Are you planning on bringing your interests of comics/writing stories into this project? If so have a look at Speculative Everything by Dunn & Raby for context. I’d also like you to find design examples of people working with your theme and analyse their design choices. You’re a strong image maker, can you illustrate a speculative fiction of poverty?

Considerations below:

- Poverty is not based on 'luck', but born from colonial and capitalist systems of extraction and oppression which makes your metaphor of poker incorrect. 

- Your slides suggest you are going to visualise a metaphor for poverty through poker. Avoid metaphors as they will not offer you a critical, post-graduate level of exploration. Instead use design to research into other systems of value. How many can you find/catalogue into a research document? 

- I would also like you to narrow your theme. Poverty of what? Money? Time? Culture? Education? etc. When you have this focus, research from multiples perspectives. Native and indigenous people all over the world have varying alternative systems to distribute, and even define, value. 

These are very interesting key words, but I will need more context during Friday’s tutorial. What is it about abbreviation and deconstructive typography you are interested in? How it is created? How it communicates? Vernacular of a place? There are many different directions you can take this, therefore I cannot offer suggestions or references at this time.

You mention your interest in analogue film photography, can you incorporate this into your research? Give people disposable cameras to document your theme through their eyes and see how others interpret your focus. 

You also mention you love for making books – keep practising and looking into book design that already exists/is being made currently, this is the only way to improve these skills. 

Your research focus and area is very interesting, and feels already like a postgraduate area of research. 

You talk about repetition/homogenisation as a negative but I wonder if you can turn it into a means to challenge conformity? For example, by repeating creative processes, do you always get the same result? I’ve included some examples below which use repetition in an iterative way. 

Your research is very interesting, but what do you want to say? 

Next steps [suggested research]:

- research into other types of games (card games, boardgames, verbal games, parlour games, arcade games, video games, etc.) and their ideological meaning (e.g. the monopoly board game)

- research into collective games (i.e. the participants work together to win the game collectively)

- you’ve focused your research on social structures of wealth, now spend some time looking into activists that disrupt them. Can you ‘disrupt’ a card game in a political way?

- research the term ‘gamification’

Next steps [suggested experiments]:

- create a series of designed disruptions for the card game (these could be additional rules, card, etc.?)

- document your friends/family playing the card game in multiple ways

- redesign the card game, considering scale, materials, and formats

Next steps [suggested research]:

- investigate where the common use of abbreviations in technology came from (limited bandwidth, limited space etc.)

- investigate the notion of a universal language (see Ellen Lupton’s Critical Way Finding essay)

- research/explore hidden ideologies in emojis (example I gave in class is the yellow emoji = default white)

Next steps [suggested experiments]:

- recording a day in emojis is a great idea

- could you also record your day in acronyms?

- think about how spoken language is being impacted by abbreviation – can you record conversations and look for evidence?

Next steps [suggested research]:

- consider the ‘interface’ of repetition, what form does it take? A *New* Program for Graphic Design by David Reinfurt has an excellent chapter on interfaces you may find useful. 

- research repetition in a closed context (perhaps time?) to help you narrow your focus. 

- research speculative design

Next steps [suggested experiments]:

- make a list of time management systems (e.g. timetables, clocks, calendars, etc.) and think how you could redesign them/disrupt them with repetition. 

- Experiment with repetition, do a single task over and over again 

The first scenario: we play a game just because it's fun. Many of us like to play chess, for example, because we think it is a very interesting game.

The second situation: the people who play it are only there to help me on the project, they are part of my conceptual expression, for example, I invite them, they participate in my project and I then record interviews with them. But it's not that they want to play the game themselves. In this case, the game is just a way for me to express the 'Matthew effect' or the 'gap between rich and poor, not a real game that attracts people.

I'm torn between the two,  and now I prefer to just use the game as a way of expressing my thoughts on the Matthew Effect and the wealth gap not put attention on “playing the game” itself, but that would make me feel that the game's format loses its "playability” here. However, “playability” is so crucial to games.

Thanks for your reading.
Looking forward to your reply.😊

Kate

Next steps [suggested research]:

- look into gamification in graphic design

- find other graphic design-based games / political games / games created by graphic designers and analyse what they are doing / how they are doing it / the similarities and differences in what you want to achieve with your game. 

Next steps [suggested iterations]:

- iterate the board game; experiment with materials, typography, instructions, etc.

- user test your game on new people, each time you make an experiment 

A bit more time/attention to detail needed on your presentation 

Next steps [suggested research]:

- investigate the naming conventions of emojis (I think one is called curious moon) 

- original emojis built with limited pixels – is language getting simplified/unified? Or more complex?

- I appreciate you looking into the ethics of emoji, research further into ‘default white’

- would it be worth looking into meme culture as a form of communication? Particularly the language used in these memes. 

Next steps [suggested iterations]:

- investigation into the yellow smiley face – how it’s interpreted / used in different context. Can you create an index of this? Or an encyclopaedia of everything yellow smiley face? By collecting this information you will find the theme of your work. 

- more experiments needed before you can settle on an idea. You’ve done a lot of research, you need to translate this into experiments. 

- when you’re happy with your experiments, choose an idea to iterate with for next weeks session

Next steps [suggested research]:

- ‘time templates’ is an interesting idea, can you find any communities that do not use universal time?

- research anti-procrastination techniques, is there a critical link between time and productivity you want to make here? Is a 24 hour day natural for humans? Or is it the result of capitalism?

Next steps [suggested iterations]:

- Select one of your experiments to develop further with focus

- list the ‘variables’ within this experiment and begin to iterate / altering the variables (e.g. using your interests in the repetition of gymnastics / the body clock, alter the variables of a day and repeat these exercises.)

- Iterate what a ‘day’ is - how to record it, visualise it, time it, etc. 

- Use of code to make a new ‘clock’ dictated by other input (i.e. not time) to guide you through a day 

Actually, there is still a part of the rule I talked about in my last lesson that I didn't actually think of clearly, so I may need more time to optimize it.

But I think I will use an instruction book next week to help me explain my rules. But I'm still confused about my output. Apart from the game proper and the instruction manual, do I need a booklet to show my preliminary experiments and my analysis process? Because I would like to be able to show the process of my thinking.

Feedback:

- In your presentation you jump between naming conventions which makes it difficult to follow. Can you illustrate the rules? Think of ways to communicate the rules (videos, instruction manual, photographs, etc.)

- Because your topic is complex, your rules need to be simple.

- You can get a 9 sided dice

- Design the complete packaging/branding for the game. – the cards are interesting, keep developing the visual signs for each level. What existing visual language is there to communicate these different class levels? 

- You need to practice English Language / English comprehension. The more you do this the more confident you will be.

Feedback:

- Creating images out of language – can you describe the emojis, then use this to describe an image? 

- Research visual descriptions for visually impaired people (as a process you learn a lot about your images) 

- Translation of English language textbooks – is this about learning a language or using interpretation?

- World emoji awards / data of emoji use (can you plot this against history? A historical timeline just in emojis?)

- Create a research book/a catalogue of your experiments and places where the yellow smiley face is found.

- Your idea to assume a future of international communication via an An emoji society is very interesting. Think beyond advertisements (what else? Stories, paintings, everything, etc.) 

Feedback:

- Excellent presentation, very professional – improvement, try not to read from the screen. Can you show visuals that illustrate the different time methods? 

- Research Charles Jencks’ Adhocism

- An exploration of time based media – communicate what are you learning through these iterations

- Be careful of legibility issues (blue text over video) Include the background info as to why these exercises take place etc. 

- Make a research book to support your video(s)? (Show serape’s publications)

- Experiment with different audio? No audio? What effect does this have? 

- Back to coding? Body tracking? See Tigris Li experiments

- Consider a way to show us the variables as the videos are playing? (Old video cameras or dance games?)

- Frame the story book more clearly as an artefact from you speculative future, emoji society. Could this be in the form of an introduction? Or something that ‘sets the scene’ like an illustration? There is an element of this coming through in the timeline of language evolution you have generated. 

- You mention the emojis, and the possible future of a emoji society could result in many problems. I’d like you to explore these problems through additional digital editing of the emoji (as you did with the cover of your presentation). This additional layering of information could be the next step on the language timeline, after the traditional emoji.

- Should the text exist in your book? I suggest using a French fold to hide the text from the viewer, so they are required to interpret. Alternatively, could you create a series of these books with the same story but the emojis have been interpreted in several different ways, therefore generating different stories?

The interpretation of the emoji language is interesting over different languages because of the ordering of the emojis, but perhaps also over different disciplines – my practice uses visuals. Bloom’s practice uses words. 

- Interesting that you are manipulating the emoji’s on the first page with blur – is this something you can apply to your book? What other effects can you apply to the emoji (these could be informed by the current issues with emoji’s you highlight). 

- Create a research booklet to showcase your experiments. 

Good luck with the project Pearl – looking forward to seeing the final results in a few weeks. 

- Consider the design decisions you are making with more criticality (e.g. typefaces, illustration style, colour schemes, materials of paper/chess pieces etc.) All of these decisions impact the message you are trying to communicate with the game, so they must be chosen, and tested, carefully. 

- The chess board having varying heights is an excellent example of a design decision you have made that reinforces your concept. 

- Over the next few weeks I’d like you to think about production. What materials and processes are you going to use to make your chess pieces, cards and the instructions? Are you putting the game into a box? What is the game called? Could all 4 be different materials that represent different wealth/value?

- In your final presentation make sure you summarise your research, tests and iterations of the game so we can see an overview of your process.

- Finally, it would be useful to take professional photos of people playing your game that you can use in the presentation and your portfolio.

Good luck, and looking forward to the final presentation on 10th August.

- Producing your research document (Physically? Digitally) Think about your themes of time and repetition? Can you use this in the way you produce your work? Perhaps you create two editions, one very quickly, one over a really long duration of time? Perhaps you can find ink that doesn’t last forever? Perhaps there’s an online version with a countdown to when it’s no longer available? 

- Where do you envision the film being shown? Is this a visual representation of your research / a tool to communicate your research, or a film to pose questions / a provocation to the audience? 

- if it is to be used as a new time template, how can you illustrate this? Through mock-ups? The film on the wall where a clock should be, or on the bedside table where an alarm clock should be, or on a wrist watch? etc.

- The film ends  abruptly – should it loop forever? A title? Caption? Credit?

Really looking forward to the final presentation Swany. Have a great couple of weeks.