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end of semester reflection

I honestly didn’t know what I was expecting or was supposed to expect going into Communication Design Studies. Karen and Andy have shown that design doesn’t and shouldn’t have to comply to one definition, design should be understood in a broadened sense and can be explored simply through the use of our hands. It was refreshing to step away from technology and focus on communicating and creating with other students, whilst also learning about the theory regarding design.

Karen and Andy have an immense passion for design that made learning much more enjoyable and fun. I retained quite a bit of information from lectures and have some interesting notes from over the semester. 

Taking my experiences from this semester, I am going to push myself to’ think with my hands’ more and to not overthink when i’m coming up with a concept. I learned that I need to let things flow freely and not be too consumed about what the end product should look like. 

Thank you to Karen and Andy for being massive inspirations and opening up my idea of design. See you all next semester :)

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ask me anything...

lInitially, I was set on presenting my interview through a zine, but I somehow ended up making a book thing (?), where each question+answer are presented in their own little way. 

After interviewing my creative, Nicola Hardy, I was very much inspired by interactivity, and the ways I could present information a little out of the norm. I set up the inner contents to mimic a ‘journal’ of sorts and each question could be perceived as different ‘notes’ during Nicola’s life. Through this, i got the idea to exhibit the questions as if they were from a notepad (through my special skills in diy lol). 

I wanted to make it to feel as if though, each time you move onto a different question, it’s as if you’re moving onto a different stage of Nicola’s design thinking/ life. 

I did encounter some troubles with the net of the book; thankfully nothing trial and error couldn’t fix. I didn’t take any pictures flipping through the notes unfortunately, but here are a couple more pictures showing the individual notes.    

this was before i assembled all the pieces together,  i was still figuring out the layout of the contents, and this was the one i ended up going with.

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cds 10.04.18

Up until this point I was leaning toward making a zine but i was still open to any other format of presentation as i noticed many other students were doing a zine, so i thought about perhaps doing something different. In this class ideas started popping up in my head as I was making a my prototype. I didn’t have anything necessarily in my mind as I was making it, but I did want it to adopt the presentation of a book. Then I thought about showing each question/answer in an individual way within that book. This was a workshop that really helped direct me toward what type of presentation I wanted to go with. 

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cds 03.05.18

In today’s workshop we were given various images from magazines and search for letterforms within the shape and forms. It was a little difficult to view the entirety of the image, broken down into smaller forms in order to ‘tease’ out letterforms. I thought about the contours of the face and following the natural curves/ surface of the face, and how that could be translated through the cutting of the letter. The letters that weren’t the most obvious ended up looking the most intriguing and interesting. Was definitely empowering to know that with such simple materials and little time, we can produce such fascinating designs. 

Somehow ended up making the word fetish lol. 

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cds 26.04.18

In today’s class, we deconstructed the layout of a typical A5/A6 zine, and labelled each page according to their number of order. This reassures that we start at the true beginning of our design, in order to understand the layout and the way in which we can position our contents. This class enabled me to understand that there are various things to consider (such as not placing elements too close to the edge of the page, take advantage of double-pages). Overall, a quite productive and insightful lesson. 

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cds 19.04.18

A fun class where we have the opportunity to enjoy the nice weather while looking for letterforms that exist with the many buildings RMIT owns. This class encouraged us to observe the space around us and pick out certain elements of a building that could be representative of a certain letter.

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Some of the other groups work. Interesting to see how others interpret and work with their given shapes.

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cds 12.05.18

In this session we were given a paper bag filled with a particular shape and asked to create a typeface of the entire alphabet. The first shape we were given was a quadrant, it was quite difficult to produce some letters, particularly those which typically have sharp edges and linear lines (such as F, X and Y). Some letters required us to manipulate space; involving the use negative space enable us to be less restrictive with our creative thinking. 

The addition of a second shape, the square, allowed us to represent the letterforms more precisely and gave us additional material to work with. The contrast of the colours also gave us an opportunity to highlight certain elements of a letterform, thus enhance the legibility of the letterform (seen in letters O, Q and X).     

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cds 05.04

In this class we exhibited our first project and worked in class groups to produce two distinct yet similar exhibitions. 

My group furthered the conception of a “question” and each found a hiding spot for our work; some beneath tables, others on the side of columns, or even the ceiling. Mine was aptly hidden on the side of a storage cabinet. We had mapped the whereabout of our pieces on a diagram of the class and gave further indiction to the location by using bright orange stickers.  

we proceeded to arrange the room in a manner that appeared empty and untouched; besides the slide on the projector. 

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hello, my question is...

“how can design be the answer to global warming?”

i believe design harbours a lot of potential to reduce our carbon footprint. as we have learnt, design is systems; so what systems can we change to prolong the longevity of our planet? What materials can we substitute/ abandon in our designs in order to alleviate some of the stresses Earth is facing? How can we modify our design processes to be more sustainable? 

the letterforms are produced out of the contents from my trashcan. each of these products have reach the end of their product life, so it was important to me to think about their impact on the environment now. will they be burned and buried, left to decompose in landfill over some centuries? Or can they be salvaged to enter a recycling system? 

design is already responding to the environment’s desperate cry for help by becoming more and more material conscious, but what other systems can we change?  

Some alternatives for my question were: “how can design be more waste conscious?” “can design be less wasteful?”

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cds 22.03

Going off writing efficiencies, we were to create a pangram from a selection of materials and try to limit the amount of cuts. My group used navy blue twine to create our pangram "The Five Boxing Wizards Jumped Quickly" with the assistance of some electrical tape to hold the twine in place. We didn't end up cutting the twine at all, but we took majority of the time allocated to create our phrase. 

Then working against the time for water to dry and evaporate, we had to write a pangram as a group and ensure all the words were legible. Coordination, planning and strategy played a part in this activity; each member was responsible for spelling one word and another was recording our progress.  

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Amandine Alessandra,  Legttering, 2009

https://www.behance.net/gallery/253606/Legttering

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János Megyik

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cds 08.03

We were introduced to the use of palimpsests and how they may apply in design. Going some centuries back, we discussed the ancient tools and materials that formed the means of communication. Such as the clay tablets in Mesopotamia and the practice of cuneiforms. We were given a material similar to the malleable nature of the clay. Playdough proved to be a promising substitute; we were to write our names onto our ‘clay tablet’ and were encouraged to restore the clay tablet and use a different typeface/font to express out name. I soon figured that dragging any tool through the material did not work well, rather, pressing and imprinting sections of the letter works much more efficiently. 

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cds 01.03

during this lecture i was encouraged to think with our hands. removing our modern applications and tools, we emptied out the contents of our bags and used those objects to spell our name + a phrase of our choice.