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Intro Presentations:
We began the course with an afternoon of presentations. Each member of the course gave a little introduction into themselves, and their practice. This was a good way to initially break the ice, and give us ways to start conversations with each other. I decided to reuse (but modify) my A-B presentation from the end of last year, as there was plenty of similarities between the briefs.

There are a lot of graphic designers on this course, which is great as I'm a designer too. But, I do hope to connect with others from lots of other creative fields during this year!

Jyni Ong:
Jyni's workshop was about storytelling, we each had to select an email, message, or a moment. And by the end of the week we had to communicate this story/ moment as a visual piece - in any format we'd like.

I wanted to challenge myself, and try to boil down my chosen story to its simplest  form, to the point of icons if possible. I chose to communicate my first day at uni, in comparison to my first day of the MA. I ended up with a poster design, which Bryan described as being reminiscent to a flag! It covers my journey from then to now in a series of icons.

I wanted to test my communication skills to the limit. This was a very tricky experience, not only did I struggle to finalise my idea, but I also struggled to visualise it. I've never tried to communicate anything in this style before, I normally allow myself to think too literally, and sometimes project can fall flat. Yet, this helped me to improve my slightly more metaphorical thinking skills. The knife and fork representing "living" in its purest form - eating! Commenting on how my current life on the "light side" is settled, normal, and ordered (represented by the parallel lines). Where as the "dark side" contains chaos in the form of a black scribble etc. The oval in the middle is my face - in its simplest possible form. Creating it was a great insight into my creative process too, very chaotic, frustrating, and tricky to pin down.

I really enjoyed this workshop, and found it very beneficial for many reasons. As I mentioned, it encouraged me to think and create in a way I had experienced before, but never to this extent. I don't think I'll be taking this exact project forward, but I will definitely be taking forward this way of thinking. Trying to test the limits of communication, and boiling things down are definitely things I'd like to experiment with in the future.

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Now we have time to begin our main, overarching brief. When thinking of my creative process, and what elements to perhaps focus on, I was very quickly drawn to poster design. We've been tasked to create an artefact that says something about us, and communicates our design process. This has become a big part of my recent design identity, and I also feel the act of creating a poster, in isolation, is actually quite a good insight into my creative process. I don't have any concrete ideas about this projects direction yet, but hopefully I'll get there soon.

It's been quite a slow week, as I have been struggling to come up with ideas as to where to take this spark. The fact is, my design process is normally very chaotic, frustrating, and full of back and forth. I'd like to be able to communicate this aspect - but figuring out how, is tricky.

Another important aspect of this poster design insight is that  over the summer since my BA finished, I was able to appreciate how refreshing it is to create art without reasoning at all - just for fun. This is exactly what my love for poster design was born from. I think its very important to include this feeling in this piece.

Dwayne Roberts:
At the end of the week, Dwayne Roberts delivered us a lecture about our digital footprint, and its subsequent environmental impact. It was a very in-depth lecture, and was very eye-opening! Dwayne covered things I'd never heard of, things I wasn't aware of, introduced us to terms such as "CRUFT" and "dithering", and things that were hiding in plain sight.

One thing Dwayne spoke about was a website's carbon footprint. This is something I've never considered before, but once he mentioned it I thought "of course!" It can be very environmentally demanding to keep a website running, and this problem is almost always overlooked by all of us who use the web on a daily basis. This effect can be worsened by uploading large files/ images to your website, or falling victim to "cruft" (badly designed, unnecessarily complicated, or unwanted code or software). Dithering images (drastically lowering the quality) can lessen this burden placed on the computing power.

All in all, this lecture made me take a step back, and reconsider ow I use the web, how I could build my website to be less damaging, but also about my outlook as a designer. I'm not thrilled to think I may have to lower the quality of the work I post online, but it's about weighing up what's more important I suppose. Interesting stuff!

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"If you read - write!"

George Orwell Reading:
I found Orwell's piece really interesting, and quite relieving actually. When tasked with reading, I am almost always turned away due to the verbose language - It genuinely infuriates me. If you want to educate someone on your new findings, why talk in riddles?!!!! Idiots. But hearing one of the most renowned novelists of all time come out and attack that way of writing was music to my ears.

I struggle to concentrate on reading at the best of times, let alone when there are awful sentence structures stopping me from understanding. I'd like to find more texts on this subject, as I have always felt like my opinion was somehow invalidated simply because those with a larger reputation seem to write in this pretentious manner.

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I'm struggling to finalise my idea at the moment, and it's becoming very annoying. I come up with lots of ideas, and have discussions with various people, but cannot seem to like one idea enough.

Sometimes I think I'm trying to communicate too much at once, other times, not enough at all. Some other ideas are too literal, and some are too metaphorical.

In general, I feel that I prefer longer projects, and struggle to work on one's that are shorter than six weeks. This is because it normally takes me a couple of weeks to get up and running - especially as this is the first module of the year. I have wasted so much time procrastinating, and working "around" the brief - instead of actually tackling it and nailing an idea.

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As discussed in my boards, I am currently working towards a walkthrough poster design workshop. Things aren't great, but aren't terrible either. I am just struggling to pin down exactly how to execute this idea.

Through meetings with Bryan, James and talking to my course mates, we have begun to think of possible outcomes, but nothing is really sticking. I haven't had much chance to conduct in-depth research into my idea, as the idea changes everyday. I'm hoping I can use this development time/ experimental time as some first had research, and decide where to take the project this way.

I will have to see where this project takes me, but then again, it is still very early days! No need to be too stressed yet.

I haven't done a great deal of traditional research so far this module, while I would have liked to have done more at this stage, I am constantly flip-flopping between ideas, leaving me with little time to research. As I don't want to fill up my boards with irrelevant things.

But this week consisted of me just continuing my project as best I can. Nothing else to report.

Friday:
I can't seem to get any idea to settle! Getting a little frustrated, as it's really holding back my progress. Took a walk with Kalina and we discussed ways of streamlining my idea - focusing on the "not making sense". But this idea didn't last until the afternoon, as it still felt too shallow? I can't really think of many poignant things to say - because I'm not really sure what I'm thinking myself!

I was hoping I could get this project finished on time, but procrastination, and confusion have set me back

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Weekend Beginning:
Had a very slow weekend, in fact I did no work. I am really enjoying socialising on this new course, but this has further delayed my settling on my idea.

Monday Morning:
Scheduled an emergency meeting with my friends, and when discussing my idea of a walkthrough workshop, Charlie noticed that it reminded him of a "Wiki-How" step by step guide. Perhaps I could make a walkthrough zine instead? Rizo-print it? Make the zine confusing to match my process?

Catch up with Jyni:
It was great to get an external opinion on my ideas at this stage - you forget how refreshing it can be. The studio culture is great, but it can become stale sometimes, especially when everyone is working hard on their own work. So I took this "instruction Manuel" idea to Jyni, and we discussed it further.

We spent most of the meeting discussing my process actually, to decide what elements to focus on, as this idea may become too broad like the others - perhaps that was where I was going wrong?