Hannah Waterman

AGP500 Please use the links below to navigate the blog in order they are represented in the PDF. Project One: Think Global Act Local Project Two: Documenting Project Three: Type and Language Project Four: PDF Portfolio Workshops Professional Practice Talks Reflection

[hannahwaterman]

Semester Review and Reflection

To conclude this semester, I want to write a critical analysis and reflection of the body of work I have made. 

I believe that within my physical, Covid-induced limitations, I have conducted an exceptional degree of experimentation. I have clearly evidenced that I have produced a titanic body of work, using a huge range of styles and techniques. In my digital work, I have used several programs, such as ProCreate, Illustrator, Lightroom, Photoshop, Premiere and InDesign. I have also used inks, paints, pencils, objects, tape and scalpels to design work on paper where appropriate. I have used film and digital photography, photo editing techniques, illustration, video and video editing, typographic designs, painting on canvas, layout and page design skills. I have full confidence that I have gone above and beyond what was expected of me in order to exemplify my ability to visually experiment, try new things, teach myself techniques and work in a diverse range of methods. I created confident and authoritative final products and when I have not achieved this I have critically analysed my shortcomings.

I adhered to task specifications to a very high standard, reread and rewrote briefs, as I have evidenced in my blog. I showed that I understood what was expected of me. I sought and received continued feedback, guidance, reassurance and support from tutors to ensure I was meeting these specifications. I have thought carefully about the way that my work shall be viewed and considered ease of access and readability throughout the entire process. In my writing and my inclusion of images I have worked to take the viewer along with me on the journey of each project, rationalising my decisions and telling the story of my response to the brief, in a structure that makes sense. The thought and time that has gone into the layout of this blog alone evidences that I have considered audience and reception all throughout my work, and I have been striving to make it highly legible and easy to follow. 

I am confident that I have shown boldness, originality, and an ability to synthesise ideas to reach relevant and exciting visual conclusions. I created and used an extremely broad spectrum of research to synthesise inspiration into original and informed ideas. Context, audience, style, tone and voice have been considered in my work throughout. I have displayed a high level of knowledge of my subject. I have been decisive and detail oriented, and made good judgements critically and analytically. One example of this is during the Type and Language project, I made outcomes in many many different styles that I was very happy with. However, I created the final product in a very stripped back and edited down manner, in order to think about purpose, audience and market in a way that made more sense. 

I have put in many many man hours and evidenced personal responsibility, good timekeeping, and initiative. I have self taught many skills and techniques, and sought material independently to improve my work and learning. For example, this term I used ProCreate to make a lot of my work, and all my ProCreate knowledge is self taught - it is an atypical program to use for graphic design work, but I’ve made use of the very simple UI as a way to improve my workflow and increase my creative output. I also was critical enough to know when this limited me: for example, in the Documenting project, I began learning code for my generative design project, but I knew that I did not have the resource, nor was I yet ready, to create a good final product by coding. 

Next semester I want to work on making my layout skills better, spend more time on my final products, and think more critically and selectively about outcomes. I want to work on my photography skills in a meaningful way, learning more about how digital cameras work. I want to improve my Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop skills. In the next few year or two I want to begin using AfterEffects and learning motion graphics because it is a very highly desired skill in the design industry and it pays very well. My shortcomings this semester I think are that I could have tried a larger and more delicate and detailed range of layout styles. I could also improve my typesetting and utilise this more within my work. I try not to feel too bad about work I do because self deprecating is useless, but I also can see quite plainly where my shortcomings have been visually. I do need to keep improving my page design and layout skills, and become more confident at using type at smaller scales, and fitting more information on pages - something my PDF lacked. However, I do believe I have identified many places where I fell short in my actions. I hope to get some robust feedback from this semester that I can act on meaningfully next time around. 

I cannot say I am yet sure what the direction is my design work will go in. I have created a small typographic work every day this year so far, and posted it on my instagram (disgustinggirlart). I am getting better at typography and it is something I have sought to improve. I see myself doing page design in the future and I think I would like to design or contribute to zines in the upcoming months. In the months leading up to summer, I will be creating a portfolio to send to design studios to try and get some intern work, either paid or unpaid. I really want some work experience as it will push me to finessing and finishing my work faster and in a more detail oriented way. I will continue to seek feedback from tutors wherever I can, and I will also soon be seeking feedback from outside university by these studios I will email, or any other professionals I can get myself into an email conversation with. I would like to build a larger range of books, magazines, and online resources for me to learn about graphic design techniques. I will also be continuing to design a small typographic work every day this year if I can manage to keep it going! 

Thanks for viewing my semester portfolio, and thank you for being great tutors this semester. I have really enjoyed myself. 

[hannahwaterman]

Semester Portfolio 3: Making The Blog

When making the blog, the priority I had in mind for design was easy navigation. I chose Tumblr for ease of design and my familiarity with it - though Tumblr I learnt some HTML because as a teenager I kept a blog and would edit it how I wanted. Tumblr lets you choose themes to display your blog in different ways. I started off with a theme called Glump, where I could choose a blog background. 

I didn’t get a capture of myself using Glump, but above I have included an example. I cycled through a few different backgrounds, including photographs I had taken during documenting, and marks I had made in the mark making workshop, but it became apparent that having a picture for a background was very busy and didn’t fit my intentions super well. Martin also critiqued the size of the sidebar and main column of posts - the posts should be bigger, the sidebar smaller. I tried a few more different themes, focusing on simplicity. 

After I had tried some without a sidebar, or ones where the sidebar stayed at the top of the page, it was apparent that I did need a fixed sidebar for navigation simplicity. Because many of the posts are so long and dense on this blog, I didn’t want you, the reader, to have to keep scrolling down and then back up to re-navigate the blog. I settled on the theme below, called Mundi, with a smaller sidebar and a larger blog display area than Glump. I edited some of the HTML to change certain things. For example, I got rid of “notes” (where you see how many likes and reblogs Tumblr posts have). I got rid of the function that tells you how many days ago a post was posted because it was not vital information, nor accurate, as I have retroactively edited post dates to reflect the chronology they should appear in on the blog. 

After a few more tweaks, it turned into the blog you see before you now. 

On the blog I chose to split up each project into it’s fundamental parts, as it happened chronologically, and as it happened developmentally. I split up the project into sections defined by my actions in those sections, such as a research phase, initial ideas, outcomes, etc. 

[hannahwaterman]

Semester Portfolio 2: Making the PDF

As mentioned in my last post, I decided to make a shorter, very concise, visually appealing portfolio with this blog to supplement it information-wise. This came from a conversation where Sarah suggested it to me. I did feel like during the making of my last few PDFs, I am sometimes sacrificing information for style, or sacrificing style for information. This method of working is a way to show the full expanse of work I have done for the semester, whilst also being able to hand in a PDF that I am happy with aesthetically. My visual aims for the PDF are for it to be something you can get “lost” in - a publication that really keeps you feeling like you’re in another world when you’re looking at it. You do that by having very precise visual rules, changing the pace in an exciting way, using hierarchy and scale in an emotional and productive way, and using colours that feel cohesive and make sense.

I started this process by choosing some colour palettes I like - black and white comes with each palette by default - and then making some experimental cover pages for my portfolio. After I had made some in a fair few different styles, I went back and assessed what worked and what didn't work, and what sort of theme I would be working towards. 

The colour palette I eventually chose is pink and green-ish blue, they are colours I gravitate towards often.

As for font, I wanted to use something fun and unconventional for headers, as I really enjoy alternative fonts as a form of expression and staying on trend. Plan sans serifs are great and useful, but people’s work often sticks out to me when it uses fun and wacky fonts. I found this one called Hot Chocolate which became the header front for my portfolio. I originally paired it with Georgia but went with Sunflower by MADE as it was thicker and more playful. I also used a font occasionally called Erotique which I chose mainly because I haven’t played with fonts like that before so I wanted to do something new and expand my horizons. The numbers that correspond to the post number are in Love Craft. Some of these fonts are unlicensed so I cannot use them commercially, but things like this portfolio are a great reason to try new weird font demos before I buy them. I really love Sunflower and Erotique, and I want to find dupes on the Adobe fonts collection, or buy a license for them sometime. 

Here are the portfolio guidelines.

After feedback from tutors, I scrapped the wavy visual furniture, as the rest of the document seemed to do enough to form a visual excitement. Also, just from the way photos looked best edited & text looked best, I changed the turquoise to a darker blue.

I always get stuck on my PDF portfolio because I want it to be perfect, as it’s my final hand in. I get very precious and nervous about how I am making it look, and I get very coy and cautious. I decided to throw my caution out of the window a little bit so I could just try and be experimental with it and learn from my mistakes: much more valuable experience than being scared of bold moves. I hope it really shows now how much fun I have had making it. For many purposes, this style would not be appropriate, and to some people it may look garish, I am aware. However, I am very happy with it, I think it reads nicely, and takes the viewer on a journey. The hardest part of making it was trying to align it with this blog in a way I was pleased with. I hope the way I have done that translates well to the reader. If not - I tried something new, and next time, I will be able to take lessons from this experience.

Next time I will

Undertake more directed visual research, focused on audience and intent, rather than just peruse my personal collection of inspiration images leisurely

I will have more knowledge of photo editing now, and I am confident that next project similar to this, I will be able to have even stronger visual cohesion

I will make 2 or 3 references pages for style outlines, to look back on, to instruct me as I go through the project, again to create more visual cohesion

I will try to use asymmetrical compositions more and learn new ways of creating interesting asymmetrical compositions

I will do a different scale for my next portfolio, for sake of variety. This one is large scale, has big texts, and does not read like a more classic book, with more content. 

I will do the blog again, but this time formulate it into a larger and more informative PDF. The blog will be just to keep it all in one place.

I will draw rough plans analogue before putting it up on InDesign or ProCreate immediately. 

I will use more analogue techniques, as I am about to acquire printing and scanning equipment, and this will help me show different textures and layout styles and techniques, as well as give me more time. 

Think more carefully about what work to highlight and seek more direct feedback when making my decisions 

Things I did well

I believe that this portfolio shows that I enjoyed making it and is very energetic

I edited down very well from a busy execution of my idea, to a much calmer and palatable one

I used very consistent type and colour and style throughout

I used it as an opportunity to show my personal style 

[hannahwaterman]

Scoping Workshop

With Nick we did a “Scoping” workshop, were we discussed and analysed how to effectively research and collaborate. I really enjoyed this workshop and I found it’s contents to be eye opening for my project-starting process. I have tried to apply these lessons to all my projects since.

Nick told us to think about the creative value of research, and to really consider why research is important in design projects. It stops your mind from going blank - you don’t have to sit around waiting for ideas to hit you if you actively partake in structured research. We spoke about the benefits of collaboration, and Nick told us that in his estimation, most worthwhile projects are collaborative. Good ideas never just “come to you”, you have to make them. 

Here are the fundamental aspects of research that Nick told us about. 

Scoping - Where are we going? What are we looking at? What is the brief?

Scale > Community - What is the scale of the operation? What is the size of the community? How will this effect the medium of the work? How do you target communities of different sizes?

Micro - Zoom in and take a microscopic look at the subject. How detailed can you go into your topic? What are the smallest elements of the topic you can single out?

Macro - Zoom out to see the topic in context, as broadly as possible. How does this fit into society at large? The country? The world?

History - What are the historic perspectives related to this subject, place, and medium?

Future - What is the future of your topic? How can we model and speculate? Does your object have a certain trajectory? Where do you think the object should be in 5, 10, 100 years time?

Collaboration - Who needs to be involved? How can we involve them? What are the ethical implications of people in, and people out?

Persona - What personality or character will your project adopt? What is the identity? Will it deploy humour? What perspectives will it explore and why?

Audience - Who are you communicating with and why? What are the relevant creative methods and means?

Craft - What skills do you need? What materials do you need? What are the relevant practices? What do you need to practice?

Ethics - What are your responsibilities as a designer? Have you mapped ethical issues? What actions will you take? Does this project hurt or exploit anybody? Is it sustainable?

Risk - Have you identified and mitigated risk? Is this project potentially dangerous? 

Design  What makes this project a design project? How can design help? How can we translate information for the masses? 

Since this workshop I have definitely applied these lessons to my workings. For example, in my Type and Language project I employed futuring techniques to create a fictional distant reality for my final piece to live inside of. During Think Global Act Local, each member of my group took a microscopic look at a very large topic, and we sought to view both the small aspects and the overall picture in detail during our research. I think that going forward, this Scoping list will be a great starting point for research I do, and a great checklist for issues of identity and ethics. 

[hannahwaterman]

Toolkit Workshop

We had a workshop with Chris were as our groups for the Think Global Act Local project, we came up with a set of visual rules with which to design our publications, and we discussed important elements of designing layout. On this day I had one arm in a sling due to carpal tunnel, so I found it difficult to contribute on the day. However, the discussions we had as a group were seminal to the creation of our magazine. It was during this session that we decided on colour scheme and font choice, and the general visual direction of our magazine to look a bit scrappy and analogue. 

[hannahwaterman]

Semester Portfolio 1: PDF First Attempt

I can split this semester’s PDF into 2 different attempts. The first I slammed everything straight into inDesign, and it looked good, I enjoyed it - but I was having problems keeping on top of everything and fitting all my work in. So Sarah suggested to me that I make a blog, put all my workings in a blog, and have a PDF accompany it. Below are the makings of my first PDF attempt.

I enjoyed playing with the layout on my first try, but visually it was not the wavelength I was on, so I combined use of ProCreate and InDesign to make the designs below. I really enjoyed making these and they are definitely an improvement on the above. I made JPGs of underlays to put on each slide that were much more visually appealing. 

In some ways the above images I am very happy with. I really enjoy using a limited colour palette as I feel it can bring a work together so cohesively with minimal effort, but if I was going to go that direction, I had to acknowledge the rest of the colours in the work I was showcasing took you out of the style a bit, as a viewer. After my talk with Sarah I decided to make a smaller, more concise, and more visually consistent PDF, with this blog alongside it as an accompaniment. 

[hannahwaterman]

Clash Workshop

Martin’s collaging workshop was great. I enjoy any design method that has an air of spontaneity and chance. When I get my printer next semester I hope to make much more work like this. We were encouraged to combine images in cropped down decollages. Below I have mostly included the full scans and photographs as I found it quite difficult to choose smaller portions. I enjoy collage a lot and I want to involve it more in my practice in the future, so doing this day where I got to just go wild and make as many compositions as possible was a great joy.

After that day, I used some of the images to make posters for Kate Gibb’s professional practice talk, which I have included in my PP talks section of this blog. I want to work into these images more soon, and maybe make some more posters out of them to post on my social media sites, just for fun. Once I have better printer and scanner access, I can be more selective about the images used too, and better create something that is closer to my desired aesthetics.

[hannahwaterman]

Type and Language 10: Post Project Typographic Works

After the type and language project, I have been making works in the spirit of the brief every day. I give myself quotes and design small Instagram graphics with them. I’ve been challenging myself to do at least one a day and hope to continue for the rest of the year. It is useful practice to update my online graphic design presence with relevant and fun work. I have included some examples of the work I have done post-project here.

[hannahwaterman]

Workshop: Mark Making

Chris hosted for us a mark making workshop. I had a great day and I made so much work - I have not much to say apart from it was really fun and I really enjoy making a mess! I used it as an opportunity to zone out my brain and let the hands do the talking. After I had made sufficient mess of my desk, I put some of these images into Procreate and Illustrator to develop further concepts out of them, which I used to inform my Type and Language project. 

I used pieces from the mark making workshop to develop pieces for my Type and Language project. I also explored calligraphic expression of certain words in the quote like “mystery” and “wonder”.

I enjoyed the mark making workshop a lot and I think it will be useful for me in the future, for making messy and off grid designs. I enjoyed layering the marks over eachother digitally and changing the colours around. I love a design technique that forces serendipity. 

[hannahwaterman]

Workshop: Font Design

We had a workshop directed by Jon where we were encouraged to think of strange rules of line behaviour in order to create a font. I found this workshop challenging and intriguing and it has encouraged me to think hard about creating my own dedicated fonts for briefs in the future. 

I wanted to make some strange things, so the first font I came up with could only have lines of one shape - a bent sort of crescent moon style.

I then drew this font comprised of mostly bulbous and soft rounded squares with little thin ovals cut out or added. I want to develop this further with an even more limited visual style, but I really like this font, and I want to use it for a project in the future.

Next I made this comprised of lines with a diagonal angle, and little circles to accent it. Every single character had to have that same slash in it. It’s close to unreadable but it feels like some sort of space age hidden language and so I think for visual furniture it could work very well. 

I digitised the fonts I had made, and I want to try and use them in context at some point in the near future.

This workshop informed my process during the Type and Language project, as after being inspired by this workshop, I went onto make my own fonts to express myself in that brief. 

I learnt a lot in this workshop. I really enjoyed being able to dedicate a whole day to learning a skill that’s somewhat new to me. This day made me realise that in the future I definitely want to pursue font design in my practice, either as a focus or supplement to my other work. 

[hannahwaterman]

Workshop: Experimental Type

Lily Heys ran an experimental type workshop for us which I absolutely loved.

[hannahwaterman]

Professional Practice Talks

Jonathan Barnbrook

Jonathan Barnbrook is an experienced and exciting graphic designer with rock and roll spirit and an eye for detail. He covered many topics in his talk for us, including his time working with the late David Bowie. He has his own design studio called Barnbrook, where he and his team work on album covers, branding and typography.

Jonathan made a point of declaring design to be a lifestyle, not just a career, and he said that graphic designers “should not like design too much”. He says to “do pure extreme work that you love”, adding that the main criteria we should take into consideration when taking on work, is whether or not we find it interesting. He says that portfolios should represent what we want to do, not what looks professional or makes us look commercially viable. I enjoyed his optimistic and passion-driven outlook on his career.

Barnbrook is an experienced album cover designer - “there’s something special about graphic design’s relationship to music” he says. Although his work has been praised by critics and fans alike, he received hate mail galore for his work on Bowie’s “The Next Day”, which he looks back on as a pretty standard job hazard when doing branding for much loved cultural icons.

He persuasively argues that “good graphic designers tell the truth”, and encourages us to “stay away from corporations that want you to lie for them”. He says imagination is more important than knowledge of theory and history, insisting that “everything is research”, and the best way to be a researched designer is to take in visual information from every facet of your daily life, taking influence from as many sources as possible.

I found Barnbrook’s talk to be very inspiring and heartfelt. I’m very glad he took the time to explain to us about his practice, and his thoughts on the practice of design generally.

Monique Jackson

Monique Jackson is a Brighton University illustration graduate, who has gone onto being a professional illustrator, workshop facilitator, podcaster, and activist. Since first falling ill with Covid-19 in March 2020, she has suffered from a drawn out battle with a novel chronic post-viral illness named Long-Covid. She started an Instagram account to document her journey with the syndrome, chronologically journalling her Coronavirus infection and subsequent illness, named Corona Diary, and has garnered attention from the media and other activists looking to raise awareness of the dangers of Long-Covid syndrome. She has gone onto make documentary style videos and interviews with other Covid-19 survivors.

Monique encourages art students not to be afraid to work in many different industries at once - her illustration, videos, activist work and workshop jobs have all played roles in the success of each other. Being a creative person, Monique says, means you should feel confident to have your fingers in many pies, and try many different kinds of creative roles.

Network, network, network, she encouraged us to do as BA students, saying that her success is down to nepotism and remarking “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”. Monique told us that it’s been beneficial for her to meet people from many different industries and mediums, as it has expanded her creative practice outward into many different walks of life. Monqiue’s experiences with Long-Covid have lead her to tell us that “pain is a teacher”; and we should take our life experiences, and our pain, and turn them into something beautiful and useful, and if you want to be a good ally to those affected by painful causes, she says to ask questions and try to understand where other people are coming from.

Kate Gibb

Kate Gibb is a commercial illustrator and printmaker, whose weapon of choice is silk screen. She describes her method of screen printing as unorthodox and freeform - the unconventional technique makes her stand out from the crowd. Kate says her work is all about process, and therefore employing less technically strict workflow methods allow for a more tactile and free creative process. Make it up, and do what feels good, she says. Not many civilians these days are too aware of what screen printing entails and how the technique works, and therefore clients can be misinformed about Kate’s limitations. She says it’s important to explain carefully to clients how your process works, and what one can and cannot do. In order to make her client work easier and keep clients happier, she employs what she calls “digital silk screen” - she prints layer by layer in one dark colour, scans those in, and then puts them in photoshop to layer them over each other and colour them. This method makes client requests and alterations much faster and more flexible. I really enjoyed listening to Kate Gibb talk about her innovative ways of practicing an older printing style in a modern world. She also talked a lot about inspiration and creativity, remarking that “it is most important to make original intuitive work that you enjoy”, and that as creatives we should be collecting inspiration from many many sources, from every aspect of our lives. She pressed us to “keep collaborating, keep on learning, and remain open to a bigger experience”. Kate made a plea for us to stay authentic to ourselves and try not to get jealous of other artists - she said, “you’re not going to make anybody’s work but your own”, so there is no point wishing you could make the work someone else made.

Tim Wan 

Tim Wan is a graphic designer who has most notably worked for COlours Magazine. His favourite projects to work on are layout and print design. He has worked for fashion, design and photography magazines as well as working on branding for bands, real estate agents and even P&O ferries. He is enthused about how travel can inspire creativity, how lunch is super important and breaks through the workday help productivity and team spirit, and how visual collaboration is an imperative creative tool.

Tim enjoys creating brand identities and tells us to break each element down into small pieces, zooming in and out of a project in huge detail to assess every small element of a design or set of designs, to see how each small piece contributes and communicates the brand identity. Tim tells us to constantly have self initiated projects on the go in order to keep energised.

Adam Bridgland

Adam Bridgland says he “accidentally” became a printmaker and that he is very glad that life brought him to that point. He was told by a peer that he painted repetitively and made works like that of a printmaker, so he began to express himself using printing techniques. He says he enjoys being a graphic designer because he enjoys working to deadlines, and it allows his creativity to be more strictly channelled. One of his most well known and favourite parts of his practice is to put typographic work out in open landscapes, as installations for everybody in that area to witness and enjoy. He says “design alone can never be as good as design in context.”

Chloé Legret

Chloe is an excellent graphic designer whose main practice consists of typography. She talked to us about appreciating naivety in your work, setting visual rules and restrictions in order to aide your process, and how to design your own type faces to best get your message across. Chloe loves to use letterpress to create her work and says that the imperfections that hand printing creates makes the design outcomes much more special. 

Chloe addressed the differences in working styles between corporate and boutique studios. She tells us not to be afraid fo corporate work as it’s not as big and scary as young designers tend to think. She also really loves having side hustles and told us about the benefits of having as many side projects and passion projects as possible. I can relate to Chloe as she expressed that she works weekends and evenings, just because she loves type design so much that it energises her and stays fun in her off time. I feel similarly about my work and I often finish workdays wanting to continue working. 

[hannahwaterman]

Documenting 8: Conclusion and Rationale

The process of the documenting project for me has been an exercise in experimentation and persistence. I have worked in an extreme variety of different contexts, mediums, and visual styles and have shown careful consideration of the story I am telling through my work. I have experimented with a large range of ideas and then critically weighed up each outcome in terms of it’s communicability and style. I have then reached a project conclusion that is aesthetically pleasing, takes advantage of my skillset and available equipment, and impresses emotional information onto the viewer. I have evidenced that I am a highly adaptive designer and capable of communicating in many different contexts, considering in detail each facet of a design work and the affect it has on the reader. 

Throughout the duration of this body of work, I have stopped to analyse my strengths and weaknesses in each particular medium and style, and written honestly about my progress. The main triumph of this project is the expanse of work I have produced - over 2,000 photographs were taken in the making of this - and the massive diversity of visual communication skills I have evidenced I am capable of. I tried something completely new as well, in the section of the project where I experimented with data driven design. I have shown that as a designer I am unafraid of new avenues and will painstakingly break things I am working on down into thorough detail to assert that it is communicating correctly.

My weaknesses in this project came out as my hesitancy to settle on a final outcome. Ultimately, the work I did between my brief and the start of the making of my zine is the most important body of work. I am very happy with my zine - I think that I have communicated with it exactly the vibe and energy I wanted to communicate. However, the majority of the lessons I learnt are in that developmental stage. For example, the way this project has changed my eye for photography will stay in my practice forever. It became very clear to me how once you have a camera in your hand, you will see the world in a very different light, and instead of the same old town I am used to walking through, everything around me became a photo opportunity. I am very grateful to have this new and refreshed outlook on photographic processes. An important part of being a creative designer is not just technical prowess, but the energy and enthusiasm that you bring to a project, and this last few months has made me so enthused about photography.

In conclusion, I am ending this project having learnt many valuable lessons that I can take with me into future projects, and I believe I have also evidenced a strong technical capability, energetic approach and conceptual understanding of the mediums and contexts I tackled within it.

[hannahwaterman]

Documenting 7: Rituals

After doing a huge wealth of photography, and finding myself uninspired by much of it, I thought that I would take after Hannah Mullins from my course and give myself a word to use to theme my photodocumentation around: ritual. I also decided to create a more tactile, candid and personal feel to my work by using a polaroid/instax camera to take the photographs.

The word “ritual” has vast meaning and very individualised meaning to different people. It can mean a personal day to day behaviour, or it can mean something as big and bright as religious celebrations. It was interesting to talk to people about the word and figure out their take on it. 

In my day to day life I have many rituals. My morning walks; zoning out by cooking dinner; my daily skincare; having baths to calm down. I photographed some friends and their rituals, including my housemates smoking cigarettes, my friend Saphra doing their makeup. I planned to photograph my friend Maya, who celebrates paganism, practicing their religious rites, however, lockdowns prevented me from doing this and also prevented me from planning and executing other shoots. 

Instax photography feels very vulnerable and raw, it tends to have a washed out and sensitive quality to it, and it has limitations that make it candid by nature and therefore for a documentary project it felt like a very appropriate method of visual communication. I came out with around 100 images by the end of this project. 

I began designing my zine.

I chose to make an A5 zine because it is around the size of a standard diary or journal, so feels more personal and delicate than A4 for example. I chose the front Metallophile Sp8, mostly in italic, because it felt very delicate. I wanted something that felt personal, understated, delicate and informal, not too serious, but not overtly playful. I chose an accent colour of lilac / light purple to match the bathwater featured in a couple of the included photos. I used black over white to design the magazine, using my accent colour sparingly, and then in order to perpetuate the air of mystery and softness I wanted in the publication, I put over a paper texture which made the colours more washed out and faded the black to grey. 

I used procreate to create scribbled designs to give it a hand-made feel to go well with the instax photography. I worked hard to make every page feel different and intriguing within the rules of the publication. The text on the publication includes sections of dictionary definitions of the word ritual, and words taken from friends and acquaintances from mine who told me what the word “ritual” means to them, and if they have any rituals. I found a big variety of responses to the word, some even talking to me about their OCD rituals and how those uproot the lives of OCD sufferers. 

As an exercise in image placement on pages, I found the making of this zine very valuable, and I hope that the ebb and flow that I wanted to be read from it is there for the viewer. I think it has good pacing when read as a booklet. I am looking into making a run of prints of it. 

The front cover was difficult to come up with as I am always turned off of including too much information in a front cover. I kept it very simple and sleek and elegant. I think that ultimately I have made a very stylish and attractive, meaningful and communicative publication that I like very much. After seeking feedback from my peers I was met with mostly very warm praise for it. I am proud of the final product of this project.

[hannahwaterman]

Type and Language 9 - Final Outcome and Critical Evaluation

Picture this: it’s the year 2027. Facts and logic have become wildly unimportant due to the practice of making up your own, which was started by some president a little while back. Now you can pretty much just say what you like, and we have entered an era of distrusting experts in favour of TV pundits and Nigel Farages. A fascist-esque political party have co-opted this quote for their own means - by zeroing in on small parts of this well intentioned Robert Sapolsky quote, they have managed to give it the opposite meaning.

I landed on this conclusion because I thought it was a very intriguing and important aspect of design to tackle. When working with people’s important words, designers have to be careful that we properly convey the whole message, when we are an industry so prone to using slogans, and snappy, quick communication methods. I used these futuristic eyecatching font treatments on Futura, in order to keep a classic public information poster feel with my own dystopian twist. 

In summary, this project has been a long ride through so many different approaches. I used a wide range of digital and analogue methods, did a lot of experimental work, designed my own fonts and calligraphic styles, utilised skills learnt in workshops, self taught skills, researched different graphic approaches and compiled a wide range of inspiration to draw from. I considered different contextual outcomes and settled on an outcome that works as a good way to display my designs, in context of the audience and reasons I am trying to convey this message. I did utilise a massive range of creative strategies, and although working towards a final conclusion was very difficult for me, I made no shortage of experimental process work. 

I have identified and experimented with how the audience of a piece will change the format, visual language, energy and typography of a piece. I have made works appropriate for posters that a Sapolsky fan could have in their room, and works suitable for view by general public as a public information strategy, and even went as far as to change the format, selection and context in a way which completely subverts the meaning of the quote. This work has been very valuable for me exploratively, as I have managed to represent the same words in many different styles and with different levels of gravitas. I made a very large, playful, energetic body of work, and made informed decisions about several different possible outcomes, in ways that were visually appropriate for each route I went down.

In the future, I would work better with aid of what I know now in the following ways. I would like to make use of typesetting equipment and of other printing styles in order to have some analogue methods of creating finessed outcomes. Had I known how important that would feel to me by the end of this project, I would have gone about securing such equipment at the beginning of term. I have also been waiting on a student funding pot to get me a scanner and printer, and as such, there have been many methods I love to use in my usual creative process that I have been unable to. In one way, my restriction to largely digital methods of creation has been good insofar as it has made me improve my skills in Illustrator and Procreate. However, I feel I have been restricted without the options of as much analogue equipment. 

In future projects like this, Type and Language has taught me that I should have a stockpile of fonts, colour schemes and hierarchy styles that are appropriate for different settings, that I can use as a cheat sheet for poster making. I could definitely do with some more workshops and more exercises in different approaches to visual hierarchy and typographic finesse. I would benefit perhaps from doing more reading or more practical tasks in this area. Next semester I aim to use what I have learnt to build up a much wider, more detailed, and more detailed range of typographic work. I also need to think about my final pieces and what they’ll look like sooner into the project, as I love the initial ideas stage so much, that it is very easy for me to stay there.

[hannahwaterman]

The Othering of Nature From Humanity

Click to visit the PDF format version of my presentation speech for CCS AGP500.

[hannahwaterman]

Think Global Act Local 9: Conclusion and Critical Evaluation

In conclusion, I am very satisfied with what my team managed to achieve with our W3 magazine. We sought permission from tutors to do so, then went over the 24 pages. We did so in order to prioritise readability, style, and the overall experience for the reader of the magazine. Both Charlotte and Ella added an extra spread each, which sure, we could edit out, but they worked so well towards the overall W3 publication, we did not want to exclude them. Instead of having a dedicated center spread, we also opted for that to go as an introductory spread. 

I think throughout this project I demonstrated a complete willingness to throw myself into a topic, and do lots of research towards it, both visually and information-wise. I have explored many different visual approaches and avenues, playing with page design in many different settings - analogue, on ProCreate, on Illustrator, and on InDesign. I gathered inspiration from several different sources and went out of my way to find great quality graphic references before designing my own pages - and then I made sure to try and keep my spreads looking as original and imaginative as I could.

I thought carefully about how to visually convey the message in the writing, and I experimented with many different typographic styles and methods in order to achieve this. I believe I have evidenced that I have synthesised, analysed, and critically evaluated my work at each stage of the design process, whilst leaving room for it still to be fun, bold and original. I have shown that I understood and executed this task to a high standard. As a group we aimed to make something extremely visually cohesive yet not monotonous, and I think we achieved this extremely well. Each new page of the W3 magazine feels fresh and new, yet due to the colour scheme, you feel very much “in” the magazine. 

I believe I also showed leadership skills and the ability to perform under pressure, bring my group together, and design democratically for this publication. Together we had excellent organisational skills, time management, communication, and encountered near to no conflicts in the process.

If given the opportunity to do this task again, I would honestly say there is nothing of the teamwork aspect I would change. I am so impressed by how wonderful everybody in my group was to work with. However, I would begin my approach to the visual research element of this project in a different manner, and start with higher-end publications. I would want to reapproach this with a sleeker style. Whilst I know that our publication looks wonderfully cohesive, yet not monotonous, it would be a good exercise to write even stricter visual rules, if a do-over was to happen. I have learnt a lot from this project, and the next time I work on page design, there are many new lessons I will be bringing to the table. 

Another thing I would try next time, is having more text, more rules about type styles, (body, sub headings, headings), more cohesive rules about graphic furniture, and a more structured and co-working approach to the making of the magazine. By ensuring that we each make 2 spreads, we are essentially not collaborating in a very cohesive way, so I think it would be nice to work on the same spreads together in a future version of this topic. I would also next time make even more prospective pages, to ensure I had an even larger range of choices and ideas from which to assemble my spreads.

Lessons I learnt from this project

I improved team work and diplomacy skills

I improved my layout and typesetting skills

I worked on my photo editing skills

I improved ability to work to publication specifications

I improved my researching skills, both visually and gathering information first hand from people I know

I generated many ideas for interesting headline type.

Next time I do a project like this, I will

Make improved meeting notes and use a teamworking app

Use a grid more strictly

Write more or hire writers to have more written content

Look at other publications more closely for inspiration ie - measure margins and text 

Make photography plans when I use a film camera

Work analogue more often, when I have better access to equipment.