. We tried to contact her over the last 2 months and she would not respond. It’s just annoying because we are really organized and talking like that when we are presentating is just not professional. But I hope she will try to work with us from now on. That would be great because more people mean better work and more hands to produce work for our project.

# data[].attributes.body
This week, we gave each other job roles for our final pitch/project outcome and I believe this is the best that we could have done. I feel like we are really really organized and that is represented in our work - I have a feeling that the final outcome will be very good. I was assigned (or I wanted) to do a flyer for the allotment, because layout has been one of my weaknesses in the past. As we talked about in the early stages of our project, we should choose tasks that challenge us and help us learn something new. I haven’t started yet, but I did a Moodboard.

One major thing that I have learned during the group work is: how powerful Pinterest is. I have never used Pinterest before and it is helping me so much. Especially about layout and just general design, I have always been so overwhelmed by all the options that I have. Creating a Moodboard on Pinterest really started to help me reduce the stress and to feel the direction that I am going into. It’s great.

We also want to create guidelines for our final outcomes (the posters,flyer,logo,..) to make our final pitch look cohesive and show that we communicated. If our final work would look completely different from each other, that would just show that we did not communicate well. So this is so important in my opinion. I also have never set „guidelines“ before and I just realized how helpful this might be not for group projects but also for my personal ones.

# data[].attributes.body
This week, most of us were mostly focused on our personal projects. We only talked once on Friday, which I found unusual. When we talked on Friday, I noticed that the tone was a little bit different aswell which I think was because of the stress/soon deadline. Usually, when we spoke it was all friendly and not bossy at all, but this time it felt more like a work-only conversation. I found that sad because that’s when we need each other’s help and empathy the most. Anyways, we decided to set a deadline for the final renders/posters/the leaflet on Monday, because India wants to put them into a final pitch then. I think having a final pitch to present and show is super important and will also look great in our portfolios. I started with the leaflet on Saturday and I actually enjoyed the process. I looked for a lot of inspiration on Pinterest and rewatched an InDesign tutorial from the CCW Tech Help. It turned out professional in my opinion and I want t do a mock up of it during the next days. My Design Process was just completely different to how it looked befor - much more organized, having guidelines, a plan, direction and clear vision. Before it was just messy and without structure. I am very excited about seeing all our pieces coming together on Monday/next week.

# data[].attributes.body
The group work was done on Monday, when we all gave the final designs to India. I created 2 designs for the leaflet, one with phoebes pattern, and one in blue without it. I really enjoyed the process of creating the leaflet, because as I already said - layout has not been my strength. I enjoy facing my weaknesses because after you finish, you just feel great. I am not that insecure about my layout skills anymore, because I feel like they are going somewhere. I find this very exciting.

I also created mockups for the first time using photoshop. I have seen these mockups done by Sofia, and I thought a flyer would look better in 3D. So I watched a couple tutorials and it actually was not that hard. I was still very proud in the end, because it looked so professional. Being professional has been an insecurity of mine for longer now, I have heard in feedback often that I need to be more „professional“. I was always wondering what that actually means, but I believe I am getting closer. These mockups are professional to me, because they show skill, they show the vision that I have and they are finished. They look clean.

After that we did not talk again, but we will meet up again to celebrate the submission. Overall, i have been really happy with my group and the way we worked together. I really like the girls and I hope to stay in contact actually. Working with them was the easiest groupware I have ever experienced because they were interested, attending and enthusiastic. It feels weird to go back to normal now because I got so used to working with them over the past months. I will miss it!

# data[].attributes.body
Focus on Group Project mainly. I have chosen the tea idea to be the theme of my personal project, because that was my first idea and the one that I am most passionate about. I will need to start researching the history and about tradition, so that I can find ways to visualize my outcomes. When it comes to projects like these, I believe knowledge is the key to good design. Good knowledge makes you see certain things that can be very useful while designing. Still, the main focus is the group work at the moment and finding ways to organize myself and the tasks that I have to do.

# data[].attributes.body
I started doing research on my topic and I find it really interesting to learn even more about my culture. It is crazy what kind of an impact tea had on our community and what a strong bond it it that holds people together. I am still not sure what exactly I want to do and feel like I am stuck while not deciding. I have also been very focused on the group project and did not really think about the personal project yet, I just believed the group project was more important. We also talked about finishing the group work first and then helping each other with the individual. I hope that I’ll be able to start working on it very soon.

# data[].attributes.body
I presented my personal project idea to my group, but I still need to clearify which format I want to use for it. It is still about tea culture in modern rooms, and my original idea was an editorial. But I was thinking if there might be a more fun way to do this. I feel like everything is moving into the right direction as long as I keep working and stay focused.

# data[].attributes.body
We had to talk about our personal projects this week and that made me remember that I have not done enough for it yet. Because quite a lot has been going on in my personal life, I have been focusing on the group work. So when I tried talking to Matthew about it, I realized that I haven’t really decided what I actually want to do. So I need to do that until next week, because we will have to talk in a 1:1 tutorial about our progress. I am still with the tea culture and tradition idea. Because I want to paint a traditional tea set, the first thing I need to do is get a tea set. Matthew told me that as well. I think I just need to decide the direction I want to go with it, stick to it and finally start working. Just start.

# data[].attributes.body
I talked about my personal project on Tuesday with Matthew, and I basically thought about just starting over. I was really unsatisfied with my idea and what I actually want to do. Compared to the group project, there was no structure at all. No vision, no nothing. A year ago, or maybe just a few months, I would have started over. But I forced myself to stick to it and just finish it, because that’s better than not finishing anything. Also, I really think that I did not like it because I haven’t really thought about it. During the last days, I started reflecting about where I actually want t o go with it. What’s my goal? What’s the format? Why? I did not really take time for these questions during the last weeks, so no wonder I did not like it - I did not like the fact that I haven’t put enough work into it. I now have created a plan what I need to do, every single step, to finish it. This is really helping me be motivated and stay focused. Now I just need to continue doing the work. Last week I said start the work, now I will just have to keep going. (Also to be ready on time)

# data[].attributes.body
The last week was very stressful to me, because external happenings threw my time plan over.

I planned to finish my individual project in the beginning of the week but then the tea set I ordered did not arrive. So I had to find a quick alternative at home. I was also trapped at home because of the weather, I could not go back to Hamburg because no trains were running. In Hamburg I had all the other equipment for my project, like pens, markers, spray paint. Lastly, I have had ordered a LED photo light to be able to shoot professional pictures at home, I wanted one of these for a long time now. But before I could pick it up it was stolen. Just A LOT that happened this week.

Obviously, I had to adjust. I could only leave home on Thursday, which left me with 3 days for the personal project. To make the most of it, I started writing my text for the editorial/zene I am doing, mapped out the layout for the zene and prepared everything as far as possible. I painted the tea set with a friend on Friday. On Saturday the weather was really good, so I decided to take the pictures outside with sunlight. We went to a local park and layed out some white sheets as a background. When it comes to these things, I really wish we could go to Uni. Being and learning to be flexible is important, but having a photo studio would make the process a lot easier and more professional, without paying for additional personal equipment. I then finished the layout and the zene on Sunday along with the final submission pdf.

I am really annoyed that it got so „last minute“ because I was really hoping to get everything done earlier this time. I wanted to keep Sunday free, to have it as a check and refined day before submitting. I believe you always have to sleep over a design and then look at it the next day, just to see if you’re still happy with it. These happenings were out of my control, but if I would have taken care of it earlier on, it wouldn’t have been such a problem. Still, I feel like this has gotten better through the project, because working with people who might be better organized than me really helped me create a structure/time plan that works for me. I hope that I will be able to use that knowledge from the beginning on during the next projects, preventing situations like this week from happening again. Overalls, I am still happy with the outcome of my project. Compared to what I would have done 6 ,months ago, I personally see a great process that I am proud of. The layout would not be as clean, the pictures would not have been edited this way and it would not be as cohesive. Still, with better time management I wonder what I would have done.