Design Boards

Evaluative Summary

Overall COP3 has been both exciting and stressful. I've enjoyed it more than previous years because I enjoyed the subject I was researching- I've realised how important this is for me to be invested in what I making. I'm also happier with my final outcomes- even if everything didn't go completely to plan. I've pushed myself outside my comfort zone by attempting to make GIFs, and actually, they're not as bad as I was expecting! I do wish I'd had more time to do another two but too much went wrong with the others and trying to get my book printed properly. My time management was slightly better this time round, still could be improved though (to leave more time for fixing mistakes). Something always seems to go wrong around hand-ins but it's not the end of the world! I've learnt a lot about semiotics and simplicity and discovered new processes I can use in my future practice. I also feel as though some of the symbols I've created have been some of my strongest work to date. 

Reflective Summary 4 - Essay

The essay, due to choosing a topic I was genuinely interested in, wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. I think the level of research I carried out enabled me to make an informed approach to it which made it less difficult to tackle. I did struggle to start it. For me, working systematically when writing is essential, I have to start at the beginning and go on from there. I found that the most difficult line was the first one, but once I got past that, it seemed a little more achievable.

I find it really useful to make a solid plan. The more I plan, the easier it is for me to keep a flow of writing. On my blog I have made a post for each text I read, I then went back into it again to highlight key quotes and points that could be useful for the essay (the green highlights of these posts do not need to be read, they are purely for my own benefit). I then filtered through this once again and created a document of quotes and references I could use. These were colour-coded in terms of author, which turned out to be super helpful. I also added to my Bibliography as I went along, which I’m proud of as this is usually something I forgot to do and panic about last-minute (this left room to panic about other things).

My first essay draft wasn’t a full one. I did as much as I could, and the feedback received was really useful and helped when writing the rest of the essay. It need to be restructured, and I realised at that point that there were three main points I was discussing within the essay- reduction, organisation and metaphor and this allowed to me to clearly outline each one and make better connections between them.  When it came to my next draft, I was slightly more confident about it. I still have a habit of panicking about things like this because I doubt myself a lot, but I have tried my best to write something clear, concise and analytical.  

I found the practical section much easier to write about as I was talking about my own work and all of the ideas that went into making each one. As they are extremely simple, its probable that some element that I have thought about and put effort into will be overlooked, but I hope that the images demonstrate the ideas and theories discussed in the essay well as the whole project has been huge a learning experience. The central processes outlines will always be in the back of my mind when creating reductive shaped-based design. 

Reflective Summary 3 - Practical Outcomes

So after having created the 8 images, I needed to apply these to certain other formats to suggest how they could be displayed and distributed. I decided to go with a poster, publication and postcards.

I thought the poster would have been fairly easy to put together, but it turns out, due to page sizes not being bang on centimetres and having a somewhat weird amount to place on a poster (something I didn’t realise before) this took a lot longer than I expected it to. Due to their being 8, rather than say 9 symbols (where 3 by 3 works nicely) I had to work out a way to display 8 without ruining the effect of them being simple. I didn’t want to over-complicate the layout, especially because part of my research suggests that complicated layout implies the feeling of being lost, and for this reason, simplicity implies the feeling of being found. I asked a lot of people’s opinions while at Uni to see which they preferred, and unfortunately it was very 50/50 across two of them- which seems to happen to me a lot. I suppose this is probably a good thing, it could mean that I sometimes have more than one good idea. I eventually went with the one I preferred and I’m happy with my choice.

Both the poster and postcards were printed on matte paper in the digital print room and look really good. I’m very happy with them. However, something I’m not so happy with- the publication. As mentioned in my ‘Printing Issues’ post, I struggled to get a good print of my book. This technically wasn’t my fault, it was due to the printers, but it’s still really disappointing to have worked hard on something and not be able to see it at its best. I tried multiple time in multiple places to get it printed (digital print, various mac suites) but for some reason the colours were printing different to each other or with streaks, probably because there is a lot of block colour. I have provided an issuu document of what it should look like, so maybe look at that instead.

I also created some GIFs in order to push the images further and communicate how so much can be done with something so simple. Although I encountered a lot of problems when doing these- causing a lot of stress and frustration- I’m happy I did them, as it is a skill I needed to remember how to do in case I need it for the future. I have written a post about the struggles I faced in a blog post titled ‘GIF Struggles’. 

Reflective Summary 2 - Practical Development

I began the practical development based on verbs. When discussing my potential essay topic and line of enquiry in group crits and one-to-one’s, it was suggested that I look at something more complex than just nouns. Verbs communicate an action, so this would be more challenging. I got up a list of verbs from the internet to start me off and the first word I chose was ‘alert’. This proved to be quite difficult as there are already signs that illustrate similar content, this being warning or danger signs. I found it was difficult to not think of the most obvious things- an exclamation mark, a hand, the colour red. But as I couldn’t avoid this and was drawing with immediacy to throw out ideas, the end result ended up not being very exciting even though I tried my best to make it more interesting. I then moved onto the word announce and the same thing happened. I knew from that point that I needed to choose a topic that was more enjoyable and creative, and came across the idea of ‘untranslatable emotions’. These are emotions from other languages that we do not have a word for here. This led on to looking at the slighter broader subject of ‘untranslatable words’, which gave me more words and more choices.

Though my sketchbook may not be the biggest or fullest, the roughing process for each of the potential symbols was repetitive and proved more difficult that it seemed. Each symbol started off as being quite fun. I drew whatever came to mind and this then sparked other ideas. However, once I got to a certain point, it became more and more difficult. Some reached a point where they could be ‘done’ and I was happy with what I’d come up with, and others took more tackling.

It was actually useful to use processes found within my research, for example the use of reduction and organisation suggested in Maeda’s text. But something I usually enjoy and found super helpful in this context was visual metaphor. Combining more images into one allowed the symbol to be less complex and to also be more enjoyable to look at. Some of the research I found suggested that simplicity is ‘boring’, the aim of my practical work was to prove this wrong. 

Making the symbols digitally was a fun process and stages of this can be seen in earlier development points. I am comfortable with using vectors, and though there were a couple issues along the way, nothing major. 

Reflective Summary 1 - Research & Theory

When thinking about what I wanted to look into for COP3, I thought back on modules I’ve enjoyed during my time at Uni so far. In First Year we did a task where we had to take an object, draw it in a very representative form and then begin to reduce it down to the simplest we could get it.  Something clicked that day and I realised how much I love reductive, shape-based imagery. I started this module by taking out a few books from the library on symbols and semiotics. Semiotics is a topic I feel as though I should have already looked at throughout my practice at some point as I often work in shape now. I’d never actually got around to it until COP3.  I feel as though this is definitely the right thing for me to be exploring.

Initially, I was thinking about the process of simplification and whether the meaning that an image conveys is affected when the visual perception of it has been simplified. Furthermore, I wanted to explore where the limit was. At what point does this sign no longer represent what it initially did? When has the process been pushed too far? I thought for the practical element I could do something similar to the aforementioned task, repeatedly draw something to find the answers to these questions. After having a group tutorial, I realised this idea probably wasn’t very original.

I looked at artist Warja Lavater’s books- which tell stories in simple shapes- and talked about how it’s interesting that you perceive certain things about the character (dot) due to the placement of it amongst the other elements within the scene. This sparked more ideas on what I could look at and I eventually came to the idea of creating a book of symbols that represent something complex in a simple form. I then carried out lots of research into visualisation, simplicity, complexity etc. but the most useful book I came across was John Maeda’s ‘Laws of Simplicity.’ (2006). In this book he talks about the many laws of simplicity and how to achieve it within design and it daily life.

I felt a lot better about writing the essay this year. Admittedly in the past I haven’t taken out many books or read through them properly, but this year due to it being a topic I was interested in, I read a lot and I read through thoroughly to better understand the text and be able to use quotes more effectively within my essay.  

Final GIFs