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reflection - bye, love you, cya

Coming into this course I wanted to extend my knowledge on the concepts of communication and design. I wanted to explore my understanding and I was open to challenge my existing ideas. I think I achieved this objective. I learnt so much about the history of design and particularly the post-modernism movement and the Bauhaus that really stood out to me. I learnt about medical designs which Id had very little exposure to previously. Other notable mentions are conceptualism, the Memphis Group (love love love them), Swiss-style and the Gorilla Girls (hehe).

Skills are something that I think I really expanded during my time in this course. I loved the hands on approach to the Photoshop and Indesign workshops that Andy and Karen ran. They made each step very clear which is something I wasn't actually expecting at uni, rather I was expected to have to fend for myself. I also learnt a lot about type-making, prototyping, zine making and collaborative work. But the stand out of all of these would have to be the collage which is definitely something I’m going to explore heaps more.

Andy and Karen would have to be what inspired me most in the course, Their extremely futuristic outlook on communication design expanded my idea of what design can be and how we can challenge the conservative. They taught me to be messy and that things don't need to be perfected and photoshopped to the max (My question is assignment).

I love the idea behind the post-modernistic movement that we explored as I mentioned above. The strange and often times impractical designs are is something that I want to translate into my designs now and especially in the future. I want to push myself to be excited and crazy with my creativity and let myself go wild.

I’m kind of obsessed with collage now and I wish I’d interviewed a photographer or collage artist for my zine just so I could've had an excuse to do collage. I took heaps away from this course but I think the beauty of collage might just be the biggest take away.

Thanks you Andy and Karen for such a great semester. I can't wait for the next time I get to pick both your brains. :)

#done

week 13 - where the zine are you 2.0 (last edition)

IT’S DONE!!!

I’m so proud that I’ve finished my zine. I love the quality of the print and I’m so proud that I decided to hand sew the binding. I chose this as my preferred option of binding because I thought It put a level of care and craftsmanship into my work that reflects the care and craftsmanship that goes into the Incredible work of Trudy Rice. The stock I used as mentioned in my last post also reflects her natural aesthetic with its texture and weight. Although I had wanted to use an organic and recycled paper it was too hard to find a paper stock that would me malleable enough for me to fold it multiple time and sew pages together. The uneven figures just weren't strong enough.

In the early stages when deciding on a layout of this zine I thought that flaps and cut outs might look a bit too trivial for my artists work. Her work in my mind didn't lend itself to geometric cuts and tabs. However I’m really pleased that I wasn't to closed minded and included my little baby pages. They were a way for me to include images of Trudy working and posing in a way that didn't distract from the large pages of her work. I strategically chose to do all the photos in black and white and let her colourful work shine without any distraction.

I love my zine and I hope you love it too.

#colgate

week 12 - where the zine are you

So we've gotten to that pointy end of our zine making process and I spent most of this week trying to figure out how I’m actually going to make this zine. I decided I want to use a paper from Officeworks called Quill Parchment with a. 176gsm weight and I can't find it in anything larger than A4. Im stuck on using this paper because I think It best fits my creatives work and it just so damn sexy.

So this focus of this week was making be 16 page zine layout with baby folds and all fit onto some A4 paper.

week 11 - cut outs everywhere

So I got my NGV membership this week and On Thursday I thought I’d use it. After a lovely (free) cup of coffee in members lounge, aren't I so fancy, I went for a wonder round. I was most amazed when I found the Memphis designed shelf that Andy had been raving about in the lecture last week. However more to the point of this post, I stumbled upon this incredibly beautiful book in the design store which is largely beautiful because of the amazingly cut pages. It has kind of inspired me to explore the idea of cutting pages like this for my zine and I think I might give it a go.

#yummymummy

week 10 - imposible impositions make zine making a dizzaster. or not

In todays workshop Andy and Karen taught us all about that illusive program we've all been avoiding, InDesign. We got to make some zines and surprisingly a little lyrical came out of one of my mistakes. I somehow ended up folding and cutting it wrong and as you can see from the zine on the right in the first photo and all the other photos I was left with a zine that had pages of all different sizes which is definitely something to consider when designing my zine for ‘Ask me anything’

Funny how wonderful accidents can come out of mistakes.

#bler

week 10 - somewhere over the rainbow, gorilla girls fly?

This weeks lecture provoked a tonne of thought in this little mind of mine. I was angry at people for being sexist and homophobic but the real thought was why do we design and should we, as designers, really be mass producing such boring a meaningless shit just to go out there into the nothingness that is the consumer market or should we be designing beautiful campaigns that inspire change and make the world a better place.

I think we all know the answer.

But what are we going to do about it? Because after all aren't we all just here to “get rich”??

week 9 - cut, paper, scissors. rock?

When Andy first told us we’d be exploring collage in this lesson I was pretty opposed to the whole idea. I thought, ‘this is just some kindergarten activity, what a waste of my time’. However I couldn't have been more wrong. I think I might just be obsessed with collage and I think I’m gonna start some of my own right now. The idea of the material being precious as well as the discussion we had about how there was no ‘undo’ button really appealed to me. The black and white photos that stand against the plain white or coloured background is striking and can send a message to the audience that otherwise would be almost impossible to create with a simple vector illustration.

I think the actual task itself confused me a bit and I might have lost some of the information while fighting with the photocopy machine but I really like the ‘F’ that I ended up making. In my mind I was wanting to do something conceptual. I found a National Geographic magazine and it was all about food and famine. So I pieced together a collection of images that all related to famine. I think the images of the starving children are striking and the though provoking and the fact that it makes a F (as in F for Famine) is a little subversive. Thanks that's all.

#blessed

week 8 - where is the punctuation? do i need a k?

In this weeks workshop we adventured out into the open to look for some letter and number in and around the campus. As one of the last groups to do this activity we were given the task to fill in the letters with very little examples but also to try and and find some much needed punctuation for the typeface Karen and the rest of the com design studies cohort were creating.

This idea of coming together as a large group to contribute to the same big project was inspiring to me. How else could a large group of designers come together to create something extraordinary. It is exciting to think about the things we can create and design together as a collective and how this can have an impact on our designs but also the impact to the design community as a whole.

#collab

week 7 - good design, pfft

I decided to sit down and look over some of the reading material provided via the ‘A Reader - Communication Design Studies’ archive. I came across a very interesting article under week 7 which really made me think about what good design actually is. The article is titled ‘Good Design - What is it for?’ by George Nelson in 1957.

The piece was a look into the writers mind and their perception of good design and concluded that good design is separate from functionality (as bad design can prove functional too) as is rather enriches the creator and user/viewer

however is not required for a person to be enriched. The article was specifically focused on consumerism that is so present in todays world and left me feeling as though good deign is in some way pointless. Surrounding yourself with examples of good design does not make your life any more exciting as is empale in Picasso, Braque, Einstein and Matisse. They all lived very enriching lives and created beautifully wonderful things all while living in drab and dull environments. Their designs and the process of their creativity was what really enriched their lives so they had no reason to partake in the consumption of good design.

The text made me wonder why we actually strive for making good designed things if they cannot be understood or fully appreciated by someone who doesn't do the same. If we strive to make great looking posters, logos, houses, interiors and fashion why do we always bring it back to justifying our aesthetic and visual choices with functionality; doing so seems unjust and restricting.

Just something to think about.

#wow

[Design is] a plan for arranging elements in such a way as to best accomplish a particular purpose.

Charles Eames 1972

#whatisdesign #readme #weekseven

week 6 - typeface or twofaced?

Using only one (and then a second) shape to create a type system was a first difficult but once a pattern is established and a ‘grid’ of sorts in followed the task almost finishes itself.

My group decided that when given the challenge of adding a second shape to our typeface we would only use one of the black spares so that the pattern that we had created in the first part was maintained and all the letters remained a set.

Our biggest challenge of the task was surprisingly the ‘S’ and ‘Z’. Although making a nice looking ‘S’ was easy it was hard for us the follow the 2x2 grid with the 3 height only for ascenders and descenders.

#typography

“tilevetica” from week 6 workshop

week 5 - living, breathing, designing?

Hello, my question is...

How is Design alive?

My question for our first assignment was originally heading along the lines of “Where does design begin/end?” which, to me, was challenging the way we use, create and perceive design. However when talking to some peers and telling them my question they started saying things like “ooo you could use things that are alive and make the question progressively of the object dying (beginning and end of life).” For example the decomposition of a banana. This got me thinking about how design really is alive in and of itself. My question then evolved into what it became.

I wanted to question design and ask design, how are you really alive? How is design its own living and breathing entity and how has it evolved and changed since the beginning of human existence and where will it evolve to in the future.

I envisioned the word alive being created out of things that are living so I collected plant material from the streets around my house and neighbourhood. For the first part of the question I wanted a contrast to the leaves, nuts and flowers and collected other natural material that isn't necessarily ‘alive’, hence the stones, rocks, sand and shells.

week 4 - photoshop skillz

The lesson from Andy and Karen today on some basic photoshop skills really helped me to get my final presentation photo to a higher quality.

week 3 - the evaporating pangram

This week’s typography task was based around limited materials as well as the limited time. Both involved creating a pangram (a phrase that uses all the letters in the alphabet).In the first photo we used a continuous line of electrical tape (limited materials) and in the other photos my group of Emma, Roby, Arcadia, Zoe and myself created “The five boxing Kanye wizards jump quickly west” out of water. This demonstrated limited time as the water would evaporate in the sun.

#pangram #com design studies

week 2 - melbourne art book fair

As recommended by Andy Emma, Hannah and I took a visit to the Melbourne Art Book Fair which was running as part of Melbourne Design week at NGV. It was really eye opening to see so much creative work in one place. It was particularly interesting to see and look at some of the work done by some of the RMIT Communication Design students that had created books each with the subject of a different part of the book (spine, heading etc.) as part of one of the studio options.

The large glass displays pictured above were not part of the book fair but rather the upcoming design week and we took some cool photos using the reflections and experimenting with the light. I used one of the RMIT cameras that I borrowed for the weekend.

week 2 - cuneiforms and what?

The main focus of this weeks classes was the cuneiforms of the ancient Sumerian people living on the African continent. This discussion lead me to wonder about other forms of writing inscription in other locations and civilisations around the world.

One system that stuck out at me was that of the Mayans of the South American continent that lived prior to the Spanish colonisation. Similar to the hieroglyphs of the ancient Egyptians the Maya writing used pictographs as well as sophisticated phonetic symbols to express spoken language. The medium used was predominantly highly perishable books made from bark paper coated with lime however their writing system is found carved into sone on altars, grave stones and architectural monuments. The use of such a writing system was for priests and the noble class to keep track of important dates on the religious calendar and possibly entertainment through poetry and story.

It is interesting to note how similar the early forms of written communication were. Although the Sumerians and Mayans used a different code their modes of enscription and reasons for developing such a system were relatively similar despite the geographical locations of the civilisations. However the medium used by both groups reflected the natural materials that were abundant and cheaply distributed in the area.

Sources:

https://www.ancient.eu/article/655/maya-writing/

http://chemsites.chem.rutgers.edu/~kyc/Five%20Original%20Writing%20Systems.html

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